In a recent article on Townhall, I suggested that modern man hasn’t “progressed” much (or any) from his ancestors, that we are as barbaric and savage as they were. Most commenters agreed with me, but a couple took exception and tried to provide some examples of how we aren’t as bad as previous naked apes. Let me beg to differ.
The following are examples of modern “progressive” humanity. You decide how much “progress” we’ve made.
In Soviet Russia:
Vladimir Lenin: "Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now underway everywhere. An example must be made. Hang (absolutely hang, in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, fatcats, bloodsuckers. Publish their names. Seize all grain from them. Designate hostages — in accordance with yesterday's telegram. Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of verst around the people see, tremble, know, shout: "the bloodsucking kulaks are being strangled and will be strangled".
Lenin gave the Cheka (secret police) the right to torture or kill without trial or any judicial supervision. Within two years, the Cheka had 20,000 men and women with the power to kill and torture. Countless people were imprisoned. Some people’s hands were soaked in boiling water with gloves on, and then the gloves were removed, shredding the skin. Belts were made from the skin off people’s backs. The Cheka broke people’s arms and legs and tossed them into the river. In one instance, they put hundreds of people on a barge with a large leak in it, in the middle of the Volga River. The people had to continually bail out the water. Eventually, too weary to do so, they all sank and drowned. This happened often, some people being tied up with barbed wire and eventually washing up onto beaches.
“Who should feel sorry for killing a counter-revolutionary?” one comrade asked.
More: An old colonel was roasted alive in the furnace of a locomotive. One officer was thrown head first into a ship’s furnace. People were mutilated while still alive. But that’s happening in “progressive” America now. We’ve really “progressed” beyond ancient man, haven’t we? The lawlessness was so great in Russia that even the head of the Cheka was mugged and robbed.
Let’s move on to China. In the “Chinese revolution”:
Chairman Mao sent Tao Zhu, the man popularly characterized as a ‘tank’, to crush all opposition, killing 15,000 people by March 1951. Over 100,000 were sent to prison, where many died of starvation and sickness. In parts of Yulin province, a fifth of the entire population was imprisoned. In Guangxi, 450,000 “bandits” (innocent civilians) were “pacified,” 40,000 killed. By the time the campaign ended in October 1951, a total of 46,200 had been killed, or 2.56 per thousand of the total population in the province. In other words, more than one person out of every 400 had been executed.
The Chinese Communist Party archives are full of such cases. And age made no difference. In Yanxing county, over a hundred middle-school students were arrested and tortured in April 1951 after an anonymous denunciation reached the local party headquarters. Wu Liening, 10-year-old, was hung from a beam and beaten. Ma Silie, aged eight, was tied up on a cross in a kneeling position. A wooden pole was placed across his thighs and pressed down by two of his tormentors, crushing his legs and knees on the concrete floor. Liu Wendi, aged six, was accused of being the head of a spy ring. Two of the children were tortured to death.
These weren’t isolated incidents. A team of militia in Sichuan province also tried to uncover counter-revolutionaries among schoolchildren. Some had both hands and feet tied up while being suspended upside down; others were made to go through mock executions. Three were tortured to death; another five of the children committed suicide. About 50 of the victims survived the abuse, although many were crippled or maimed for life.
A man named Zhang Yingrong was carried on a wooden plank onto a stage after being beaten, and remembered the occasion: “I thought: People lived harmoniously under the same sky in the same village for many years. Why did they act like this now? Why did they hate each other and torture each other like that? Was that what the Communist revolution was all about? All the ‘class enemies’ had been beaten; their faces were swollen and their heads scarred. Beatings couldn’t quench the Communists’ thirst. They started killing.” Sometimes the bodies were eaten by wild animals. In Hebei province, some of the mass graves were so shallow that feral dogs dug up the remains and devoured them.
Huang Zuyan, a top-ranking military leader, was assassinated. Within days of the assassination, Mao demanded ‘several batches of big killings’ in the cities.
“The people say that killing counter-revolutionaries is even more joyful than a good downpour.” (Huang Jing, Tianjin)
These stories could be multiplied endlessly. I don’t have space here for one one-thousandth of them. Read Frank Dikötter’s trilogy on Mao Zedong and Antony Beevor’s history of the Russian Revolution, for just two examples of where this kind of information can be found. And, of course, I haven’t even mentioned Josef Mengele and the Nazi horrors. Or the Japanese in Nanking. Or the Cambodian “killing fields.” Or America’s “Planned Parenthood.”
But modern man is more “progressive” than ancient man, right?
It stretches right up to our day. Recently, the Netherlands ‘aborted’ a 2-year-old baby for “mental and physical disabilities.” The Netherlands has legalized euthanasia for children under 12. What are our own Democrats doing to children?
Progress? Finding different methods of being savage from the old world doesn’t equal “progress.” In fact, we’re worse. We should know better!
And this is what leftism will bring to America. Well, it already has.
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