Remembering the lessons of 1939 and 1989: Resistance not appeasement to totalitarian thugs

Today we too find ourselves in the midst of a dramatic conflict between the "culture of death" and the "culture of life".  - Saint John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995

Statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky taken down in Warsaw

Europe offers a cautionary example to the world of what happens when the good appease tyrants rather than oppose them.  In the 1930s Western Democrats sought to appease Hitler's Third Reich to avoid war and ended up with the destruction of Europe in World War II. Fifty years later, Western Democrats following decades vigilance and resistance, the communist regimes of the Soviet empire peacefully imploded.
  
Despite this moment of celebration, Pope John Paul II raised the warning in 1995 that there was a dramatic conflict between the cultures of life and death. This warning had also applied in 1939, and caught many by surprise when two ideologies that at first glance appeared to be opponents became allies.

On August 23, 1939 the Hitler-Stalin Pact (formal name the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) was signed that publicly proclaimed a non-aggression treaty, but had secret protocols that divided up Central Europe and partitioned Poland. This so-called "non-aggression pact" had sparked Word War 2 on September 1, 1939. On September 22, 1939 a joint Nazi–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk was held to celebrate the successful invasion and conquest of Poland. This war ended six years and one day later on September 2, 1945.  An estimated 15 million soldiers died on the battlefield, and 45 million civilians were killed in the conflict. In a speech delivered on August 1, 1940 Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov,  celebrated this alliance.

"A radical change for the better in the relations between the Soviet Union and Germany found its expression in the non-aggression pact signed last August. These new, good relations between the USSR and Germany have been tested in practice in connection with events in former Poland, and their strength has been sufficiently proved."

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany continued to collaborate and assist each other in a bilateral pact through the summer of 1941.  In October - November 1940 they held talks and negotiated terms and spheres of influence to have the Soviet Union join the Axis powers in a four power pact. This would have meant that Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union would all work together to overthrow Western Democracies and divide up the world.  However, their inability to reach on accommodation on the division of Europe led to a deterioration of relations in 1941, and Hitler's invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 ended their alliance. 

Talks on dividing up the world between Nazi and Soviet spheres held in 1940

This was not the first time Nazis and Communists would collaborate nor would it be the last.  This history calls for a deeper reflection on the two ideologies and their commonalities, which are found in the "culture of death" they both embraced.

World War II escalated the culture of death to levels not seen before in human history and culminated in the creation of atomic bombs that threaten continued human existence, and the depravity of the Holocaust. It also ended with the Soviet Union occupying half of Europe and imposing communist regimes on captive nations.

Thankfully the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe from communist control was finally achieved relatively non-violently between 1989 and 1991. Democrats were nonviolent while communists killed opposition members and created martyrs.

Over the next few weeks many in the world will be celebrating this triumph of the culture of life over the culture of death that took place between 1989 and culminated on Christmas day in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Velvet Revolution in Prague on November 17, 1989

 What was achieved 30 years ago in Czechoslovakia on November 17, 1989 that makes it a day of celebration around the world? It was a rejection of totalitarianism and the system of lies and hatred on which the regime thrived. It was a rebirth of freedom and of normal human relationships.  In Vaclav Havel's address to the European Parliament on November 11, 2009 he outlined the daunting challenges faced after the collapse of the communist regime:

A democratic political culture cannot be created or renewed overnight. It takes a lot of time and in the meantime there are plenty of unanticipated problems to be solved. Communism ruled just once in modern times (and, hopefully, for the last time), so the phenomenon of post-Communism was also a novelty. We had to confront the consequences of the rule of fear that lasted for so many years, as well as all the dangers related to a redistribution of property without precedent in history. So there were and are lots of obstacles and we are only now acquiring experience of such a state of affairs.

In Poland on the same day, people applauded in Warsaw as a 49 foot statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka, the first Soviet's secret police that would eventually be replaced by the KGB, was taken down. It had been in downtown Warsaw since 1945. Poland had elected its first non-communist government since WW2 in September of 1989.

Despite the claims of Francis Fukuyama that history had ended and democracy had won the reality is that resistance to these evil ideologies and other variants that arise must continue. The German city of Dresden declared a "Nazi emergency" on November 1, 2019 citing a resurgence of the toxic ideology. 

Communism did not disappear with the Soviet Union. In 1990 following a request made by Fidel Castro to Brazilian leader Lula Da Silva the Sao Paulo Forum (FSP) was established with the goal “to reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe.” The FSP is a communist network comprised of over 100 left wing political parties, various social movements, and guerrilla terrorist organizations such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Chilean Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR).

Both Communist and Nazi networks continue to operate worldwide, but the communists can still rely on state actors such as Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Mainland China for additional support to the existing networks.  During the Cold War, the Soviets provided support to the Neo-Nazis in West Germany in an effort to disrupt the democracy there.

What began as a strike on rising prices at the metro turned violent

Communists in Chile channeled discontent over a fare increase in the Metro there into a coordinated series of violent protests that destroyed in short order 80 of the 136 metro stations had been damaged with eleven completely destroyed. This began with a protest of the fare increase that led to jumping the turnstiles and escalated to coordinated acts of destruction and violence that has caused over 300 million dollars in damage and over twenty dead in riots and looting.

80 of 136 metro stations have been damaged in Chile with a cost of $300 million

We are now witnessing an attempt in New York City to repeat this "revolutionary" moment. Teen Vogue has published an article favoring the violence in Chile as a challenge to inequality while ignoring that poverty has been steadily declining in the South American nation over the past thirty years, and inequality has also been declining over the past ten. The objective is to destroy a successful economic model that has lifted many out of poverty and with proper reforms could achieve even more.

The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States on October 15, 2019 sounded the warning:

The strategy of destabilization of democracy through the financing of political and social movements has distorted political dynamics in the Americas. For years, the Venezuelan dictatorship, with the support of the Cuban dictatorship, institutionalized sophisticated co-optation, repression, destabilization and media propaganda structures in the region. For example, the financing of the Venezuelan dictatorship to political campaigns has been one of the effective ways to increase capacities to generate conflict. The crisis in Ecuador is an expression of the distortions that the Venezuelan and Cuban dictatorships have installed in the political systems of the hemisphere. However, what recent events have also shown is that the intentional and systematic strategy of the two dictatorships to destabilize democracies is no longer as effective as in the past.

This warning should not just be heeded by Latin American policy makers but also by their counterparts in the United States.  The refrain, "that it cannot happen here," is one that I have heard over the years from Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Bolivians, and Mexicans. It is a foolish sentiment. It can happen anywhere. Complacency and lack of vigilance are the greatest threats to liberty. British statesman Edmund Burke understood that "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Metro cars destroyed in Chile

We witnessed in 1989 what can be achieved when the good associate to resist evil, and what happened in 1939 when the good sought to appease evil and the terrible price paid afterwards to contain and defeat it.

Now is the time to defend the culture of life that is found in the defense of human dignity and rights. While opposing those who seek to subjugate and destroy free nations and peoples.