America is now a socialist nation. We are all socialists now. So let me suggest, perhaps we should think about some of the socialist regimes that came before. Let’s limit ourselves to say the last, what say 75 years more or less.
Here is a partial alphabetical list: Angola, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Germany, North Korea, Soviet Union, Romania, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. They say birds of a feather flock together, right? So, if that’s correct, let’s take a country at a time and try to discern our future. Are you in?
Angola is a country in the west coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking country in both total area and population behind Brazil. Following World War II, independence movements began. For a time Portuguese military forces did suppression in maintenance of Portuguese control.
There were three major nationalist organizations. They were the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) which is a Marxist party. The second was the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA). The third was the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
After 14 years of war, Portugal finally did grant independence to Angola in 1975. The MPLA, which led the independence movement, has been in control of the government ever since. The reporting is in 1977 the MPLA murdered tens of thousands in power consolidation. We are all socialists now.
Lara, Lara, Lara
According to Lara Pawson, a leftist and a writer who was there at the time things were disturbing. She writes, “I began to discover that the idea of a 1970’s MPLA heyday was just misguided. An Angolan colleague told me about 27 May, 1977. The day an MPLA faction rose up against the leadership. And the honeymoon of revolution crashed to a halt. Some called it an attempted coup. But my colleague insisted it was a demonstration that was met with a brutal overreaction.”
“Whichever story you believe, six senior members of the MPLA were killed that day by supporters of the uprising. In response President Neto, the politburo and the state media made many highly inflammatory statements that incited extraordinary revenge. In the weeks and months that followed thousands of people possibly tens of thousands were killed. Some of the executions were overseen by Cuban troops sent to Angola by Fidel Castro to repel a South African invasion.”
MPLA literature featured a great example of a socialist regime deciding to silence its critics. They labeled them saboteurs and scapegoated them for all of the country’s problems. In this case the regime dealt with them solved the matter permanently.
On the back of an MPLA pamphlet of the day was the message, “We will apply the Democratic Revolutionary Dictatorship to finally finish with saboteurs, with parasites and with opportunists.” The MPLA went out of its way to brand itself a Marxist-Leninist organization at a meeting of its national congress.
Welcome comrade. Shut up and sit down. Failure to comply will result in your removal. You understand your property is forfeit. Your children are children of the state. We are all socialists now.