Communism – The Wind of Change

How the language of propaganda is related then and now

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Fifty years ago, in socialist East Germany (German Democratic Republic, GDR), I and others were drilled into believing that only fools do not believe in communism. Once or twice I also heard the phrase, “Only a communist is a good person.”

Always pray nicely. So far, hundreds of abuse cases have come to light that the Southern Baptist Convention tried to cover up for decades. The number of unreported cases is probably much higher.

In a slight variation and a few decades later, I heard the following pithy phrase in a Florida church that made my ears ring: “Only a Christian is a good person.” What a merciful, Christian assessment for all those who dare to think differently. I left the institution of totalitarian opinion at the same moment these words were spoken, because I had heard all this before in my life.

Deriving from such experience, when we replace the words “communism” with “God” and “communist” with “Christian” in the first paragraph of this article, we should not be too dumbfounded to discover certain similarities.

The propaganda is comparable in each case, because there is no credible contrast between good and evil here. If you look at the history of Christianity objectively, you can hardly avoid the realization of the role the church has always played in the oppression and extermination of entire peoples in the name of their God. Not even the misdeeds of the churches from today’s time should be mentioned here – starting with the Catholic Church up to the Baptist sect and thousands of cases of sexual abuse. In general, communism lags behind Christianity in the crimes committed only because it did not have 2,000 years in its infamy to cause similar damage on humanity as was inflicted under the Christian cross. Mendacity, however, differs in nothing.

For myself, I come to the impossible conclusion that I am in some way indebted to the Communists. For anyone who has been exposed to their propaganda and, moreover, has not only resisted but rejected its effects, is inevitably endowed with the instinct to smell any form of propaganda from a hundred miles away for the rest of his life.

The absolute majority of people in what was then East Germany (often incorrectly referred to in the U.S. as “communist East Germany”) had a similar experience. Otherwise, a peaceful revolution like that of 1989, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators every Monday on the streets of East Berlin and Leipzig under the eyes of snipers posted on rooftops, would not have been possible. We were sick and tired of listening to the demented socialist propaganda any longer. Needless to say, a revolution like the one in 1989 cannot be carried out with people who are on the side of the power apparatus. The tireless protests swept away the communist rulers, which would not have been possible without the tacit restraint of the Soviet occupation forces. During the workers’ uprising of 1953, which had already brought the GDR to the brink of the abyss, things looked quite different.

Experience from history should teach:

One’s own life and the independent, free thinking associated with it are too precious a personal good to let it be influenced by unscrupulous impostors – whether from religion or politics. They are easily recognized by their use of language. For such propagandists want nothing else than to bring about the unity opinion, which in the end finds no more contradiction, and all this for only one purpose: Allowing only what they and no one else think is right in the (profitable) interest of the few over the many. Nothing is more dangerous for a society than that.

It sounds like a bad staircase joke: Much of what I can observe in America today reminds me of the old GDR – with the only difference being that in the USA the danger does not come from socialism, but from the extreme opposite, namely real existing neoliberalism. Every encyclopedia explains what that is and what it stands for.

From my Writing Room

The closer it gets to the election day, the more the political right in the United States is riding their hobbyhorse of “Socialism” in a desperate attempt to defend a President who not only has proved a lack of intellect and morale, but bullies, lies, and sneers. Followers that are still holding on to him – careless or clueless about the incorrectness of terms used in the heated political language – walk straight into the verbal trap, eagerly abusing the mystic expression themselves. And yet, the strenuous iteration does not make it an inch truer.

This writing comes from someone who – not voluntarily – has lived nearly thirty years in the pseudo-Socialism of the extinct German Democratic Republic (GDR). I would not want to have it back.

Nevertheless, a dose of clarification seems necessary at this point in view of the utter nonsense spreading like a virus in Trump’s America almost every time the term “Socialism” is being referenced.

So, my fellow Americans, hold on to your seats, lean back for a minute, grab one of your numerous dictionaries especially Trump supporters should always have at hand, and look up what “Socialism” stands for. I am for my part quoting for you Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (unabridged), page 2162. A pretty heavy book, by the way – but any other American dictionary will do.

Socialism is a – quote – “System or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.” End quote. Period, that’s it – no more, no less.

Got it?

A socialist command economy – I did not have to see it with my own eyes decades back for coming to the conclusion: Such state controlled, nationalized economy cannot function due to its utter inefficiency. Which makes me wonder: Where in the United States are such circumstances in existence? Is somebody out there who can please prove me wrong?

Hold your politicians, regardless of their political color, responsible for their baseless propaganda trick, don’t let them take you for a fool with an imaginary scapegoat that does not exist. Don’t fall for the catch phrases from political pied pipers who themselves have never lived in Socialism, like no American within the United States has ever even seen a glimmer of Socialism in their country.

For the sake of bettering the conditions for most Americans, it is worth noting here that an accompanying, controlling mechanism – ensuing from the government in terms of checks and balances – must be incorporated in the legal system to protect the little man from exploitation. It’s not called Socialism, but rather: Justice. Those who have – for example – ever worked for America’s largest retailer, W******, (and again, I was there, too), should know what the talk is about. The indiscriminate cut of work hours without any legal regulations versus the corporations own dictates, recurrent bullying, the shortening and eliminating of night shift allowances, the virtually non-existent access to institutions to defend themselves, a broadly lawless work environment in general, as well as a wage which does not allow hard-working Americans to make a decent living – all these facts experienced by the author disparages American citizens to a merely disposable mass of people without rights. The phrase of a “Free Country” becomes a farce here. Not even in the pseudo-Socialism of the GDR have I witnessed human beings being treated like this, which arises the question: Why do Americans, in their very own country with a Christian claim, humiliate their own people that way, albeit the means for a fair treatment and more income justice are available and could be easily arranged? Why?

By the way: If social justice is an interpretation of Socialism, then the pastor in church who commonly calls his sheep all “brothers and sisters”, obviously invoking equality, might be called a communist as well – that is, God forbid, the consecutive comparative of the spell “Socialism.”

Ironically, some 50 years ago, in that very same Socialism I lived through, once a teacher, not exactly convinced of the subject himself, asked his little students what it might look like in Communism. A girl raised her arm, stepped outside the bench and replied with an upright posture: “In Communism they are all brothers and sisters.”

By now we should know what propaganda is. If not – ask your dictionary.

Tag: Communism

What the Communists taught me

Americans and their Specter of Socialism