Alarm bells should be ringing across our great nation in the face of one of the gravest existential threats it has ever faced, and one of those clanging the bell the loudest is that incomparable student of the history of American communism, professor Paul Kengor of Grove City College. His warning comes to us through his superb, just-released book, “The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration.”
Many of us thought that the unrivaled success of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the resulting collapse of the Soviet Union under George H.W. Bush spelled the end of Marxism-Leninism for all time as a governing socioeconomic system. Sadly, that evil philosophy proved only to be in abeyance for a short time, while its pernicious, satanic influence fermented in American society over the succeeding three decades in the halls of academe, the newsrooms of Big Media, the studios of Hollywood, the corporate offices of the tech giants and, yes, in politicians’ suites across the country.
For those who laugh at the notion of a spiritual dimension to the shocking, recent embrace of radical Marxist policies by the once-mainstream Democratic Party, with seemingly explosive rapidity, Kengor’s book will open their eyes. It certainly did mine. Anyone who scoffs does so at their own, and America’s, peril.
Let’s face it. As we watch Antifa and Black Lives Matter riot, and the incredible embrace of these people by political figures and corporate America, any sane American must be asking, “What on earth is going on?” The actions of these “protesters” can only be described as demonic. They are literally burning Bibles, attempting to torch government buildings with police officers inside, while blocking escape routes, brutally assaulting innocent civilians trying to protect others under attack, and shooting to death passersby, like a young mother who had the temerity to say the most commonsensical thing imaginable, that “all lives matter.” These are the behaviors of demonic individuals. And there is a reason for that, as Kengor so ably explains.
While Kengor is careful to note that he did not find evidence that Karl Marx was a practicing satanist (although other Marx biographers suggest he was), in the manner of holding black masses or engaging in satanic rituals, he delves into Marx’s early literature and reveals a man whose writings were replete with paeans to Satan. In a poem called “The Pale Maiden,” Marx wrote: “Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for Hell.” In another poem, “The Player,” Marx waxed: “See the sword—the Prince of Darkness sold it to me. For he beats the time and gives the signs. Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.”
There are many similar sentiments expressed by Marx in his writings. His own family members and friends believed him to be possessed or influenced by the devil. His friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, called Marx a “monster of ten thousand devils.” His father said he was “governed by a demon,” and his son Edgar called him “my dear devil.” Kengor provides many more such examples, and notes, “The frequency of such observations of and by Marx is really quite bracing and far too frequent to shrug off.”
And as Kengor details in this illuminating work, Marxists, communists, and socialists have demonstrated a similar affinity for the devil since Marx gave birth to his hellish philosophy.
One might dismiss such suggestions as hyperbolic descriptions of Marx or things said in jest of someone with a temper or a bizarre personality, but serious scholars of Marx agree that they had never encountered descriptions of other historical figures by their contemporaries and close associates in such frequent demonic phraseology.
And since the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating, consider the manifest results of Marx’s work. As Kengor outlines, Marx’s ideology in its communist and socialistic manifestations as governing systems since he conjured it has led to more human death and suffering by far than any other political system. The most conservative estimate, contained in Harvard’s “The Black Book of Communism,” places the number of those who perished at the hands of communists at 100 million. More realistic estimates place it near 140 million. But as Kengor notes, only God, and perhaps the devil, knows the real figure, as even those estimates may be low.
A theologically based analysis of Marx is no mere academic exercise. As Kengor writes: “Far too many people ... separate Marx the man from the evils ushered in by Marxism. That is a grave mistake. Not only are the results of Marxism very much the result of Marx’s ideas and his very pen, but Marx himself penned some very devilish things. Karl Marx wrote not only about the hell that was communism, but about hell itself.”
Some time is spent exploring Marx’s early years. His father converted the family from Judaism to Protestantism, and Karl was baptized a Christian at age six. He left Christianity and became a strident atheist in college. Sound familiar? At one point during his studies, his angst-ridden father berated Karl for spending his nights “giving birth to monsters” in his writing.
Kengor then goes on to explore the satanic ties of prominent Marxists and communist organizations throughout history, including their consistent efforts to destroy traditional religions and to infiltrate and undermine the Church, both Catholic and Protestant. That’s not coincidence. It’s all of a piece of Marx’s original plan to remove the divine from man in order to control him.
Kengor’s review of political and cultural Marxism and its adherents’ ties to Satan continues through modern times, with a particular focus on the depravities, sexual and otherwise, that seem to characterize many of the most prominent Marxists in our culture.
