An Israeli-American whose parents escaped Communism in Romania is disheartened by the U.S. social media influencers and academic institutions glorifying Communism. And he has a sober warning for Americans.
Elad Vaida, in an op-ed for Campus Reform, wrote, “Communism is a cancer on history, and few other ideas have rivaled it for sheer human misery.” In fact, statistics from multiple current or former Communist nations, including China, Cambodia, Russia, and Vietnam, show that Communism is responsible for more mass murder and genocide than any other ideology in history. And yet American academics and influencers are “singing the praises” of Communism, a situation which Vaida understandably believes to be very dangerous.
For instance, popular TikTok influencer Madeline Pendleton made the utterly false assertion that “countries under communist Marxist-Leninist leadership are flourishing,” and urged her followers, “If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired here in the United States, maybe give communism a try.” Then there’s Aminda Smith, a Michigan State University professor, whose children’s article painted the fantasy of Communism “shar[ing] wealth so that no one is too poor, no one is too rich, and everyone has enough to survive and have a good life.” And unicorns and hippogriffs will dance past with the fairies.
Unfortunately, Vaida noted, such propaganda has 25% of college-age Americans convinced that Communism is a good system. Even at my conservative Catholic college, there were a number of students and professors who waxed poetic on the charms of socialism and Communism, but when challenged never could explain how such theories would or even could possibly be applied successfully in reality. But it made them feel most extremely virtuous and toplofty to lecture about the theories anyway.
Just listen to the smug confidence in the voice of this young man on Instagram, as he repeats blatantly false propaganda points about highly impoverished, tyrannical, genocidal, exploitative Communist China, where forced labor, harsh persecution, extreme poverty, and disastrous infrastructure are daily facts of life for most. Instagram’s algorithm brought this Commie fool up on my sister’s feed.
Related: Karl Marx: Father of Genocide and Tyranny
You can read my previous VIP article for more data and details on the hundreds of millions of victims of Communism. For Vaida, however, this issue is very personal. His parents escaped the “horrifying pain and hunger” of Communist Romania in the 1980s.
Romania under communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was a “gray and grim place,” as recounted by an American diplomat stationed there in the 70s. Ceausescu’s economic policies—such as severe austerity measures and exporting food to other nations as his own people starved—led to widespread hunger.
Cyclopean food centers at the capital, much praised by the state, became known as “hunger circuses” due to the empty shelves. My parents and grandparents would recount stories of waiting in line for hours just to get a loaf of bread and some chicken talons with not enough meat on them to feed a chihuahua.
Mass starvation, particularly mass induced starvation, is a defining feature of Communist nations. Two famous examples are the Soviets’ Holodomor and Chinese dictator Mao Zedong’s Great Famine (reportedly the most deadly famine in human history). A survivor of the Communist Khmer Rouge civil war in Cambodia told me how many of his family members died of starvation.
Related: EXCLUSIVE: Survivor’s Recollections of Genocidal Khmer Rouge Civil War
Ceausescu’s policies also caused routine energy shortages and blackouts. The resulting energy rationing was so severe that the communist dictatorship ordered most street lights to be shut off and forbade Romanians from driving their own cars.
The cherry on top of the starvation and freezing was the censorship. To paraphrase an old Soviet joke, Romania had freedom of speech—People were free to say what they wanted, and the communist authorities were free to arrest them.
The censorship was only one facet of the brutality of the communist regime, which imprisoned and tortured Christians, killed thousands of its own people, used slave labor, and operated the Securitate—a ruthless and infamous communist secret police.
And no, Romania wasn’t a “fluke,” a rare example of Communism gone wrong. In fact, there is not a single example in the history of Communism gone right, nor will there ever be. Vaida related the horrors of living — and dying — under Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in Russia, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping in China.
As Vaida observed, “Communism always fails because it is based on an evil idea: That a government has the right to rob its own people of their hard-earned property, that it can institute a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to safeguard its ill-gotten gains, and that it must use ‘revolutionary terror’ to crush anyone who disagrees. Don’t believe me—go and read Karl Marx’s writings.”
And, in conclusion, “We owe it to all those—both alive and departed—who suffered under communist maniacs like Ceausescu and Stalin to combat such wicked lies.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member