If you live in the United States, there is only one sure fire way to learn about the failings of Socialism. That is to sit down with a person who actually lived through it. I know a Bulgarian who will go off on a rant about Socialism’s evils at a drop of a hat. You could also get someone from, Cuba, Hungary, the Czech Republic, or a Ukrainian. They will give you clarity of the bestiality of Socialism. I found another man to enlighten you and your family.
If you have been a reader of this column you have known I have gone off on how the evils of Socialism in its many forms has been hidden from us. Go to a bookstore (yes, there are some left) and you will find a major section on Hitler and the Nazis. Book after book. Try and find more than one book on Stalin or Mao who were far more successful mass murderers. I get a movie every month about Nazi Germany shipped to me from Netflix. There are oodles of these movies. Try to find a movie on the evils of Mao or Stalin – nearly impossible until now.
I received a movie (Yes; Netflix still ships DVDs to your mailbox) entitled Mr. Jones. I had no clue what it was about. I started watching and became bewitched. Gareth Jones was a young Welsh journalist. He not only spoke English, but was fluent in German, French and Russian.
Jones was in Germany in 1933 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. A few days later he flew with Hitler and Joseph Goebbels to Frankfurt for Hitler’s “coronation” as Germany’s new leader. He saw first-hand the coming dangers of Hitler. Yet, he turned his interests to Russia.
Because Jones, at the age of 28, had interviewed Hitler, he felt emboldened to attempt to interview Stalin. He had already been in Russia in 1931 and anonymously had reported the famines in Ukraine and Southern Russia. He had to hide who he was because of the immense pressure to suppress any mention of these famines as Stalin and his defenders in the West wanted to hide Stalin’s failures to make it seem this new experiment Socialism — or as they called it Communism — was succeeding.
When Jones went back to Russia for his third trip, he was spurred to expose the mass deaths that were later referred to as “The Holodomor.” This was the man-made famine causing millions of Ukrainians to starve to death. Jones slipped away from his handlers and saw the face of the famine that was being suppressed by Stalin and the friendly press in the West.
A perfect example of this coordination of Stalin and the western press was Walter Duranty of the New York Times. He served in Moscow as the bureau chief from 1922 through 1936. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing in 1931 during the famine. When Jones released his original work revealing the famine, Duranty wrote that it was a fallacy. Who was the world to believe — the NYT bureau chief or an anonymous writer?
After Jones’ 1933 visit, he wrote under his name about the famine in a press release from Berlin that was published around the world, including the New York Evening Post. His devastating first-hand report revealed the vicious cruelty of the mass murder of his own people by Stalin. Jones was banned from the Soviet Union.
Jones himself was murdered on a later trip to Mongolia in 1935. He was just 30 years old. It is thought the killing was carried out by Soviet agents.
The reason this story is so important today is because there are a lot of people walking around this country today calling themselves progressives which is a nice term for Socialist or Communist. They are all the same. Some are true believers. Others are followers because what the leaders tell them sounds nice and they have never heard detailed accounts of the dangers of Socialism or Communism. They don’t know the destructive menace of these philosophies. They don’t know how many people were murdered to further their causes. They may even have a Che Guevara t-shirt in their closet.
Grab your deeply confused relative and sit down and watch Mr. Jones. It is quite an enthralling tale. Then when it is done and they tell you they had no idea, tell them about Mao and Pol Pot and Che and their gangs. Get them some reading material and remind them every one of these regimes committed mass murder of their citizens whether it was in the thousands or millions. Nor has any of the regimes succeeded for the people who lived in their country. The citizens have lost all the rights that their supporters in America would never tolerate.
If they knew how wretched progressivism and its predecessors are they will turn their backs on it. Don’t wait for the schools or Hollywood to educate them. Take matters in your own hands.