The Devil and Karl Marx 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

“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

“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

“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

“Though it has been long obvious to sentient human beings that communists hate religion, they nevertheless had an almost preternatural ability to enchant liberal Christians. They cynically, contemptuously targeted the religious left. They knew that progressive Christians shared certain sympathies with them: workers’ rights, wealth redistribution, shrinking the income gap, denouncing the rich, fomenting class envy. Communists exploited that trust, often invoking the language of “social justice” to enlist liberals in their petitions, their marches, their campaigns, their objectives.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“His fellow German socialist and labor organizer Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx referred to as a “greasy Jew,” “the little kike,” “water-polack Jew,” “Jew Braun,” “Yid,” “Izzy,” “Wily Ephraim,” “Baron Itzig,” and “the Jewish Nigger.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“As for the other girls in the family, Marx’s relationship with his daughters is more complex and the subject of very different reporting by biographers, often depending in part on the ideological preferences of the biographers. Paul Johnson states that as Marx’s daughters grew, he denied them a satisfactory education, if any education at all, and vetoed careers for them entirely. This most adversely affected Eleanor, the youngest Marx girl, who, as Johnson put it, “suffered most from his refusal to allow the girls to pursue careers and his hostility to suitors.”191 As we shall see, this manifested itself in Eleanor’s marriage to an utter reprobate, a widely reviled man who seduced and slept with other women and, ultimately, killed her.”
― 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

“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

“This call to total transformation resonates today among cultural and sexual Marxists. While very different from classical Marxists in their cultural-sexual as opposed to economic thinking, they bear a crucial commonality with their forebears in this ongoing objective of fundamental transformation via criticizing all that exists, especially traditional Judeo-Christian values and institutions. The original ambition of an economic/class-based revolution has failed. And so, instead, today’s Marxists—including throughout Communist Party USA, once the home of classical Marxism—have gone cultural and sexual.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“He reconsidered, subjected to criticism, and verified on the working-class movement everything that human thinking had created.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“The political left’s cultural revolution on the sexual-gender-family front is ubiquitous, as is its intolerance of any dissenters. We see it in the culture of fear and intimidation by the self-prided forces of “diversity” and “tolerance” who viciously seek to denounce, dehumanize, demonize, and destroy anyone who disagrees with their brazen newfound conceptions of marriage and family, even as their inventions are at odds with the prevailing position of 99.99 percent-plus of human beings who have bestrode the earth since the dawn of humanity. Instead, traditional Christians are the ones portrayed as the outliers, as abnormal, as extremists, as bigots, as “haters.” That is a fundamental transformation of a culture and a nation. That is evidence of a true revolution by the heirs of Marx and other radicals. “The Most Radical Rupture in Traditional Relations” To “fundamentally transform.” Here was, in essence, an inherently Marxist goal declared to a sea of oblivious Americans, whether Barack Obama explicitly or fully understood or meant it himself. It is highly doubtful that Obama had Marx (or a Marcuse or Millett or Reich) on the mind at that moment.665 Obama was merely riding a wave that began as a ripple over a century or so ago. And typically, most of those surfing or floating along have little notion who or what helped give the initial push. Nonetheless, the goal of Karl Marx and the Marxist project from the outset was one of fundamental transformation, permanent revolution, and unrestrained criticism of everything—nothing less than “the ruthless criticism of all that exists.”666 Marx’s ideas were so radical, and so (as Marx openly conceded) “contrary to the nature of things,” that they inevitably lead to totalitarianism; that is because they are totalitarian in the strictest sense, as they seek to transform human nature and the foundational order. We have seen passages from Marx to that effect throughout this book. Here is a short summary: Marx in the Manifesto said that communism represents “the most radical rupture in traditional relations.” Marx in the Manifesto acknowledged that communism seeks to “abolish the present state of things.” Marx in the Manifesto stated that “they [the Communists] openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Marx in the close of the Manifesto: “Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.” Marx in a letter to Arnold Ruge called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists.” Marx had a favorite quote from Goethe’s Faust, “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” • Marx in his essay declaring religion “the opium of the people” said that “the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.” (Recall that in that essay he used the word “criticism” twenty-nine times.) Beyond”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“The reality is that the true fundamental transformation in America (and the West generally) has come in the realm of culture, notably in matters of sexual orientation, gender, marriage, and family. The shift there has been unprecedented and far beyond anyone’s imagination in 2008. It was signaled most conspicuously in June 2015 when the Obama White House—the nation’s first house—was illuminated in the colors of the “LGBTQ” rainbow on the day of the Obergefell decision, when the Supreme Court, by a one-vote margin, rendered unto itself the ability to redefine marriage (theretofore the province of biblical and natural law) and imposed this new “Constitutional right” on all fifty states. If ever there was a picture of a fundamental transformation, that was it. And that was just one of countless “accomplishments” heralded and boasted of by the Obama administration. In June 2016, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Obergefell, the White House press office released two extraordinary fact sheets detailing President Obama’s vast efforts to promote “LGBT” rights at home and abroad.663 Not only was it telling that the White House would assemble such a list, and tout it, but the sheer length of the list was stunning to behold. There was no similar list of such dramatic changes by the Obama White House in any other policy area. Such achievements included the infamous Obama bathroom fiat, through which, according to Barack Obama’s executive word, all public schools were ordered to revolutionize their restrooms and locker rooms to make them available to teenage boys who want to be called girls.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Such is the totalitarian task of communism. Indeed, the textbook definition of totalitarianism, which I have scribbled on the chalkboard every fall semester at Grove City College since 1997, is to fundamentally transform—specifically, to seek to fundamentally transform human nature via some form of political-ideological-cultural upheaval.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“The burning objective of Kate’s “consciousness-raising” was “the destruction of the American family,” as she deemed it “a patriarchal institution devoted to the oppression and enslavement of women and children.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Kate Millett: Marxist, feminist, advocate for gay rights, for new sexuality, for new spousal relationships, and on and on. She channeled her revolutionary energies into a campaign to take down marriage and family, the backbone of American society. And she practiced what she preached. Though she was married, she practiced lesbianism, becoming bisexual. She had started that lifestyle at Columbia while writing Sexual Politics. This would, predictably, end her marriage to her husband, who found the trashing of these norms unnatural and detrimental to the health of their marriage. Of course, to many in our brave new world, this makes Kate a heroine. Today, the bio for Kate Millett at the “GLBTQ” website hails her as a “groundbreaking” “bisexual feminist literary and social critic.”
― 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

“It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China. We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in the Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice: “Why are we here today?” she asked. “To make revolution,” they answered. “What kind of revolution?” she replied. “The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted. “And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded. “By destroying the American family!” they answered. “How do we destroy the family?” she came back. “By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly. “And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied. “By taking away his power!” “How do we do that?” “By destroying monogamy!” they shouted. “How can we destroy monogamy?” … “By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.648”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Millett was the author of Sexual Politics, her dissertation at the communist hotbed Columbia University. It became a cultural juggernaut when published in 1970. There, she decried the “patriarchy” of the monogamous nuclear family. The book landed Kate on the cover of Time magazine on August 31, 1970, which dubbed her the “high priestess” and “Mao Tse-tung of the Women’s Movement.” Her angry book served as the bible, the feminist-Marxist manifesto, of women’s lib.645 The New York Times referred to Sexual Politics as “the Bible of Women’s Liberation.”646”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“This was much more akin to the Fabian-socialist model adhered to by many American progressives and “democratic socialists.” It was the call of evolution rather than revolution. It was the Marxist-communist-socialist call of public ownership of the means of production, but without Lenin’s love of violence.”
― 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

“Alinsky offered this curious opening acknowledgment: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history … the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.”
― 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

“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

“Reich by then was well on his way in search of a grand unifying theory of Freudianism and Marxism. He ultimately did so in his revolutionary sexual manifesto, The Sexual Revolution. The book made him famous. Wilhelm Reich was the man who thereby coined the term “The Sexual Revolution.”590 Today, the likes of The New Yorker hail him as the “Father of the Sexual Revolution.”591 He was widely read by the 1960s New Left—the children of the sexual revolution.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“There were many key figures from the Frankfurt School: Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Franz Neumann, the Soviet spy Richard Sorge, Wilhelm Reich, Walter Benjamin, and others. The school began in 1923 as the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany. It is also sometimes called Goethe University, fittingly and frighteningly enough. Karl Marx would have been proud. The Frankfurt School in the 1930s would pick up and relocate to the United States, as its members (most if not all of them Jews) fled Hitler’s atrocious Final Solution.584”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Rather than organize the workers and the factories, the peasants and the fields and the farms, they would organize the intellectuals and the academy, the artists and the media and the film industry. These would be the conveyor belts to deliver the fundamental transformation.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“To be sure, the Frankfurt School of the 1930s was certainly not issuing joint statements calling for, say, same-sex marriage—such would have been considered pure madness in any day before our own. Nonetheless, this cabal’s comprehensive push for untethered, unhinged sexual openness with no cultural boundaries or religious restrictions cracked the door for almost anything down the road. When God and tradition and ancient norms are said to no longer exist, anything and everything is permissible.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“These men developed a kind of Freudian-Marxism, or “Freudo-Marxism,” integrating the extraordinarily bad but influential twentieth-century ideas of Sigmund Freud with the extraordinarily bad but influential nineteenth-century teachings of Karl Marx. This was no match made in heaven. The noxious Marx had conjured up the most toxic ideas of the nineteenth century, whereas the neurotic Freud had cooked up the most infantile ideas of the twentieth century. Swirling the insipid ideas of those two ideological-psychological basket cases into a single malevolent witch’s brew was bound to uncork a barrel of mischief. The Frankfurt School was the laboratory and the distillery for their concoction, and the children of the 1960s would be their twitching guinea pigs and guzzling alcoholics. The flower-children, the hippies, the Yippies, the Woodstock generation, the Haight-Asbury LSD dancers, the sex-lib kids would all drink deep from the magic chalice, intoxicated by lofty dreams (more like hallucinations and bad acid-trips) of fundamental transformation of the culture, country, and world. And a generation or two still later, they would become the nutty professors who mixed the Kool-Aid for the millennials who would merrily redefine everything from marriage to sexuality to gender, wittingly or not serving the Frankenstein monster of cultural Marxism by doing so.”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

“Amazingly, Duranty would be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, despite his woefully misleading and scurrilous journalism. Duranty would report, including in articles with titles like “Russians Hungry, but Not Starving” (March 31, 1933, New York Times): “Here are the facts. … There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition. … These conditions are bad, but there is no famine.”531 This was not simply erroneous reporting. Duranty knew otherwise. He told William Strang at the British embassy on September 26, 1933 that as many as ten million people had already died. He also personally told Eugene Lyons (UPI’s Moscow correspondent) that he estimated the total number of famine victims around seven million. Malcolm Muggeridge would call Duranty “the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism.” Even the esteemed man of the left, Joseph Alsop, would denounce Duranty as a “fashionable prostitute” in service of communists.532”
― Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration