Do They Know They're Marxists?

“How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” ~Ronald Reagan

Do you know the difference between Communism, Socialism, and Marxism? They are so similar I needed to define them for myself.

Communism is a society where everyone is equal, and everyone shares resources equally. Everything is owned by the government; nothing is owned by individual citizens. There is no wealthy or poor. The government decides how everything is produced and distributed.

Socialism is a form of communism, just wrapped in a neater package. The government owns all important resources and businesses. It minimizes the gap between the wealthy and the poor so that everything is “fair.” The government manages the economy and provides services to the people, like public healthcare. The people work; the government takes and distributes the resources.

Marxism is communism with an attitude that blames all of society’s problems on the division of classes (rich vs poor), so it works to eliminate them. They are anti-capitalist and will launch a violent revolution to overthrow our current system.

The point that is often overlooked is the government’s control over these systems. The idea of “fair” is difficult to attain when the leaders at the top are allowed to make the determination of what is fair. They don’t suffer as their people do. For example, the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is repeatedly mocked for being overweight while the people of his country starve. The leaders thrive, while the people suffer.

Communism in all forms has no place in America. The question is, would we recognize it if it spread over our land?

In 2020, Americans watched as a violent revolution was attempted in our country. Did the protestors participating in the Antifa and BLM riots know that they were Marxists? Did the college students who were disrupting and destroying their campuses know they were Marxists? What about the people defacing and vandalizing our historical statues, did they know they were Marxists?

How many of you remember the scary duck-and-cover drills we were subjected to in grade school? Although I was born in the late 1960s, we were still getting under our desks and covering our heads like that was going to save us from the Russian nukes we were convinced were going to kill us someday. Or at least the media, the government, and our school wanted us to think they were going to kill us.

For me, Russia was the boogey-man when I was growing up. We only knew what the news told us about Russia and their connection to communism. Russians weren’t allowed to think for themselves, they were constantly monitored, and they were definitely not flourishing. Like the United States, Russia was also considered a super-power and there was much competition between the two countries. After news of Hitler’s Germany and World War II, stories coming from Russia solidified what a horrible system communism was. It was the Capitalist America against the Communist Russia. We were fortunate to be Americans. That was the environment in the country. Communism was bad, capitalism was good.

Probably like most people, I didn’t pay attention to politics when I was younger. Whether my parents voted Democrat or Republican was not a topic of conversation in our home. I didn’t vote and didn’t see the importance of it. That all changed when Bill Clinton was President. Before that time, I didn’t have a party affiliation and was indifferent toward either party. However, watching the President of the United States speak condescendingly to the American people about not having sexual relations with that woman shocked me. This man held the highest position in the land. The President of the United States was a position to be revered, not disgraced. He was clearly lying, and it infuriated me. In that moment, an American Voter was born, and I have voted straight Republican ever since.

As time went on, I started sensing a change in the country that left me uneasy. Not knowing where to turn for information, I started listening to Rush Limbaugh. The stories of his racism and sexism weren’t lost on me, but I thought I could see past that if he could just inform me what was happening to my country. It didn’t take me long to realize that everything the media had said about Rush was also a lie. He wasn’t a racist or a sexist. He was a threat to them.

Around the middle of Obama’s second term, I started to listen to Rush religiously. His show was on the AM station at lunchtime in my area, so I would plan my day around it. We eventually became members of his show so we could listen at any time, but I still loved my lunchtime routine with Rush. He taught me more about my country and its history than anyone ever had. He had become part of our family, and I can honestly say that I loved that man. (And boy do I miss him.)

Rush repeatedly warned us that our country was moving toward socialism. He talked about Obama’s history and the direction he was taking our country. I listened intently but was too naïve to think it could really happen. Knowing our country’s founding and our Constitution, I trusted our government not to allow that to happen. I didn’t realize it was our government that was making it happen.

The shift to socialism (which became blatant Marxism) was gradual. The first time I heard “white privilege” it caught me off guard. It was a new term for me, and I was surprised by who said it since number one, he was white, and number two, he came from a very wealthy family. He explained that because we are white, we are given certain advantages over non-whites. This young man had been given more privileges than anyone else I knew, but I would never think it was due to the color of his skin. Every member of my immediate family had worked hard their entire lives just to make ends meet. Privileged was not a word I would use to describe any of them. If I were to argue that fact with him, he would tell me I was racist. How did he not see that referring to us as “white privileged” was itself racist? It seemed that racism had flared up to an uncomfortable level. Instead of moving forward, we seemed to be moving backward.

Things began shifting rapidly during Obama’s second administration. Since I was Republican and didn’t agree with his politics, I didn’t vote for him. But I wasn’t devastated when he was first elected. Obama was from my home state. The local media oozed with admiration for him. He was, as Joe Biden said, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” I was hopeful. He was promising hope and change and I wasn’t paying close enough attention to understand that his idea of hope and change was much different than mine. What I hoped for was a movement toward racial healing in our country because we badly needed it. Who could have guessed that a man elected to be the first black President of the United States would use that position to increase the racial tension and hate between us? Suddenly we were bombarded with messages that America was something to be ashamed of, and Barack Obama was promoting that idea.

Black, Republican Senator Tim Scott is a sharp contrast to Barack Obama. In Barack Obama Ever the Racial Arsonist, the author writes of the difference between Obama and Senator Scott when he says, “the optimistic Mr. Scott views the glass that is America today as much more than half-full, while the ungrateful Mr. Obama still sees it as half-empty—or worse.” Being the narcissist he always was, Obama couldn’t find it in himself to be supportive of Tim Scott who had dreamed of becoming the country’s second black president. While acknowledging that Scott should be hopeful, Obama says that he should maintain “an honest accounting of our past and our present.” Obama was elected president two times, yet he still saw his country as racist. Rather than celebrating his success, he resorted to victim status - the oppressed black man. (In his defense, now that we know the depth of the election rigging, he probably wasn’t chosen by the people after all.)

Obama should have worked toward racial healing by admitting the “enormous strides toward racial equality” the country had made since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Instead, he worked toward trying to convince Americans that he was a victim of a racist American society. Never mind the fact that in 2023, Obama had a net worth of $70 million and owned four homes, including oceanfront properties in Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard. Not bad for an oppressed black man in America.

54% of respondents to a 2016 CNN Poll said that race relations had gotten worse while Obama was President. Of the white respondents, more college educated (62%) than non-college educated (42%) said that white people receive more privileges than black people. Could this serve as an indicator that the idea of “white privilege” was being pushed in our colleges?

The change in the education system started to become noticeable to me. Students were being taught a different version of history, and it was concerning. Instead of patriotism and pride, students were taught that America was something to be ashamed of. I saw this firsthand 16 years ago when I returned to college at the age of 40. It was during a Speech class when the depth of the change in our country became most evident. There was a young man, fresh out of high school, who had very different views than me. That was to be expected, but it was the foundation of his beliefs that concerned me. Every one of his speeches were centered around atheism and his disgust for America. During a persuasive speech assignment in which we were to convince others to contribute to a worthy cause, students delivered speeches for the Humane Society or St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. He used that opportunity to persuade the class to offer donations to a group purchasing billboards to spread the word about atheism. It wasn’t that he shouldn’t be allowed to express his point of view, it was that there was no pushback or discussion on that point of view.

During a group exercise, the topic of America’s founding on Christian principles was brought up. The professor’s reaction to that statement shocked me. This woman was younger than me, and I watched as she spit venom to argue that America was not a Christian country and was not founded on Christianity. It was surprising to hear an authority figure speak in such an anti-Christian, anti-American way. Why then are our money, historical buildings, and police cars emblazoned with “In God We Trust?” It was a confusing time for me and one in which I started to wake up, I just wasn’t sure what I was waking up to. This discussion occurred right on the heels of an English class in which we were instructed to write a paper describing the “Myth of the American Dream.” The American Dream was a myth? Everything I had believed my whole life was being flushed away.

The spread of Marxism in colleges is nothing new. A 2020 article details the effects of it 30 years after a 1989 New York Times article titled, “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges.” Since Marxism’s emphasis was rooted in the economic side of socialism, many Americans felt that the destruction, poverty and totalitarianism of communism was undesirable. They were not ready to let go of America’s capitalist founding. Rather than the Marxists letting go of their dream of a socialist utopia and knowing they couldn’t focus on the class struggles of capitalism, college professors began indoctrinating students in the social sciences. Instead of the socialist mantra of rich versus poor, they began to focus on men versus women (gender), black versus white (race), gay versus straight (sexual orientation). Wokeness, identity politics, victimhood, and cancel culture all stem from Marxist beliefs of oppression and conflict. The victimhood being encouraged in our schools and universities has become dangerous to the foundation of our country. Many think they were fighting a good cause, not realizing they were being used as pawns in a revolution to overthrow the founding principles of our country.

It has become obvious that colleges are pushing a more radicalized view of our country. The level of destruction coming from this indoctrination wasn’t obvious to me at first. Seeing it, living it, and still not comprehending its devastation has been detrimental to our country. It wasn’t until many years later that someone enlightened me to Marxism. Suddenly it all made sense, and I realized Rush had been right all along. 

Many people still don’t understand how fortunate we are that Donald Trump and the Patriots came along when they did. We were literally a hair away from losing everything our founding fathers have built for us. Luckily there are still enough of us who remember what life in America was like before Marxism and we were able to recognize what was happening. Unfortunately, we were helpless in defeating it by ourselves.

This has been an uncomfortable decade for many of us, but we must remember where we were headed. Could we have pulled loose from the communism invading our country without the help of President Trump and the Patriots? I think not. The Marxists had the cards stacked against us.

Unfortunately, our younger generations, the ones who have been subjected to the brainwashing, don’t even realize they were brainwashed and will argue against it. They believe and will swear that they were standing up for some great noble cause. Do they realize they have been following the Marxist playbook? When the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, most of us believed that communism had finally been defeated. We were naïve to the infiltration from within that the communists were mounting against us. Their plan was to destroy America’s foundation by rewriting history, stirring up racism, labeling speech as politically incorrect, all while pretending they were Social Justice Warriors looking out for the little guy.

Millennials and Gen-Z were indoctrinated to ideas that go against everything our country was built upon. While they should have been taught that all people are created equal, they were instead taught that some people are more privileged than others due to their race, their gender, or their sexual preference. They weren’t taught that the United States has brought more prosperity to more people than any other nation on earth. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This should have been the drumbeat of generations. Instead, these generations were taught that America is racist, and that its founding was based on a system of white supremacy. And they believe it.

Sadly, the indoctrination didn’t end in college. These students carried their beliefs into their jobs in media, government, public schools, and human resources departments. In 2020, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to end any government training programs that included any reference to “critical race theory” or “white privilege.” Government agencies had spent millions of taxpayer dollars training government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda. Employees were required to attend training where they were taught that ‘virtually all white people contribute to racism.’ Your tax dollars were being used to teach the government employees who work for you that all white people are racist. Thankfully, President Trump ordered that any programing relating to “white privilege” end immediately.

Many of us have felt firsthand the effect of the poisonous education our children received. We paid thousands of dollars in taxes, only for our children to be taught conflict and oppression. We were brainwashed to believe that our children had to attend college in order to get ahead in life. We paid tens of thousands of dollars to colleges for our children to be taught wokeness, identity politics, victimhood, and cancel culture. Not only did college put many students into a constant state of debt, it also allowed the Marxists more opportunity to manipulate their minds into becoming anti-white, anti-male, anti-American. For some of us, by the time we realized what was happening to our children, it was too late. Only now are we aware of what it was and why it was happening. Only now can we pray that there is an exposure meaningful enough to make a difference.

Americans need to be educated on what Marxism is and to recognize it before it takes hold and destroys our way of life. Communists, Socialists, Marxists will never abandon their dream of destroying the United States. We need to build our patriotism up to be stronger than they are. Do President Trump and the Patriots have a plan to help us do that?

Going forward, will we be able to forgive the Marxists among us? Do we excuse them for their ignorance? Do they deserve compassion or understanding? How do we recondition them? How do we teach them about the negative effects of communism? How do we reform our schools, our businesses? How do we return patriotism to America?

I may not have the answers, but I still have hope, and I still think the best is yet to come.