Spectre of evil

Paul of England writes:

It's all about tyranny and liberty. Right down to our simplest Yes/No decisions. We inherently know this, it's a gift of the Fall, part of our make-up. Our feelings of joy or elation and conversely depression or misery are intimately tied up with this same knowledge.

This is in part what makes Lenin interesting. He didn't wake up one day as a despot or murderer. He had himself in his mind on the trajectory of a liberator. That's a commonplace though - being misled about our own intentions by the force of the world, and then if we go deep enough, the active presence of the Devil begins driving.

In a sense though, Lenin is more than his followers. More complex, more adaptive, creative, arguably more authentic in a sense too. For instance Marx thought Russia had no prospects for revolution - it was too vastly peasant. Marx envisaged the proles, the workers rising up against the fat controller. That could only occur in a more developed nation. Lenin's solution was to invent the idea of the Intelligentsia leading the peasants until the peasants were able to take command of themselves. Like parents caring for their infant children. He would save them from the wickedness of the aristocracy by leading them in revolt against their masters. That ideological deviation is already no longer Marxist.

Did he genuinely believe his ideology would emancipate? One of the common defences thrown out is that you can't blame Lenin for the totalitarianism that emerged. That's what he was fighting against. I suspect that's a lame defence.

I've never read Lenin but he may be interesting. Whilst his contemporaries would say "we must protest against this injustice" Lenin would publish methods for killing the oppressors with boiling oil. And so forth. Curiously i have an impression of Lenin as a recurring historical figure that I first met in the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Lenin's elder brother, in his late teens, plotted to assassinate the autocratic Tsar. Lenin's brother gets caught and is hanged. This is cited as the primary catalyst for Lenin - it begs the question, was his drive to liberate Russia from the debauchery of the aristocracy real or a mask for a deep seated vengeance? His ideology of course was BAMN which makes anything permissible. and probably set the course for the rest of the regimes history and for all the copycat regimes that followed.

I responded:

This is why I harp on Dostoevsky. These socialist ideas, the nihilism, all of it started in - or arrived in - Russia in Dostoevsky's time. He was one of them. He was sentenced to die, was taken to the wall to be executed, was then walked back to his cell and sentenced to ten years in Siberia where he became a Christian.

He then knew it was all demonic. He called his political novel on it all Demons. Or the Possessed. It is even a theme in Crime and Punishment. He was prophetic of the 20th century. He predicted it all.

An element of Lenin you didn't mention was his militant atheism. It was arguably his driving motivation. The one thing that brought all the various factions that became the Bolshevik Party together was their unified hatred of Christianity. Their atheism. You saw the same thing in the French Revolution, which was the father, so to speak, of the Bolshevik Revolution.

These were not naive utopians. The useful idiots that followed them were, but the leaders were not. They were consciously demonic as hell. They called their idealist, utopian, naive followers *useful idiots.*

Of course these types will have better cover if what they are undermining or taking over is despotism to one degree or another itself. but it is always exaggerated. They are looking to create the possibility to make massive human sacrifices to the Kingdom of Satan. Pure and simple. That's what it always came down to. The ultimate, always-present goal. - C.

And added:

THE spectre haunting Europe in The Communist Manifesto (1848), and haunting the world today [1968], walks for the first time in the pages of [Edmund] Burke:

Here is a quote from one of his letters about what was happening in France:

"… out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrifick guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist..."

That word, spectre, was used by Marx obviously, and he mentioned Burke in his writings, so he was using it intentionally, and wickedly (in a wicked, mocking fashion).

The French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution are similar break outs of this evil spirit. You have to read of the French Revolution by a non-leftist historian to see just how identical it was to the totalitarian ideology and regimes and means and so forth of the 20th century.

Leftist historians know that all the seeds of the evil they cover up and excuse are in the French Revolution. Forget that the 'old Regime' was what it was, such evil will break out against the most successful, egalitarian society. In the U.S. it has been working to bring this nation down from the beginning. They despise the contrast of the American Revolution (the third major revolution) with their gruesome totalitarian revolutions. For instance, one leftist historian described Robespierre as a religious fanatic, giving the intended impression that he was like a Christian fanatic, not telling his reader that Robespierre was 'religious' because he set up a false god he called the God of Reason to replace Christianity and did all the 'year zero' things (changing the calendar, fundamental things) to leave no trace of Christianity in culture and society. That was how he was 'religious'.

Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is a good start in seeing what was going on. - C.