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Imagine the following scene: a man —without ideological, racial or religious distinction— enters a public park and begins to shoot in cold blood against the crowd. Corpses begin to fall to the ground, bullets penetrate skulls, hearts, necks, and organs. Children cry, families are torn apart, and the world of hundreds of people crumbles in a matter of seconds because of the actions of a sick person.
At the beginning, I made the remark that the mass murderer had no ideological, racial, or religious distinction, because really, when a tragedy of this magnitude occurs there is absolutely no reason that could justify such an aberration, I believe that a very tiny percentage of the population could find a justification for something like this, but why or how is it that many people end up accepting —and even supporting— when mass massacres —violent or not— occur in the name of an ideology or political movement?
Let’s change the scene, let’s assume that a group of people have particular beliefs about the best way to move a society forward and make absolutely peaceful demonstrations, without calls for rebellion, without terrorist attacks, simply exposing ideas totally opposed to those of the government in power. Then, the dissatisfied government sends the state police and they start hunting down and killing 50 people just because they think differently. Would you support it? As a conservative, would you support the shooting of communists? As a socialist, would you support the shooting of libertarians? I would definitely never do so, however, in this case, it is likely that the group —still very small— that approves of this kind of action will increase a little bit. However, things could be worse, much worse…
Let’s assume that a political group comes to power promising to solve all existing problems, no matter which one. That group says it will solve absolutely everything, applying certain types of political and economic policies to achieve it. Years go on and the policies applied, far from helping to solve the problems they vowed to tackle, accentuate them, so public services begin to deteriorate, food becomes scarce, people get poorer and poorer, and, little by little, citizens begin to die of hunger and disease. However, the government is incapable of recognizing its mistakes and continues with the nefarious economic policies that have led its citizens to this situation and continue to apply them, despite the fact that more and more people are dying and everything is getting worse. Would you support this? What are you waiting for, to reveal which policies are being applied to know if you are for or against them?
It is never the intentions that matter, but the outcome
In today’s world, it is common to observe people openly supporting and talking about communism and socialism, ideologies that have led to the death of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, through famine, torture, and executions.
It is no less interesting that currently Nazism and Fascism have been basically eradicated, since their confrontation with Soviet Communism turned it into an “ultra-right” phenomenon, despite following the same collectivist/left-wing recipe of Marxist socialism. Part of the differentiation between the internationalist socialism of the Soviet Union and Hitler’s national socialism lies in the vision of borders, and also in the fact that some use the class struggle as an engine of confrontation and the others the race. But beyond this, their goals are the same: everything within the State, nothing outside the State, both are completely anti-liberal and anti-capitalist. However, today one receives much worse press than the other, although both ideologies are equally harmful, and devastating and have led to genocide.
Back to the issue at hand, what is the substantial difference between supporting a psychopath who takes a gun and murders 50 people in a shootout, and supporting another psychopath who uses the power of the state to massacre his population over a prolonged period of time causes those 50 or even 100 victims per day? Why do we judge both actions differently if both cause unprecedented devastation?
Societies and economies evolve and with it, human beings find new systems of the social contract that allow the development of all parties. It is absolutely understandable that a couple of centuries ago, when Marx released his nefarious ideas, many were impressed and wanted to spread them around the world. However, after decades of terrible experiences, famine, and death, whoever still supports these postulates should be looked upon with the same contempt as those who support mass shooters, after all, an idea can be as or more lethal than a bullet, and no one should be exempted from promoting and propitiating mass murder.
Today’s renowned socialists who have taken on the label of “progressivism” like to boast of their “good intentions”, however, those grandiose intentions of equalizing all people by force have ended poorly, very poorly, as we have seen throughout history and have explained throughout this article.
On paper it sounds very nice to “redistribute wealth”, “destroy capitalism”, and achieve “absolute equality.”Hhowever, in reality, these are ideas that destroy nations, separate families, and kill millions of people. Today Venezuela has almost 7 million people forced out of their country for following the good intentions of internationalist socialism. That is more than 20% of its population, and this is without taking into account the deaths caused by hunger and disease: it is a tragedy of biblical proportions, and the worst thing is that those who caused it are still free and promoting the same failed ideas around the world, together with a bunch of fanatics of mass murderers who applaud their aberrations.
Emmanuel Rincón is a lawyer, writer, novelist and essayist. He has won several international literary awards. He is Editor-at-large at El American // Emmanuel Rincón es abogado, escritor, novelista y ensayista. Ganador de diversos premios literarios internacionales. Es editor-at-large en El American