Was Marx a Satanist? Richard Wurmbrand certainly thought so and says as much in his mostly forgotten book Marx & Satan.
Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor who experienced communist persecution first hand, quotes the poetry and drama of a young Karl Marx to support his claim. For example, the conclusion of Oulanem (1837):
If there is a Something which devours,I'll leap within it, though I bring theworld to ruins –The world which bulks between meand the abyssI will smash to pieces with myenduring curses.I'll throw my arms around its harsh reality,Embracing me, the world will dumblypass away,
And then sink down to utter nothingness,
Perished, with no existence - that would be really living.
Hardly a message of love, joy, peace and hope, to say nothing of bad verse. But was Marx a member of a satanic sect? Wurmbrand doesn't produce a smoking gun but circumstantial evidence, and rhetoric from Marx's family and friends make for unsettling reflection. His daughters Eleanor and Laura commit suicide, his friends Bakunin and Proudhon embrace Satan as the guiding anti-principle of revolution.
More than this, Wurmbrand highlights the destructive hatred of the radical Left, a hatred he believes satanic and with good cause, it's killed millions. He quotes Che Guevara:
Hate is an element of fight - pitiless hate against the foe, hate that lifts the revolutionist above the natural limitation of man and makes him become an efficient, destructive, cool, calculating, and cold killing machine.
University students facing 10 year prison sentences for revolutionary rage might want to think about the ethos and consequences of their actions. Lenin did, apparently, on his deathbed:
I committed a great error. My nightmare is to have the feeling that I'm lost in an ocean of blood from the innumerable victims. It is too late to return. To save our country, Russia, we would have needed men like Francis of Assisi. With ten men like him we would have saved Russia.
But you didn't, Vladimir, you bathed it in blood.
Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that Karl Marx was a ritual satanist, along with Stalin, Hitler and associated devils? If their hatred of God and all we hold decent, good and true, coupled with rage against life and humanity itself suggests the demonic, the effect of their thought most certainly is. Yes, to the tune of hundreds of millions of people tortured, killed and thrown into misery.
Richard Wurmbrand, who was imprisoned by the Romanian communists for the sin of being a Christian ends, towards the conclusion of his short book with:
Sadly, Satanic Marxism has a materialistic philosophy that blinds its followers to spiritual realities. But matter is not all that exists. There is a reality of the spirit, of truth, beauty, and ideals.
There is also a world of evil spirits, whose head is Satan. He fell from heaven through pride and drew down with him a host of angels. Then he seduced the progenitors of the human race. Since the Fall, his deceit has been perpetuated and increased through every conceivable device, until today we see God's beautiful creation ravaged by world wars, bloody revolutions and counterrevolutions, dictatorships, exploitation, racism of many kinds, false religions, agnosticism and atheism, crimes and crooked dealings, infidelities in love and friendship, broken marriages, rebellious children. Mankind has lost the vision of God. But what has taken the place of this vision? Is it something better?
Is it something better? Those Americans smashing up their cities and enabling the nihilism therein might want to think about that. To say nothing of a "world of evil spirits."
LSP
You do bring it all into focus, which is only proper.
ReplyDeleteEvil pigfucker. All we needed was another few Saints. We would have killed them too. But, yanno. The greater good. You enjoying your omelette?
ReplyDeleteGood sermon.
ReplyDeleteI was telling the younger engineer I work with, today, that there is a spiritual battle raging.
He looked like he never heard that.
Thanks, WSF, I was struck by that little book.
ReplyDeleteJC, I'd argue Lenin has a fair bit on his conscience.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the plaudit, Ed. I'm trying to catch up on my reading and there's an embarrassingly long way to go.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of spiritual battle? Wow, "the Devil like a roaring lion..." Which side of the combat will the US fall on? I pray it doesn't get worse before it gets better, but a country which kills its babies in the womb isn't going to fare well.
In college I read part of "The Mind of Adolph Hitler." At the end of Chapter 1 I decided he was possessed. Hitler reportedly said to an insider early in 1945: "I have been betrayed. I have been defeated by a greater power."
ReplyDeleteHeard a point of view the other day that caught my ear. It has to do with the whole "everyone gets a trophy", "you're OK, I'm OK" Dr. Spock crap.
ReplyDeleteThe implication being that you are just fine the way you are. You are not flawed. You are perfect. And if you are perfect, what need do you have of God?
We are all His creation. He loves us as we are, and his forgiveness is there for the asking. He also expects us to do better.
Having to have (professionally) crossed over into the old USSR most people have no real comprehension of just how utterly, banally evil it was.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think they were all Satanists though. From personal contact with some ‘true believers’ they didn’t actually believe in anything … but themselves.
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
- G.K. Chesterton
“Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well...human beings.”
― Terry Pratchett
“It was said later that he came under bad influences at this stage. But the secret of the history of Edward d’Eath was that he came under no outside influences at all…he just came under the influence of himself…”
- Terry Pratchett
They were, definitively, all nihilists. Marxism, I believe, is nothing more than institutionalised sociopathy. They did what they did because they never believed in anything that would ever make them question why not. The ‘State is God’ was just a means to excuse the naked power grab they desired, and any behaviour they chose to enact.
Their utter lack of faith, of belief in anything may not make them ‘officially’ satanists, but I can guarantee come the time … he knew his own.
The current nihilism of the ‘everythings relative’ progressives, the replacement of God with gaia and government, and the refusal to ever engage with (or even to allow to exist) anyone who disagrees is, as Ed says, the latest battle in the spiritual war we’re in.
(islam and marxism? The first a political movement masquerading as a religion, the second a religion masquerading as a political movement. Both ruled by totalitarian sociopaths as a means to furthering their own wants/wishes/excesses)
Hey, at least you there have sufficient numbers and faith to still fight. Here, in The UK, I fear the battle is long lost.
I think he was too, Sgt. Was he a ritual occultist? I doubt it, unless you hold the rallies etc as having that kind of significance, which perhaps they had. But regardless, his early accounts of being governed/guided by a "higher power" speak volumes, to say nothing of the deeds themselves.
ReplyDeleteRHT, do you remember the book "I'm OK, You're Not So Hot"? I always thought that amusing. But yes, sinners in need of redemption and the ersatz Marxist version most certainly doesn't cut it.
ReplyDeleteAnon: "Islam and marxism? The first a political movement masquerading as a religion, the second a religion masquerading as a political movement. Both ruled by totalitarian sociopaths as a means to furthering their own wants/wishes/excesses."
ReplyDeleteYES.
And it's true, the US hasn't traveled nearly so far down the road of the lie as the UK. Still, I'd argue in an expat kinda way that there's a good spirit in the England. Half asleep, perhaps, but there nonetheless.
If I'm wrong? Well, you'll have to fight a guerrilla action (I'm sure you're more than qualified...) and my mind goes to the Reconquista. By no means a doomed enterprise, albeit centuries long. Think, Cordoba Cathedral's not longer a mosque, at least for now.
Likewise, who would've thought the Soviets would collapse so dramatically? But they did. We mustn't lose hope.