Persecution comes
in many forms: persecution for religious beliefs, persecution by the police
state, for those who do not follow the party line, persecution for ideology, persecution
for personal beliefs in regard to one’s body, and persecution based on racial identification.
The mainstream propaganda machine organizes persecution into four broad categories,
religious, ethnic, political, and social.
Examples of
persecution include:
-
Persecution
of Jews by the Nazi regime (the social democrats)
-
Covid-19
gave governments the excuse for religious persecution (relief discrimination,
forced conversions, and justification for more surveillance
-
Christians
are treated poorly by the Islamic State
-
Persecution
of political dissidents
-
Persecuting
racial groups and other minorities
-
Physical
and mental violence
-
Persecution
through denial of judicial redress, basic human rights, and humanitarian aid.
-
Armenians
were persecuted and killed in Turkey, resulting in an Armenian genocide that is
yet to be addressed properly by Turkey.
-
Communists
and the Nazis persecuted gypsies and homosexuals across Europe, throwing them in
concentration camps and prisons.
-
Stalin
persecuted Ukrainian farmers which he called “kulaks” (wealthy peasants in
Russia). He caused the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933, entirely man-made,
which resulted in the killing of almost four million Ukrainians who resisted
his collectivization. There was no basis for famine in 1932-1933, there were plenty
of crop yields to sustain life, but Stalin sent the Soviets to requisition huge
quotas of crops which left the Ukrainian peasants starving.
-
Christians
in Africa were persecuted by the Muslims and many were killed.
Persecution
can be expressed as outright confiscation of property through eminent domain, confiscation
by brute force in communist regimes, destruction of property such as burning,
followed by confiscation, exclusion from society by marginalization and pariah
status, arrests, incitement of hatred and violence against a specific group or
person, prison, beatings, torture, murder, and execution.
Religious
persecution is widespread. Not even the formerly constitutionally protected
United States is free of religious persecution and examples are many. Most
recently, churches in North America were not allowed to meet during the policed
Covid lockdowns and priests and parishioners were jailed and fined for
attending church.
As United
States accelerates its advance to global communism, religious persecution will
spread fast just as it did during the former socialist republics, Soviet
satellites where the Communist Party ruled, pressing their heavily armed boots
on the neck of the hapless and unarmed citizens.
Religion will
suffer a similar fate as it did in former or current communist states. Religious communities of the Christian faith
will dwindle, seminaries will be restricted in the number of attendants, church
building permits will be reduced, churches will be demolished, burned, or sold
as mosques, and pastors may not be given the state license to preach. Churches
will be controlled by the government and the lives of families of the Judeo-Christian
faith and of their children will be made difficult and avenues for advancement
will shrink or be closed for them.
One glaring
example of persecution of the faithful happened in 1972 and 1981. Twenty
thousand Bibles were promised to the Reformed Church (ethnic Hungarians located
in Transylvania). Two shipments were sent in 1972 and 1981 as promised. According
to former Ambassador to Romania, David B. Funderburk, … “fewer than two hundred
out of the promised twenty thousand were actually delivered to the churches.
Instead, pieces of the Bibles appeared in toilet paper made at a factory in
Braila. The Rev. Dr. Alexander Havadtoy of Yale University has meticulously
documented this blasphemy. Interspersed throughout strips of toilet paper which
made their way to the West were letters and words from the Bibles of the type
sent to Romania.” The toilet paper samples were presented at press conferences in
the U.S. (Pinstripes and Reds, David B. Funderburk, Edwards &
Broughton Company, 1987, p. 85)
Such human
desecration did not diminish God and Bibles were eventually replaced after the “fall”
of communism, following the December Revolution in Romania and the destruction
of the infamous Berlin Wall built by East Germany, the socialist republic under
the wing of the Soviets. Funny how nobody rushed to defect to the oppressive
communist East but plenty have succeeded or have died trying to flee to the
freedom of the capitalist West.
But has
communism truly fell? Did it not go underground, regrouped, and re-emerged more
powerful than ever around the world from Switzerland, of all places, the
country that does not confer citizenship easily or generously to anybody, yet
they are influencing the flood of illegal immigration and communism around the
world.
Whatever Christian
religion the communist police state allowed to exist in the socialist republics
ruled by the iron fist of the Communist Party, that religion and those priests
had to be active agents of the police state and to control the faithful with
lies and platitudes such as, “if you listen to the father and the mother of this
country [the dictator and his wife], then nothing bad would happen to you.” Translation,
be quiet, endure the poverty, the misery, and you will live. You will receive
your daily indenture to communism via long lines at the grocery stores, bread
stores, pharmacies, and hospitals.
Dissident
priests were often persecuted, disappeared, tortured, and killed. The West
ignored the deaths or made cursory mention of such tragic events.
The Jews in
Romania had a unique situation when compared to the other socialist countries
ruled by the Communist Party. Ceausescu had made a deal with Israel to allow
Jews to emigrate in exchange for payments per head. Israel even had an embassy
in Bucharest. According to Funderburk, “Before WWII, there were nearly one
million Jews in Greater Romania, but by the end of the war and due to
territorial losses, the number was cut in half. By 1987, 25,000 Jews were left
and were mostly elderly but much better off economically due to assistance from
groups in Israel and the U.S.
As part of
the U.S.-Romanian Trade Agreement of 1975, 2,500-3,000 Romanians a year were
allowed to emigrate. The rest, who were denied visas, were persecuted by the communist
police state.
Political
persecutions around the world and across the centuries were too many to mention.
The most recent in history is the constant six-year long persecution of President
Donald J. Trump by his rivals in the Democrat Party, in the mainstream media,
and in the Republican establishment.
Philosophers,
artists, actors, revolutionaries, scientists, heads of states, military
leaders, writers, priests, and activists have been persecuted by their opposition
or by a police state, or a tyrant drunk on power. If we allow such persecutions to persist, unchecked, the state will force us to live in a world not unlike Orwell's 1984.
No comments:
Post a Comment