It happened in the late spring when thousands of demonstrators took part in the Cultural Revolution.  Students on campuses everywhere came together to make radical changes in the nation.  The old ideas, customs, and beliefs had to be put away and a shining new society ushered in.  Young people marched in the streets, tore down signs, and toppled statues.  Media outlets throughout the country praised this unprecedented movement.

Did this happen in Seattle? Portland? The streets of Chicago?  No, this was Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution that started in May 1966 and ushered in one of the bloodiest eras in China’s history.  This particular cultural revolution ended with millions being murdered.

While what did happen in Seattle, Portland, and other American cities in 2020 started because of George Floyd’s death and primarily involved challenging racism and police brutality, it quickly escalated and evolved into so much more.  One of the primary leaders of this movement referred to herself as a “trained Marxist.”  Another activist tweeted, “Tear them down,” referring to statues of Jesus and Christian churches.  In 2020, BLM rioters burned a Bible and American flags in Portland and decapitated a statue of Jesus in Miami.

These comments, and the actions of many of the protestors, bear a striking resemblance to another movement besides Chairman Mao’s Marxist makeover of Chinese society.  There also was the Bolshevik Revolution.  Nearly fifty years before Mao made his move, Lenin’s revolutionaries ushered in the first Marxist state.  While creating their socialist Utopia, they went on to burn churches, execute priests, and ultimately kill millions once civil war ensued.  While this rioting and burning that took place throughout 2020 diminished in 2021, the angry sentiments and striking division in our country have continued to grow.

Brutal dictatorships and bloody revolutions have always been part of the human condition and continue to take place around the globe.  Yet Americans often think that extreme brutality, including persecution, will never happen here.  It can and it will if the vast majority remain asleep at the wheel of democracy and freedom.

Jacqueline Murekatete, an attorney and Rwanda genocide survivor, has written the following regarding how genocide normally starts.

As I always tell my audience when I speak on this topic, people do not just get up one day and want to systematically murder their neighbors. Genocide is always proceeded by a number of steps, including state sanctioned discrimination of the would-be-target group, a dehumanization process in which the target group is portrayed as the “other” or the “enemy,” and a culture of impunity.

If that sounds eerily familiar, it’s because it’s currently happening in the United States in the form of cancel culture and the increasing censorship of voices and ideas that don’t line up with the mainstream worldview.  The conditioning of the masses always proceeds persecution.

It happens when people compare those who voted differently than they did to terrorists and Nazis.

It happens when Chase, the biggest bank in the country, refuses to do business with conservative groups.

It happens when nearly all major institutions and platforms, including media, entertainment, academia, and tech companies almost entirely promote far-left ideology and millions of conservatives feel they no longer have a voice.

There are many examples in recent years of individuals losing their jobs, having their businesses boycotted, and getting their social media accounts canceled or suspended because they promoted conservative ideas, supported Biblical standards, or refused to bow down to the demands of the woke culture.

The dehumanization process of conservatives and traditional Christians as “others” and “enemies” is rapidly increasing.  The more it continues to happen, the more many in the media insist that it isn’t happening.

A friend of mine recently stated that this can’t go on much longer, that millions of Americans are going to stand up against the cancel culture, censorship, and the marginalization of traditional values.  I nodded my head when she said it, but I don’t think I really believed it.

When you have a society that is already in the process of banning words, burning Bibles, and allowing four-year-olds to choose their gender, you have a society that has pretty much already jumped the shark.  When you have millions who have sunk so far down the rabbit hole that they actually believe this is “progress,” you realize Rome has been burning for a while now.

After all, how many stood up against most of the persecution, brutality, and genocide when it occurred in Bosnia or Rwanda? How many stood up against Mao or Stalin?

Sing a Little Louder is a movie based on the true story of an old man, who as a boy, witnessed the horror of the Holocaust from the safety of his church.  As the cattle cars full of screaming Jewish prisoners rolled by on the train tracks near the church, parishioners simply sang louder to drown out their cries.

If most people didn’t stand up against the majority of atrocities that have occurred throughout history, what makes anyone think that people will stand up now for what amounts so far to much milder forms of persecution?

No, we’re not anywhere near genocide in America as I write this.  We’re at the edge of where Murekatete said such things start.  We’re in the hatred, marginalization, and censorship stage.  We’re not currently seeing people dragged off to Gulags or facing public torture.  But as history teaches us, it never starts out that dramatically.

It starts out small.  It starts out where it’s starting now.  For these reasons, people should prepare themselves for what’s likely to come in the not-so-distant future.  Freedom of speech, religious liberty, the right to own property, and the right to bear arms; these precious liberties may soon be gone or severely limited in the near future.

What does all this have to do with COVID and all the lockdowns and mandates we’ve lived through in recent years?  Maybe nothing.  Or maybe this is more of the division and dehumanization that so often leads ultimately to unspeakable atrocities.

It’s important to note that in recent months Australia has built a COVID Quarantine Camp.  The Guardian reported on Nov. 30, 2021, that three individuals escaped from the Darwin’s Howard Springs COVID-19 Facility.  They were quickly recaptured.  Across Europe travelers now carry barcode vaccine passports on their phones.  In Sweden, thousands have already received a chip implant in their hands with passport information.  It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going and what may happen to those who refuse.

How long until fines, quarantine camps, or worse measures arrive in the United States?  Possibly not long.  Prepare spiritually, mentally, and materially.  You may not have much time left.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License