Paul Kengor > Quotes

“In 1999, The Black Book of Communism endeavored to attempt the impossible task of tabulating a Marxist-Leninist death toll in the twentieth century. It came up with a figure approaching 100 million. Here is the breakdown:

*USSR: 20 million deaths
*China: 65 million deaths
*Vietnam: 1 million deaths
*North Korea: 2 million deaths
*Cambodia: 2 million deaths
*Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths
*Latin America: 150,000 deaths
*Africa: 1.7 million deaths
*Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths
*The international communist movement and
Communist parties not in power:
about 10,000 deaths”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“The people who influence our presidents matter.”
― Paul Kengor, The Communist

“If one Googles “critical theory,” the first thing that pops up is a boxed definition that states: “crit-i-cal the-o-ry, noun, a philosophical approach to culture, and especially to literature, that seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain it. The term is applied particularly to the work of the Frankfurt School.”630 That is precisely correct. Note the words “culture” and “Frankfurt School.” Modern critical theory has grown out of that early Freudian-Marxism of the Frankfurt School.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Karl Marx desired to ruthlessly criticize all that exists, to blow up traditional absolutes, and to invent an entirely new order.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“That is no casual thing: a special preference for Mephistopheles. He was especially fond of Mephistopheles’s line from Faust: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”79 This is no surprise; it reflects the very thinking of the man who in letters called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists,”80 who in the Manifesto declared that communism seeks to “abolish the present state of things,” and who at the close of the Manifesto called for “the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Ultimately, Reagan presided over the largest tax cut in American history, and accomplished it working in tandem with (rather than against) a huge Democratic Party majority in the House. It was a bipartisan triumph. The Washington Post called Reagan’s accomplishment “one of the most remarkable demonstrations of presidential leadership in modern history.” After a slow start through 1982–1983, the stimulus effect of the Reagan tax cuts was extraordinary, sparking the longest peacetime expansion/recovery in the nation’s history: ninety-two consecutive months, far surpassing the previous record of fifty-eight months.”
― Paul Kengor, 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative

“What was Ted Kennedy up to in May 1983 with that offer to Yuri Andropov via the KGB?”
― Paul Kengor, Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century

“These liberals were prey, typically made vulnerable by their misplaced trust in the far left. They mistakenly saw American Communists as their friends and as simply another group of citizens practicing civil liberties in a democratic society based on First Amendment freedoms. Most liberals, obviously, were not themselves Communists, but in sharing the left portion of the ideological spectrum, they shared with the Communists many key sympathies: workers’ rights, the redistribution of wealth, an expansive federal government, a favoring of the public sector over the private sector, class-based rhetoric (often demagoguery)”
― Paul Kengor, Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century

“Incredibly, in November 1933, FDR appointed this giddy member of Stalin's fan club as America's first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.”
― Paul Kengor, Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century

“So why aren’t you dead?” The shooter was incredulous: “I know I was aiming right. I know that the bullet was a killer. So why aren’t you dead?”92 Dziwisz, standing a few yards away from the conversation, sensed that Agca was “terrified by the fact that there were forces bigger than he was.” The Muslim had found out that there was not just one Fátima—that is, Muhammad’s favorite daughter—but also another one, whom he called the “goddess of Fátima.” According to Dziwisz, Agca, who thought in terms of divine retribution, told John Paul II that he was afraid that this powerful “goddess” would avenge herself on him and “get rid of” him.”
― Paul Kengor, A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century

“Overall, the “Reagan boom” not only produced widespread prosperity but—along with the attendant Soviet collapse—helped generate budget surpluses in the 1990s. Carter-Ford-era terms like “malaise” and “misery index” vanished. Only during the Obama years, and specifically in 2011, has America reapproached similar misery-index levels, reaching a twenty-eight-year high.133 Finally, aside from the matter of the economic impact of the tax cuts, it is important to understand that tax cuts were the very essence of Reaganomics. Reagan conservatism, in the realm of economic policy, is first and foremost about tax cuts.”
― Paul Kengor, 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative

“The success of Communism naturally depends on altering human nature because few things are more inherent in human nature than the ownership of property. This basic human right is as ancient as the ten commandments where God ordained that 'Thou Shall Not Steal'. The commandment implicitly acknowledges that persons have possessions and that they have an inherent right to that property. So it is thus not permissible for others to take it away from them. But Marx & Engels weren't about to admit the right to private property that we find even in the bible.”
― Paul Kengor, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism

“One could take this connection further and draw a parallel between Satanism and the so-called “critical theory” pioneered by the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School sought to dispel a traditional/Christian understanding of society and instead desired to set society free from the constraints of historical Western culture. As Max Horkheimer noted, the goal of critical theory is “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”628 These “circumstances” are the traditional Western institutions and moral norms that have held together the Judeo-Christian world for millennia. For culture-focused Marxists, these institutions had to be dismantled. Literally speaking, to hell with them.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“As communists sought to enter the churches of Christendom, they simultaneously sought to set them ablaze—and not merely metaphorically. In the USSR and throughout the communist world, churches were ignited, dynamited, obliterated. As communists in the West assured Christians that they wanted to shake hands with them, communists in the East and elsewhere handcuffed them and blew up their churches.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“He stated emphatically that “Socialism cannot be brought into existence without revolution.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“This was their religion, their faith. Che was their Jesus Christ: “Like a Christian seeking to emulate the life of Christ,” Rudd remembered, “I passionately wanted to be a revolutionary like Che, no matter what the cost.”36”
― Paul Kengor, Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century

“The heirs of Gramsci, like the ideological progeny of Marx and Lenin and the Frankfurt School, insisted on the need to question everything, including moral absolutes and the Judeo-Christian basis of Western civilization. They needed to frame seemingly benign conventions as systematic injustices that must be exposed. This is where we got professors fulminating against everything from “the patriarchy” to “white imperialism” to “transphobia.” By the twenty-first century, even biological sex was no longer considered a settled issue.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Yes, Saul Alinsky, icon of the political left, whose admirers include Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, commenced his magnum opus—the one for which he is hailed by progressives, a book not only read by Clinton but used as a text by Obama in Chicago as a teacher of community organizing—with an acknowledgement of the devil.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Mallory watched it unfold and unravel. She also witnessed the cultural wreckage. Today she speaks tragically of encountering women in their fifties and sixties who fell for this “creed” in their youth and now cry themselves to sleep many countless nights grieving for the children that they will never have and that they “coldly murdered because they were protecting the empty loveless futures they now live with no way of going back.” “Where are my children?” they cry to Mallory. “Where are my grandchildren?” Those children were sacrificed at the feminist altar of abortion.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“One can point to the confusion created by heretical concepts, such as those found in so-called Liberation Theology, promoted chiefly by the Jesuits, which became very popular and influential in Latin America.519 We know, of course, that Liberation Theology was pervaded with Marxist sentiment. Some ultimate insiders, such as Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the leading Romanian spy chief who defected to the West in the late 1970s, have gone so far as to claim that Liberation Theology was created by the KGB. “The movement was born in the KGB,” states Pacepa unequivocally, “and it had a KGB-invented name: Liberation Theology.” Pacepa, a very high-level Communist Bloc intelligence official, gave specific details: “The birth of Liberation Theology was the intent of a 1960 super-secret “’Party-State Dezinformatsiya [Disinformation] Program’ approved by Aleksandr Shelepin, the chairman of the KGB, and by Politburo member Aleksey Kirichenko, who coordinated the Communist Party’s international policies. This program demanded that the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool.”520”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“She repeated this in slightly more detail in a major speech at Fordham University in 1950, where she said that Trachtenberg had told her in New York in 1944: “When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of communism; we will not take it under the label of socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been speared too much. We will take the United States under labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But take it we will.”446”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Communists are also, curiously, utopians—secular utopians. They sought a heaven on earth—for them, an earth without religion. They did so without realizing that utopia is not only elusive but such a literal self-contradiction that it does not exist. The Greek roots of the word are ou topos, or “no place.” In other words, there is no utopia, at least not in this world and realm. And yet, communists would pursue this no place with religious-like zeal.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Marx finished his destructive passage with an exhortation to history, to philosophy, to law, to politics to undertake the secular righteous “task” to “establish the truth of this world.” What truth? That truth, alas, was Marx’s “truth.” Ye shall be as gods.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Alas, this brings us to a closer understanding of critical theory. What is often termed (for better or worse) “cultural Marxism,” or Marxism operating on the cultural front, is more often or formally referred to in the academy as “critical theory.”629 Today, in the twenty-first century, much of the more culturally inclined Marxism flies under that banner. There are entire academic departments at universities dedicated to critical theory. Tellingly, most of these academic proponents of Marxism are not economics or political science professors, or historians, most of whom know better, but faculty from English departments. Only in our intellectually bankrupt universities could these vapid viewpoints get a following let alone a hearing. There seems to be an ever-widening panoply of these Marxists. The numbers evolve as the Marxism itself evolves. Today, there are even gender Marxists in the academy. There are, for instance, self-described “queer theorists” and academicians engaged in “intersectionality” who are Marxists focused on cultural work. Above all, these Marxists are about culture. Culture, culture, culture.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Braw’s book highlights four specific “pastor agents” and the recruiting work of a Stasi official named Joachim Wiegand (still living and interviewed by Braw), who headed up the Stasi’s so-called “Church Department,” formally known as Department XX/4. These pastor agents, states Braw, were “very active,” engaging in regular clandestine meetings with Stasi contacts and “extensive cooperation over many years,” agreeing to “spy on their fellow human beings,” including their own congregants. They had varying motivations. Some did it for the money—a “depressingly” small sum, notes Braw. Others cooperated because they felt they were helping causes like “peace” by curtailing “anti-militarism” in post-war Germany. Regardless, notes Braw, these pastors “betrayed and sold out their friends and acquaintances.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“He and his party initiated an aggressive push to create a “united front” led by communists and socialists attracting a broader coalition of liberals and fellow travelers.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“It was December 30, 1933, and the author of the Great Purge wined and dined Bullitt. At the end of a lovely evening together, FDR's new ambassador bade Stalin goodnight with a tender kiss on the cheek; the doting despot dutifully reciprocated.24”
― Paul Kengor, Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century

“More than that, the Communists hated those whom the liberals loved. As this book will make clear, the Communists maligned the Democratic presidents whom liberals adored. Throughout the twentieth century, each and every Democratic leader was a target for Communist vilification, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, whom Lenin called a “shark” and a “simpleton.” The Communists, whether American or Soviet, demonized icons of the Democratic Party.”
― Paul Kengor, Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century

“Biographers who admire Marx and seek to cover for him will want to ignore his poetry among his corpus of writings. They should nonetheless bristle at what they see in Marx’s poetry. They will encounter what Paul Johnson discerned: “Savagery is a characteristic note of his verse, together with the intense pessimism of the human condition, hatred, a fascination with corruption and violence, suicide pacts and pacts with the devil.”82”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration