Those of you who get the postings from the JPFO will recognize the source for the ideas in this column (and several which will follow.) At any rate, I consider that this book, The Black Book Of Communism," to be one of the most important to come along in quite awhile. As the final sentence in the column says, "If we are to protect the future, it is imperative that we understand the past in the present!

A few weeks ago, we reported on the manner in which the teachings of Antonio Gramsci have been (and ARE) being used to change our cultural traditions in order to make it possible to install a totally new set of beliefs. This process has been going on for many decades but has been accelerated rapidly in the last twenty years without the American people, with rare exceptions, even suspecting that the cultural "ground" was being dug away from beneath their feet. Indeed, it is only the middle aged and us "gray hairs" who are aware that conditions were once markedly different in this country.

There is a new book available called "The Black Book Of Communism." The book is the work of several authors, chief among them being Stephanie Courtois. It was published first in France in 1997. After translation from the French, it was published in this country by Harvard University Press in 1999. The seven hundred plus pages of the book are not any passionate partisan tirade. It is far more powerful than that. It is a simple recitation, in article after article, of the horrendous historical facts of Communist conquest and crimes.

Beginning with the terror tactics instituted by Lenin and continuing through better than 80 years to include the starvation resulting from Afro-communism, the book dispassionately describes the events, adds up the numbers, describes the conditions and names the names of the criminals involved. It is astonishing that so little is widely known of this history. We hear, over and over and over, of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis, although little mention is made of the other millions of non-Jews who were also killed in the extermination camps. However, Hitler was a rank amateur, a piker, as compared to the Communist regimes all over the world.

This book documents right at one hundred million (100,000,000) deaths directly attributable to the Communists — NOT casualties of war, but CIVILIAN slaughter. Deaths in gulags and concentration camps by the most brutal torture methods the minds of inhuman beasts could design. "Kinder" deaths from a simple bullet to the back of the head. Most of the deaths came from simple starvation (not an easy way to die, either.) In some cases the starvation was the result of deliberate, planned famines used to exterminate any who were considered to be enemies of the "State." In other cases, the starvation was the inevitable result of the government's disastrous control of the goods and means of production. Regardless of the reason, one hundred million humans lost their lives because of the actions of their own government!

But, OF COURSE, nothing like that could ever happen in this country! Could it?

It is unthinkable to imagine a "Pol Pot" type regime, as happened in Cambodia, being able to take over and exterminate a THIRD of this country's population. The brutalities of the "Sendero Luminoso" (Shining Path) Maoist movement which terrorized Peru aren't possible either. Are they?

Or, closer to home, how about the prisons in Nicaragua where prisoners were jammed so tightly into cells that they had to sleep standing up. Water was so scarce that prisoners drank their own urine. Toilet facilities were non existent to the extent that the cells, and even the hallways, ran thick with excrement. Nah, nothing like that could ever happen in a modern industrialized nation like the United States!

Ah, but think about Nazi Germany, itself an extremely modern industrialized nation. Nazism and Communism are remarkably similar in their tactics, if not their beliefs. The Nazis were working to exterminate masses of people on the basis of "race." The Communists were (and are) slaughtering masses of people on the basis of "class." There is NO MORAL DISTINCTION between the two!

It is interesting, as the authors point out, that the Communists actually benefited by massively promoting the belief, worldwide, that the Holocaust was a crime unique in mankind's history. Doing so diverted attention from the even more horrendous crimes which they were committing themselves. By concentrating popular attention on the so-called "fascist right" and its atrocities they were able to keep their own crimes almost totally unknown — except to the unfortunate victims!

We are "told" that Communism is dead, that even China is on the road to capitalism. (As if that were somehow beneficial to the free world! An industrialized Red China is an even greater threat to its neighbors and us!)

Why should we care what happened "way back then?"

The answer is that trust in the all powerful STATE is becoming ever more common in this country. That trust is waiting to destroy masses of people AGAIN. That trust was the very essence of Nazism and Communism. It is the belief that the STATE, regardless of where it claims to have its authority from, is supreme. This belief leads first to the acceptance of the idea that certain individuals or groups, who are not "politically correct" (to use today's terminology), are "unacceptable." Then these same people become "enemies" and finally we will be told that they must be "disposed of for the good of society."

Can you think of any instances of this already? How about Ruby Ridge? How about the Branch Davidians in Texas? How about miners, cattlemen, timber and oil companies we are told are "destroying" the environment? We are being carefully conditioned to accept the OLD evils of total central government control even though the "appearance" of Constitutional restrictions is maintained.

In the next few weeks, we will be examining a few of the ways in which that conditioning is taking place, right here in Happy Valley, in Utah and in the country as a whole. In order to protect the future it is imperative that we understand the past in the present!