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August 20, 2020

Americans have long been proud of the fact that, unlike Europe, it never went the route of totalitarianism as embodied in communism, fascism and Nazism.

This achievement may be coming to an end.

In order to understand why, it is necessary to understand why European countries embraced — or fell victim to — totalitarian doctrines.

Until World War I, the primary beliefs that gave life meaning, both on a national and personal level, were Judeo-Christian religions and patriotism. What gave people moral guidance were Judeo-Christian values.

For most younger Europeans, World War I, with its seemingly senseless slaughter of millions, ended belief in Christianity and, in many cases, the people’s faith in their nations. God was deemed absent; religion unnecessary; and national identity was seen as a cause of the war.

That left a void that almost immediately was filled by communism, fascism and Nazism.

World War I led directly to the Russian Revolution. In 1917, the czar was overthrown, and later that year, the Bolsheviks took over. As awful as the czar was, there was far more freedom under him than in the Soviet Union until the fall of communism 72 years later, not to mention the deaths of  20 to 40 million people under the Soviet regime.

In Italy, the rise of fascism followed World War I. And in Germany, the Nazis came to power 15 years later. The Nazis conquered most of the European continent during World War II, and after Germany’s defeat in 1945, the Soviets imposed communism throughout Eastern Europe.

Although there were communists, communist fellow travelers, Nazi sympathizers, racists and anti-Semites in the United States, neither communism, fascism nor Nazism took root here. The primary reason was that, unlike most Europeans, Americans did not lose their faith in Judeo-Christian religions and values or in America after World War I. America remained so religious that, in 1954, the words “under God” were inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance recited daily in American schools.

However, by the 1950s, faith in America, Christianity and what we call bourgeois middle-class values was largely limited to older Americans. The post-World War II baby boomer generation already was indoctrinated in secularism and anti-Americanism. As early as 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional.

By the late 1960s, vast numbers of baby boomers were attending demonstrations that were as much against America — routinely characterized as an imperialist and colonialist aggressor country with an evil military — as they were against the war in Vietnam. It was not uncommon to see America spelled “Amerikkka” or “Amerika” at protests and in graffiti.

When I was in graduate school at Columbia University in the early 1970s, I was taught that men and women are not inherently different and that the Cold War was between two superpowers (equally at fault), not between freedom and tyranny.

 Unlike most Europeans, Americans did not lose their faith in Judeo-Christian religions and values or in America after World War I.

Another generation has passed, and the post-Christian, left-wing baby boomers have come close to achieving complete success. The mainstream print and electronic media, universities, high schools and elementary schools, the arts and now sports have been conquered by the left. 

We now have the answer to the question: What will happen to America if Americans lose faith in God and country as the Europeans did after World War I? What will happen to America when Christianity dies as it did in Europe after World War I?

The way things now look, America may have its bout with some totalitarian doctrine. Liberty has never been a left-wing value. From Lenin on, wherever the left has come to power, it has suppressed liberty, beginning with free speech. Already, despite a Republican president and a Republican Senate, America has less free speech than at any time in its history. Exactly one year ago, I testified before a Senate subcommittee and wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal about YouTube (owned by Google) placing more than 100 Prager University, or PragerU, videos on its restricted list.

And things have gotten much worse. Last week, PragerU was locked out of its Twitter account for retweeting a press conference of eight physicians in Washington, D.C., which already had received 17 million views, and Facebook has just informed us that if we even cite studies that show possible benefits of hydroxychloroquine (in conjunction with zinc) in the early stages of a patient with COVID-19, we will lose our Facebook account.

And then there is the “cancel culture,” which is merely a euphemism for leftist suppression of dissent. People are booted from internet platforms, fired from their jobs or have their reputations smeared and their businesses ruined for differing with the left.

We also are undergoing a nonviolent version of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, with individuals forced to issue humiliating public recantations of their beliefs and attend “reeducation” sessions.

Another communist norm taking root in America is the rewriting of the American past. We are living a famous Soviet dissident joke: “In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it is the past that is always changing.”

On almost all social issues and many economic ones, the American left is more radical than the left in Europe. Europeans across the political spectrum are more wary of ideological fanaticism because of the vast scale of death and suffering that resulted from communism, fascism and Nazism.

One might say that Europe was inoculated against fanaticism. Europeans are more preoccupied with working less, traveling more and being taken care of than with ideological movements. But America, which has not suffered under fanatical, irrational, liberty-depriving ideologies, has not been inoculated. Without such a vaccination, what replaced Christianity in Europe may well do the same in America.


Copyright 2020 creators.com. Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host; president of PragerU, which has 1 billion views a year; and author most recently of volume two (Genesis) of the bestselling Torah and Bible commentary in America, “The Rational Bible.” Reprinted with permission.

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