Hate speech laws, not free speech, facilitated the rise of the Nazis in Germany. Fact checking Face the Nation.

Let me begin by making an admission of bias. I am a free speech absolutist, and was recently interviewed on the topic, and it is available online. Earlier today on Face the Nation, CBS news correspondent Margaret Brennan made a disturbing claim, that although correctly challenged and rebutted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, needs closer examination. Below is the transcript that begins at 12 minutes and 12 seconds into the interview.

 

 

 

CBS News senior foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan: "Well, he [ Vice President J.D. Vance ] was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio: "Well, I have to disagree with you. No, no, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal, because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they – they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.

I also think it’s wrong – again, I go back to the point of his speech. The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and in tolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern because that is eroding – it’s not an erosion of your military capabilities. That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about. And I think allies and friends and partners that have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or upset. And I spoke to foreign ministers from multiple countries throughout Europe. Many of them probably didn’t like the speech or didn’t agree with it, but they were continuing to engage with us on all sorts of issues that unite us.

So again, at the end of the day, I think that people give all – that is a forum in which you’re supposed to be inviting people to give speeches, not basically a chorus where everyone is saying the exact same thing. That’s not always going to be the case when it’s a collection of democracies where leaders have the right and the privilege to speak their minds in forums such as these."

First, Weimar Germany had modern-like hate speech laws and vigorously enforced them but it did not have the desired effect. Making the Nazis hate speech illegal and outlawing their publications raised their profile and helped them gather more support. The New Yorker on February 14, 2015 in the article "Copenhagen, Speech and Violence" interviewed Flemming Rose, the foreign editor of the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten who set the record straight:

"Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences."

The outcome of silencing hate speech is not what those who advocate for it would expect as Rose continued to explain:

"Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigor."

When violence erupts in a society where the rule of law exists, it must not be tolerated, but dealt with an expeditious manner through the judicial system. However, where the poisonous tropes of anti-Semitism, and hatred against the Jewish people arise, it must not be censored by the government, but challenged by people of good will in the battle of ideas to expose both its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. 

Hate speech has Marxist origins that are in opposition to free expression. Perversely, it claims that language can be violence to censor speech while at the same time defending physical violence as justified. When you outlaw speech and drive it underground you imbue it with power and credibility it does not deserve. 

This approach in Wiemar Germany weaponized hate speech laws against the Nazis that created a backlash that helped them take power, and once in power free speech was completely eliminated in Germany.  

Ms. Brennan's claim on Face the Nation was not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to what actually happened, and a disservice to her audience.

#WeRemember: International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27th

"It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere." - Primo Levi, 1986 The Drowned and the Saved

Never Again is Now.

Tomorrow, January 27, 2025 is recognized by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is observed around the world.  

We must never forget what happened,  six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and remain vigilant now and in the future to battle against the mass destruction of innocent human beings.

Primo Levi was right, it can happen anywhere - even in Israel, and even here.   

One year, three months and twenty days ago on October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded and attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostages. This strike ignited a Middle East war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, which has its base of operations in Gaza. 

This was the largest mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Two days after the Hamas terrorist attacks, before Israel had responded to the attacks, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in Australia over a thousand protesters chanted, “Gas the Jews.” 

Sadly, the Cuban dictatorship backs Hamas, and is spreading anti-Semitic tropes. 

Six years and three months ago on October 27, 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue with an AR-15, and three handguns shouting anti-Semitic slurs and opened fire killing eleven, and wounding six others. 

It was believed to be the deadliest attack against Jewish people in U.S. history, but it was not the first.

Unfortunately the international community has failed more than once since 1945 to prevent another mass slaughter. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge murdered between one fourth and one third of its population between 1975 and 1979, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff pointed to another genocide that could have been stopped in Rwanda in 1994, and in 2016 we witnessed another in Syria where religious minorities, including Christians were being targeted. 

 Today, we are witnessing the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China.

It is important to remember that antisemitism is on the rise world wide and people of the Jewish faith need our solidarity and support now more than ever in confronting rising hatred and intolerance to ensure that what Nazi Germany did never be repeated. 

At the same time it is also important to remember and honor the martyrs and heroes who resisted the Nazis.  One of these heroes was Raoul Wallenberg, who saved over 100,000 Jewish people, and was disappeared by the Soviets in January 1945. 

 They are exemplars in moral courage that are much needed today. Let us continue the fight.

"How We Must Continue to Fight Antisemitism 80 Years After the Liberation of Auschwitz"

The latest piece for @TIME magazine by our Founder and International Chair, @IrwinCotler and the Chair of our Board @JayRosenzweig:https://t.co/kL93gQEMXk

"The Holocaust revealed the…

— Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (@TheRWCHR) January 26, 2025

Karl Marx in his own words at 205: Nothing to celebrate, much to remember and condemn

 Anti-Semite, racist, advocate of terrorism, and genocide honored in Cuba and in Germany.

Karl Marx's heirs in Cuba: Miguel Diaz-Canel (left) and Raul Castro (2nd from left).

 The Castro regime finally celebrated May Day, four days late, on Friday, but Cuban workers have nothing to rejoice about. In Cuba, there are no legal independent unions, and workers do not have the right to strike or bargain collectively. 72% of Cubans live in poverty, defined by the World Bank as a daily income of less than $1.90. 

Prior to Cuba's 1959 communist revolution, that was supposed to empower workers, but stripped them of their rights and agency, Cuban trade unions over a half century had achieved much for their members, and Cuban society at large.

Labor legislation passed in 1938 guaranteed workers' rights such as the minimum wage, pensions that assumed a constitutional character; and the creation of the Central of Workers of Cuba  Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC in Spanish) on January 28, 1939. All of the above made trade unionism an important factor in Cuban civil society. 

In 1940 a new Constitution was drawn up that respected labor rights, and strengthened them, and ushered in a period of competitive elections in which power was contested. The right to strike was recognized in the 1940 Constitution. This translated into real world gains for Cuban workers. For example, the sugar union "managed to impose a guarantee clause, thanks to which the workers of the sector obtained an extra salary of 13.42%, known as the sugar differential." In 1945, with half a million affiliates, the CTC was the second largest trade union in the region.

Professor James W. McGuire and Laura B. Frankel in their paper published in the Latin American Research Review, “Mortality Decline in Cuba, 1900-1959: Patterns, Comparisons, and Causes” found that “Cuba's progress relative to other Latin American countries at reducing infant mortality was even greater from 1900 to 1960 than from 1960 to 1995. During the earlier period, Cuba led all Latin American countries for which data are available at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. From 1960 to 1995, by contrast, it came in fourth and fifth respectively.”

Cuba celebrates International Workers' Day

Thousands of Cubans filled the country's squares on Friday to celebrate International Workers' Day and the 205th anniversary of Karl Marx.

#ALaPatriaManosYCorazón 🇨🇺❤ pic.twitter.com/Tij1xTvPtM

— Embacuba_Turquia (@Embacuba_Turqui) May 5, 2023

Marxism-Leninism took power in 1959, and worker's rights began to evaporate along with wealth generation in the wider society.

On January 22, 1959 the CTC was replaced by the CTC-Revolucionaria. In the X Congress, held in November 1959. And in the XI Congress, November 1961, the delegates renounced almost all the achievements of the labor movement: "the nine days of leave for sickness, the supplementary Christmas bonus, the weekly shift of 44 x 48 hours, the right to strike and an increase of 9.09%, among many others.

The Hotel Habana Libre that had been owned by the Hotel Workers Labor Union (Sindicato Cubano de Trabajadores de la Gastronomía ) retirement fund was seized by the revolutionary government. The Hospital Maternidad Obrera (built 1939) was taken and fell into disrepair without adequate funding and maintenance by the revolutionary government.Workers were required to do "voluntary work" that was not voluntary.

The original intellectual author of this debacle is Karl Marx, and unfortunately despite the repeated disasters his ideology has caused around the world, many continue to advance his political agenda. 

Bronze statue of Karl Marx given to German town by Communist regime in China.

Karl Marx's 18-foot bronze statue was unveiled in his hometown of Trier, Germany, on April 13, 2018. The statue was a gift from China's Communist regime to commemorate the 200th anniversary of German communist theorist Karl Marx's birth on May 5th. Communist China has the highest absolute death toll of any communist state.

Marx's writings demonstrate that the German philosopher is the father of the Communist ideology that has cost over a 100 million lives, and other endemic problems found in Marxist regimes.  Marx's early formulation of communism is antisemitic and offers a "solution" to the "Jewish Problem."

"Money is the Jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities.  The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of the world. In emancipating itself from hucksterism and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself...by destroying the empirical essence of Judaism, the Jew will become impossible." Source Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff),vol. iii,pp146-74

His early defense of using terror, one of the key elements of Totalitarianism is also problematic.

"We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you.  When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vi pp 503-5

"Far from opposing the so-called excesses, those examples of popular vengeance against hated individuals or public buildings which have acquired hateful memories, we must not only condone these examples but lend them a helping hand." Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vii p 239

Karl Marx in the essay “Forced Emigration,” in the New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853 seems to view the elimination of classes and races as a necessary part of revolution:

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. 

In a July 30, 1862 letter to Frederick Engels, his chief benefactor, Marx described nineteenth-century German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, in a racist manner:

The Jewish Nigger Lassalle . . .fortunately departs at the end of this week . . . It is now absolutely clear to me that, as both the shape of his head and his hair texture shows – he descends from the Negros who joined Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or grandmother on the paternal side hybridized with a nigger). Now this combination of Germanness and Jewishness with a primarily Negro substance creates a strange product. The pushiness of the fellow is also nigger-like.

This may explain why the Soviet Union, the first communist regime, allied with Nazi, Germany in 1939 to divide Poland and plunge the world into World War II. It also might explain why 23 years later Fidel Castro would contract former Nazi SS Waffen members to train Cuban troops in 1962.

There is much to remember and condemn on the 205th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. There is nothing to celebrate. 

If you want to help Cuban workers, and the Cuban people more broadly then sign the petition to call on international labor unions to call on the Castro regime to restore labor rights in Cuba.

 

#OTD in 1941 the Stalin - Hitler Alliance ended when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union

 "Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism… As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world into more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their destruction." - Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm (1948)

Soviet and Nazi soldiers fraternize in Poland. Their alliance ended 80 years ago today

On August 23, 1939 the world was shocked to learn that Communist Russia and Nazi Germany had signed a non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It was named after their respective foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Observers would have been even more horrified had they known of the secret protocols that divided Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian powers. What they called a "peace treaty" in reality was a war treaty.

On September 22, 1939 the German Nazi army joined with the Soviet Communist army in a military parade in Brest-Litovsk (Poland) and celebrated together.  

On March 5, 1940 Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and the order was carried out. 

Stalin deported hundreds of refugees to Nazi authorities. Most of them were German anti-fascists, communists, and Jews who were seeking asylum in the Soviet Union. 

Secret protocols of the Hitler-Stalin Pact not only partitioned Poland but also divided up Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland & Romania into Nazi and Soviet "spheres of influence."

This alliance ended on June 22, 1941 when Hitler double crossed Josef Stalin and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.     

"Stalin was shocked; he had received a plethora of warnings of an imminent invasion – notably from Winston Churchill, informed by British intelligence briefings. The communist dictator had refused to believe them," reported Agence France Press. Stalin refused to listen to Churchill, and had relied on Hitler's assurances. 

It is important to recall that for the first 18 months of WW2 that the Soviet Union was allied with Nazi Germany.  Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in a October 31, 1939  speech spoke candidly about this alliance, and ridiculed its victims.

"The ruling circles of Poland boasted quite a lot about the ‘stability’ of their state and the ‘might’ of their army. However, one swift blow to Poland, first by the German Army and then by the Red Army, and nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty which had existed by oppressing non-Polish nationalities." 

November 9, 1989: The day they started tearing down the Berlin Wall and the importance of memory

"The official Cuban press has not yet announced the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thus, year after year, many Cubans check the national newspapers in search of any allusion to this fact ... but nothing ..." - Yoani Sanchez, over Twitter, November 9, 2020

Tearing down the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989

Today is a day to remember and cherish. 31 years ago it was the day that the Berlin Wall became no more, but in Communist regimes like Cuba, as Yoani Sanchez pointed out today, the official media has not recognized this historic episode of liberation.  

Freedom from tyranny.
Freedom from captivity.
Freedom from communism. #BerlinWall #FallOfTheWall pic.twitter.com/HHYgcTBV5x

— Victims of Communism (@VoCommunism) November 9, 2020

It is important to remember and share so that new generations will know what happened, and be inspired.

31 years ago today the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe. 

The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961 with barbed wire fence followed by a 100 mile wall and more than 300 watch towers to spot and shoot escapees and the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was not inevitable. It did not fall down. It was torn down.

In Germany, this was not a passive top down process or the Berlin Wall falling as a result of gravity and inertia. It bears repeating that it was torn down by courageous Germans.

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down at least 136 Germans were extrajudicially executed by East German border guards for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is The Berlin Wall Museum that offers a complete listing of the 136 known victims with details about them and their deaths.
 

Chris Gueffroy shot dead on February 5, 1989 at age 20 by East German guards while trying to cross the Berlin Wall

For example one of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968 and shot dead on February 5, 1989 trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies “Harmonie“ and “Sorgenfrei” on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. Dead at 20 years of age for the crime of wanting to live in freedom. A memorial column commemorating Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online. 

Today is the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall! 🎉

The Wall divided East and West Berlin for 28 years. But today marks 31 years since ordinary Berliners tore it down!

Do you remember that fateful day? 🇩🇪🤝🇺🇸#FalloftheWall pic.twitter.com/uk9fZ7p2zX

— German Embassy (@GermanyinUSA) November 9, 2020

As in Cuba today, the process of the Berlin Wall being torn down was both a struggle of ideas and of nonviolent action. Germans crossed the wall seeking freedom in an act of nonviolent defiance. Many escaped but many paid the ultimate price for freedom. The Order to Border Guards from the East German regime was clear:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.”

On June 14, 1973, Fidel Castro addressed the men charged with shooting East Germans fleeing to West Germany as "the courageous and self-denying border guards of the GDR People's Army who stand guard in the front line of the entire-socialist community." Later in the evening Premier Castro addressed the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in East Berlin:

It is very important to know that the people of the GDR have great confidence in you, that they are truly proud of you. The comrades of the party and the citizens of socialist Berlin have told us with great satisfaction about the activity of the border troops, speaking with great admiration for you and for your services.

Some equate nonviolence with pacifism and they are profoundly mistaken. There is nothing passive and often times nothing peaceful about nonviolent resistance. It can be loud and boisterous or as in the case of the Berlin Wall the loud sound of tools smashing against an oppressive structure that denied the East German people the right to freedom of movement.

Tonight, I lift my glass and give a toast to freedom in memory of those brave souls who tore down the Berlin Wall in 1989 and those today in Belarus, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, Venezuela, and elsewhere in the world continuing the struggle for freedom. And I remember the worlds of the Czech writer Milan Kundera: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

This is why the Castro regime continues to try to shut out the news of this great event over the past 31 years, and why we must continue to endeavor to break through the walls of censorship. At the top of this blog, the text of Yoani Sanchez's tweet is translated to English. Below is her tweet from today.

La prensa oficial cubana no ha anunciado aún la caída del Muro de Berlín. Así, año tras año, muchos cubanos revisamos los periódicos nacionales en busca de alguna alusión a este hecho... pero nada... https://t.co/TZEq6vroP8 pic.twitter.com/qWa4ovqGyW

— Yoani Sánchez 🇨🇺 (@yoanisanchez) November 9, 2020

Eighty Years Ago: Stalin Sent German Jewish Refugees to Hitler in 1940

Eighty years ago on August 23, 1939 Communist Russia and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The treaty had secret protocols that divided Eastern Europe between the two regimes. It was named after their respective foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Soviet and Nazi soldiers fraternize after conquering Poland in 1939

What they called a "peace treaty" in reality was a military alliance. On September 22, 1939 the German Nazi army joined with the Soviet Communist army in a military parade in Brest-Litovsk and the two sides celebrated their victory together.

EUvsDisinfo, February 25, 2020

80 years ago: Stalin sending German Jews to Hitler

Historical revisionism is an important strand of disinformation. The EUvsDisinfo database contains a large number of cases of this kind, most of which pertain to rewriting the history of World War II. Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets are attempting to diminish the meaning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, concluded between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in late August 1939. The pact with Stalin made it possible for Germany to unleash a military attack on Poland just one week after the signing of the treaty. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included a credit agreement between Germany and Soviet Russia, cooperation on trade, military technology and cultural exchange – and a secret protocol on the delineation of “spheres of interests” between the two totalitarian powers.

 

One example of the cooperation between Soviet Russia and Nazi German was demonstrated in February 1940, when the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre broadcast German composer Richard Wagner’s opera “The Valkyrie” for a German audience. Soviet theaters had been reluctant to stage Wagner, since the Nazis exploited his works in their propaganda. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact changed all that. “The Valkyrie” was staged and introduced to radio listeners by the world famous Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein.

Another manifestation of Soviet-German cooperation was Russia’s deportation of hundreds of refugees to German authorities. Most of them were German anti-fascists, communists, and Jews who were seeking asylum in the Soviet Union. Now they were handed over to the Gestapo. One of the deportees was Betty Olberg; the wife of a German Jewish communist who had been killed by Stalin in 1936. Olberg was sent from the ALZHIR camp in Soviet Kazakhstan to Germany in February 1940. With her traveled Margarete Buber-Neumann who wrote a book about her experiences in Stalin’s and Hitler’s concentration camps after the war. All traces of Betty Olberg have been lost since her arrival in German-controlled territory.

The transfer of refugees from the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany commenced about a month after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The last refugees were sent to Germany only a few weeks before the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941.

Betty Olberg’s mug shot from Soviet secret police

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.

80 years ago today the Soviet Union invaded Poland in alliance with the Nazis

"The ruling circles of Poland boasted quite a lot about the ‘stability’ of their state and the ‘might’ of their army. However, one swift blow to Poland, first by the German Army and then by the Red Army, and nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty which had existed by oppressing non-Polish nationalities." - Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Foreign Minister in October 31, 1939  speech

On September 17, 2019 the Soviet Union invaded Poland.

80 years ago today in the early morning hours of September 17, 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East. According to the History Channel, "the 'reason' given was that Russia had to come to the aid of its “blood brothers,” the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were trapped in territory that had been illegally annexed by Poland."

On September 17, 1939 with "between 600–650,000 soldiers and over 5,000 thousand Red Army tanks  [of the Soviet Union] invaded the Second Polish Republic, which had been fighting against German aggression since 1 September."



This invasion was in accordance with the secret protocols of the Hitler-Stalin Pact also known as the  Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that divided up Central Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Nazi and Soviet troops met in the middle of Poland and exchanged pleasantries on September 22, 1939 and held a joint military parade in Brest-Litovsk. Soviet troops paid their respects as the Swastika flag was lowered, and Germans moved west to their agreed upon line of partition.



About 230,000 [Polish] soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Bolsheviks."

The Soviet precursor to the KGB intelligence service was the NKVD. "From October 1939, the delegated NKVD officials from Moscow heard the prisoners, encouraged them to cooperate and collected data. Only a few of the prisoners agreed to collaborate. The commanding officers’ reports included opinions about hostile attitudes of the Poles and a minimal chance of them being useful to the USSR authorities."

Nazi and Soviet soldiers salute raising of the Nazi flag on September 22, 1939 in Poland

The decision to shoot the prisoners was signed on March 5, 1940 by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich.

The lists of those sent to death were to be prepared and signed by Piotr Soprunienko, commander-in-chief of the Prisoners of War Board of People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which was created by the order of Beria in September 1939

In the Spring of 1940 the Soviet secret police began to shoot the prisoners in the back of the head or in the neck and burying them in mass graves. This war crime became known as the Katyn massacre.

 

The secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact not only partitioned Poland but also divided up Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Romania into Nazi and Soviet "spheres of influence." The Soviet Union was an ally of the Third Reich during the first 18 months of World War Two.

17 September 1939 | The Soviet Union invaded Poland, assisting the Germans, as agreed in the #Ribbentrop-#Molotov Pact & its secret protocol that divided Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland & Romania into German and Soviet "spheres of influence." https://t.co/yxr87GBN03 pic.twitter.com/syabhoa5AL

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 17, 2019