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When Americans defend free markets, they analyze real-world outcomes and quote economists. When radicals defend communism, they ignore history and those who experienced it firsthand.
The omissions are deliberate. Survivors of communist regimes are dangerous to the argument because they are proof of its outcome. They know what happens after the government acquires the power it promised to use only for the public good.
I recently gathered survivors of communist regimes in the Capitol to hear their stories. They came from Cuba, Venezuela, the Soviet Union and China. One endured torture in prison. Another watched grocery shelves empty as his community decayed. Others saw schools converted into instruments of indoctrination and churches treated as enemies of the state.
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José Daniel Ferrer spent more than 12 years in Cuban prisons. He endured physical and psychological torture, and watched fellow citizens die from the same abuse and malnutrition he experienced. He understands the deception communists employ that made those prisons possible.
Chairwoman Lisa McClain Hosts “A Warning to America: Stories from Survivors of Communism” Roundtable. (Courtesy of House Republican Conference)
“It’s the best evidence that the communists who try to get to power in democratic nations are scam artists,” Ferrer said. “Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez denied what they were until they had secured power.”
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Castro denied being a communist before consolidating power for himself. Chávez sold himself as a democratic reformer before turning Venezuela into an authoritarian state. The radical label is hidden while votes are needed, then embraced once the institutions capable of restraining them have been weakened.
We see the same deception among American politicians who call themselves “Democratic Socialists.” They insist the label separates them from communism while embracing the concentration of economic and political power that has defined every communist movement.
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Communism’s advocates respond to witnesses like Ferrer by reaching for an excuse. They blame sanctions, corruption, foreign interference or the supposed betrayal of an otherwise noble idea. Their theory is always innocent. The people who suffered under it are somehow mistaken about what happened to them.
Daniel Di Martino’s family suffered from the same communist deception in Venezuela. Before the Bolivarian Revolution, they had an apartment, steady work, and an ordinary middle-class life. Then the promises were replaced by empty shelves and government rationing. Milk disappeared from stores. Meat became scarce. The government assigned citizens shopping days and required them to scan their fingerprints before determining what they were allowed to purchase. This is how communist control enters daily life. It doesn’t always begin with soldiers in the streets. Sometimes, it’s just a few regulations at the grocery store.
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“The common denominator is that they destroy free enterprise,” Di Martino said. “You cannot start a business, you cannot feed your family, therefore you die, or you flee.”
When the state controls food, employment and housing, citizens lose the ability to provide for themselves without bureaucrats’ permission. The government does not need to imprison every dissident. It can seize your paycheck, apartment or your next meal. People who depend on the state for sustenance live at the will and convenience of their captor.
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Communism doesn’t just control your physical necessities. Mike Gonzalez shared how it wages war on faith, conscience and independent thought. As a child in Cuba in the 1970s, he was harassed for attending church and pressured to join the communist Pioneers. Regime thugs interrogated him at age 11.
Communism’s advocates respond to witnesses like Ferrer by reaching for an excuse. They blame sanctions, corruption, foreign interference or the supposed betrayal of an otherwise noble idea. Their theory is always innocent. The people who suffered under it are somehow mistaken about what happened to them.
“Why did communists try to control the schools and didn’t like church?” he asked. “Because they tried to control the message.”
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Faith, family and national traditions remind people that the state is neither the source of truth nor the highest object of devotion. Religious freedom therefore becomes an obstacle to totalitarian control. Communists cannot tolerate independent institutions that demonstrate loyalty to something other than the state.
That is why communist movements teach citizens to despise their country. Its history becomes irredeemable, its traditions oppressive and its culture illegitimate. Once people are convinced that their institutions are rotten, destroying them can be sold as an act of liberation.
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Pastor Ezra Jin experienced what happens when a regime decides that even faith itself is a threat, after he and 20 other church leaders were arrested in China just last year. The Chinese Constitution formally promises religious freedom, but the Communist Party places itself above the Constitution. Jin was eventually released, but eight of his fellow pastors remain behind bars. Their only crime was worshipping something other than the party. His story exposes the emptiness of rights that exist only on paper. A constitution offers no protection when the ruling party recognizes no authority above itself.
Use whatever Marxist label you want; every variation uses the same blueprint. Discredit the institutions that limit its authority. Subjugate economic freedom, education, religion and public speech. Punish those who refuse to surrender their independence.
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Defenders of communism prefer abstractions because abstractions cannot contradict them. Survivors can. They’ve seen the prison cells, confiscated businesses, empty shelves, demolished churches and childhoods shaped by fear. They expose the arrogance of those who insist that this time the results will be different, even though the underlying demand for power remains unchanged.
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We should be wary of politicians who call themselves “Democratic Socialists.” Before believing their promises, we should listen to the people who already lived under leaders who made the very same ones.
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