Orthodox in Michigan wrote: Who invented communism?
Who invented Communism? It certainly wasn't practicing Jews or even men who had apostatized from Judaism. Most Communist founders or leaders were not Jewish in an ethnic sense, either. Karl Marx was ethically German Jewish (with one grandparent being a rabbi), but religiously he was baptized German Lutheran (as was his assimilated father), and he became atheist. Engels was raised German Protestant by German Protestant parents and became atheist. Lenin's background was Russian Orthodox Christian, but ethnically mixed. Stalin's background was Georgian Orthodox Christian (an Orthodox seminary student no less). Trotsky (ethically Jewish) was secular and founded the Red Army: he was not a founder of Communism nor the party leader.
The most influential leaders of Communist states were Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Josip Broz Tito, and Fidel Castro. None were Jews, or controlled by Jews, and the last six had virtually no connection to Jews at all. Stalin was rabidly antisemitic. Pol Pot was educated by Parisian gentile atheists, of French Roman Catholic ancestry.
IT IS A FACT THAT COMMUNIST IDEOLOGICAL LEADERS AND PARTY LEADERS CAME FROM VARIOUS RACIAL, ETHNIC, AND RELIGIOUS BACKGROUNDS. Numerically, the most common background of early supporters of Bolshevik revolution was "apostate Russian Orthodox."
ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ANTISEMITISM AND VIOLENCE AGAINST ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS
Modern antisemitism (irrational hatred and prejudice against Jews) is a modern western ideology, not supported by the Gospels or the sermons of Saint John Chrysostom. In that sense, modern (often fascist-inspired) antisemitic conspiracy theories are a form of Latinmindedness. Saint John Chrysostom did not believe, for example, that Jews were controlling Roman, Persian, and Germanic/barbarian governments, and manipulating them into wars. Theories that Jews control the economy and governments of the world (and start world wars) are undeniably modern, Western theories — not ancient or Orthodox. The most extreme antisemites in history, the German Nazis and the Croatian Ustashas, killed Jews and Slavic Orthodox Christians together, sometimes in the same death camps. Extreme, modern, Western antisemitism has led to the extermination of millions of Orthodox Christians and Jews, in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. That type of murderous antisemitism is historically inseparable from murderous anti-Orthodox-Christian hatred. Western antisemitic movements killed millions of Orthodox Christians, 1939 to 1945.
Facts do not support worldly conspiracy theories, such as: “the secret society” controls things; Zionists control so many things; the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate have the same political agenda; Clint Eastwood and others in Hollywood predict future events in their films and TV programs; moon landings were faked; the Earth does not revolve around the sun.; etc. Knowledgeable people will not want to be Orthodox if they are persuaded that those things are what Orthodox Christians believe. There are dozens of mainstream scholarly books about Zionism (like Mearsheimer and Walt’s famous book The Israel Lobby). Why not start with mainstream scholarly books that document open facts, rather than rely on obviously-forged documents like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? There is a danger that people will believe the most inaccurate worldly books and ignore the books that document the open agendas and actual facts that anyone can verify. Clearly, the massive opposition to Trump’s plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, shows that Zionists do not control everything. There are, in fact, numerous kinds of different Zionisms and debates and critiques about various kinds of Zionism. Communists often hated Zionists and Zionists often hated Communists. Scholars of Jewish background have written some of the best books on Communist genocides: see Steven Rosefielde, Red Holocaust.
Many of us have read Metropolitan Antonii Khrapovitskii’s Sermon Against the Pogroms, given after the pogrom in Kishinev (Chișinău). He was a compassionate Christian pastor. The Orthodox Christians in Belgrade saw the flourishing Serbian Jewish community disappear before their very eyes during the Nazi occupation — everyone knew it. These Serbian Jews were gassed, not in Auschwitz, but in the very city of Belgrade. At the Jasenovac death camp in Croatia, Orthodox Christians and Jews were murdered together by the Latin and Muslim fascists — and everyone knew it. Much of the Orthodox East suffered 400 years of Islamic tyranny, and Jews had nothing to do with causing the oppression. But there was an alliance between the Islamists and the fascists. Some Greeks, supporters of both the old and the new calendar, tried absolutely heroically to defend Greek Jews from deportation and death. Those Greek Jews, an integral part of Greek society, were sent to Auschwitz and gassed. Jews were the largest ethnic group in Thessalonica, more numerous than gentile Greeks in the city, and they never returned from Auschwitz. Read Raul Hilberg’s book on the Holocaust, which estimates 5.1 million Jews killed, 1939 to 1945. Hilburg also, to his credit, condemned sensationalizing or exploiting the Holocaust for gain today. During the Second World War, the Islamists and fascists were very close allies in a war against Orthodox Christian civilians and Jewish civilians. So, the lived experience of Orthodox Christianity knows that the truth is much more complex than some anti-Semitic conspiracy theories would have it. Holocaust denial shows ignorance of recent, verifiable Orthodox history. Orthodox Christians and Jews were frequently shot or gassed together by the Nazis, fascists, and collaborators. In fact they (Nazis, fascists, and collaborators) killed more Slavs and more Orthodox Christians than Jews during the Holocaust era. The point in that all these Christian victims, Jewish victims, and other victims were killed together by the extreme anti-Semite/anti-Slav/anti-Orthodox fascists. Solzhenitsyn wrote with much more nuance and Christian love than some do today on this topic, especially in Two Hundred Years Together. He also wrote without leftist “political correctness."
A key point in Nazi ideology was that Orthodox Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (Orthodox in baptism, not in government) were to be invaded, millions of Slavic Orthodox people starved to death, and the remaining people permanently and eternally enslaved for the good of the non-Orthodox Germanic race. The actual, real result of that invasion was 20 million dead. In Belgrade they used mobile vans to gas people inside, in addition to the public hangings, and semi-public shootings. All well documented. Many eyewitnesses, Serbs and ROCOR people and others, escaped to the West and wrote accounts. Many Italian and German documents survived, including notes from the Wannsee conference, which planned the extermination camps in Eastern Europe. On Yugoslavia, read Stevan K. Pavlowitch’s book Hitler’s New Disorder, which is a broad summary of 1941 to 1945 in occupied Yugoslavia; even better, read Michael Lee's The Rape of Serbia. Non-Jewish and non-leftist American and British scholars admire Raul Hilberg’s book Destruction of the European Jews, and many think the true death figure is closer to 6 million than to his 5.1 million figure. The Holocaust, broadly defined, may be the most documented fact in world history. The people of Orthodox-majority Belarus were the hardest hit proportionately by the extermination effort. Several so-called concentration camps in Poland were outright extermination-only camps, and some did use gas, after Belgrade. What the fascists accomplished was mass extermination of millions of human beings, mostly European Christians, possibly more killed than by the communists. We must expose both of these totalitarian, genocidal, anti-Christian, anti-human, and anti-God evils: Communism and (antisemitic) Nazism/fascism. If we do not, then we will fail at half of our responsibility to tell the truth about totalitarianism’s murder of so many of God’s creatures, many or most of whom were Orthodox Christian, with the Slavic Orthodox peoples being the greatest victims numerically of both the European Marxist (mostly gentile) Left and the European fascist (mostly antisemitic) Right.
DOCUMENTATION
For documentation on Marxist genocides, see Steven Rosefielde, Red Holocaust.
For documentation on Nazi genocide (including the gasings in Belgrade) see: Christopher R. Browning, __ The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942.__
For documentation on Roman Catholic and Croatian fascist genocide, see Michael Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War.
For documentation on Islamist-fascist-Nazi collaboration, see David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann, Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam.
For documentation on Islamic oppression of non-Muslims, see Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism.
For a scholarly critique of the Israel lobby, see John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
