In a discussion on assessing 100 years of communism, Carlos Eire a Yale history and religious studies professor and an immigrant from communist Cuba said,
“it is possible to speak of communism…as a religion” and one “governed by bad theology.”
In the “unforgiving” communist religion, Eire posited, the “oligarchy becomes the priesthood,” and the government becomes a theocracy with “a very active inquisition, with heretics who have to be expunged one way or another.”
A very active inquisition. And of what does that remind us? There is no shortage of examples from shouting down speech, to running Republicans out of restaurants, to riots at Berkeley, to Antifa’s antics, to smear campaigns and now the effort to institutionalize the end of due process; bring charges (no matter how distant or obscure) against presumed political opponents and declare them guilty without a shred of actual evidence.
Flagg Taylor, a political science professor from Skidmore College,
“…argued that the label of totalitarianism is insufficient to describe communism. He suggested that it is better described as an “ideocracy,” a regime wherein “ideology is not just one of four or five important features,” as it is in systems properly described as totalitarian. Rather, ideology stands out as “the most distinguishing feature” of an ideocracy.
Again we see the parallels to the modern Democrat party. A party of warring tribes all beholden to a political oligarchy that promises them rewards in exchange for blind devotion. Failing in that devotion voids whatever label the party had previously provided for your ‘protection.’
Black, gay, woman, trans, Latino, or any otherwise modifier becomes illegitimate. What they claim made you special in their eyes is erased should you refuse to dine on the entire Democrat Socialist menu as presented.
No substitutions.
Taylor adds that,
“a totalitarian regime becomes totalitarian precisely because it is ideological.”
Communism, and ideology in general, is founded on “organized and systematic lying,” which differs from “ordinary falsehood,” Taylor argued, referencing French historian and philosopher Alain Besançon, in that the “ordinary falsehood” “stays in touch with the truth and knowingly distorts the truth,” whereas the “ideological lie, by contrast…seeks to impose a pseudo-reality upon reality. It does not depart from reality so much as [it] completely ignores reality and…it seeks to disrupt our normal access to reality.”
The pseudo-reality “acquires a very peculiar but real strength,” Taylor said, quoting the late Czech statesman Václav Havel. “It becomes reality itself, albeit a reality altogether self-contained, one that on certain levels may have greater weight than reality as such. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the reverse.”
Need I say more?