The following is an edited transcript of a Daily Wire interview with Bill Whittle on his new, in-depth docuseries on the rise of the Soviet Union: &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/apollo-11-what-we-saw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What We Saw: An Empire of Terror</a>.&#8221; 
Daily Wire: Bill, you’ve now produced multiple “What We Saw” documentaries for The Daily Wire: “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/apollo-11-what-we-saw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Apollo 11</a>” and “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/apollo-11-what-we-saw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Cold War</a>.” Why did you choose the rise of the Soviet Union as your next project?
Bill: Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine I received a call from Jeremy Boreing at The Daily Wire. I just finished covering a fair amount of Russia with &#8220;The Cold War&#8221; series. Given the research for &#8220;The Cold War,&#8221; and my previous readings, I&#8217;ve always been kind of morbidly fascinated with the mechanisms of the Soviet Union — fascinated and disgusted and appalled and intrigued by governments that have to terrorize their people in order to remain in power, antithetical to the American system. And no matter how bad we think things get here, there&#8217;s nothing that&#8217;s happened or is happening now in this country that even approaches this scale.
DW: Why is it important to remember Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution?
Bill: Several years after World War I, Winston Churchill said that the Germans had transmitted a “Bacillus” into Russia in the form of Lenin. I think he got that exactly right. It (Lenin) was a biological weapon. And it was designed to destroy Russia as a great power in World War I. That&#8217;s why the Germans not only allowed Lenin to travel through Germany during the height of the war, but in fact paid his expenses for many, many years afterwards.
This regime is interesting to me for two reasons: the main reason is how intellectual it was — and I have a very low opinion of intellectuals. Intellectualism is for people who think they are intelligent and are so certain of themselves and so certain of what they believe that they feel the right to enforce their theories on other people.
What fascinated me about this horrific system was the theoretical aspect of everything. There was nothing about the system that was practical. There was nothing based on common sense, experience, reason, kindness, decency — nothing. It was all based on the theory of a German philosopher named Karl Marx. His writings appealed to people looking for some sort of justice, but they also appealed to people who had any sort of envy for the people in power but didn&#8217;t want to do any work in order to achieve it.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/apollo-11-what-we-saw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: &#8220;An Empire of Terror&#8221; on DailyWire+</a></h4>
The other remarkable quality about all of the Soviet leaders is just how useless they were. Prior to finding themselves in the middle of the system, none of them had jobs. Lenin’s only job was as a failed attorney, very briefly. As a lawyer he lost, I think, 13 out of 14 cases and never really worked a day in his life. Prior to the revolution, he sat around for 16 years, sitting in cafes in safe places like Berlin and Munich and London and Zurich, sipping tea and discussing theory. 
He developed in his massive forehead this idea of how a society should work and there was no real world evidence that would change his mind. If it turned out that there was a difference between the map he had in his head and reality, then the reality had to be well, he would then go about doing whatever he had to do with the lovers of state power to beat reality into line with the theory. And this is why the Soviet state was a terror state. They never had legitimacy. 
The Bolsheviks were a minority every single time they held a so-called “election;” they were a tremendous minority. And you can’t even accuse the Nazis of that.
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DW: In &#8220;An Empire of Terror&#8221; you mention the leader of Russia’s provisional government, Alexander Kerensky. Why wasn’t he able to mount a good defense against the growing Bolshevik threat?
Bill: Someone once wrote that Lenin was “lucky with his enemies.” And that was exactly the case. I have very high regard for Alexander Kerensky’s principles and for what he wanted for the Russian people. But as an actor, Kerensky had two qualities that actors often bring to the world: First, he was spectacularly naive when it came to the real world. And second, he was tremendously vain. These two blind spots led him to believe he was in control when in fact, Lenin was ready to do everything up to and including murder when Kerensky was simply looking out the window at the daisies. He was a good man and history was kind to him but he was no match for Lenin’s ruthlessness. This is the thing about the Soviet state — it&#8217;s designed in such a way that you have to keep the population under control through terror. The people that end up running the machine, by definition, become the most ruthless and terroristic of the bunch.
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DW: What were some of the challenges you faced making this new series?
Bill: All roads lead back to Lenin. When I began to realize the magnitude of the crimes that these people committed, I began to feel a tremendous sense of historical responsibility to the people who disappeared without photographs.
800,000 people were killed in one of the gulags called Kolyma. 800,000 people. That makes it second on the leaderboard from hell: Auschwitz is first, Kolyma is second, and Treblinka is third. So, more than anything, I wanted every single episode to have as many photographs of the faces of individual people. And most importantly, we can never use the same face twice. I just wanted faces because, as Stalin said, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.”
So my biggest challenge was to find a way to try and personalize this. Make people understand that this could just as easily be you or your family, and then try to give them some idea of what the size of 20 million people looks like.
For example, about 100,000 people attend the Super Bowl every year. Imagine that everybody had to exit the stadium, single file, through one gate and you had to stand there and look at every single face as they left the stadium. When you were finished, hours and hours and hours later, you would have only 199 more Super Bowls to look at before you reached 20 million and saw the face of every person killed by this “idea.” And if it&#8217;s killed that many people, maybe it&#8217;s not such a good idea.
DW: Did you come across any surprises in your research?
Bill: The most astonishing story in &#8220;An Empire of Terror&#8221; is a true story. I&#8217;ve worked exceedingly hard and long to make sure that not only everything I wrote was true, but that I also had the receipts for everything.
But the most astonishing coincidence in the entire series is this: Lenin and Stalin were both known to be extremely paranoid, and very, very private people. They kept a very tight circle and they were constantly on the lookout for assassination and betrayal. So when Lenin finally arrives in Moscow from St. Petersburg, and eventually gets himself a little mansion, he is living with his sisters, his wife, and two secretaries. He also has four bodyguards and a private cook named Comrade Spiridon.
Comrade Spiridon went from being the only person that lived with Lenin, who was not related to him, to becoming the only person who lived with Stalin. And he lived with Stalin for the duration of Stalin&#8217;s reign in the Soviet Union. The only person who shared the insight into the entire thing — from the rise from agrarian peasantry to nuclear superpower. Comrade Spiridon was the only man who was on the inside. He would serve dinner to people who were the heads of the secret police one night and then the next night they were gone. They&#8217;d been killed and replaced. The genuinely remarkable part of this story is that Comrade Spiridon’s last name was Putin. This was Vladimir Putin&#8217;s grandfather.
Vladimir Putin learned about the Soviet Union on his grandfather&#8217;s knee. And so the perspective Vladimir Putin received of the Soviet Union was the most elevated inside perspective that was possible to obtain. No one else in the entire history of the Soviet Union, ever, got that close to both of those men. And to think that it was possible for Vladimir Putin to turn out any other way is insane.
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DW: In light of the upcoming presidential election, do you see elements of communism at play in our politics?
Bill: Well, the first thing I think that stands out about the upcoming election is the lawfare that&#8217;s being conducted against Donald Trump. If these people who are committing these atrocities against him genuinely believed in democracy, if they genuinely believed that their democratic values were better than Republican values, they wouldn&#8217;t be trying to lock up Trump. They&#8217;d be doing everything they could to get him to keep talking. If you feel like your only way to win an election is by having your opponent put in jail, you are well on your way to this kind of totalitarian empire of terror. That&#8217;s number one.
Number two is cancel culture. The Left is using cancel culture as a strong-arm tactic to get people to shut up. And we all know the way it works: “You&#8217;re racist” or “we&#8217;re going to call your boss” or “we&#8217;re going to boycott your product” or whatever. But the point is that the only people who feel they need to shut up the opposition are people who know that their opposition has a better argument. And if they don&#8217;t shut them up, they&#8217;re going to win. One of my favorite sayings is that liberals want conservatives to shut up and conservatives want liberals to keep talking. And that&#8217;s the essence of the difference between these two parties.
I have seen a concerted effort in America over the last several years to silence people. This whole idea of cancel culture is as close as we&#8217;ve come so far to taking people out to the Gulag and shooting them in the back of the head. But there are people who do want other people silenced. And the one thing I did realize is that there comes a tipping point when too many people are too quiet for too long. The social proof is to be quiet. The longer everybody is quiet, the harder it is to speak up. Eventually, it will lead to a situation like the Soviet Union, or the Nazi state. With &#8220;An Empire of Terror,&#8221; I was determined to do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen.

EOT – Key Art – 16×9 (1)

‘An Empire Of Terror’: Bill Whittle On The Rise Of The Soviet Union

Bill Whittle

Communism

Documentaries

Josef Stalin

Opinion

Readers Pass

Russia

Soviet Union

Vladimir Lenin

As Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine continue to dominate political discourse and presidential agendas this election year, DailyWire+ announced on Wednesday the launch of “What We Saw: An Empire of Terror,” the latest iteration of its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/apollo-11-what-we-saw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">popular anthology docuseries</a> hosted by renowned storyteller Bill Whittle.
Now in its third season, the show’s newest episodes investigate the class-based genocide perpetrated by communist Soviets in the early 20th century under the reigns of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, unveiling a chilly reality of fear and violence.
The first episode of “What We Saw: An Empire of Terror” is now streaming on DailyWire+, with new episodes dropping weekly on Wednesdays.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/innocent-people" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH ‘WHAT WE SAW: AN EMPIRE OF TERROR’ ON DAILYWIRE+</a>
Russia’s relationship with the United States has long been a complicated one, and though the countries have been allies at times, relations are again strained following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. To comprehend Putin’s motivations in the modern global landscape, Whittle guides viewers through Lenin and Stalin’s regimes, exploring the historical context that shaped the current Russian president’s behaviors.
“Putin wanted to join the KGB from the time he was a small child, but why? I can’t tell you what goes on in Putin’s head, no one can. I thought the next best thing was to show you the horror of what was in front of his eyes growing up,” Whittle says in episode 8.
Whittle&#8217;s core message of common sense and decency has earned him a devoted following among those who value reasoned thought, civil dialogue, and vigorous laughter. His powers of vivid storytelling, relentless logic, and self-deprecating humor join forces to apply time-tested principles in memorable ways.
“What We Saw” is an exclusive <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus?utm_campaign=dwplus&amp;utm_medium=paid&amp;utm_source=googlesearch&amp;utm_content=na_subscriptions&amp;mid=g&amp;cid=dailywire&amp;xid=0&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gclid=CjwKCAiAopuvBhBCEiwAm8jaMe6RmlPijLsp3ZTnuxrm6cvHV_fqd9ibYczyBD8MSDUCoQBzpdNGkhoC7QgQAvD_BwE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DailyWire+</a> anthology series that presents pivotal historical events as a creative cinematic adventure. Subscribe now to watch the full Apollo 11 and Cold War seasons and catch new episodes of An Empire of Terror weekly on dailywireplus.com.
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Empire of Terror

DailyWire+ Launches ‘An Empire Of Terror,’ Third Installment Of Hit Docuseries ‘What We Saw’ Hosted By Bill Whittle

DailyWire+

Vladimir Putin

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler may be the most infamous villain in world history. He perpetrated the Holocaust, unleashed a reign of totalitarian oppression over most of Europe, and initiated the most destructive conflict the world has ever seen.
Ian Kershaw, a distinguished historian widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on Hitler and the Nazi regime, has <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/03/hitler-nemesis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">referred</a> to him as &#8220;the embodiment of modern political evil.&#8221; The accuracy of that assessment is showcased by the fact that partisans of all political stripes (though it is especially favored by the Left to refer to anything even remotely Right-of-center) use <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-says-trump-is-a-nazi-thats-not-going-to-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">comparisons to Hitler</a> and his ideology as the ultimate slander against their opponents.
In fact, as many have pointed out, the comparison has become <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/facts-ep-3-fascism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">so ubiquitous</a> that in many ways it has lost its effectiveness as a political epithet. Additionally, to rely on a single historical reference to embody evil diminishes public awareness of other psychopathic despots (especially Left-wing ones) who have rampaged through history, even in the last century.
So, here is a non-exhaustive list of tyrants of the 20th Century who we can reference besides Hitler.
<h4>Vladimir Lenin</h4>
Vladimir Lenin orchestrated the first, but by no means last, successful communist revolution and forged what would become the Soviet Union in a tide of violence and repression.
The Bolsheviks <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/october-revolution/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launched</a> the October Revolution of 1917 to overthrow the Provisional Government of Russia, which had ruled the country since Tsar Nicholas II abdicated during the February Revolution earlier in the year. The communists quickly seized control of Petrograd (today St. Petersburg) and Moscow, but the country soon descended into a bloody and chaotic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Russian-Civil-War" target="_blank" rel="noopener">civil war</a> as anti-communist factions — ranging from moderate socialists to monarchists to anarchists and separatists — resisted the new government.
<div id="attachment_680029" style="width: 791px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-680029" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-680029 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515384712-781x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images" width="781" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515384712-781x576.jpg 781w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515384712-300x221.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515384712-768x567.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515384712-1536x1133.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515384712-2048x1511.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 781px) 100vw, 781px" />Credit: Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images</div>
On the orders of Lenin and other top Bolsheviks, soldiers of the newly formed Red Army seized food, property, and other valuables from peasants in order to support the war effort, creating famine and destitution throughout large swathes of the country.
Lenin oversaw the creation of <a href="https://history.blog.gov.uk/2017/12/20/whats-the-context-20-december-1917-formation-of-the-cheka-the-first-soviet-security-and-intelligence-agency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Cheka</a>, the Soviet Union&#8217;s first secret police, and during the civil war it carried out mass arrests, torture and executions in order to suppress any political opponents of the new regime. The Cheka also founded and ran the USSR&#8217;s infamous prison labor system — the gulags.
Lenin also endorsed the murder of the former tsar, his wife, and their five children in July 1918 as anti-communist forces approached the location where they were being held prisoner by the Bolsheviks.
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The Russian Civil War lasted more than 5 years and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Russian-Civil-War" target="_blank" rel="noopener">caused</a> the deaths of up to 10 million people — five times the number of Russians who died in World War I.
Though his reign over the nascent Soviet Union was relatively short, a little over 6 years, Lenin&#8217;s ruthlessness provided a blueprint for Left-wing dictators who rose to power throughout the century, most infamously his successor.
<h4>Joseph Stalin</h4>
Joseph Stalin&#8217;s rise to power in the aftermath of Lenin&#8217;s death in 1924 foreshadowed his own brutal tenure as the leader of the Soviet Union. He <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin">supplanted</a> and eventually exiled Lenin&#8217;s preferred successor, Leon Trotsky, and had several of his other opponents demoted and replaced by allies.
Once he secured his position as leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin embarked on a program of collectivization, the forced consolidation of individual farms into large, state-controlled collectives. Along with this policy, Stalin <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/collectivization-texts/stalin-on-the-liquidation-of-the-kulak/">called</a> for the elimination of prosperous peasants known as kulaks &#8220;as a class.&#8221; Though these farmers were rarely much better off than their neighbors, Stalin designated them as class enemies, and the new secret police, the NKVD, carried out mass arrests and deportations of the kulaks, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Soviet collectivization of agriculture under Stalin also caused a massive famine that afflicted Ukraine and southern Russia from 1930 to 1933. Known as <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor">the Holodomor</a> in Ukraine, the Great Soviet Famine killed an <a href="https://www.nber.org/digest/202110/disproportionate-death-ukrainians-soviet-great-famine">estimated</a> 10 million people, of which roughly 4 million were Ukrainians. The legislatures of dozens of countries, including the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-resolution/435">United States</a>, recognize the Holodomor as a genocide against the Ukrainian people.
Though he had dealt with Trotsky (eventually having him assassinated in Mexico in 1940), Stalin still feared internal opposition to his rule, causing him to instigate <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Purge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Great Purge</a> in 1936.
Stalin once again deployed the NKVD to hunt down and terrorize his enemies, real and imagined. Dozens of high-ranking Soviet officials, including several original Bolsheviks who had helped Lenin seize power in 1917, were found guilty in show trials and executed for supposedly conspiring to overthrow Stalin.
The purge unleashed a wave of paranoia throughout the country, and suspicion soon extended to the military, ethnic minorities, and even the general population. By the time Stalin declared in 1938 that the internal threat to the Soviet Union had been suppressed, at least <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/great-purge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">700,000 people</a> had died.
<div id="attachment_680033" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-680033" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-680033 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515177218-1024x532.jpg" alt="Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images" width="1024" height="532" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515177218-1024x532.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515177218-300x156.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515177218-768x399.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515177218-1536x797.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-515177218-2048x1063.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images</div>
As a result of the Great Purge, the gulag system founded under Lenin exploded into the infamous &#8220;Gulag Archipelago&#8221; as more and more people were accused of being counter-revolutionaries. Of the estimated 17 million people who <a href="https://apnews.com/general-news-b2adacb992004f4aaa4c739ec3f4629a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">were sent</a> to the gulags between 1930 and 1953, between 1.2 and 1.7 million <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Gulag" target="_blank" rel="noopener">died</a> in the camps.
The Soviet Union invaded Poland along with Nazi Germany in September 1939 as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which facilitated the partition of Eastern Europe between the two countries and their cooperation until the German invasion of Russia in 1941. Stalin <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/katyn-massacre" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ordered</a> the mass execution of Polish prisoners-of-war who had been captured during the invasion, and NKVD agents killed over 20,000 Poles during the Katyn Massacre in April and May 1940.
Stalin continued his totalitarian policies during World War II, in which anyone accused of questioning his leadership was severely punished and collaborators with the Nazis were killed or sent to the gulags. Arrests of political dissidents, carried out by a succession of increasingly monstrous NKVD directors, continued right up to Stalin&#8217;s death.
After he rose to power in the wake of Stalin&#8217;s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/khrushchevs-secret-speech-cult-personality-and-its-consequences-delivered-twentieth-party" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denounced</a> Stalin&#8217;s barbarity and embarked on a campaign of de-Stalinization to dismantle his policies. Estimates on exactly how many people during the Stalin era vary greatly, with most historians placing the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/joseph-stalin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">death toll</a> between 6 million and 20 million.
<h4>Mao Zedong</h4>
In 1949, the Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong — after a decades-long civil war — forced the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek to retreat to Taiwan, cementing communist control over the Chinese mainland.
After a period of relative openness designed to bait opponents of the regime into publicly criticizing the CCP, Mao <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-silence-that-preceded-chinas-great-leap-into-famine-51898077/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declared</a> the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957 to root out anyone who opposed communist rule or collectivization. Between half a million and 2 million people were arrested during the campaign, and hundreds of thousands died due to starvation or ill-treatment during captivity.
Mao&#8217;s most destructive program was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/Great-Leap-Forward" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Great Leap Forward</a>, which was intended to transform China from an agriculture-based economy to an industrial powerhouse that could compete with the Soviet Union and the West. The central government set unattainable production quotas for both industry and agriculture, causing lower-level bureaucrats overseeing the programs to take more food from peasants and overwork factory laborers. Out of fear of being labeled anti-communist or, more importantly, anti-Mao, many officials refused to report failures and fabricated data to meet the quotas.
Anyone who opposed the Great Leap Forward could be arrested, tortured, conscripted into forced labor battalions, or summarily executed by the communist overseers. The program was a complete economic disaster, plunging tens of millions of Chinese into grinding poverty.
Because the cadres didn&#8217;t report food shortages and took more food from peasants to fill the outlandish quotas, famine broke out across China. The Great Chinese Famine lasted from 1959 to 1961 and is widely considered one of the worst famines in human history. Scholars continue to debate the exact death toll, but <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/#:~:text=Extent%20of%20famine&amp;text=More%20detailed%20later%20studies%20came,totals%20closer%20to%2040%20million." target="_blank" rel="noopener">most estimates</a> fall between 15 and 55 million deaths from the famine alone.
It wasn&#8217;t until 1981, 5 years after Mao&#8217;s death, that the CCP officially <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/resolution-certain-questions-history-our-party-founding-peoples-republic-china" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recognized</a> that the famine had been primarily caused by policies implemented during the Great Leap Forward.
Much like Stalin, Mao eventually became paranoid about the threat of internal threats to his absolute power. He insisted that capitalists and conservatives had infiltrated Chinese society and called on young people to purge the country of any elements that might threaten communism, launching the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cultural-Revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cultural Revolution</a>. Units of Red Guards, usually comprised of university students, targeted local government officials, teachers, community elders, and even parents who were accused of not being sufficiently dedicated to Chairman Mao.
<div id="attachment_680035" style="width: 784px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-680035" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-680035 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-517262776-774x576.jpg" alt="Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images" width="774" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-517262776-774x576.jpg 774w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-517262776-300x223.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-517262776-768x571.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-517262776-1536x1143.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/GettyImages-517262776-2048x1524.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 774px) 100vw, 774px" />Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images</div>
Though struggle sessions, in which someone accused of disloyalty to communism was forced to admit their crimes and subjected to public ridicule and abuse, had been a tactic used by the CCP to force ideological conformity for decades, the practice became infamous during the Cultural Revolution. Heretofore committed Chinese communists were suddenly accused of not being ideologically pure enough or being secret capitalists, hauled out into a public space, and harangued by their neighbors. They were most often imprisoned afterward, but in many instances they were executed by the government or killed on the spot by the mob.
Massacres of suspected traitors took place across China, and in the southern province of Guangxi hundreds of instances of cannibalism were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/06/world/a-tale-of-red-guards-and-cannibals.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Millions were imprisoned or persecuted by the Red Guards, driving thousands to suicide. Overall, between 500,000 and 2 million people died as a result of the Cultural Revolution.
Much like Stalin&#8217;s Great Purge, the Cultural Revolution served to cement Mao&#8217;s position as the undisputed leader of the country.
By the time Mao died in 1976, an <a href="https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zedong-mass-murder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimated</a> 65 million people had died as a result of his regime of terror and subjugation.
Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are all synonymous with communist brutality in the 20th century. Each of them displayed just as much cruelty, ruthlessness, and disregard for human life as Hitler did during his vicious domination of Europe. Though references to Stalin and Mao are made in political discourse, they pale in comparison to those accusing someone or an idea of being Hitler-esque. And the crimes of these men deserve just as much scrutiny and public awareness as those of Hitler and the Nazis. More frequent references to these despots not only phases out the tired Hitler trope, but it can also help point out the horrendous atrocities carried out in the name of communist utopia.

Portraits de théoriciens et de dirigeants communistes

Tired Of Comparing Your Political Enemies To Hitler? Here Are Some Other Evil Despots Worth Mentioning – Part I

Tired Of Comparing Your Political Enemies To Hitler? Here Are Some Other Evil Despots Worth Mentioning - Part I

Adolf Hitler

China

World

A journalist whose family was targeted by Nazi Germany was fired from his position as an editorial board member for The Seattle Times after he was accused of “defending” Adolf Hitler on Twitter.
David Josef Volodzko began his career as a university lecturer but decided to switch to journalism to report on injustices throughout the world. He has spent the past 15 years covering stories about refugees, prisoners of war, and war itself. In <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/seattle-times-writer-fired-over-hitler-lenin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an essay</a> about his firing posted to Bari Weiss’ Substack “The Free Press,” Volodzko describes himself as a democratic socialist and notes that his wife is a DEI trainer.
None of that prepared him for the current cancel culture movement.
<div id="attachment_600215" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-600215" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-600215 size-medium" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/08/David-Volodzko-300x300.jpeg" alt="David Volodzko was fired from his job after comparing Lenin and Hitler." width="300" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/08/David-Volodzko-300x300.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/08/David-Volodzko-150x150.jpeg 150w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/08/David-Volodzko.jpeg 312w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />David Volodzko</div>
Volodzko thought that he, his wife, and his baby daughter would fit in perfectly in ultra-progressive Seattle.
His first official column for the Times was about Seattle’s statue of Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Volodzko wrote about how the people of the Fremont neighborhood in which it stands dress it up and make it a joke, but also about his own family’s struggles and Lenin’s genocidal killings.
He received positive and negative responses, as any columnist would. The column was never the issue, but the words Volodzko used to post it on Twitter cost him his job.
“In fact, while Hitler has become the great symbol of evil in history books, he too was less evil than Lenin because Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself didn’t believe were harmful in any way,” Volodzko wrote in a now-deleted tweet.
He followed up this post by explaining that he was only comparing the two by their intentions, not their actual atrocities.
“Hitler was more evil than Lenin if we’re looking at what they did to people and that’s a pretty important metric for assessing evil!” he wrote.
As Volodzko noted in his essay, this is the kind of topic one could debate in person, but not on Twitter. “And the argument I was making is a fraught one even under the best of circumstances—you don’t need to compare anyone to Hitler to argue that they are evil — and my delivery was poor, to say the least,” he wrote.
He was accused of “defending” Hitler and had his life threatened.
Six days later, Volodzko thought his job was safe after he was told the media outlet stood by him. But he was soon fired for “poor judgment” and “continuing to engage online.” After he was terminated, the paper issued an apology statement that appeared to contradict that reasoning.
“An editorial writer engaged in Twitter recently in a way that is inconsistent with our company values,” the paper wrote. “We apologize for any pain we have caused our readers, our employees and the community.”
Volodzko is now trying to earn income through his Substack, “<a href="https://volodzko.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Radicalist</a>,” in which he covers political extremism from communism to fascism and the cancel culture environment of which he is a recent victim.
On Saturday, Elon Musk announced that his company – which he has renamed X – would fight for anyone punished by an employer for their actions on his platform.
“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” Musk <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-musk-vows-to-go-to-war-against-companies-that-punish-employees-for-activity-on-x" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>. “No limit. Please let us know.”
Volodzko responded to the tweet with his Substack essay, and Musk eventually responded by saying: “This does sound like a good case.”
It is unclear whether anything will come of Musk’s response, and any action would not be immediate for Volodzko and his family, but it does provide some hope.

Statue of Vladimir Lenin

Seattle Times Editorial Board Member Fired After Comparing Lenin And Hitler On Twitter

Cancel Culture

Seattle

Twitter

U.S.

Washington

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) on Thursday claimed that President Joe Biden finds himself &#8220;to the left of Lenin&#8221; after recklessly kowtowing to the woke mob.
“What President Biden has done is immeasurably reckless and foolish,&#8221; Kennedy told Fox News host Harris Faulkner regarding the Biden administration&#8217;s response to the recent police shooting of Ma&#8217;Khia Bryant, which they used to criticize the police.
&#8220;He&#8217;s gone full &#8216;wokerista,'&#8221; Kennedy continued. &#8220;He has joined those people who believe that America was wicked in its origins, and that the American people are even more wicked today; that we have millions of Americans who are racist and misogynistic and ignorant, especially if they didn&#8217;t vote for him.&#8221;
Kennedy went on to claim that the leftists with whom Biden has aligned himself have contempt for America when they should have gratitude.
&#8220;I am very, very disappointed in President Biden,&#8221; Kennedy said. &#8220;I knew he would be left-of-center. I didn’t know he would be left of Lenin, and he knows better. He knows better.&#8221;
&#8220;The president is encouraging this, Harris,&#8221; Kennedy added. &#8220;He&#8217;s got to stop it. He&#8217;s encouraging this radical thinking that America is bad. The American people are not perfect, but they&#8217;re good.&#8221;
Regarding what he would say to Biden, Kennedy said, &#8220;I would tell President Biden: Mr. Biden, you&#8217;re a smart man, and you didn&#8217;t get to be your age, with your experience, and not know this is nonsense. America is not rotten to its core.&#8221;
&#8220;We&#8217;re not perfect, but we are good,&#8221; Kennedy reiterated. &#8220;And you&#8217;re turning our diversity, which is one of our strengths, into a division; and some say — Mr. President, I&#8217;m not accusing you — purely for political reasons. And it&#8217;s wrong, and you know it&#8217;s wrong. It&#8217;s not worth it, Mr. President. Lead. Don&#8217;t just follow and do what the wokeristas tell you to do.&#8221;
WATCH (beginning at 7:45):
<iframe loading="lazy" title="04 22 21 Kennedy talks DC statehood, Ohio shooting with Fox News&#039;s Harris Faulkner" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wTAH5Dw02Dg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Bryant, 16, died Tuesday in Columbus, Ohio, after a police officer shot her in an apparent attempt to stop her from stabbing another girl. Bryant’s death sparked protests in Columbus as Black Lives Matter activists and others accused the officer of using unjustified force against the teen.
According to video that was later released of the incident, Bryant can be heard shouting, “I’m going to stab the f*** out of you, b****,” as she lunged toward the girl before she was shot.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
In new video, Makhia Bryant can be heard screaming “I’m gonna stab the fuck out of you, bitch,” while lunging at two unarmed people who were posing no imminent physical threat to her 
 <a href="https://t.co/iIrn1RlbBR">pic.twitter.com/iIrn1RlbBR</a>
&mdash; Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1385305451428990978?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/video-emerges-of-makhia-bryant-before-shooting?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=benshapiro&amp;fbclid=IwAR1jShlxjaKb8aFQDHIKM4LCmMHKI-oa9tq6MQg0gPOsfM5HrPPz-qJqAOQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reported</a> regarding some of the backlash to Bryant&#8217;s death:
<blockquote>The incident with Bryant spawned a multitude of social justice posts ripping into the police officer who shot her. NBA superstar LeBron James <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lebron-james-posts-photo-of-cop-who-protected-black-girl-from-being-stabbed-youre-next">posted a photograph</a> on social media of the police officer who allegedly shot and killed her, writing, “YOU’RE NEXT. #ACCOUNTABILITY.” Along with the photograph of the police officer, James included an emoji of an hour glass, signifying that time is running out.
Former President Barack Obama’s top advisor, Valerie Jarrett, also weighed in on the incident. “A Black teenage girl named Ma’Khia Bryant was killed because a police officer immediately decided to shoot her multiple times in order to break up a knife fight. Demand accountability. Fight for justice. #BlackLivesMatter,” she tweeted.</blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/video-emerges-of-makhia-bryant-before-shooting" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">‘I’m Going To Stab The F*** Out Of You, B****’: Video Emerges of Ma’Khia Bryant Before Shooting</a>

Joe Biden and Vladimir Lenin

‘Full Wokerista’: Sen. John Kennedy Claims Biden Has Fallen To The ‘Left Of Lenin’ By Kowtowing To Radicals

Harris Faulkner

Joe Biden

John Kennedy

Paul Kengor is a professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He has just published &#8220;The Devil and Karl Marx,&#8221; a careful look at the diabolical side of Karl Marx. The book has come out during an important time in our history since so many Americans, particularly our youth, have fallen for the seductive siren song of socialism taught to them by the academic elite.
&#8220;The Black Book of Communism,&#8221; edited by Stephane Courtois details the Marxist-Leninist death toll in the 20th century. Here is the breakdown: USSR, 20 million deaths; China, 65 million; Vietnam, 1 million; North Korea and Cambodia, 2 million each; Eastern Europe, 1 million; and about 3.5 million in Latin America, Africa and Afghanistan. These figures understate those detailed by Professor R.J. Rummel in &#8220;Death by Government.&#8221; He finds that from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens. From 1949 to 1976, Communist China&#8217;s Mao Zedong regime was responsible for the death of as many as 78 million of its own citizens.
The world&#8217;s intellectual elite readily focus on Adolph Hitler&#8217;s murderous atrocities but ignore those of the world&#8217;s socialists. Mao Zedong has been long admired by academics and leftists across our country. They often marched around singing his praises and waving his little red book, &#8220;Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.&#8221; President Barack Obama&#8217;s communications director, Anita Dunn, in her June 2009 commencement address to St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral, said Mao was one of her heroes.
Whether it&#8217;s the academic community, the media elite, stalwarts of the Democratic Party or organizations such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, Green for All, the Sierra Club and the Children&#8217;s Defense Fund, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism — a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined. Today&#8217;s leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from those of Nazi, Soviet and Maoist mass murderers. Keep in mind that one does not have to be in favor of death camps or wars of conquest to be a tyrant. The only requirement is that one must believe in the primacy of the state over individual rights.
Kengor highlights another feature of Marx ignored by his followers. This feature of Marxism should be disturbing to Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who said that she and her fellow organizers are &#8220;trained Marxists.&#8221; I wonder whether she shares Marx&#8217;s views on race. Marx&#8217;s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, was viewed as having Negro blood in his veins. Marx denigrated him as &#8220;Negillo&#8221; and &#8220;The Gorilla.&#8221;
Marx had similar hate for Jews. He referred to his fellow socialist labor organizer Ferdinand Lasalle as a &#8220;greasy Jew,&#8221; &#8220;the little kike,&#8221; &#8220;water polack jew&#8221; and &#8220;Jewish n——r.&#8221; In 1844, Marx wrote an essay titled &#8220;The Jewish Question&#8221; in which he asks, &#8220;What is the worldly cult of the Jew?&#8221; His answer: &#8220;Haggling. What is his worldly god? Money.&#8221;
Down through the years, leftists made a moral equivalency between communist/socialist totalitarianism and democracy. W. E. B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian (1953) said, &#8220;Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.&#8221; Walter Duranty called Stalin &#8220;the greatest living statesman &#8230; a quiet, unobtrusive man.&#8221; George Bernard Shaw expressed admiration for Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith visited Mao&#8217;s China and praised Mao Zedong and the Chinese economic system. Michel Oksenberg, President Jimmy Carter&#8217;s China expert, complained that &#8220;America is doomed to decay until radical, even revolutionary, change fundamentally alters the institutions and values,&#8221; and urged us to &#8220;borrow ideas and solutions&#8221; from China.
Kengor does a yeoman&#8217;s job of highlighting the evils of Marxism. The question is whether Americans will heed his lesson or fall prey to the false promises and live the horrors of socialism. By the way, while Sweden and Denmark have a large welfare system, they have market economies — not socialist economies, as some leftists claim.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Karl Marx statues

WILLIAMS: The Devil And Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Marxism

A far-left political group unveiled a new statue of Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in Western Germany over the weekend which comes as numerous statues worldwide have been toppled in recent weeks.
&#8220;The installation of Germany&#8217;s first large public statue of Lenin outside the former communist East Germany was fiercely opposed by many Germans,&#8221; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/germany-marxists-lenin-statue-germany/30681737.html">reported</a>. &#8220;The 1.3-ton, cast-iron statue was made in the former Czechoslovakia in 1957 and bought by the MLPD in an online auction for 16,000 euros ($18,000).&#8221;
Gelsenkirchen&#8217;s city council opposed the move by the far-left Marxist-Leninist Party Of Germany (MLPD) but was defeated in court because the statue was being erected on private property. The irony there is that Lenin, a communist, did not believe in the private ownership of property as his regime <a href="https://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-vladimir-lenin">abolished</a> private land ownership on his first day in office.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
While statues of heroes such as George Washington, Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt are being vandalized knocked down or removed, Vladimir Lenin’s statue is being erected of all places in Germany that suffered years of communist oppression while it was divided. Pathetic! <a href="https://t.co/C7EuC5YxNL">pic.twitter.com/C7EuC5YxNL</a>
&mdash; Amir Tsarfati (@BeholdIsrael) <a href="https://twitter.com/BeholdIsrael/status/1275014492380938241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 22, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Lenin, head of the Bolshevik Party, rose to power during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and later went on to found the USSR, the world&#8217;s first communist nation. History <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/russia/vladimir-lenin">provides some background</a>:
<blockquote>[In April 1917] Lenin began plotting an overthrow of the Provisional Government. To Lenin, the provisional government was a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” He advocated instead for direct rule by the workers and peasants in a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
By fall of 1917, Russians had become even more war weary. Peasants, workers and soldiers demanded immediate change in what became known as the October Revolution.
Lenin, aware of the leadership vacuum plaguing Russia, decided to seize power. He secretly organized factory workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors into Red Guards — a volunteer paramilitary force. On November 7 and 8, 1917, Red Guards captured Provisional Government buildings in a bloodless coup d’état.
The Bolsheviks seized power of the government and proclaimed Soviet rule, making Lenin leader of the world’s first communist state. The new Soviet government ended Russian involvement in World War I with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.</blockquote>
The Bolshevik Revolution sparked a three-year civil war inside Russia between the Red Army and the White Army, which was supported by capitalists and supporters of democracy. Lenin instituted &#8220;War Communism,&#8221; which was a series of policies that essentially nationalized all industries throughout Russia. History notes:
<blockquote>These measures proved disastrous. Under the new state-owned economy, both industrial and agricultural output plummeted. An estimated five million Russians died of famine in 1921 and living standards across Russia plunged into abject poverty.
Mass unrest threatened the Soviet government. As a result, Lenin instituted his New Economic Policy, a temporary retreat from the complete nationalization of War Communism. The New Economic Policy created a more market-oriented economic system, “a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control.”</blockquote>
In 1918, Lenin was shot in an assassination attempt by a member of a rival party and his secret police force, the Cheka, responded by what became known as the &#8220;Red Terror,&#8221; a period of time in which mass executions were carried out against those who were not loyal to the communists. History reported that some estimates suggest that up to 100,000 people were killed as a result of the campaign.
A Wall Street Journal op-ed from 2017 <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810">noted</a> that the events that were set in place by the Russian Revolution of 1917 ended up leading to a century where communism was responsible for the deaths of approximately 100 million people.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

GERMANY-HISTORY-SOCIAL-POLITICS

Statue Of Communist Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin Unveiled In Germany

President Donald Trump &#8220;spoke briefly&#8221; with Vladimir Putin at a G20 dinner in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, a dinner attended by hundreds, including world leaders and their spouses. The Russian president was seated next to Melania Trump, so at the end of the dinner, Trump popped &#8217;round, said hello.
Cue the hysterical mainstream media. &#8220;Trump, Putin met for nearly an hour in second G20 meeting,&#8221; cried CNN. &#8220;Trump and Putin Held a Second, Undisclosed, Private Conversation,&#8221; shouted The New York Times. &#8220;Trump held secret hour-long meeting with Putin at G20,&#8221; The Independent screeched. 
On Tuesday night, when the news first emerged, most of the MSM went with &#8220;secret&#8221; in their headlines &#8212; it&#8217;s more nefarious. But many pulled back after they found out the &#8220;secret&#8221; meeting took place in front of hundreds in a grand dining room (Helpful note: next time, do the reporting first, then write the headline). 
But Twitterers were under no obligation to even attempt to sound unbiased, like this journalism professor in New Hampshire:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
BREAKING (THE HILL): Trump and Putin held a second, secret, one-hour meeting at the G20 they didn&#8217;t disclose. Story: <a href="https://t.co/k22dILlTU3">https://t.co/k22dILlTU3</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ciz6GqGUoq">pic.twitter.com/Ciz6GqGUoq</a>
&#8212; Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) <a href="https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/887422506633658368">July 18, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
And Congress, too, was apparently exempt from any requirement that they be remotely accurate, like this California Democrat:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
How do we know 2nd Trump-Putin meeting was NEFARIOUS? Because <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS">@POTUS</a> tried to keep it a secret &amp; he didn&#8217;t even trust Tillerson to be there. <a href="https://t.co/btAcY1VDhY">https://t.co/btAcY1VDhY</a>
&#8212; Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/887463221157822464">July 19, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
And morning talk shows hosts on, say, MSNBC, were certainly not at all obliged to truthfully present the facts.
&#8220;Reporters, foreign policy analysts and our allies can safely assume the worst,&#8221; Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough said on Wednesday. Ah, preaching the powers of assuming &#8212; what a journalist! Joe mused on.
&#8220;They can safely assume the worst of Donald Trump, they can safely assume the worst of Vladimir Putin, because in the last meeting that Donald Trump had with Russians before Putin, he was talking to their foreign minister and their ambassador to the U.S., and he was talking about firing James Comey and saying he had gotten the pressure off of everybody because he had fired the nut case who was investigating Donald Trump&#8217;s possible illegal ties with Russia.&#8221;
&#8220;So what are we to assume if not the worst &#8212; that he had this meeting, the White House didn&#8217;t reveal it. Once again we had to find out about it through third channels and there wasn&#8217;t even an American within earshot to listen what they talked about for an hour.&#8221;
Yes, the big sinister charge is that Trump talked with Putin without an American translator. Trump had been seated next to Japan&#8217;s prime minister during dinner so brought a translator who spoke Japanese. The &#8220;brief&#8221; conversation between Trump and Putin was translated by the Russian translator.
But wait. Before we go on, let&#8217;s get the facts from the White House. 

&#8220;During the course of the dinner, all the leaders circulated throughout the room and spoke with one another freely,&#8221; a senior administration official said in a statement Tuesday night. &#8220;There was no &#8216;second meeting&#8217; between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to &#8216;hide&#8217; a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd. It is not merely perfectly normal, it is part of a president&#8217;s duties, to interact with world leaders.&#8221;
Meanwhile, Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the information policy at the upper house of Russian parliament, also mocked the breathless reports of &#8220;a secret conversation that didn&#8217;t happen.&#8221;
&#8220;They&#8217;re sick,&#8221; he said.
And that&#8217;s just what Trump said, too.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is &#8220;sick.&#8221; All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/887475373981696000">July 19, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest! Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/887477071160762369">July 19, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
It seems the downward spiral of the media is now bottomless, and just how stupid they can look limitless. But you know they&#8217;ll try. 

<div class="embed tweet"></div>

U.S. Media Hits New Low With Report Of ‘Secret’ Trump-Putin Meeting

Donald Trump

Fake News

Media

Media Bias

As Russian bombers lay waste to American-allied opposition forces in Syria, President Obama scrambles to string together something resembling a foreign policy platform. The fact is, the Obama administration has no Syria policy. Four years of civil-war, sectarian tensions, and chemical gassing, and still, nothing.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, an Obama advisor that routinely cuddles with ambivalence, <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_RUSSIA?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2015-10-02-04-40-32">said</a> in March that the administration is &#8220;working through what kinds of support and under what conditions&#8221; the U.S. would assist its allies in the region.
They must have taken a long coffee break. Obama&#8217;s underlings are still &#8220;working through&#8221; the contours of this supposed plan, while the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Syrian_Army">Free Syrian Army</a>, an anti-Assad contingent of defected soldiers aligned with U.S. interests, is <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11903702/Russias-Vladimir-Putin-launches-strikes-in-Syria-on-Isil-to-US-anger-live-updates.html">blasted</a> into oblivion by Vladimir Putin&#8217;s air pilots. The Daily Beast <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/01/u-s-admits-we-can-t-protect-syrian-allies-from-russia-s-bombs.html">reports</a> that United States officials conceded Thursday that there is little they could do in Syria to protect CIA-vetted rebels, the very people the American government trained and armed, who are now coming under fire by Russian airstrikes.&#8221;
Under the banner of American apologetics and prostration, the Obama administration is abandoning key strategic U.S. allies on the ground, exacerbating a political vacuum that has already seen the emergence of Sunni jihadist factions like ISIS and the al-Nusra front. The disastrously ineffectual $500 million <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/204/russia-takes-control-syria-tells-us-stand-down-joshua-yasmeh">Pentagon program</a> to train and equip allied fighters against the Assad regime failed to yield any results. Only &#8220;four to five&#8221; militants were prepared for the project.
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&#8220;We are getting to a place where there are little, if any, option left.&#8221;
Sen. Bob Corker
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In the midst of this futility, the U.S. is still attempting to fight a <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/01/u-s-admits-we-can-t-protect-syrian-allies-from-russia-s-bombs.html">two-front war</a> in the region: supplying the FSA and its affiliates with intelligence from CIA spies on the ground and surveillance satellites and training a separate commando unit called the New Syria Front to function as a counter-terrorism strike force against ISIS militants. The Daily Beast highlights the absurdity of this strategy, chronicling the administration&#8217;s history of consequential miscalculations:
<blockquote>
The Obama administration has emphasized that its main fight is against ISIS, but since 2011 it has been calling for Assad&#8217;s negotiated &#8220;transition&#8221; from power. The administration realizes that it&#8217;s in a much stronger position to facilitate that transition if it underwrites the application of mild to moderate military pressure on Damascus&#8212;not enough to topple the regime but enough to keep it on the defensive. Russia, unsurprisingly, has decided to rob the U.S. of that leverage by attacking the anti-regime rebels. And Putin has calculated, with good reason, that the U.S. will do little to nothing to defend these proxies from Russian bombs.
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The discursive nature of U.S. policy in the post-Iraq invasion of the Middle East is damaging both U.S. assets on the ground and the stability of the region as a whole. With Arab analysts suggesting that President Obama has been &#8220;<a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/2015/09/26/Putin-has-checkmated-Obama-in-Syria.html">checkmated</a>&#8221; by Putin, the Obama doctrine delves deeper into incomprehensibility. &#8220;I don&#8217;t even know what to say,&#8221; <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/01/u-s-admits-we-can-t-protect-syrian-allies-from-russia-s-bombs.html">confessed</a> Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, &#8220;We are getting to a place where there are little, if any, option left. This administration has frittered away most opportunities &#8212; to the point that they&#8217;re not going to be in direct with Russia, and Russia knows that.&#8221; A Cold-War style showdown with Russia is not in anybody&#8217;s best interest. Mutually Assured Destruction is still the operative phrase. That leaves the United States with very few logistically plausible options.
Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group (a leading global political risk research and consulting firm), shares Corker&#8217;s sentiments, <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/the-exchange/2015/02/13/obama-has-bumbled-into-the-right-syria-policy/">stating</a> that &#8220;Barack Obama&#8217;s painfully public vacillation on what to do with Syria&#8217;s Bashar al-Assad marks the low point of his six years in office.&#8221; In fact, the internationally-renowned foreign policy analyst quipped today on Twitter:
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How dare Putin show the world that the US has no Syria policy? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AfterOnly4Years?src=hash">#AfterOnly4Years</a>
&#8212; ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) <a href="https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/649920611616202752">October 2, 2015</a></blockquote>
All jokes aside, U.S. allies are suffering under the aerial assault of Russian jets. This president needs to materialize a Syria policy quickly. After an <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/204/russia-takes-control-syria-tells-us-stand-down-joshua-yasmeh">exodus</a> of 4 million refugees and a <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/204/russia-takes-control-syria-tells-us-stand-down-joshua-yasmeh">death-toll</a> marked at 300,000, it&#8217;s about time that the Obama administration takes notice.

Obama Abandons Syrian Allies as Russians Bomb

Barack Obama

Syria

For those who want something for nothing, look no further than an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/30/tired-of-capitalism-lets-try-basic-income/">article</a> in the Washington Post by Matt Bruenig, a researcher of poverty and welfare systems at the leftist think tank <a href="http://www.demos.org/video/we-are-demos">Demos</a>.
Bruenig begins his diatribe by stating baldly, &#8220;Capitalism is a coercive economic system that creates persistent patterns of economic deprivation.&#8221;
You might assume that after that rigorously substantiated statement Bruenig would have nothing more to say, but then he is advocating communism, so &#8230;
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To secure freedom and prosperity for all, it may ultimately be necessary to supplement the welfare state with a universal basic income &#8212; a program that would provide all citizens with a basic level of financial support, regardless of whether they&#8217;re employed.
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Oh. Young Matt wants his money, and dammit, he&#8217;s going to get it! Someone might point out to Young Matt that a basic income would take money from the rich and the middle class to redirect it to the poor; so those who have earned their wealth would be punished for no reason at all. Not to mention that when basic income guarantee has been tried, the consequence has always been a withdrawal of participants&#8217; labor, as Jim Manzi <a href="http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/08/jim-manzi/when-basic-income-guarantee-meets-political-process.">points out</a>.
But wait, another well-substantiated calumny is forthcoming:
<blockquote>
By now, it is well established that capitalism is fundamentally built upon threats of force. 
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From the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm">Communist Manifesto</a>:
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Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
</blockquote>
Yup, we capitalists are holding a gun to those poor workers, forcing them to slave at their jobs instead of simply offering them plush rewards for their indolence.
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&#8220;By now, it is well established that capitalism is fundamentally built upon threats of force.&#8221; 
Matt Bruenig
</blockquote>
Let&#8217;s follow Young Matt&#8217;s logic: 
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As libertarian philosophers Robert Nozick and Matt Zwolinski have explained, the only way to turn unowned natural resources (such as land, minerals and other goods) into privately owned property is by violently preventing all others from using them. 
</blockquote>
From the Communist Manifesto:
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&#8230; modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
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(And by the way, don&#8217;t bring up how buying real estate works to this chump.)
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This one-sided exclusion destroys freedom of movement and cuts many people off from the things that they need to survive. When the physical resources necessary for production are privately held in the hands of very few, as in the United States, the majority of the population is forced to submit itself to well-financed employers in order to live. 
</blockquote>
The Manifesto again: 
<blockquote>
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
</blockquote>
Bruenig continues:
<blockquote>
The precarious position of most workers in this position &#8212; desperate for employment but aware that they could lose their jobs at any time &#8212; is coercive on its face and susceptible to exploitation and abuse &#8230; no amount of labor regulation can ever undo the fact that workers are confronted daily with the choice between obeying a supervisor or losing all their income. The only way to break the coercion at the core of the employment relationship is to give people the genuine ability to say no to their employers. And the only way to make that feasible is to guarantee that working-age adults, at least, have some way to support themselves whether they work or not.
</blockquote>
Paging Vladimir Lenin! Mr. Lenin? 
<blockquote>
Even as capitalism makes some workers&#8217; lives miserable, those who can&#8217;t work are in even worse shape. Even after counting some or all public welfare benefits, the U.S. poverty rate in 2013 was anywhere from 15 percent to 18 percent.
</blockquote>
Hey, Lola, stop gabbing with your cousin in Bangladesh, turn off that damn microwave and lissen to this guy! He says we can get out of poverty for nothin&#8217;!
For the record, the president of Demos, Heather McGhee, <a href="http://www.demos.org/heather-c-mcghee">co-chaired</a> a task force within Americans for Financial Reform that helped shape key provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/">Forbes</a> wrote of Dodd-Frank:
<blockquote>
A grossly ill-defined law, assigning massive authority over the entire financial sector (banking firms with assets $50 billion or more, plus nonbank financial firms as subjectively determined by the Fed, FDIC, et al.), is much more than a problem of regulatory overreach. It is a direct assault on the notion that government must have defined limits.
</blockquote>

WaPo: Get Your Money Here, Without Working!

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