Marx as Satanist

Updated @ 1:33AM

I had a conversation today with an acquaintance of mine who holds fairly right-of-center beliefs. I've had my suspicions for awhile, but I think I can finally prove that the man is nuts. Either that, or he's lying to me to try to get me to abandon my beliefs and see things his way. First, I should note that he believes that most academics and the "elite media" have a liberal bias. This is a page straight out of Buckley. Second, he thinks that a lot of the "progressive secular left" are subversives, and out to undermine the US gov't. This is a page straight out of Horowitz. However, today, I got the kicker.

He told me, with a straight face, that Marx was a satanist, and that Googling it would prove that he was right. So I Googled it (Marx poetry Satan, to be exact).

Most of the hits I've gotten are from zealously anti-communist religious sites that purport to demonstrate that Communism was, in fact, Satanism because atheists have to be satanists. The logic, if you can call it that, is that since atheists deny God, they're obviously working for Satan, because if you don't work for God, you work against him. This bifurcation sounds familiar...

Another lead I pursued (here) has strongly anti-semitic overtones. It even has lots of quotes. Alas, no actual sources for those quotes. But it does mention a book, Marx - Psychography by Arnold Kunzli. There is also this article which purports to show that Marx was a self-hating Jew and a racist, to boot. Then there's a .pdf at the von Mises Institute website (here) that explores the Christian eschatological roots of Marxism (and very well-written, too). While I think there are a lot of points of comparison, and it's possible that Marx was inspired by such thinking, given the social climate of Germany at the time (not to mention the rest of Europe and the US) and the general cultural backdrop against which he was writing, it's hardly surprising that he would channel some of these feelings.

Apparently, there's also a book, Marx & Satan by Richard Wurmbrand, that purports to show the satanic roots of Marxian communism.

In short, all manner of base slander, mostly written by people who can't grasp the concept that someone who has transcended religious belief, surrounded by people who still believe and bombarded by messages of hatred and anger, will be troubled psychologically because they belong to a small group of people who see a bright future if only people can be awakened from their torpor. As a child, in my late childhood/preteen years, I wanted to belong to a church because everyone else I knew did. I wanted to fit in. Sometime around High School, I suddenly decided that I didn't need to believe in God, just because that's what everyone else was doing. I could think for myself! This was a stunning revelation, one that came by degrees, but once I became aware of the implications I abandoned all need for the existence of a higher power. I could have become a Satanist, but I viewed it at the time (and still do) as a form of infantile rebellion. Many very well-meaning people, however, do not believe that it is possible to have morals and ethics without God. So you're constantly bombarded by "but why don't you believe in God?" and "but how can you know what's right or wrong?"

Simple: I was taught that certain things are right, and that certain things are wrong, and these beliefs were conditioned into me. Some of my conditioning (the US is a free country, capitalism is good, our political leaders have our best interests at heart) I have been able to overthrow, because it was not meaningful until later in life when I began to see that something was very seriously wrong with how the world worked. I also received counter-conditioning from my parents, especially my father. However, children are very sensitive to approval and rejection, and parents teach their children from a very early age how to behave. But does not everything have a cause?

I think that Humans are hard-wired for ethics. As social animals, we develop complex codes of behavior and signals that allow us to interact with one another without descending into chaos. Although Human society clearly shows a wide spectrum of acceptable behaviors, that certain acts are acceptable when targeted against certain groups and not against others is a constant. How these groups are constituted is the variable. But I digress.

So this acquaintance of mine either really believes that Marx was a Satanist, or he's lying to me. Either way, I think I'm going to sharply curtail my contact with him.

Update
During this conversation, he also told me that Morris Dees, one of the co-founders of the SPLC, had beaten his wife and sexually abused his stepdaughter. I did a little research on this one, and found that he had been accused of such by his wife, and that Stormfront was passing this off as God's honest truth. I don't mind new ideas, I don't mind having evidence presented to me that my beliefs are incorrect. I do, however, mind people trying to put one over on me.