We are the Communists now. Though communist is not the best term, because Communism speaks to a particular form of governing philosophy that has gone extinct in many parts of the world, and failed utterly in others.
But I think calling it Communism makes sense, because most people on the right side of politics and even some on the centre-left, associate Communism with everything that is bad and horrible in the government and the state.
Whatever you call it, whether authoritarianism, Babylonianism, Communism, or whatever else, I think those of us in the West need to recognize a horrible truth: we are now on the inside of the iron curtain. That is we are being locked into the non-free world.
Let me demonstrate:
Communists were famously anti-press, their Newspapers were just propaganda arms for the state. Communists were famously anti-free speech, or really any kind of open political speech, at least once they took power.
They used free speech before they had power as an effective tool to disarm their opponents’ ability to stop them. Communists were also anti-protests because protests would allow people to congregate and move towards potentially gathering support and numbers to overthrow the system.
On top of this, they were anti-free association, allowing only those associations which strengthened the Communist state, and banning those which could oppose it successfully, like Churches and free businesses.
I think you can now see this is now increasingly what the West is looking like. We are not fully there yet, but the trajectory is very clear. We are now inside the iron curtain, and the restrictions are tightening.
Writer, Caitlin Johnstone, demonstrates this quite clearly in her article, “Authoritarianism Keeps Surging In Western ‘Free Democracies.’”
She gives three examples. Firstly, “The Grayzone’s Kit Klarenberg was detained by “six anonymous plainclothes counter-terror officers” who “grilled him for over five hours about his reporting” upon returning to Britain on the 17th of May, according to a new report by Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal.”
The Grayzone notes this was in retaliation for revealing embarrassing information. Secondly, she notes how South Australia is bringing in new authoritarian anti-protest laws:
“Reacting to recent inconvenient demonstrations by environmental activists, the state of South Australia has just rapidly shoved through legislation — without consulting the public — to exponentially increase the penalties for unauthorized protesting. Demonstrators will now face up to three months in jail and fines of $50,000 if they are deemed guilty of the extremely vague offense of ‘obstructing a public place’ with their protesting.”
Thirdly she notes, that government officials in the United States are just brushing aside piercing questions about the treatment of their own citizens by allied governments:
“At a press conference last week the State Department’s new spokesman Matthew Miller flatly brushed off questions about whether the US government was doing anything about the fact that commentator Gonzalo Lira has been arrested and charged with what amount to speech crimes by the Ukrainian government.”
And I will add one more example from my own home state of Queensland and from another outfit you may know, Caldron Pool:
“In a draconian move said to be “protecting minority groups,” the Queensland Labor government has introduced a bill that would “dramatically increase the maximum prison sentence for racist, anti-gay, anti-trans or seriously bigoted statements.”
The Criminal Code (Serious Vilification and Hate Crimes) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023 proposes an increase in the penalty for “bigoted public statements” from six months in prison to three years.
Inflammatory Facebook posts would be a criminal offence with legislation covering “any form of communication to the public, including by speaking, writing, printing, displaying notices, broadcasting, telecasting, screening or playing of tapes or other recorded material, or by electronic means.”
There is an increasing trend in the globalist allied Western nations, particularly in the Anglo-sphere, to come down harder and harder on various kinds of political speech. The ability for citizens to speak up on a range issues is being increasingly restricted, and more and more people are being threatened not just to be labelled as bigots, and racists and all kinds of …phobes, but to be prosecuted as such and more.
If the hysteria of the Covid years was not enough proof for you, then perhaps the way that various different governments in the West are refusing to defend someone like Julian Assange, but are instead making it harder for those who report on the powerful, to do so without fearing reprisal, might help you start to take notice.
The elites of the West don’t want their activities reported on and noticed by their populations. They have long since rejected any pretence of open government.
The absolute hysterical overreach of government powers in recent years is becoming an increasingly noticeable pattern. But the complete unwillingness of most people to speak out publicly about any of this happening means that those of us who live in the West find ourselves in a boiling pot with the temperature slowly being increased. Most people are settling in for what they think is going to be a comfortable bath, which is in fact anything but. The iron curtain is being drawn tightly.
The so-called “Free World” has failed, and those who are in charge of it are slowly revealing their true natures more and more.
We are the Communists now. We now live in the anti-free world. We now live in the world that rejects national sovereignty, and promotes globalized empire. We now live in the world that rejects political speech, but promotes degraded speech and calls it free speech. We now live in the world where Christianity is under increasing attack and is being increasingly sidelined.
It is incredible to observe because we have become accustomed to seeing ourselves as a free and peaceful people. But the West is now neither free, nor a promoter of peace, but rather a harbinger of more increasingly destructive wars, and a persecutor of many of those who are on the frontlines seeking to expose what is happening.
We are not one and free, we are fractured and increasingly under surveillance.
We know that the fallen world is filled with lies, but the level of the lies surrounding us every day now is at an astonishing level that we would have found hard to believe just 10 years ago.
In the increasing darkness we are seeing, the bright ray of hope we have, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, is that his Church has both seen and overcome worse. And perhaps, by the grace of God, we might see the Church grow so much in the next few years, that our society is protected from going as far behind the iron curtain as the Soviets did.
Let’s hope and pray that this is the case.
