June 13
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that plays a Project Veritas video that Refusefa is Antifa and that George Soros funds them. This appeared on Heidelblog.
Refusefa is not antifa. One only needs to read Refusefa's website, listen to their presentations, or look at the age demographics of its members to tell. I have street knowledge of Antifa. Clark doesn't have that.
I watched the video referred to in the video above. There is no proof that they were training anyone from Refusefa. Rather the only reference to Refusefa made is the following: Refusefa(Antifa) label made by Project Veritas which tries to conflate the two. In fact, video presentations like the one above should never be used as proof for a claim against a group because there is no way of knowing how the video was edited to make a point. Such videos, like the one above, at best should only be used to get people to start investigating claims
From here, we should note the factual reporting rating that Project Veritas has. According to Mediabiasfactcheck, Project Veritas has a mixed factual reporting rating because of some of its previous reports have been shown to be false (see https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/project-veritas/ ). Before one either accepts or rejects that report, one should look at the specifics as to why Project Veritas received such a rating, one should look at the specifics of the report.
An example of Project Veritas's work, one could look at their attempt to get the Washington Post to publish a false accusation against Roy Moore (see https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/washington-post/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-project-veritas/ ). But such is only one example. Other examples are needed to get a better picture of Project Veritas.
What does the above mean? For the Christian it means that if one is to avoid violating the commandment prohibiting bearing false witness, then one should consult other news sources and stories that confirm the accusations made by groups like Project Veritas. Otherwise, one has negligently, at best, or opportunistically, at worst, made oneself vulnerable to bearing false witness against a person or group.
Unfortunately , Clark makes no such effort to verify a claim made by a questionable source. Going back to the videos, what proof was given that Refusefa and Antifa are the same or even linked together. Antifa is a street fighting group. I have street experience with them because I met them before they became (in)famous. They see themselves as today's version of the communists who battled the Brown Shirts in Germany prior to Hitler coming to power. BTW, we should note that regarding the recent protests and riots, the FBI found no evidence that Antifa was involved in the recent rioting and destruction of property following the George Floyd murder. However, it was discovered that some of the destruction of property was committed by people who were trying to sabotage peaceful protests.
Refusefa also opposes fascism, but they do so peacefully through protests. In the principles page of their website, it explicitly states that Refusefa opposes fascism with NON-VIOLENT protests. Refusefa consists of a diverse group of people who are opposing what they see being done by the Trump/Pence Administration (see https://refusefascism.org/category/on-critical-questions/ ).
In relation to the Commandment prohibiting bearing false witness against one's neighbor, we should also note that George Soros is a favorite whipping boy of conservative conspiracy theorists According to some, he pays protesters but that has been shown to be false. In fact, in my 15 years of activism, I've never seen a protester who was paid just to protest in some event.
According to some, Soros and Hillary fund Black Lives Matter (BLM). But that was shown to be false for Soros and problematic for Hillary since BLM has publicly expressed serious disagreements with her.
Soros has founded Open Societies Foundation (see https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/ ) which gives grants to different groups as described in their website. A list of their awarded grants from 2016 to 2018 can be found on the following website (see https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/past ) and current grants can be found on the following website (see https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants?sort_by=name ).
We should note that some who want to incite fear create conspiracy stories while those who are truly afraid find it more difficult to tell the difference between fact and fantasy. They are not just the true victims and intentional targets of conspiracy theorists, they also tend to be vulnerable to whims of active authoritarian teachers and leaders. And that is something we should wonder about here since Clark has passed along unexamined accusations from a suspect news source about a activist group whose politics he obviously opposes. .
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June 14
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that consisted of a video of a Eastern European church planter as he talks about the effects of Communism in his nation. This appeared on Heidelblog.
Conservatism's biggest weakness is that it relies on oversimplifying problems and issues. The above is such an example.
One way Conservatism oversimplifies the subject of Communism is that it relies almost exclusively, if not exclusivity, on the past to define the present. In fact it relies on a partial view of the past. Thus Communism is reduced to what was tried in the past regardless of whether what was tried in the past was truly Marxist.
The Soviet Union and the nations behind the Iron Curtain experienced Bolshevik rule. We should note that the reason for the Soviet takeover of the eastern European nations was because of past invasions from the West. What is left unmentioned is that many socialists died because of either Bolshevik purges or opposing Bolshevik rule. And the Western Christian response to that is to equate what the Bolsheviks did with Communism regardless of vast differences between Bolshevism and what other socialists believed in. In fact, we could also point out the vast differences between Bolshevism and what Marx wrote.
What is also ignored are the sins of the West, especially the US. For most part Communist revolutions sought to overthrow tyrants who were supported by the West. The Tsars, French colonialism in Vietnam followed by dictators in South Vietnam, Batista in Cuba, and Somoza in Nicaragua provide some examples. In addition, many times the US replaced left-leaning democracies with harsh dictators. Examples include Iran (1953) with help from the UK, Guatemala (1954), Greece (1967), and Chile (1973).
See, in an overly simplistic world, citing Leftist opposition to tyranny whether it proceeded a revolution or was the result of Western intervention complicates the subject because now we have what were the good guys doing bad and the bad guys doing good. This complicates things.
In addition, the Sandinista rule over Nicaragua during the 1980s which started with the overthrow of the dictator Somoza introduced Nicaragua to democracy. It didn't work out because the US supported terrorist attacks on Nicaragua until the nation was so damaged and the Sandinistas were voted out.
And because Conservatism relies so much on the past to define the present, it has become blind to the changes in anti-Capitalism over the years. Those changes are described in Ezequiel Adamovsky's book, Anti-Capitalism.
Now the presenter was certainly correct in his comments on utopianism. And Marx was a utopian. But that doesn't make everything he said wrong. In addition, we might note that there are two kinds of utopianism: absolute and relative.
Marx believed in an absolute utopianism. But there are those who support relative utopias in the West. A relative utopia is one that is viewed as being so good that it cannot be improved on. And that is the view that many in the US have of Capitalism even though many of those people are unaware of the different kinds of Capitalism. Thus, there is a resistance to any changes to our capitalist economy because of the belief that it is the best and thus cannot be improved on.
And while the presenter talked about envy in both Communism and post-Communism, that envy is in the West too as it is especially evident in the decades-long growth in wealth disparity since the much of the world has embraced neoliberal capitalism.
Was there corruption in Communism? Of course, But is there any less corruption in the US, for example, when its economy relies on the maximization of profits philosophy? The causes for the economic collapse of 2008 were largely due to corruption. And the almost recent study showing how the US is now more of an oligarchy than a democracy (see )https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ). Do we honestly think that such a transition occurred without envy, greed, and corruption?
There are many other problems with the video presentation that could be mentioned, but that would only take up too much time. In short, the video presentation is simply an example of opportunism, this time by conservatives, to take a shallow look at Communism/Socialism in order to discredit it. And while the presenter wants to speak to those in the US who are considering Marxism, he fails to listen to why they would do so. The why might be that Capitalism has failed too many people in the West.
Finally, we need to address the issue of religion here. Church history is replete with examples of the dominant branch of the Church for a given nation siding with wealth and power at the expense of others. When that occurred prior to a revolution, revolutionaries naturally believed that the Church contributed to the suffering of others and was the enemy of the people. Marxists have responded in different ways to that. For example, Lenin observed how many Russians Christians from the Church there ignored and failed to help workers who were suffering because of the economic system. His response to the Church was to label it as an enemy of change.
Rosa Luxemburg, however, pleaded with Christians to join the cause and side with the workers who were suffering greatly in Russia. In Latin America, Liberation Theologians combined liberal Christianity with some of Marxism. So Marxism has been able to mix with religion. BTW, some of those Latin American Liberation Theologians were assassinated by Latin American fighters who were trained in the US.
It is sad that on a Christian blog, honesty on this subject is in very short supply. Why? It is because of opportunism, a similar kind of opportunism demonstrated by people like Lenin and Mao only there was no dictatorship that followed. Rather, there was just a hiding of the truth and an attempt to control thinking.
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