HOW COULD THE POLITICAL MASS MURDERS OF THE 20TH CENTURY HAVE HAPPENED?
COULD SUCH UNSPEAKABLE DEVASTATION HAPPEN HERE IN AMERICA, IN OUR TIME?
By Kelly John Walker, M.S.
“Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth. Yet I have not given up all hope that human beings and nations may be able, in spite of all, to learn from the experience of other people without having to live through it personally.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago1
America is on a sure and certain path to democide. Specific patterns exhibited in governmental and social responses to this “pandemic” strongly indicate that our society is on track to repeat the horrors of history. The parallels, unfolding in stepwise fashion, are unmistakable.
The Holocaust in Germany, the Warsaw Ghetto genocide, the murder of millions of Russians and Chinese under Communist regimes, the Killing Fields of Cambodia—why didn’t people see the horror coming? Why didn’t they stand up? What were the warning signs and will we recognize and respond to them before it’s too late?
“’Resistance! Why didn’t you resist?’” wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago.1 “Today those who have continued to live on in comfort scold those who suffered.”
Author, Israel Gutman asked in Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 2 “Why had Jews made no effort to defend themselves? Why had there been no organized or spontaneous Jewish opposition on a serious scale?”
The answer lies in one critical question you must ask yourself: Why aren’t you standing up today? “Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself,” wrote Solzhenitsyn.1
The reasons these humanitarian nightmares of mass murder became reality are the same today as they were throughout the most violent and bloody century in human history: the 20th. Genocidal despots broke down established societies and gradually gained absolute control through deception, psychological manipulation (propaganda and censorship), and fear-based hysteria. What were some of the main ways murderous despots gained absolute power?
1) The “Big Lie” (fallacy of personal incredulity): Adolf Hitler coined the term, “Big Lie” in his 1925 book Mein Kampf. It is the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Today this principle is often manifested in stereotyping challenges to the narrative as “conspiracy theories.” Surely the CDC, WHO, and the pharmaceutical companies have our best interests at heart. Dr. Fauci couldn’t possibly want to exaggerate the effects of a virus and prolong its duration for political and financial gain. Governor Cuomo and four other Democrat governors didn’t really purposely send nursing home residents to their deathbeds…right? They can’t possibly be that evil. As Gutman explains it, incredulity can turn into a dangerous denial.
“Historians have struggled to understand how this knowledge could be suppressed by the victims, who, after all, had everything at stake in understanding what was happening to them. The answer may be found in the psychology of people who subconsciously refuse to believe the worst; the woman who ignores the lump in her breast or the person who dismisses chest pains as indigestion, the spouse who represses compelling evidence of infidelity.”2
“The Great Masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The most insidious of demagogues don’t hide in the shadows; they operate in broad daylight, clad in lab coats and Armani suits, telling you to trust them—or the “science”—while suppressing dissenting data and opinions. After all, we are conditioned to trust the “experts”; many wouldn’t think of questioning their physician, even though challenging every theory is endemic to the Scientific Method, and getting a “second opinion” used to be standard practice.
2) Gradual acceptance
“There is every reason to believe that the authorities exploited health warnings to carry out a plan.” Israel Gutman
“Most of these restrictions were intended to humiliate, separate, and denigrate the Jews,” according to Gutman. “Initially, they had a dramatic effect. A young man wrote of feeling that his arms were encompassed by a tight ring when he first had to wear the badge of disgrace, the Star of David. But in time, perhaps because they followed one another so quickly, the restrictions and decrees were taken as a matter of course. The Jewish response was muted, resigned.”2
“Universal innocence also gave rise to the universal failure to act,” according to Solzhenitsyn. “Maybe they won’t take you? Maybe it will all blow over?” 1
Maybe if I just wear this mask, they will let me go back to work. Maybe if I take an experimental vaccine, this whole pandemic will end and they’ll let us return to normal. Maybe I’ll just make the mask part of my daily wardrobe and get all the booster shots—I don’t want to be ostracized and isolated.
“At the outset of the occupation,” wrote Gutman, “the Nazis employed deceptive tactics. Military commanders of the Wehrmacht, which governed the city, mollified the community. Jews were told that they need not be worried about their well-being,”2 wrote Gutman.
“Put trust and faith in our government to fulfill its most important function, which is to protect the American people,” said Joe Biden recently.
“I know people must like to have their individual freedom,” says a little man in a white lab coat, from behind a black mask, “but we must “put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties…now is the time to do what you’re told.” Thus spoke Dr. Fauci.
“The German has kept his freedom by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a Nazi prison cell. “But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends…Civil courage can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Letters and Papers from Prison
“There is every reason to believe that the authorities exploited health warnings to carry out a plan,” wrote Gutman. “The Germans themselves later said that the ghetto was a response to the threat of disease, especially the typhus epidemic. Ludwik Hirschfeld, an outstanding epidemiologist, responded by noting ironically that there was no surer way of spreading an epidemic than by confining masses of people together, adding that it was doubtful that one could stop an epidemic from spreading beyond the ghetto.”2
“Some Nazi orders attacked the essence of the ability of Jews to survive. Jews were dismissed from jobs and offices without compensation. Others were deprived of their pensions and rights. Jews who had worked in industry workshops, the free professions, teaching—that is, all who had received a monthly wage were left without a livelihood, without any legal means of support.”2
“Praying together with a group of more than ten was prohibited,” explained Gutman.2 Sound familiar? Authorities around the country limited gatherings to (you guessed it) groups of ten. Restaurants and bars were closed; small businesses were targeted and forced into bankruptcy.
3) Irrational belief that someone is coming to save us.
“Only two responses are possible: attempts to escape, or self-deception by grasping at illusions.” Israel Gutman
“We must be patient and a miracle will occur,” Gutman quotes a Ghetto leader. “Fighting against the enemy makes no sense…Defense means the utter destruction of the Warsaw ghetto! If I were convinced that we could not manage to save the core, I would arrive at a different conclusion.”2
The inaction resulting from such a desperate belief can be tragic:
“As long as the ghetto’s population could be deceived by reassurances from those in authority—Germans or Jews—they were prepared to carry out German orders and treat the Jewish Fighting Organization as provocateurs endangering the entire ghetto. In this new climate, however, [when all hope was lost] the Judenrat [Jewish police complicit with the Nazis] and the police could no longer dominate public life. Public opinion no longer regarded the Jewish Fighting Organization as an irresponsible element that could bring catastrophe to the ghetto. They had already experienced catastrophe.”2
Maybe there is a “Plan”; many of us would like to think someone ultimately has control, and everything will turn out fine. And yet, as the saying goes, it is wise to “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” Politicians and the powerful cannot always prevent catastrophe, and God does not always choose to for reasons perhaps only He fully comprehends.
The proverbial unwise virgins did not fill their lamps, and their lack of preparation and vigilance cost them dearly. “Faith without works is dead”; faith without preparation can be fatal.
4) The fear that fighting back will only make it worse.
“From the very moment of arrest our fate has almost certainly been decided in the worst possible sense and that we cannot make it any worse.” Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn
“[The] reasoning seemed compelling. Active resistance would trigger collective retaliation, and while there was some hope for the majority or a part of the ghetto to survive, such actions were tantamount to collective suicide…Only when all hope for survival was abandoned did resistance enjoy widespread support. A manifesto was prepared in which the true intentions of the Germans were described and the fate of Jews after deportation was outlined. Jews were called on to oppose and evade their pursuers. This manifesto was received by ghetto inhabitants with distrust if not actual antagonism. Readers of the manifesto feared that the publication itself was an act of provocation and that any attempt at opposition might serve the Germans as a pretext to expel all the Jews from the ghetto. Again, despair, not hope, was a prerequisite for resistance.”2
“And how can you resist right then?” wrote Solzhenitsyn, “After all, you’ll only make your situation worse.”1
In his memoirs, a Jewish leader named Yitzhak Zuckerman wrote, “’What if’: ‘If we had done,’ and ‘If we had decided in good time, things would have been different.’” But he lamented, “When there were hundreds of thousands in Warsaw, we could not manage to organize a Jewish striking force,” because “We did not manage to train the masses” to understand the gravity of the situation.
Can you learn from the lessons of history, will you act in time? Will you do things differently than the victims of mass democide? Will you stand up, draw a line in the sand and accept whatever sacrifice is necessary to halt the triumph of evil tyranny? Or will you stand by and listen to the requiem of another unconscionably tragic chapter in the history of mankind once again marching millions to oblivion?
Postscript
Just to give perspective on this incredible murder by government [Socialist and Communist regimes], if all these bodies were laid head to toe, with the average height being 5′, then they would circle the earth ten times. Also, this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century. Finally, given popular estimates of the dead in a major nuclear war, this total democide is as though such a war did occur, but with its dead spread over a century.4
Kelly John Walker is an American statesman, senior writer, and entrepreneur. He is Founder of FreedomTalk, Host of FreedomTalkTV, and a freelance writer published in The Washington Times, Gateway Pundit, The Epoch Times, Townhall, and more. Kelly holds a BA in English & Theology, and a Master of Science degree on a graduate fellowship with the US Department of Defense. He had a distinguished career as a conservation professional before founding two award-winning advertising agencies.
His newest project is the “Fathering in a World Gone Mad” series featuring Eric Metaxas, Victor Marx, Sheriff Mark Lamb, Clay Clark, and more.
