People who wear Guy Fawkes masks often like to spout a little poem about remembering the fifth of November. That’s the date of the foiled Gunpowder Plot that was designed to kill the English king and members of Parliament in 1605.
They would be more well-advised to remember the seventh of November, for reasons Stella Morabito explains in a Federalist column.
Scarcity, terror, and the mass murder of more than 100 million victims are communism’s main contributions to human history. As we mark the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia on November 7, we should never forget that legacy. Communism is a fount of human misery and death. Few today really understand what that system of so-called government is all about.
In a nutshell, communism enforces a privileged elite’s centralization of power. This means it always puts too much power into the hands of too few people. They tend to weasel their way into power as their ventriloquized agitators use talking points like “justice” and “equality” while promoting a false illusion of public support.
So, how would it ever be possible for a free society like America to succumb to such tyrannical forces? I think we’ve spent precious little time trying to dissect and understand this process. … I hope to map out six stages that lead us into this dangerous direction. Within each phase, several trends take hold. …
There is a lot of overlap among the phases, but I think they can be roughly identified as: 1.) Laying the groundwork; 2.) Propaganda; 3.) Agitation; 4.) State takeover of society’s institutions; 5.) Coercing conformity; and 6.) Final solutions.
