We thought communism was beaten. But, slowly but surely, it has clawed its way out of the dustbin of history and into the hearts and minds of western societies. Under the guise of the more benign sounding term of “socialism”, extreme leftist ideology is now found in our schools, in the media and in mainstream political platforms. Unless we start pushing back, all the freedoms and prosperity we take for granted today will fall victim to a toxic ideology that has already claimed more than 100 million human lives in the last century.

While we are focused on the coronavirus, the deadliest virus of all has been spreading like wildfire across Western democracies. A uniquely toxic, divisive, and regressive ideology has taken root and has been gaining traction for years. Europe is becoming more and more centralized, while interventionism and big government are on the rise.

In America, the spread of identity politics and “social justice warriors” are resulting in growing wave of radical leftist ideas that are being transcribed into actual policies. And yet, most of us failed to notice the threat that this trend poses to Western civilization until very recently, when it erupted into physical violence, riots, and the mindless destruction of public and private property.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Instead of writing a longer piece on this topic, we prefer to refer you to a video produced by Turning Point USA. It provides some food for thought and it presents a good opportunity to take a step back, reevaluate the mainstream coverage of these latest developments and put them back into their proper historical context.

All too often, the severity of what is happening in our western, democratic world, is not properly reported, much less properly understood. These days, there is no such thing as independent journalism, social media managed to make nuance, facts and context redundant, while our own attention spans have been shortened to 280 characters or a 30’’ soundbite.

Every news story is sensationalized and overdramatized, every political disagreement has devolved into a shouting match, every new government plan is branded as a “War on this” and a "War on that”, with zero irony regarding the actual ongoing wars, and every hardship we encounter as a society or as individuals is labeled as an existential threat. As a result, we have become so desensitized and numb, that we find it difficult to identify genuine, real danger when it is staring us in the face.

Therefore, this gradual but widespread reemergence of Marxism is so dangerous. For years, it has been percolating within academia and the political fringes and it has only been making incremental gains, too small for the average citizen and news consumer to notice. And then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, it violently accelerated and torched entire cities, just like it did only a few decades ago.

No matter where you stand on politics, if you are a moderate liberal, a conservative or a libertarian, you need to realize that our fundamental freedoms are under attack. Freedom of speech requires that any and all censorship is nipped in the bud. Problems cannot be solved, we cannot advance as a society, unless we are able to openly express our views and argue about the way forward. When censorship – legal or social – suppresses public discourse, tensions build and erupt in uncontrollable ways. We know this from history. And we need to speak up and stand up before we end up repeating it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXGxRKlA70A

Video by Turning Point USA, YouTube