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2 FATAL FLAWS OF COMMUNISM - AND ISLAM. GENERALLY UNSEEN

Today I'm writing because I have two gifts for you. Two fatal flaws of Communism - and Islam. And the striking differences in mainstream response to Communism, Nazism, Islam, and the Jonestown massacre (1978).

Plus, at the end, an important petition to protect Canadian free speech rights from allegations of "Islamophobia." Please sign.


Fatal flaw number one. I didn't know about this flaw until a couple of years ago. I knew the (supposed) GOAL of Communism: plenty for all people. This is what many people think of when they hear the word, Communism. No hunger. Medical attention and education available to all. Housing for all. Jobs for everybody. Who could object to that?

But then there's that nasty flaw: the HOW.

Horrific dictatorships have happened, over and over, when Communist forces took over. Russia. China. VietNam. Cuba. Cambodia.

Repression. Censorship. Mass arrests of dissidents. Mass imprisonment without trial. Massacres. In Russia under Stalin: 30 to 40 MILLION deaths, according to more than one source - perhaps 60 MILLION, according to others. In the Communist-created famine in the Ukraine (1932-33), 7 MILLION people starved to death (http://www.historyplace.com/ and http://www.ukemonde.com/) Another source calculates the daily death rate: 30,000 a day (http://www.holodomorct.org/).

7 MILLION - this is more than the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis. But how many people know the number - know it and shudder with horror at the word, Communism, as they shudder at the word, Nazism?

Then there is Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958-1963): 30 to 50 MILLION deaths. Maybe double that.

And what about Pol Pot (Cambodia): 2 to 3 MILLION out of a population just over 8 million.

The first fatal flaw: Communism does not have a system of checks and balances that sets limits on those with political power. There's nothing like the Magna Carta, an imperfect document, but one that limits the power of the king. Nothing like the American constitution, likewise imperfect, but it likewise balances power, does its best to limit the power of the government to control the citizens.

Communism has none of this. In other words, it's inherently a disaster waiting to happen.

It may sound good - like a flawed blueprint that comes with a gorgeous-looking drawing of what the end result is supposed to be.


How is this fatal flaw generally hidden? Very easy: it's not mentioned. Instead, I've kept hearing that all the horrors are individual aberrations - this is Leninism not Communism, Stalinism not Communism, Maoism not Communism, Ho Chi Minhism (VietNam) not Communism, Pol Potism (Cambodia) not Communism. Now you see it (the horrors) - and immediately after you're told that the facts are irrelevant, because what really counts is the "real Communism" - which is a fantasy image.

It's as if the GOAL were Olympic level skiers, and the reality was children thrown off cliff edges - along with another reality: the dismissal of the pile of bodies at the foot of the cliff as some aberration, and the quick refocus on the wonderful GOAL.

Another lack: both Communism and the West have shown that they lack, in large part, whatever it would take to acknowledge the inherent flaw.


The second fatal flaw: the GOAL - commune-ism. Great to have enough to eat for all, education and medical care accessible for all. But total commune-ism? No private property? It's a rigid vision - it assumes this is what is best for people - rather than being reality-centered, where we keep learning and adjusting, improving.

What do I advocate? A reality-centered approach that keeps checking what is working and what isn't, in terms of human flourishing. This is my approach overall, including with ethics:
http://elsasemporium.com/reality-based-ethics.html


But back to that first fatal flaw.

How is it that one massive atrocity after another is denied and/or explained away as an aberration? I had my eureka moment only a couple of years ago re Communism during a presentation on the Magna Carta. Why did I need to come to this eureka moment when the fatal flaw is utterly obvious once one sees it? Why hadn't I been taught this in grade school, or anyway in high school? It isn't tough to understand: maybe there's a great goal, but there's no means to reach it; instead a common outcome is murderous dictatorship.

One answer: people are so enthralled by the vision of What Is To Be that they just can't pay attention to millions upon millions of people murdered.

That answer is far from enough. It doesn't explain, for instance, the barrage of positive images of Fidel Castro - instead of stories of his atrocities which add up to 100,000 deaths. (The atrocities are known, but not given much mainstream attention). How many of the people putting out these positive images of Communist leaders have been so brainwashed that they themselves don't see the horrors? What is going on?

Diana West's American Betrayal documents the impact of mass Communist infiltration.

For the impact of brainwashing, a great resource is anything on the Stockholm Syndrome - such as Kenneth Roberts' analysis of the Stockholm Syndrome within Islam,postulated to be Mohammed's greatest discovery:
https://www.politicalislam.com/discovery


Another question. Is Islam flawed in a way similar to Communism?

Yes. For non-Islamics, both the HOW and the GOAL are fatally flawed. Islam's HOW: the many varieties of jihad - each and every one of them destructive of non-Islamic societies. Islam's GOAL: a worldwide Islamic caliphate where all must follow Sharia, the dictates of Islam in which there is female subservience, slavery, sex slavery, etc - and any non-Islamics who are allowed to live are dhimmis, utter inferiors.

With Islam even more than with Communism, both the HOW and the GOAL are generally kept out of Western view as fully as possible.

However, there is a major difference as well as similarity. The HOW of Islam was clear from the start: the various forms of jihad. In this way Islam is unlike Communism. On the other hand, Communism generally tries to hide Communist atrocities, and Islam almost invariably insists it is a religion of peace, when speaking publicly to the Western media. So with both Communism and Islam, there is a disjuncture between reality and what one is supposed to perceive.


And now, my third gift to you. The huge differences in general Western mainstream response to:
- the Jonestown massacre (1978 - 909 Americans dead in "revolutionary suicide" via cyanide poisoning);
- Communism;
- Nazism;
- and Islam.


The Jonestown massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/). There was nothing wrong, from my brief look, with the Jonestown goal: some kind of paradise. The problem (as with Communism): the HOW. When things did not work out as desired on earth by the leader, Mr Jones, the outcome was death to all his followers and himself by suicide (or "forced suicide", meaning murder).

The general response: horror. My evaluation of this response: it sounds both sane and natural to me.

In other words, people did not care about the GOAL (some kind of paradise, whether on earth or elsewhere). They cared about the reality - the lives cut short. People didn't just have this response spontaneously, by the way. The media reports encouraged people to be horrified by the mass deaths. Lots of images of dead bodies. The stories were all about the horror.

Another point: the leader was held responsible, not the followers.

In this case, that also seems pretty reasonable to me.


With Communism, as already noted, the GOAL is used to deny the relevance of reality. In other words, the end supposedly not only justifies the means, it makes the means irrelevant - and at the same time, of course, the ongoing reality is generally denied. So the Communist-created famine in the Ukraine (1932-33) in which 7 MILLION people died - this was denied. It isn't as if Communism acknowledged the famine and claimed this was a small price to pay for the GLORIOUS GOAL. This happened over and over. Yet those who denied believed this was a good thing to do, to protect that Great Goodness, Communism. Communist forces massacred 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in 1940. Again, Communists denied they had done it, until the evidence was just too overwhelming. And even then, a key eye witness who spoke out was murdered. But most people in the West have not turned away from Communism. Instead, as we can see in the many recent tributes to Castro, a dictator responsible for over 100,000 deaths. Somehow the mass murder of dissidents is irrelevant. After all, just think of the wonderful GOAL.

Also we're shown plenty of pictures of smiling Castro - and of glamorous Che Guevara, and earlier there was good ol' "Uncle Joe" (Joseph Stalin), along with Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung looking nobly into the distance. With the Jonestown massacre, on the other hand, we were not encouraged to feel sympathy for Jim Jones.


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the brilliant Gulag Archipelago and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, having lived the brutal reality of years in a Communist prison camp, pays attention to that reality in his writings, and then asks WHY the West generally disregards the reality. He gives numbers. Under the czars (generally viewed as repressive brutes) an average of 17 people a year were executed. The Spanish Inquisition destroyed, at its height, 10 people per month. Once the Communists got into power in Russia (1918-1919), the death toll took a dramatic leap: 1000 people per month were executed without trial. By 1938-1939, that had risen to over 40,000 people executed per month. And the czars were the repressive ones??!!! And Stalin was "Uncle Joe"???


The situation is very different when we turn from Communism and Communist leaders to Nazism and Hitler - it's almost the exact opposite, in fact. Was there any positive goal? Hitler spoke of a Thousand Year Reich. What was it supposed to be like? What one sees is the atrocities.

Also, run-of-the-mill Communists - citizens of Communist countries who believed in Communist ideology - are not seen in the same way as run-of-the-mill Nazis. Run-of-the-mill Communists tend to be seen as ordinary people. This isn't the case with run-of-the-mill Nazis. Instead even non-Nazi Germans, at least for decades after World War II, tended to be demonized, seen as evil.

This is a natural human tendency, by the way: the tendency to generalize. Someone is bitten by one dog, and comes to fear all dogs.

But it needs to be noted that this natural human tendency does not emerge in relation to Communists

Also while it's natural to recoil from Nazi horrors (and Jonestown horrors), Communism was even more horrific and again, the natural recoil is missing. Also missing: attention to Western collusion, the West's generally discounting evidence of Communist atrocities and failing to hold accountable known Communist perpetrators of atrocities. For example, at the Nuremberg trials of top Nazis, the key Communist judge - with the accord of the British and the Americans - was known to be a major judge at Communist show trials of dissidents.


And then we come to Islam. While Nazis are judged negatively - and held responsible - for Nazi atrocities, this is totally not the case with Islamics. Islamics are not judged negatively, by the mainstream anyway, for Islam-endorsed atrocities committed by Islamics. Instead, the mainstream is on the lookout for indications of that dire dreadful thing, Islamophobia. Islamic violence, it's declared over and over, has nothing to do with Islam - something one never hears about Nazi-endorsed violence committed by Nazis.

Unlike with Communism, there isn't much attention to the GOALS of Islam (which would make most Western people recoil in horror!!). Instead we tend to be told what Islam supposedly IS: a religion of peace. And we're told about how important it is that Islamics not suffer from prejudice due to violence done by Islamics who are supposedly not Islamics.

The bad guys are the Islamophobes, who violate the prohibition against linking Islam with violence done by Quran-quoting Islamics in the name of Islam.

This is akin to the situation with Communism, where it's anti-Communists who are judged as Red-baiters and McCarthyites.

Once again, a natural horror in response to atrocities - as with the Jonestown massacre and Nazism - is missing.


There's a lot more exploring to be done.

But, in brief, Nazism is connected to:
- one part of Nazi ideology (most of all, that Jews are evil);
- Nazi means (repression of dissent; Holocaust against Jews and others designated evil and inferior);
- and Nazis (7% of Germans) and also Germans in general.

Islam is not connected to:
- Islamic ideology (most Islamic ideology is denied, except that which has been abrogated/rendered null and void 1400 years ago);
- Islamic means (jihad);
- Islamics ("but I know a nice Muslim," "Not all Muslims are like that," etc).

Communism is connected to:
- the Communist fantasy goal (heaven on earth).

Communism, in the mainstream Western media, is disconnected:
- from the means (mass starvation, mass repression of dissent; large scale murders, etc);
- and from Communists (those Communists who are for worldwide Communism domination, including through infiltrating non-Communist political systems with Communist agenda).

With the Jonestown massacre, the focus was on the horror of the deaths - not the splendor of the goal, not the glamor of the leader.

In general, something unnatural seems to going on with Communism and Islam - something that works against the human tendency to be horrified by horror.

And in fact, the general response to Nazism may be a natural child response (one side is all good, the other all bad), but it isn't an adult response that takes way more facts into account:
http://elsasblog.com/161211-new-facts-about-WW-II.html


Here are what may be 2 further parts of the explanation (in addition to infiltration and the Stockholm Syndrome) for the general softness toward Communists and Islamics: humans are very malleable - and with both Communism and Islam, 2 of our greatest qualities are used against people.

The first quality: empathy. Lots of studies show that caring for others makes people happy. You can buy happiness by spending money on other people, according to a very interesting TED talk: https://youtu.be/PsihkFWDt3Y

With both Islam and Communism, through the mainstream media, government, and so-called education, people are encouraged to feel empathy for, care about Islamics (poor them, hurt by Islamophobia) and especially about Islamic refugees (poor poor poor them), and about all the wretched of the earth (Communism promises to give them all plenty). At the same time, there's a lack of attention to the need for self-care (the danger of Islam to non-Islamic societies, the documented dangers of Communism)

The second quality: feeling. All the psychologies encourage us to be in touch with our feelings. Even in school, students are encouraged to express what they feel about something - not what they think. So masses of people have a meltdown when Clinton loses. They haven't learned to seek out information, check into sources. People feel about climate change, not think. People feel about Communism and cute Che Guevara - not think. People feel about people with information that shows Islam is a threat: eek, Islamophobes!!

I read somewhere that you can tell a society is in trouble if feeling is put above thinking. Yes!!! it went inside me. Having the capacity to feel and know what we're feeling - vital. But then there's also that other amazing capacity - to think, to take in information, evaluate it, search out more, analyze it. For instance, I've been thinking about Communism, Nazism, Islam and the Jonestown massacre.

And that's all for today.



Next time: time to celebrate. A tribute to those of us on the side of truth, human rights and freedom, like freedom of speech.


In the meantime, all the best to all who care and dare,

Elsa


PS. Please sign to protect Canadian free speech rights from allegations of "Islamophobia." What's this about? A recent petition was passed by the Canadian government, aiming to condemn "Islamophobia" throughout Canada. Anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the threats to freedom of speech throughout the West knows this is dangerous. For instance, in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, likely the next Dutch prime minister (yeah!), has just been judged guilty for speaking the truth. So please sign:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/protecting-canadian-free-speeech-rights-from


PPS. As usual, there have been COMMENTS:


What can I say .... "WOW.. EVEN DOUBLE WOW" Elsa you are on fire here!!!

What better asset do we have than the power to think... Thanks for stirring up my diminishing power... I feel I have had a giant shot of Popeye's Spinach.

Gordon Cooper, Australia


****

ELSA:

I started with this comment because I asked myself, about the send-out, would it be a bit much for most people - lots of idea stuff. So I was glad to get several comments from people who noted this wasn't light reading, but loved the send-out. I know the ideas felt important to me.

Then, one people mentioned a third fatal flaw of both Communism and Islam: there's no permission to come and go.


****

Elsa hi.

I really enjoyed reading your analysis.

As one who grew up in USSR, I know first hand about the communist system. The only place I've seen a commune work was in an Israeli kibitz. There are a couple reasons it worked there.
1. the small scale of most of the kibitz.
2. people are free to join or to leave.

This is one of the most important points about communism and Islam that people cannot comprehend.

When Bob Dylan decided to convert to Christianity he was not threatened 'to be killed' by the Jews.

When Bob Dylan decided to convert back to Judaism he was not threatened 'to be killed' by the Christian community.

There are so many ex Muslims that live in constant fear of being killed by an ordinary person following the orders of the 'peaceful religion'.

Also, another comment, if I may. We all know that Islam means submission. What quite often is missed is the opposite side of the coin, which is - domination. This would explain why virtually all the Muslim societies are totalitarian societies.

In the Judeo Christian societies what saved the day was the fact that everything was based on the 10 commandments. Thus we see that Magna Carta is fundamentally a repetition of the same principals. The mere fact that the master could not force people to work 7 days a week was a huge achievement. That meant that all people had rights and all the people including the king were accountable.

In Islam till today people can pray and work on Friday.

Thanks again for the great work you're doing.

P.N., Canada


****

Well done again Elsa!
You should be an university professor - and be lecturing lefties who are teaching political science there!

Majka Broulik, Canada


****

Your last two posts were EXCELLENT! I got so wrapped up in dissecting and analyzing them that I forgot to send a bit of gratitude your way. Your words and thoughts have reinvigorated my thinking.

Thank you for the great posts!

N.P., US


****

Dear Elsa,

I think that the first historian to reveal the full extent of the Soviet terror was Robert Conquest. He summed up his findings in a rather gruesome limerick.

There was an old Marxist called Lenin,
Who did one or two million men in.
That's a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in,
That old Marxist Stalin did ten in.

Of course, Soviet Russia had been a wartime ally of Britain and, as we know from the way George Orwell was treated, communist sympathizers in high places did not like their idol to be attacked. For diplomatic reasons, the British government would not allow the Polish community in Britain to erect a monument to the victims of Katyn.

Regards

Edward Spalton, UK


****

Another excellent article, thanks for that.

Steve Flanagan


****

Thanks Elsa. This is fantastic! I signed the petition.

D.S.


****

Thx Elsa,

Lots of great, well documented history . . . and with history books as reference.
My reading list just got much longer.
I will re-read this post 2 or 3 more times.

The sorry part is this is very important history and much of it is no longer being taught in our schools.
To quote Karl Marx: "The first battlefield is the rewriting of history."
That is exactly what is happening. Add to that, the younger people are not being taught how to do basic research . . . as you have done.
Welcome Common Core into our schools, as history books are rewritten and social studies are dropped.
Just the very title of Hillary Clinton’s book, "It Takes A Village," says it all!!! That mindset is ingrained into the DNA of most Liberals and Progressives.

‘nuff for now.

Merry Christmas,

Lee Norman, US


****

Hello Elsa,

Thanks for your writings again.

Here are a few thoughts on Nazism, Communism and Islam (and Roman Catholicism):
The Nazis had a popular message, at least for Germans, “We are the master race and destined to rule the world”; and they had a powerful army to back it up.

Communism had a message of global appeal for the oppressed working classes and again powerful armies to spread it worldwide.

Islam has no message with any appeal to anyone not already in its grip. The promise of 40 virgins in paradise has little credibility in the modern world, and no appeal to at least half the human race! In its early days Islam was a superpower, but in today’s world it has no significant military strength and no credible message.

Where does this lead? The obvious conclusion is that Islam’s time will be limited.
Communism failed after about 70 years. Nazism lasted much less. TThe Roman Catholic Church, with its promises of rewards and punishments in the life to come, has had many more similarities to Islam; but it too, after many centuries of power, has now gone into terminal decline. Islam with much less power or credibility than any of these is bound to follow.

Two positive things I see: 1. More and more people are breaking the politically correct ban and speaking out against Islam. 2. Huge numbers, reckoned to be in the millions, are leaving Islam and turning to Christ. Ironically 9/11 appears to have been one of the main evangelists responsible.

Islam is causing misery to huge numbers of people at all sorts of levels and in all sorts of ways, but actually even this is small compared with the millions that it has killed or enslaved in the past. Happily now its days are numbered.

All the more reason to carry on your good work and help hasten its demise.

Shalom!

Robert, England


****

Lots to think about here,
Thanks for starting the process. I have been watching the Australian news reports on Castro's passing with amazement at how they have completely overlooked reality in their assessment of his life.
There are some very good thoughts in this reflection.
Thanks again.

Fr George, Australia


****

The main flaw of communism is the assumption that human beings can be changed from competitive to cooperative. Every attempt to suppress the ego structure results in the same ego re-asserting itself with vengeance.
When people grow spiritually, they expand their sense of I/me to include more and more others. Making it possible to create true spiritual communes.
Communism can exist in a setting where individuals voluntarily form and maintain the commune.

Unfortunately neither Marx nor Lenin understood that. I am not even mentioning Stalin and Mao because neither of them were sincere ideologues. Rather they were just opportunists who used Communism as a means to fulfill their greed for power.
Lenin was indeed an idealist and rather unselfish at that. He was willing to sacrifice millions for the sake of his ideal, but unlike Stalin and Mao, he was also willing to die for it. Anyway Lenin and Marx both assumed that competitive egoistic personality structure were a reflection of the unjust capitalist system in which such personalities were formed.
The experiment they conducted showed that just the opposite was the truth. A social system is a reflection of the prevailing personality structure. Greed, selfishness and hunger for power do not disappear when the system is changed, they only changed names. Thus political correctness is invented. Stalin becomes a first "secretary" of the party and is addressed as "comrade", but in reality did not become St. Francis; rather he was a tsar, more deadly than any Ivan the Great and Peter the "Great" combined.

The most important similarity of Islam and State Communism is that both are involuntary. In both leaving was severely punishable. People who escaped from East Germany risked being shot, just like Muslims who want to apostatize.

Veet Vivarto, Israel


AND CONTINUED . . .

I thought more about the similarity between (State-)Communism and Islam. Now I think that perhaps the most important similarity is that both systems believe that they are the final goal of all human development. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the "seal of the prophets". There cannot be any improvements. Likewise Communists believed that Communism is the final stage of societal development. Since this is the classless society, there are no longer internal conflicts leading to further changes. So both systems believe in the inevitability of everyone eventually coming around to their system.

This is important because they believe in order for that to happen, the destruction of the existing system is required. So they both want to destroy Western civilization for different reasons. Communities because they believe that Capitalism is evil. Muslims because they believe that all other religions are inferior.

This creates a base for alliance. Communist hallucinate that after Muslims destroy Western Civilization and Capitalism, they'll have destroyed the rood of all evil, and there will be no need for any religion. And then Muslims will become secular socialists.

Muslims on the other hand are rather well aware of the Leftists as Useful Idiots. They will be the first one murdered once Muslims gain power (as was the case in the Iranian Islamic Revolution).

Veet Vivarto, Israel


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posted Dec 18, 2016




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2 Fatal Flaws of Communism.
Fatal Flaw #1: the HOW.
Fatal Flaw #2:
the WHAT, the GOAL.
An exploration of
Communism, Islam,
Nazism, Jonestown,
and the Response of
the Mainstream West:
Silence, Distortion, Bias.


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