Solzhenitsyn’s Warning About Communism Applies To Today’s Culture War

I’d like to share a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous Russian dissident author who emigrated to the United States during the height of the Cold War. Solzhenitsyn wrote about Communism and the Soviet Union mostly, but it is amazing the parallels that one can see with contemporary American society, in terms of the cultural climate. Keep in mind, the United States has changed from Solzhenitsyn’s time, so much so that the following quote now illustrates the current condition of western society.

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent.

One of the complaints of the early communists operating in western Europe in the late 20s and 30s was that the workers would not join their revolt. This astounded many of the early communists who could not believe that the workers did not want to overthrow the capitalistic system and all the accumulated historical legacy of oppression that they believed all workers inherited.

György Lukács was one of the early founders of cultural marxist thought who concluded that the workers did not join their revolt because of their “Christian souls.” What he believed was necessary was a re-education of society, a gradual changing of values and subversion of symbols until they no longer stood against global communist revolution. He and many like-minded left wing intellectuals would go on to found the Frankfurt school and continue disseminating these ideas of cultural paradigm change through language, ideas, and a pervasive counter-culture.

How much the times have changed where the counter-culture has become the dominant and only culture, the ideas all increasingly radical and the very English language changed to accommodate a pernicious left wing agenda of political correctness.

Because of this oppressive regime of thought, we are left without words to even articulate our opposition without immediately being castigated by a society-wide knee-jerk reflex, a defense mechanism programmed to act against reactionaries and traditionalists of all stripes. What Solzhenitsyn brought up about the Soviet Union is already steadily creeping up on us here in the west. The economic model of Marxism has failed, but the cultural model is alive and well, we see it in feminism, equalism, historical revisionism, native guilt, and disintegration of tradition on the grounds of it not being progressive enough.

It seems that to be part of the elite is to take part in a great lie. One must be able to mouth off their platitudes and adopt a vigilant eye for potential bait designed by the mob samizdat to lure you into making a mistake. Even worse, taking a page out of the New Testament and Jesus’s admonition of harboring any seditious thoughts at all to heart, progressives try to not only reform our behavior, but the very contents of our character as well.

Good becomes bad, bad becomes good. Death becomes life, perversion the norm, sophism a part of every lecture, and the right to dissent only accorded to a select few. Truly, Solzhenitsyn would be rolling over in his grave.

Read More: How Long Will It Take For Everything To Be A “Trigger Warning”?