When we speak to people about communism, especially young people, they often insist that although communism has failed everywhere it’s been tried, the U.S. will be successful in adopting it.

They clearly have not learned the lessons of human nature and depravity. And they might be surprised to learn that those attributes exist abundantly in this country.

We only need to study Cambodia, one of the most extreme applications of communism ever imposed, to get a hint of what might show up here. Young people in this country have a hard time relating to the Killing Fields, because the main message generally communicated is that millions of people were killed at the hands of one man: Pol Pot. But what is lost in relating the gruesome story is that Pol Pot was a communist.

During the last days of the Vietnam War in April 1975, Cambodia’s pro-American government was overthrown by the Communist Party of Kampuchea under the leadership of Pol Pot. His ideology deeply rooted in Marxist-Leninist thought, Pol Pot rallied his Khmer Rouge army in support of his vision of a self-sufficient agrarian society, founded on the principles of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China and free of foreign influence.

In order to meet that goal, urbanites needed to be evacuated from the cities. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, monks, and other professionals were sent to labor in the fields, being forced to work well beyond their strength. If you even looked like an intellectual, which could include wearing glasses, you were an enemy of the state.

The atrocities that were committed during Pol Pot’s reign are difficult to fathom. Torture and executions were common; imprisonment was standard. Eventually, Pol Pot was defeated by the Vietnamese army.

Following Pol Pot’s reign, a glass memorial was constructed in the shape of a Buddhist stupa, with 5,000 skulls displayed. If you look closely at the skulls, you may see signs of trauma embedded in them before they died. The Cambodians are committed to ensuring that their people never forget what happened to them with these kinds of memorials.

As a side note, I visited Cambodia and saw the skulls. Our tour guide explained to us that they were unable to calculate with any accuracy the number of people who had died; entire villages were wiped out so that there would be no witnesses to the genocide. To this day, the numbers range widely, from 1.3 million to 3 million, which was one-fifth to one-fourth of the country’s population.

That’s a grisly story about communism in Cambodia. But what does it have to do with the United States? There have certainly been many conversations on the incursion of socialism and communism into this country, but there is no reason to think that our practice of those two ideologies would lead to violence.

Is there?

People fail to notice that the seeds of violence have already been sown regarding communism. One of the culprits: Black Lives Matter. 

Alicia Garza, one of the main BLM founders, made her goals clear in Maine in 2019, when she told a group of eager New England leftists:

We’re talking about changing how we’ve organized this country, so that we actually can achieve the justice that we are fighting for. I believe we all have work to do to keep dismantling the organizing principle of this society, which creates inequities for everyone, even white people.

You may ask, however, what do her aims have to do with communism? Only the fact that Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the three main Founders of BLM, have been forthright about their training in, and commitment to, Marxism. Garza made the point in one interview that social movements everywhere have used Marx and Lenin to disturb the existing systems, in order to prepare for the revolution.

In addition, their vice-chair made an ominous statement about the future:

Black Lives Matter is administered by an organization whose vice chair, Susan Rosenberg, is a convicted communist terrorist who served 16 years of a 58-year sentence which was commuted by Bill Clinton.

Rosenberg was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO) which ‘openly advocate[d] the overthrow of the U.S. Government through armed struggle and the use of violence.’

Let’s not forget that BLM was at the forefront of the riots and protests of the summer of 2020. To underscore BLM’s involvement, their activists were involved in 95% of the 633 incidents. The Insurance Information Institute documented that it was the costliest civil disorder in U.S. history. 

And the Left applauded the riots:

President Joe Biden praised the efforts of Black Lives Matter demonstrators during the summer of 2020 as a ‘historic movement for justice’ while speaking at a campaign event Monday.

[snip]

The summer of 2020 featured several violent protests and riots, including the siege of the Portland, Ore. federal courthouse and shootings that killed law enforcement officers in St. Louis and Oakland.

Kamala Harris also got into the act by promoting the bail fund for rioters in Minneapolis:

That endorsement helped the Minnesota Freedom Fund raise $40million, cash it soon used to release accused murderers, rapists, and thieves.

The lessons are obvious and treacherous for our future. We have a naïve group of citizens who can’t see beyond their greed for goodies that a communist regime will provide, at least temporarily. They are too deluded to recognize that they are already witnessing the destructive elements of communism in our own country in riots and protests. They refuse to believe that the violence and depravity that we have seen in other countries has already begun to happen here.

We must overcome our arrogance and naivete regarding communism in this country and face the reality of a communist conversion.