(Minghui.org) During the New York City mayoral primary election in July, a socialist antisemitic candidate became the official Democratic nominee. This not only worried conservatives but also surprised mainstream Democrats. Some of them hesitated to endorse him because his views are too close to socialism.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, “The People’s Republic of Hollywood,” “Youth turnout in the New York mayoral primary was up big, and polling shows that 4 out of 5 of them voted for the “democratic socialist.” As did nearly half of women. None, it appears, have ever cracked a history book.”
Data shows almost two-thirds of Americans under 30 have a favorable view of socialism. Many of their viewpoints about communism come from Hollywood movies, including classic ones. In these movies, capitalism is often associated with selfishness, greed, or viciousness, while communism is depicted as a beautiful dream.
The same illusion surfaced when communism was first introduced in China. After the October Revolution in Russia 1917, some young Chinese scholars initiated a New Culture Movement. In the name of science and democracy, they established magazines, newspapers, and organizations to oppose Confucianism. To some degree, this is similar to the current progressive movement in the United States. The attack on Confucianism was essentially no different from the cancel culture movement we are seeing now.
Between 1937 and 1939, after the Sino-Japanese War broke out, many Chinese youths went to Yan’an, then headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But they did not realize what was in store for them.
Peter Vladimirov, former correspondent for the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) between 1938 and 1945, was also a liaison officer for the Communist International to the CCP in Yan’an. His observations and viewpoints were recorded in China’s Special Area 1942 – 1945 and The Vladimirov Diaries, which were published in 1973.
In his books, Vladimirov described the Yan’an Rectification Movement between 1942 and 1945, an internal purge of the CCP in which people were driven insane or killed. The CCP not only grew and sold opium for profit, but also maintained secret contact with the Japanese headquarters during the war.
Vladimirov described the young people who fled to Yan’an as follows, “I believe that most of these young people had left the Special Zone (Yan’an) before 1940... At the height of the anti-Japanese movement, driven by romantic fantasies and a momentary frenzy, they arrived in Yan’an.
“Their knowledge of Chinese history and the revolutionary movement was either very vague or completely absent.”
“They also know almost nothing about the Soviet Union. They thought that in the Soviet Union people eat for free, can study at university for as long as they want, and don’t have to work. Many young Chinese men and women want to go to the Soviet Union so they can study there for ten or even more years.
“They have little knowledge, especially in politics and economics, but they love to talk about everything and hope to one day hold important positions... The Party cadres trained in the Special Administrative Region (Yan’an) have a very low level of basic knowledge. Some students can’t even tell the time, and their arithmetic is terrible. Most future Party workers have no practical experience, no professional knowledge, and are very backward in all aspects.”
I’ve seen similar mindsets in some young people in the West today. Some are attracted by the prospect of subsidized or free education, healthcare, and other services but overlook the reality that the cost has to be borne by taxpayers in the end. Forced egalitarianism may benefit certain populations in the near term, but over time, it discourages creativity and productivity. Furthermore, when centralized power is established to force such egalitarianism, the new group of elites inevitably end up controlling the fortune. This is what happened in today’s communist China and North Korea, where inequality not only remains unresolved but has worsened. Meanwhile, these systems of totalitarian rule result in untold suffering as citizens are deprived of their most basic rights.
The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, published in 2004, sheds light on how the CCP used the notion of “equality for all” to deceive people, especially the younger generations, into following its ideology while destroying traditional values of hard work, responsibility, and other merits of humanity. For example, before taking power, the CCP promised land to peasants and assets to workers. But after seizing these assets from landlords and business owners through violence and redistributing them, the CCP took them back under its own control within several years. In today’s China, the land is owned by the CCP, not farmers. In fact, even if someone owns a property such as a house or an apartment, he or she still does not own the land the property was built upon. That is, the reality of socialism and communism is totally different from the promises that attract people to these ideologies.
According to the Nine Commentaries, the CCP inherited nine characteristics from communism, and one of them is deceit. On the one hand, the CCP distorts history and makes people forget their history, including China’s divinely inspired culture. On the other hand, the CCP continually feeds sugar-coated, falsified information to Western society through TikTok and other channels. Some Westerners who are misled about the degree of freedom in China do not know that Google, YouTube, and Facebook are banned there. WeChat and TikTok, in contrast, are tightly censored, and dissident voices are nowhere to be found. TikTok also actively promotes communist ideology in a subtle manner through sophisticated algorithms.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and collapse of the Eastern Bloc showed that communism is a failure. The human rights atrocities still being carried out in China and the large number of people who have fled China, rich and poor, make it even clearer that communism is not a beautiful dream, but a nightmare.
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Category: News Commentary
