Echo
In the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd, extreme leftist groups have captured the imagination of a mainstream media that largely shares their ideology. We watch and listen as groups like BLM and Antifa are provided with a platform to espouse their extremist views (without context, opposing commentary, or 'adult' pushback). They advocate or actually initiate:
- violent confrontation with the sole purpose of creating a video moment that they can use for propaganda;
- vandalism and property destruction with the intent of creating chaos
- looting that "confiscates" the work of evil capitalists;
- destruction of statues and other historical places that depict a history that they disapprove of (e.g., beheading a statue of Christopher Columbus);
- active censorship of articles and books that oppose their ideology;
- efforts to 'cancel' celebrities and academics who offer views that oppose their narrative;</li>
- <li>calls for the defunding of or abolishment of police;
- specious claims that our entire country is "systemically racist"
- juvenile and intellectually dishonest arguments that "privilege" is the primary cause of all societal problems
I’m in Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of Cambodia’s Holocaust Museum. It presents the horrifying story of the killing fields. Most Americans are vaguely aware of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, but what they often don’t know is that the Khmer Rouge were socialist extremists—virulently anti-capitalist, demonizers of the rich, guarantors of a state controlled utopia in which medical care, education, food and other creature comforts would be available to all, and lastly, redistributionists who stole property from those who had it and gave it to favored people (always members of the communist party).
Human Remains from the Killing Fields
At the Khmer Rouge Museum, survivors’ testimony abounds. Like Yad Vashem in Israel or the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the testimony is tragic in its description of barbaric acts of violence all perpetrated in the name of a repugnant ideology. Here’s the testimony of Leng Yun, a wife and mother whose family was murdered by the Khmer Rouge.“[The Khmer Rouge] executed high ranking officers [military who opposed their communist ideology], rich people, proletariates, capitalists, and people who used to eat delicious food. [Because we owned a small shop] we were accused of being capitalists. “To help the communist state, all of these people became slave labor, were starved, and when too weak to work as slaves, killed.
The modern-day Left appears to be very worried about language, expressing outrage whenever someone says anything that they find offensive. Yet in the United States we’re hearing echos of the anti-capitalist, eat-the-rich language that is the staple of all socialists, including the Khmer Rouge.“The rich don’t pay their fair share."Echos of these same sentiments were used by a group that ultimately killed millions.
“Billionaires are immoral."
“Capitalism is an evil."
"Those who oppose us are deniers."
To be clear, modern-day Democratic Socialists who use such language are NOT the Khmer Rouge. But the echo remains, and although it’s faint, it could grow in volume and lead to very bad things.
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