Occupiers and Refried Marxism

Sometimes stuff is better when rehashed or reused. I just had some refried beans for lunch, and it is a great component to a Mexican meal. But other things do not get better, no matter how often they are refried or retried. One such thing is Marxism. It is a failed social experiment which has helped no one but has killed millions.

I used to be a Marxist. So I know a bit about it, and I can spot a Marxist movement a mile away, even when it seeks to appear in new guises. And I know full well how the Marxist operates. Covert stealth operations are always so much more successful than utilising overt and obvious tactics.

I knew as a young radical that there are different means by which we could destroy a society. There are many strategies one can utilise to weaken the “enemy” and eventually take it over. I and my radical friends became adept at using the system against itself, to bring about our desired revolution.

And in so many ways we were wildly successful. But the revolutionaries are never satisfied, and never stop their agitation and works of destruction. Even though an Obama is in the White house, and a socialist is in the Lodge here in Australia, the radical left is not content. It continues its war against the West, and will not stop until it is overthrown completely.

Of course my own stint in the radical left was brought to an abrupt end when I became a Christian. That life-transforming story will have to be told another time. But my sojourn with the revolutionaries was certainly something I now view as invaluable, because it makes it so much easier for me to see when such radical forces are again at work.

While others might be lulled into thinking some new protest movement is fully benign and much needed, my past radical experience helps me to see through the subterfuge and spot the activist agenda much more readily. And it is not just my own experience, but the importance of history as well that comes into play here.

Those of us who lived through the Cold War, or at least the end of it, are – or should be – aware of the threat of militant, atheistic communism. We know that at least 100 million people died last century because of this monstrous and failed revolutionary movement.

And we are now seeing the same old stuff being replayed before our very eyes. Marxism is not dead – it has just morphed into various new forms. But the same intent is there: to destroy America and the West, to overthrow capitalism, and replace it with a state-run tyranny.

Sadly both during the Cold War and now, plenty of people were absolutely clueless as to the threat that existed. And also quite sadly, many naive Christians have no idea of the war we are in, or how there is a very real enemy at large bent on our destruction.

As I wrote to one Christian recently who thought the Occupy Wall Street movement was a legit group with legit complaints: “Many Christians seem to be missing the point here about OWS. Does human greed occur on all levels of society, from homes to corporations? Yes of course. Are all businesses and corporations perfect? No, of course not. But those are really not the issues here. What is fundamentally at stake is the very system which has bought unprecedented well-being and prosperity to the world – the free market. For all its faults, no other system in human history has done so much to alleviate poverty, free people from grinding and enslaving labor, and transform societies.

“The very computer you have used to type your complaint about corporations was of course the product of corporations and the free market. What the hard core in these protest marches want is the complete eradication and annihilation of the very thing that makes your life today so pleasant, easy and remarkable. They want to destroy the free market. They see it as the enemy. They want to replace it with failed systems, such as socialism, bigger government, and so on.

“That there are well meaning people marching, concerned about various injustices is one thing. We all should be concerned about injustice. But it is naivety in the extreme to think that somehow injustices will simply disappear if we smash Wall Street, destroy banks, and dismantle capitalism, which is the real goal of those pushing this.

“With all due respect, I find most Christians are abysmally ignorant not only of basic history but basic economics. This is a cultural war, with radicals, anarchists and Marxists seeking to use the gullibility and naivety of many to push their agenda – the ultimate goal of which is to smash America and the West. Being ignorant or unaware of history and economics really helps no one here.

“So it is one thing to care about the world in general and justice in particular, but it is another thing altogether to properly analyse the causes of the problems, and offer some genuine workable solutions. I see neither happening in these protest movements. It is just the tired old left seeking to destabilise the West and foist upon us all its failed and bogus agenda. If they really want to improve things, they should be targeting Pennsylvania Avenue (where Obama resides) instead of Wall Street.”

Since penning that reply a very important article has just appeared by Sally Zelikovsky which is worth quoting from extensively. Entitled “The Revolutionaries’ Revenge,” it very nicely makes the points I just tried to do above. We need to take the protestors at their own words, and not try to put our own nice spin on them and their aims.

Let them speak and tell us just what it is that they want. Sally has done just that, with extensive interviews with the demonstrators. She begins her piece with these words: “The media are mistakenly characterizing the Occupy Wall Street movement as unemployed Millennials with a legitimate gripe against Wall Street consistent with the Tea Party, or as a rag-tag group of unemployed stoners with no coherent message, not to be taken too seriously.

“After spending hours interviewing protesters in Oakland, California, both characterizations are way off base. If either scenario were apt, these folks would be marching on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and storming Congress. Instead, they’re taking on Wall Street and storming the homes of the wealthy and the buildings of large corporations.

“It’s Mourning in America, friends. Wake up to the fetid smell of Marxism taking over Main Street, intent on crushing Wall Street. Each person interviewed in Oakland had the same story to tell, and if you listen carefully to the video from the main stream press, it’s this: capitalism is the root of all evil.”

She goes on to actually identify just who is behind the Occupy marches: “When thousands say they want to overthrow capitalism and redistribute property, take them at their word, especially when their chants, signs, words, actions, websites and blogs all support that. And when they are as highly-organized, highly-funded, highly-networked, highly-mobilized and highly-motivated as the Wall Street Occupiers are, then we need to be afraid, be very afraid.

“How grassroots can this movement be when a simple scroll through the internet reveals that Big Labor and Big Community Organization are openly supporting it, organizing it, taking donations for it and drafting petitions for it? Some of those organizations are MoveOn, SEIU, AFL-CIO, National Nurses United, Working Families Party, Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream, Adbusters, US Day of Rage, Take the Square, October 2011, We are the 99%, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, CREDO and MoveOn’s very own Avaaz.org – the international progenitor of the Arab Spring.

“A cornucopia of America’s pop culture glitterati have thrust themselves into the midst of the Occupation with calls for revolution from Danny Glover; shouts of solidarity from Van Jones; cheers from Al Gore that OWSers are ‘pointing out the flaws in our system’; and professions from Michael Moore (whose latest agitprop was presciently entitled ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’) that ‘There’s a shared feeling among people down there that this economic system that we have is unfair.’

“All of the people interviewed at Occupy Oakland spoke with one voice: we must get rid of the system. And they didn’t hold back when probed: the system we must dismantle is capitalism.” If they have said all this so clearly, why don’t we just believe them? They hate America and the free market, and want it replaced now, by any means necessary.

Indeed, watch the video at the end of the article I link to below – it is most revealing indeed. If it all sounds like refried Marxism, that is because it is. They are simply parroting what Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin have already said. Sally continues:

“Marxist rhetoric plays like a broken record: bourgeoisie, oppressed workers, inequality, redistribution, capitalism and solidarity.  Fortunately, MoveOn is there to define for us the ‘oppressed’: ‘The 99% protesters represent all of us who are being left behind: union workers, public servants, the poor, the unemployed, seniors, the disabled, young people graduating off a cliff to no jobs.’

“Does this list truly represent 99% of the US population? If 1% includes millionaires and billionaires, wouldn’t the 99% have to include all of those mid-level executives, professionals and small business owners, etc.? Yes. But for purposes of this Marxist Revolution, if you have money in the bank or own property – be it a hot dog stand or beauty salon – then you are part of the bourgeoisie. The 99% have lumped bourgeois property owners (who really make up the vast majority of the middle) together with the 1% of millionaires and billionaires. To any rational mind this doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t matter. The property, hard work and success of Main Street and the American Dream have been targeted by the so-called 99%.

“And just when ‘social justice’ and ‘capitalist pig’ have become part of the American vernacular, we have to acquaint ourselves with new buzz words parroted by Marxist retreads from the 60s and their ‘useful idiot’ Occupiers:  ‘economic justice’ is the latest moniker for economic parity among all of God’s creatures and ‘neo-liberalism’ is the latest in a string of dirty words blaming corporations for just about everything. None of this is being done in secret. It’s all out in the open. We just choose to look the other way.

“America has to wake up to this new reality: the Cold War battle between communism and capitalism is back, only this time it’s on our front porch. It went underground in the 70s, got an education, put on a suit, bought a house and had a couple of kids. Then it used the schools to educate new foot soldiers and manipulated the pop culture to indoctrinate the next generation of fellow travelers who seek to create a new world order in the image of old world Marxism. Bill Ayers and his allies have been very busy – and successful. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this bona fide fifth column has patiently been marking time, waiting for the right moment to pounce on an oblivious, comfortable middle class, re-cast it as the wealthy ruling class, and take it down with a series of fatal bites to the jugular. Gramsci told Marxists generations ago that they had to take over education and the culture to bring about the revolution. The smart ones listened and acted.”

She concludes: “I am no Churchill but I admonish my fellow countrymen: don’t shrug this off as bunch of unsettled kids. Don’t wait for the Iron Curtain of oppression to fall while you go about your daily life, business as usual. It’s anything but. Take a moment to surf the net, attend a MoveOn meeting or talk to a few occupiers…. It’s your country and the Marxists aren’t coming – they’re here.”

Quite so. As a former Marxist, I know one when I see one. And I see plenty of them in the Occupy movement. Are there many sincere, non-aligned and genuine protestors amongst them? Sure, but they are all just cannon fodder for the revolutionaries. They are the “useful idiots” which Lenin so famously spoke about. And they will be the first to go when the revolution ultimately takes root.

(Don’t forget to watch the video at the end of the article in the link below.)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/the_revolutionaries_revenge.html

[2088 words]

24 Replies to “Occupiers and Refried Marxism”

  1. “Occupy Wall Street is led by New York’s Working Families party, a front group for ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), AFL-CIO and street-thug battalions from the various neo-communist organizations such as National People’s Action and Democratic Socialists of America. Paid rent-a-mobs from the Working Families Party, which isn’t even recognized in the District of Columbia, even paid a visit to the Washington Marriott at Metro Center in the nation’s capital on Wednesday.”

    http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/41392

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  2. Bill
    That video link, Chilling and Yes i think your right about these things. Like Zombies speaking with no eye contact and dare i say no brains. If i may, wonder off the point for a moment, hard to explain but it seems to me a spirit has gone in them, a spirit that has been roaming for somewhere to rest. It has occupied many a willing soul before and is at work again.
    Daniel Kempton

  3. Yes Daniel, often behind the mob is the demonic. We need to pray for them. I was once part of the radical left as well, but God broke through.
    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  4. As a fellow former Marxist, turned upside-down by the Gospel, I believe that there is one central strategic goal still ahead for the Forces of Evil as we approach the End Times: that is, the overthrow of the United States as we’ve known it. The North Western European, social, economic, scientific, technological and political revolution was by God’s Grace, predicated on the Biblical worldview. The epitome of this Christian-based phenomenon was the formation and development of the United States. We nations who have reaped the blessings of the post-reformation centuries have foolishly turned around and cut ourselves off from the well-spring of these blessings, reliance upon God’s infallible word, as preserved in the Bible, for guidance in personal and public morality, for an understanding of history, for foundations in intellectual endeavour and for the direction of great nation-states. The United States must eventually be neutered to make way for a grand renewal of a ruthless pagan world government. Wake up Brothers and Sisters! If you are in a fellowship being led by a blind man, you too will fall in a ditch. To appropriate a quote from the Marxist philosopher, George Novak, we must adopt a “long view of history”.
    Col Maynard, Sydney NSW

  5. Another apposite quotation from Winston Churchill: “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery”.
    Rachel Smith

  6. “American Communists and other assorted collectivists have spent decades hiding their true agendas under more palatable names like progressivism, socialism, cultural Marxism, anti-globalism, multiculturalism and global warming activism. Marxists like Saul Alinsky and Antonio Gramsci recognized that American soil was not fertile ground for Communism, and counseled a secretive strategy of gradual subversion from within, what Gramsci called “the long march through the institutions.” It is therefore jolting to see Communists advocating for Communism without dissimulating their true intent. No doubt they expect that after decades of anti-capitalist, anti-American curriculum in schools and universities, and similar views in the press and pop culture, the long march has paid off, and the time for revolution has arrived.”

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/the_revolutionary_communist_partys_little_yellow_book.html

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  7. Dennis Prager offers some good insights here:

    “Non-leftists who cherish the American value of liberty over the left-wing value of socioeconomic equality, as well as those who adhere to Judeo-Christian values, do not regard the existence of economic classes as inherently morally problematic. If the poor are treated equally before the law, are given the chance and the liberty to raise their socioeconomic status and have their basic material needs met, the gap between rich and poor is not a major moral problem. Of course, if the rich got rich through deceitful or violent means, they must be prosecuted.

    “But America is a place where the way in which “poor” is defined renders most poor Americans materially equivalent to much of Europe’s middle class. America is also a place where the rich by and large legally acquired their wealth through hard work and entrepreneurial enterprise. So here, the existence of rich and poor is not a problem that demands governmental action.

    “So when I see the mostly young people of Occupy Wall Street — a mixture of the bored, the nihilistic, the seekers of excitement, the left-wing true believers, the confused idealists and those hoping to engage in violence — railing against the rich capitalists on Wall Street, I get worried. Because the hatred they express toward the rich is similar to that expressed against the rich by Stalin, Mao and Pot Pot. Of course, these people are not comparable to those killers. But class hatred must lead to bad things.”

    http://patriotpost.us/opinion/dennis-prager/2011/10/18/why-is-class-hatred-morally-superior-to-race-hatred/

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  8. Thanks Bill, for your relentless speaking out of truth and wisdom. Bless you and your family in Jesus name.
    Barb Hoc

  9. Brilliant article Bill. Was just speaking with my family and coworkers about how ‘the occupiers’ don’t really know what the implications are for what they are demanding. (Or after reading your article maybe many of them actually do). The changes they are asking for will cause them much more harm than good. The places where they are going to eat their meals on wall street and the cell phone bills they are paying while organizing themselves are all the results of free markets and capitalism NOT socialism. There are too many riots and protests these days and asking for bigger government to solve the problems is only going to cause less freedom and future discontent. My message to them is to go out and work hard, be wise with all areas of life, align yourself with truth and leave the coveting behind please.
    Clive Ins

  10. Thanks Clive

    Yes these guys should all go and live in Cuba or North Korea or other workers’ paradises for a while. That might sober them up a bit.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  11. I know there has already been a tonne of stuff up on this but Miranda Devine’s column is worth reading.

    There may be something to their protests even if they are wrongly blaming capitalism;

    Lewis said last week that the Occupy movement “could be a big deal. They don’t know what they want exactly. [But] there is a horrible unfairness at the heart of our economy right now. We have essentially socialism for capitalists and capitalism for everyone else.”

    “People working inside Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are still allowed to make big bets and they get to keep the profits on the upside and if things went really really wrong you and I would get stuck with it. People respond viscerally to unfairness.”

    http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/fixing_broken_system_a_capital_idea/#.Tp6We5B1_6M.facebook

    Damien Spillane

  12. That column DS posted makes very important points. Here is something similar from American libertarian John Stossel: Wall Street Protesters Half Right:

    What’s there to say about Occupy Wall Street? The answer isn’t so simple. Some complain about taxpayer bailouts of businesses. Good for them. In a true free market, failing firms would go out of business. They couldn’t turn to Washington for help. … As Burton Folsom wrote in The Myth of the Robber Barons, there were political entrepreneurs, who made their fortunes through government privilege, and market entrepreneurs, who pleased consumers. …. I have at least found some common ground with some Wall Street protest supporters. Joe Sibilia, who runs the website CSRWire (Corporate Social Responsibility), told me, “You can’t have an environment where people are betting on financial instruments with the expectation that the government is going to bail them out.”

    So we agree that Wall Street bailouts are intolerable. Now we just have to teach our progressive friends that truly free markets work for the benefit of all.

    Jonathan Sarfati, US

  13. Truly amazing, keep up the good work Bill, so many of us are in your debt.
    Stan Fishley

  14. May I share with you the experience of a previous Premier of WA. In his maiden speech to Parliament he was vitriolic in his denunciation of the salaries paid to corporate heavyweights (which I also consider to be obscene).
    However, when his government was defeated in ’08, can you guess where he chose to be employed?
    You guessed it: on the Board of a Corporation which he had savaged some years previously.
    People, like the OWS protestors and their contemporaries, who are ignorant of the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
    Dunstan Hartley

  15. Surely you would still defend the protesters rights to free speech though? (Considering how fiercly you defended Andrew Bolt’s rights to free speech recently)
    James Beattie

  16. Thanks James

    Absolutely. I just wish that they had some mental and moral sense to go with all their shouting and shenanigans

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  17. Maybe James Beattie is aware of something that we are not: Andrew Bolt committing any of the violence and degradation of the Occupy mob. Or did he call for expulsion of the Jews, following the 109 other countries from which Jews have been expelled?
    Jonathan Sarfati, US

  18. Watched that video at the end of your article Bill, let’s hope that that Silly (oops, sorry about that little slipup!) er, Sally does not get thrown out of her accommodation, otherwise she might be forced to eat her words about her landlord, the hypocrisy of these people is mind boggling, they will put the boot into landlords and resaurants etc, but they will still use these services, for me it is a halfway point between not taking these people seriously and being very concerned, I must admit that I err on the side of the latter rather than the former!
    Steve Davis

  19. They say history repeats itself because nobody listens. It seems to me that history will repeat itself because nobody speaks. A lot of ideas like Socialism and Communism sound good but history has shown that fallen man can’t make them work. Yet our schools don’t teach the next generation what the previous generations learned and fought against so we could have freedom.
    Kylie Anderson

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: