THIS REMINDS ME OF THE OLD SOVIET JOKE ABOUT LEONID BREZHNEV AND HIS MOTHER: In China, The Communist Party’s Latest, Unlikely Target: Young Marxists. “Young people who belong to Marxist groups have recently become the unlikely targets of a state crackdown due to their zeal to help educate and mobilize China’s working class to fight for their rights. The conflict has exposed a paradox between a party founded on Marxist principles and the very young people it has tasked with carrying those principles out.”

It’s not really a paradox. Communism is just a con. When the true believers get in the way of the con, they have to be shut up.

The old Soviet joke went like this: General Secretary Brezhnev shows his mother his palatial apartment in Moscow, his fancy dacha in the countryside, his chauffer-driven limousine, his personal helicopter, etc. and says “See mom, I’ve really made it. Aren’t you proud?”

“Very much so,” she says. “But I’m worried, too.”

“What are you worried about?” asks Brezhnev.

“Well, Leonid — what if the communists come back?”