The socialist founding fathers’ hatred of free speech

By Hanne Nabintu Herland

Read Hanne’s The Herland Report.

Many have been shocked to see the left’s merciless repression of free speech for those who have a worldview that is not in line with the current socialist, politically correct narrative. But they should not be so surprised. Karl Marx (1818-1883) clearly defined socialism and communism as ideologies that precisely aim at destroying the very structures of traditional civil society and its critical thinking. The quotation: “The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism,” defines the disdain for plurality of opinions that has marked Marxist thought for generations.

If one wonders what type of society socialists are trying to create, it is useful to study its brutally vocal founders about the values of socialism: The need for intolerance, dishonesty, theft, the creating of fear by clamping-down on dissidents and free intellectuals, manipulating the people to become the needed “useful idiots” who are to help cause a bloody revolution that would extinguish the light of Western civilization. Read the two articles at WND that shed further light on this topic.

The admirer of Karl Marx, Vladimir I. Lenin, was the founder of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He detested the capitalist system, its virtues and its code of honor, stating the need to ruthlessly curb free speech: “We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth. … We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion and scorn towards those who disagree with us.” Lenin, the father of Marxist-Leninism, lived in Europe for many years and benefited from the open democratic societies that allowed him to organize his band of brothers. Yet, he set forth to brutally quench personal freedoms when taking power in the USSR – with constant vilification, persecution or death sentences for whoever dared to speak up against his institutionalized atheistic state communism.

The crushing of free speech and a free press was crucial to Lenin: “Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes is right allow itself to be criticized?” he asked.

The Soviet Communist Party articulated the tactic in 1943, the need to: “… continually embarrass, discredit and degrade our critics. When obstructionists become too irritating, label them as fascist or Nazi or anti-Semitic. … Constantly associate those who oppose us with those names that already have a bad smell. This association will, after enough repetition, become fact in the public mind.”

As investigative journalist James Simpson writes in “Who was Karl Marx?” Marx prescribed a new world order in which the weak and feeble classes and races must be defeated, and thereafter, the abolition of property rights, democratic voting, the family as a social unit, individualism and the right to own the fruits of your own labor; he also called for the destruction of eternal truths such as justice, the nation state and all religions. This is progressive despotism, as Simpson puts it.

Willi Münzenberg (1889-1940), the influential and very successful communist agent in the West and good friend of Vladimir Lenin, said: “We must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

These blatantly brutal methods have always been socialist tools designed to repress free speech for the conservative majority. Take Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), the father of the Marxist 1960s student rebellion and advocate for Critical Theory and its demonization of classical Western culture. He openly advocated for the repression of those who were not in line with radical neo-Marxism.

In “A Critique of Pure Tolerance,” he calls for biased “repressive tolerance” as tactic and demonstrates his complete lack of belief in the concept of free speech. Marcuse concludes: “The objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed.” This progressive despotism is at the heart of political correctness in 2023.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Long the world’s most Christian nation, America today is being taken over by a new “official” national religion, one being imposed on the entire populace by every major societal institution, from government, media and big tech, to academia, entertainment and business.

This new state religion is Wokeism. “Going woke” conjures up visions of someone claiming to be acutely sensitive (“awake”) to “systemic social and political injustice.” And not just alleged bigotry against blacks, but toward every other “minority” as well, from LGBT folk – especially everything transgender and “nonbinary” – to “undocumented immigrants.” All of them, being VICTIMS, intrinsically more virtuous than the shameful oppressor class: primarily heterosexual white males.

This new “woke” consciousness has turned America upside-down – from the nationwide Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, to tearing down of historic monuments, to demanding multi-million-dollar reparation payments for blacks, to appointing transgenders as top government officials, to rampant reverse discrimination in every area of life, to the U.S. military imposing mandatory “diversity training” and transgender pronoun use on all personnel, causing recruitment to disastrously plummet.

Yet there is hope. Being “saved” – which in Wokeism is called being “woke” – is largely a matter of worshipping victimhood by becoming an “ally” and “defender” of all the many victim classes, and a determined enemy of the straight white male oppressor class. Thus, “joining the righteous” as an ally – even if one is cursed to be a straight white male – opens the door mercifully for salvation, even to the most wretched.

That is the power of the religion of Wokeism. And it’s explored as never before in the February 2023 issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine. If you’ve ever wondered, for example, exactly how the most radical elements in American society are successfully pressuring the biggest corporations into adopting the most outrageous and immoral policies imaginable, even when doing so permanently damages and devalues the company, the stunning answers are in this issue of Whistleblower, titled “WOKEISM: AMERICA’S OFFICIAL STATE RELIGION.”


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Hanne Nabintu Herland

Hanne Nabintu Herland is a historian of comparative religions, bestselling author and founder of The Herland Report. Providing independent analysis on current events, philosophy and religion, the Herland Report also features a YouTube channel with interviews with leading intellectuals from across the political spectrum. Her books include "The Culture War. How the West Lost its Greatness" (2017), "New Left Tyranny. The Authoritarian Destruction of Our Way of Life" (2020), "Trump. The Battle for America" (2020) and her latest, "The Billionaire World. How Marxism serves the Elite" (2023), an analysis of how the elites use Marxist repression to achieve their goals. To learn more about her, visit www.theherlandreport.com and follow her on social media: YouTube, Facebook. Read more of Hanne Nabintu Herland's articles here.


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