Some who grew up in the former Soviet Union say that Westerners “are at least as brainwashed by Multiculturalism and Political Correctness as they ever were with Communism.” So begins Norwegian blogger Fjordman’s, “Political Correctness – The Revenge of Marxism,” a powerful essay about the long-term consequences of our incomplete victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. “We let our guard down after the fall of the Berlin Wall and never properly denounced the ideology behind it,” writes Fjordman, one of the West’s most insightful observers. And it’s “now coming back to haunt us.” (The author writes under a pseudonym since his views on Israel and Islam make him a target for terrorists.)

It was a huge mistake for those in the West to declare that Socialism was dead after the Cold War ended and no longer anything to worry about, according to him. Although the military threat to the West was gone and economic Marxism’s credibility was dashed, here we are nearly two decades later finding Marxist rhetoric and Marxist ways of thinking rampant in nearly every aspect of public discourse. When Islamic terrorism is described as rooted in poverty and oppression, that is the classic Marxist party line. It is the analysis of choice in our schools and popular media.

While economic Marxism, with its central planning, collective farms and nationalized industries suffered a body blow after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, cultural Marxism has blossomed. Today, in both Europe and the America, the Left wraps itself in the banner of “tolerance” and  “anti-racism,” but the goal remains the same: the destruction of the evil, capitalist West. As dedicated atheists, they use their influence over the media, schools and government to undermine the Judeo-Christian beliefs, attitudes and commitments that give strength and coherence to Western society.

The author tells us that the people living under Soviet domination understood that they were participants in an enormous social experiment and that the media and government officials were employing propaganda to build support for this scheme. He continues: “Yet in the supposedly free West, we are now taking part in a gigantic social experiment of Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration every bit as radical, utopian and potentially dangerous as Communism, seeking to transform our entire society …and still we refuse to even acknowledge that this is going on.”

A reader pointed out to Fjordman that unlike the de-Nazification process after WWII, there was no de-Marxification after the Cold War. The Nuremberg Trials and the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann documented and publicized the Nazi horrors for a worldwide audience. Images of National Socialist’s (Nazi) inhumanity were seared in our collective memory. No similar process has highlighted the very similar atrocities that resulted from socialist ideology in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We have never fully confronted Marxism and the scope of death and desolation inflicted by the “greatest killing machine in the history of the planet,” as someone once wrote. Western “victors” assumed that Marxism was dead and moved on - allowing its champions to continue their work, quietly preparing for their next assault on the capitalist West.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, “The tenet of class hatred remained as popular as ever” as one former dissident noted. No anniversary of a Communist purge, famine or forced ethnic relocation is likely to be commemorated by the media or discussed in social studies classrooms. Their crimes were effectively erased from our memory.

“We are now paying the price” for this failure on our part, according to Fjordman. Leftist/Marxist ideas about Multiculturalism and unrestricted immigration have replaced traditional notions of national sovereignty and the orderly enforcement of immigration procedures in America and the European Union. Those who raise objections to the resulting cultural transformation are swiftly silenced. Silencing opposing views is a high priority for both Leftists and Islamists since they each define “peace” as the absence of opposition to their rule. The push to censor “offensive” speech grows out of their mutual desire for “peace.”  
Leftist thinking dominates the nightly news, publishing houses, entertainment and education in the Western world. They set the standard for what thoughts are deemed socially acceptable. “Attaching labels such as ‘racist’ or even ‘fascist’ to anyone criticizing massive immigration or multiculturalism” serves to silence critics, Fjordman writes. “Any ‘right-winger’ can be slimed with such accusations. Curiously enough the reverse is almost never true.” The irony is that Marxism liquidated some 100 million people but “there seems to be little stigma attached to being a radical leftist.” Indeed, former Soviet president and head of the Communist Party, Mikael Gorbachev has reinvented himself as a friend of the Earth and founding member of Green Cross International, an environmental powerhouse based in San Francisco.

The Left’s ability to sidestep responsibility and assume the moral high ground leads Fjordman to conclude that the West did not actually win the Cold War. Allowing them to escape justice has led to serious moral confusion. Many Westerners have picked up a Marxist view of the world. They never question the feeble assumption supporting the Left’s claim to leadership: that high-minded Socialist intentions outweigh ruinous Socialist results where ever it was imposed.

The Norwegian commentator introduces the views of Naomi Klein, darling of the Canadian Left, who says the root cause for Islamic terrorism is not too much Multiculturalism but too little. More of it, she claims, “would rob terrorists of what has always been their greatest recruitment tool: our racism.” We are to overlook 1300 years of Islamic jihad and allow the Left to redefine reality to fit the narrative of cultural Marxism and its speech code, political correctness. Such distortions leave the West unable to defend itself in the face of barbaric terrorists, incapable of recognizing the enemy and unable to put limits on what is to be tolerated. These suicidal tendencies expose the fatal flaw at the heart of liberalism.

Tolerance is not a problem for Marxist or Islamic regimes because they treat dissent as a punishable offense. Former Muslim Ali Sina points out the similarity: “Just as for Muslims, everything Islamic is right and good and everything un-Islamic is wrong and evil, for the Left, everything the Left endorses is privileged and seen as good, everything rightist is wrong and evil.” Ali Sina continues, “Facts don’t matter. Justice is determined by who you are and not by what you have done.” This is group-based morality, the basis for identity politics.

Fjordman turns to French philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut to illustrate Ali Sina’s point. Commenting on the rioting “youths” in the suburbs of France, Finkielkraut explains that ”These people were treated like rebels, like revolutionaries… They’re ‘interesting.’ They’re ‘the wretched of the earth.’ Imagine for a moment that they were whites…. Right away everyone would have said: ‘Fascism won’t be tolerated.’ When an Arab torches a school, it’s rebellion. When a white guy does it, it’s fascism. Evil is evil, no matter what color it is.”

Political correctness is the bitter fruit of the “victors” failure to hold Communists accountable for their crimes against humanity. It has been remarkably effective in undermining Western values such as freedom of expression and individual responsibility. Perhaps worst of all, Western leaders turn a blind eye to what’s taking place, allowing cultural Marxists and Muslims to impose a psychic straightjacket that the rest of us are expected to wear.

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