The Soviet Union was a huge and diverse empire. It was also the control center of the International Communist Movement. It embraced hundreds of ethnic communities, national identities, and racial groups. It was the very essence of multiculturalism.

Yet, on great state occasions, whenever you saw party leaders reviewing those dazzling Soviet parades of goose-stepping troops and sophisticated weaponry, who was standing atop Lenin’s Tomb?

A bunch of old, fat White guys. No diversity. No inclusion. No sharing of power.

The Communist Party preached a universal brotherhood of the downtrodden masses -- “Workers of the world, unite!” -- but in reality it was a closed circle of Russian supremacy. True, Lenin had German, Swedish, and Jewish ancestors, and Stalin was an ethnic Georgian. But both of those monsters built their notorious careers on Russian culture and politics. The movement they created never diverged from that identity.

This aspect of Soviet Communism must have irked a lot of folks who had dedicated their lives to world revolution, especially those who achieved significant responsibility within their local cadres.

The highest ranks would always be closed to them. No Kirghyz Communist official would ever be Party First Secretary. No Sandinista operative. No South African ANC revolutionary. No woman. Communists made big promises, and they inspired great dedication and sacrifice. They raised many hopes around the world. But in reality, they just used people.

In our current era of corporate fascism, which draws heavily on the Soviet playbook for tactics and procedures, many parallels are clear. Consider the Antifa and Black Lives Matter crowd. They function as the shock troops of the New Age. Yes, they’re shielded from legal consequences of the sundry crimes they commit in the name of anti-racism. And their leaders and organizers are paid well and housed magnificently (there’s good money in radical action, apparently).

But do you think for a minute that once Klaus Schwab and George Soros and Bill Gates and the other world shakers have consolidated their Great Reset, the circle of leadership will include any of those desperate, face-pierced, pink-haired street urchins?

The glass ceiling is even more evident when it comes to transgender activists. Will Dylan Mulvaney sit on the Central Committee of the New World Order? Not likely. In his much-celebrated “girlhood,” he’ll just have to content himself with his Bud Light sponsorship and all those other lucrative corporate endorsements (not to mention Drew Barrymore’s worshipful tears.)

Here too, Soviet history provides insight. In the 1952 Cold War classic, I Led 3 Lives, a book that chronicled his nine-year infiltration of the American Communist Party, Boston advertising executive and undercover FBI informant Herbert Philbrick notes how American Reds promoted avant-garde ideas about sex and gender.

Feminism was a favorite Marxist-Leninist teaching that pioneered use of the expression, “male chauvinism” (which by the late ’60s would enter the mainstream). Communists also encouraged homosexuality. The object of such gender improvisation was to undermine traditional morality, and to subvert families, seen as the bastions of Judeo-Christian ethical standards and the keys to societal stability.

Philbrick reports how the Communists instructed: “If we prepare our children for their vanguard role, we must not hem them in by the narrow restrictions of conventional middle-class sex patterns of behavior.”

Yet, in the Soviet Union, no woman ever held supreme authority, no matter how staunch a feminist she might be. Additionally, the Russians suppressed homosexuality to the point of active persecution. Even today Vladimir Putin denies that sexual deviancy is a meaningful factor in Russian society. Rather, it’s a moral plague of the decadent West.

With several recent incidents revealing a violent turn in gender thinking -- the Tennessee shooting among them -- dominant social, economic and political voices are working to obscure the bloody extremes which sexual confusion can reach. Only days after transgender “man” Audrey Hale killed six at Nashville’s Covenant School, a Christian academy she had attended, the White House was boosting “Transgender Day of Visibility,” while playing down the gender dimension of Hale’s heinous act (along with pushing gun control, of course). Local authorities imposed a lock on her purported gender “manifesto,” no doubt under pressure from on high.

Can anyone imagine that such freelance murder will be tolerated, once the golden age of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion dawns and we’re all living with crypto-currency, facial recognition, and Chinese-style social credit scores?

Audrey Hale and her psychological struggles are being exploited in the same way the Soviets exploited social conflicts, labor unrest, and liberation movements in various countries around the world. Where “Western Imperialism” was once the focus of discontent, now it’s gender dysphoria.

I should note that there are people for whom the conviction that they’re living in the wrong body is overwhelming and unextinguishable. Numerous psychological explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, but it is real. Such people experience ongoing emotional distress.

Some rare individuals who possess the requisite physical characteristics, and who work hard to adapt their voices and mannerisms, may be able to pass as the opposite sex. If they’re lucky, the world won’t notice the anomalies in their personal circumstances. They can live quiet lives, and avoid being used.

These are the opposite of drag queens whose personalities combine a warped eroticism with hatred of women, and a driving need to be on public display. Those characters give themselves willingly -- enthusiastically -- to being used. The queens are having a ball just now. As far as they’re concerned, let the good times roll! But what are their prospects, come ze revolution? I don’t think their future is very bright at all.

Many people have genuine sympathy for the sexually conflicted. They wish that everyone might be free to live happily in their own way. And they try to be accepting, even of those whose attitudes and behavior make them extremely uncomfortable. Many agnostics and atheists tend to fall into this category, as do libertarians, and even a fair number of Christians.

They’re the good-hearted folks whose Facebook pages feature memes insisting that sexual variety is just an aspect of life. Nothing to worry about. No threat to families or children. We’ve seen it all before, and it hasn’t hurt anybody. Some of the graphics they post may be their own creative expressions of supposed open-mindedness. But I think most of these memes are the products of highly focused, highly motivated activist groups.

Cleverly conceived, psychologically crafted, and widely distributed, they’re works of Soviet-style propaganda for the social networking age. They get linked and reposted again and again, giving broad and repeated exposure to the message of live-and-let-live. Perhaps the good-hearted folks who post them are the ones being used most cynically.

Are you among them?

Today the effort to destabilize society goes on, although that work is now being handled primarily by government agencies and, as the Bud Light gambit shows, by our great corporations. Secretive 1950s Communist cells are a thing of the past. None of the many subversive projects underway is more cruel or cuts closer to the heart of human nature than promoting sexual conflict and gender ambiguity.

Meanwhile, all the many sad, confused, suffering Audrey Hales of the world sit stewing in their personal grievances, plotting how to lash out at an America in which they believe then can never fit. When opportunity presents itself, they too will be used.

Bill Kassel is an award-winning author who hosts “Free Expression,” a talk show/podcast produced by the EWTN-affiliated Good Shepherd Catholic Radio. The show is available online at: https://billkassel.podbean.com.

Image: Daniel Rocal