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[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The news was shocking beyond measure: a man went on a stabbing spree at a playground in the French city of Annecy last Thursday, stabbing four three-year-olds and an adult. The attacker shouted “In the name of Jesus Christ” as he did his stabbing and claimed to be a Christian. He even had a made-to-order Christian name: Abdelmasih Hanoun; “Abdelmasih” means “Slave of Christ.”It was suspicious and contrived, but it did seem to confirm the Leftist elites’ claim that the largest terror threat comes from right-wing Christians. There was just one catch: some people have recognized Abdelmasih Hanoun and say that he is actually a Muslim. I know, knock me over with a feather, right?
The French-language news site Resistance Républicaine reported Monday that “Syrians living in France and Germany” have recognized the attacker as a “madman of Allah,” and that the identification has been confirmed by others as well. The attacker, according to those who have recognized him, is actually a Muslim named Selwan Majd, “a refugee from Al-Hasakah in northern Syria.”The chain of events that culminated with the stabbing of the children was set in motion when he “traveled to Turkey with false papers.” Once there, “he met a Swedish tourist and made her believe he was a Muslim convert to Christianity.” Love, or something, blossomed, and Turkey was no place to hang around in when big, beautiful Europe was beckoning.The happy couple made their way to Sweden, where Majd married his Swedish bride, using the name “Abdelmasih Hanoun” and claiming to be a Christian. However, “the Swedish authorities doubted him,” with good reason as it turns out, “and refused to grant him citizenship.” Later, his Swedish wife left him, and he made his way to France. Once there, “he went to seek help in a church but the church also doubted him.”
Resistance Républicaine also notes that numerous refugees have given European authorities a great deal of false information. That’s certainly true. In Sweden several years ago, it was revealed that 5,460 of 7,000 Afghan “child migrants” were actually adults. In Britain, more than 2,000 adult migrants have been caught lying about their age and pretending to be children. Many migrants have claimed to be Christian, thinking that doing so would help their claim for asylum. Back in 2021, also in Britain, a man Enzo Almeni, who had converted to Christianity to get asylum in Britain, returned to Islam and became a jihad suicide bomber.
If the people who say they have recognized Selwan Majd are correct, it would certainly explain the anomalies of this peculiar case, which from the beginning seemed less like an actual case of Christian terrorism than a Muslim’s idea of what a Christian terrorist might be like. The attacker’s shout of “In the name of Jesus Christ” was all too obviously meant to be a parallel to the jihadis’ ubiquitous scream of “Allahu akbar.” But when has any Christian anywhere committed acts of violence while screaming this phrase? It was just too neat, suggesting not so much a Christian terrorist as someone who wanted very much to be thought of as a Christian terrorist.
The Christian name that the attacker used, Abdelmasih, was likewise a bit too obvious as if its whole point here again was to make onlookers aware that this individual was a Christian. During pauses between the attacks, he ostentatiously fingered a cross he was wearing around his neck, as if he wanted to make sure that people noticed it. But try to think of another instance of a cross-wearing Christian shouting about Christ and fingering a cross while stabbing people. This has, of course, never, ever happened, while Muslims screaming about Allah while stabbing people is all too common.
We don’t know why, if this report is accurate, Selwan Majd decided to pose as a Christian and stab random children. He may have been angered and disappointed by the failure of his pose as a Christian to gain him asylum in Sweden and France. Or maybe this was his plan all along: Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, famously said “War is deceit” (Bukhari 4.52.268).
Ultimately, however, we may never know the full story of this case, because once it stopped being a case of Christian terrorism, it no longer fit the media paradigm. Another Muslim migrant in Europe runs around stabbing random people? That’s not news; that’s an all too familiar feature of life in the brave new multicultural Europe.
The terrorist is a trans-Christian. He just wanted to play his terrorist game in an easier league than Syria. Stabbing unarmed infants were his way to make the cut to paradise. He forgot they couldn’t make him a martyr.
False Flag attack, as usual.
As always the M.S. Media fakes and fabricates the whole thing
AS if there was any doubt he is a muslim terrorist. Making mockery of Christians as as well.
How many churches have the muslim terrorists have burned in France again?
Christians, just like Muslims, historically engaged in violence against infidels, blasphemers, and heretics. They burned them at the stake and tortured them on the rack, they put them in prison, and they excommunicated them.
When men choose to believe in the unprovable, the indemonstrable, the illogical, the supernatural, the mystical, there is no way to convince an unbeliever by means of rational argument and persuasion and violence becomes the only alternative.
Why is there so very little violence today by Christians? Because, unlike the Muslim East, the West has been predominantly secular since the Age of Enlightenment. By “secular” I mean guided by the facts of reality by using reason and logic to discover the facts of reality. By “predominant” I mean only predominant, not completely. Man has free will, and rationality is a constant choice, at any time an individual and his society can choose the irrational such was the case with the French Terror, the Nazi Dark Age, and the Soviet Dark Age.
“Western civilization was the child and product of reason—via ancient Greece. In all other civilizations, reason has always been the menial servant—the handmaiden—of mysticism. You may observe the results. It is only Western culture that has ever been dominated—imperfectly, incompletely, precariously and at rare intervals—but still, dominated by reason. You may observe the results of that.
The conflict of reason versus mysticism is the issue of life or death—of freedom or slavery—of progress or stagnant brutality. Or, to put it another way, it is the conflict of consciousness versus unconsciousness.” – Ayn Rand
So now we know where you get your flawed opinion of the Greeks and their “contribution” to Western Civilization
Greek philosophy, your supposed foundation and bedrock of the rational and scientific beginnings and aspects of Western Civilization, folded like a cheap suit in the face of the spread of Christianity, which absorbed the teachings of your pagan heroes.
Your heroes worshiped many Gods. So what is your problem with God? Without Christianity Greek history would resemble those ruins that everyone takes selfies at. Without Christianity no would remember or care about the Greeks.
Another epic fail on your part. What a surprise.
Ayn Rand was obviously not an historian. Neither are you, just as obviously. But you have the advantage of being alive, so you can read a book. I have another reading assignment for you: Ben Shapiro’s “The Right Side of History”. Try it. You might find it refreshingly different from your usual fare.
“Christianity and violence”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence
Anyone who is still using the Leftist Wikipedia in this woke day and age, obviously cannot possibly grasp reason and reality, much as you would like to think you have the ultimate lock on it. How consummately and intellectually lazy of you.
But I am not surprised. An leftist atheist and fraud like you will use anything to get their warped version of reality into the societal blood stream.
Can we take a quick trip back to reality or do we have to hold over in the dark ages?
THX lives for the past. By constantly bringing up the non-existent “Christian Dark Ages” from 800-500 years ago he really thinks he can tarnish all 2000 years of Christianity
The so-called “dark ages” were filled with light. They were a fascinating period of history, replete with a rich literary and intellectual heritage.
Your stupidity is profound, THX. It is a wonder that one who touts himself as governed by “reality” and “reason” is completely deceived or worse, stupid (which cannot be cured). Someone here paraphrased an Upton Sinclair quote that says, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his desires depends upon his not understanding it.” That is you to a “T”HX.
What you argue for, ultimately, is the rule of man. For you, reason is “man’s mind.” Men using unaided reason to govern tend toward evil and the love of power. They oppress the “unreasonable” to conform to an arbitrary standard. Much as you do by keyboard in this forum.
If this is NOT so, then you would have to prove that morality comes from reason. That Reason can provide an unswerving standard upon which the rule of law can be established. If Reason cannot give us morality, then Reason is not enough upon which to base civilization.
Challenge re-issued: Dispute any of Dr. Kreeft’s arguments with reason and evidence. Do so without making bald assertions of opinion, which are never evidence.
https://www.prageru.com/video/where-do-good-and-evil-come-from
Dear Kynarion, I gave you my answer to this question and yet here you go again raising the same philosophical issue. What am I to do if you refuse to even acknowledge that I have answered your question? It’s one thing not to understand my answer, it’s another thing not to even admit that an answer has been provided.
Should I proceed once again to give you the answer, so that once again you can refuse to acknowledge that I have answered your question?
And not only that you keep calling me STUPID, when you throw personal insults at me it signals unseriousness and malice. Just like the malice of you encouraging “Intrepid” to keep throwing insults at me.
Maybe she didn’t like your answer. Guess what, you aren’t her boss and you certainly aren’t my boss. And I was here before Kynarion. She does not encourage me to do anything. But I do like her writing style.
So your response is to act like a hurt little girly man and whine about personal insults. I guess you think your endless daily insults hurled at Christians aren’t personal. They are. So don’t be surprised if those insults get turned back on you.
I guess that is why you stay in your room. If you actually had the guts to go out and insult Christians to their faces you would end up with a black eye, a fat lip, or worse.
Here’s a hint: no one understands your simpering, self-involved answers.
So what are you to do, poor little man? Maybe just go away and stop trying to justify a moribund philosophy that will never take hold, especially from an obsessive Section 8 like you.
Your answer was a non-answer. Another cut-and-paste screed. If you want people to believe in Objectivism, then you must be more than a parasite upon the fumes Christian culture. You must show paradise requires no more than men to be governed by reason, defined as “man’s mind.”
Your way leads to tyranny in which “unreasonable” people have less or no value, because, in the words of Ayn Rand, they are “no better than animals.” It will be the rule of man designated “most rational.”
Your constant spouting of falsehoods about history and Christianity, even in the face of overwhelming countervailing facts is nothing less than willful stupidity, not ignorance. For example, you insist upon defining faith as “belief without knowledge or reason.” I have challenged you to find even a single example of the Bible defining faith in that manner. You cannot. So what is the reasonable, logical conclusion to be drawn from this fact? The Bible actually says quite a lot about faith. Are you stupid, or just willingly ignorant?
You have no answer. Prove to the crowd here that there is a REASON to believe your inane and ignorant ravings.
I have no malice, THX. I will let others judge whether my challenges or communications to you are “unserious.” I think there is hope for you. You might one day confront the very things, the very Person whom you so hate, slander and ignore to your peril. Sometimes love requires very tough, even terrible measures delivered with hard, ugly, beautiful truth.
How does a body dead for three days come back to life then rise through the sky to a supernatural, eternal, utopia?
How did Moses part the Red Sea? How did Noah find two kangaroos and two platypuses in the Middle East?
How does an Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth happen?
Only FAITH the belief devoid or reason, logic, and reality can make someone believe this magical thinking, supernatural, absurdities.
Go ahead, rationally convince me that it is NOT blind faith and magical thinking that these absurdities are based on!
As Christians it is not our job to convince you of anything re: your favorite ridicule list of the pillars of Judaism and Christianity
More people believe these things than will ever believe your crackpot revisionist version of historical Western Civilization. you are no better than Nicole Hannah Jones and her moronic 1619 Project.
You will never get what you want re: a following, because you are a petty, jealous, vile, ignorant excuse for a person.
“What you argue for, ultimately, is the rule of man.”
Kynarion, that is some keen insight. We have seen over and over again what happens when God is abandoned and man is put up on a God-like pedestal.
Back in the 60s there was English movie entitled “Billy Budd” about an ordinary seaman who kills the ship’s corrupt first officer. The sailor had been pressed onto the HMS Avenger from a smaller merchant vessel named the Rights of Man. Ultimately Billy Budd is hanged for the killing in spite of the ships officers wringing their hands about the injustice of the first officer to Budd. The film takes place during THX’s beloved Enlightenment when the actual rights of man meant very little…..anywhere.
The French Revolution was probably the ultimate act of the Enlightenment, where God was thrown aside and set the stage ultimately for the Godless Marxist movement of the mid 1800s.
So much for the rights of man.
I only faintly remember “Billy Bud.” I must watch it again. Thank you for the reminder. I watched a wonderful movie the other night called “Three Thousand Years of Longing.” Wonderfully rendered with good music, camera, writing, acting, etc. Streaming now on several platforms. If you get to watch, try to choose one that has subtitles for the few short scenes in which ancient languages are spoken. Paramount+ has those subtitles.
I left THX alone for a long time. Did not even read beyond the first glimpse of his name. Perhaps I should return to that more peaceful place. But his constant slander of the LORD and misrepresentation of Christianity, morality, reason, the enlightenment, history, etc. ad nauseam borders on the criminal. He is not lukewarm or disinterested, but very passionate. He will not be spewed, if you get my drift. He remains in the awful embrace of his strong delusion, unable or unwilling to put together that reality with the use of his evidence-based reason. No one likes to be pitied, and so when my pity turns to disgust or anger, I feel I should speak.
Good to hear from you. I had noticed you were not responding to him. You have more patience than I do as I have none for this contemptible individual. But I’m glad you are back in the fight.
I have seen him getting more angry over time as his message fails to resonate. I don’t know where he thinks he gets the right to denigrate us to the extent that he does. It varies from what he thinks is humorous ridicule during Holy Week and Christmas to his outright contempt the rest of the time. As if that will gain him adherents.
Maybe he thinks it will insight his fellow atheists to physically attack us. I know it sounds contradictory to my previous paragraph but it may be working, at least among the trans-freaks. But it may spread. The guy who shot up the Pittsburgh synagogue was just found guilty on 63 Fed charges in prison. Atheists get angry at the drop of a hat. The most recent notable was Audrey Hale. Of course THX will deny his motives.
Personally I think he is the personification of evil. He really needs professional help. 20-30 years ago he would have been living in a mental institution.
I’ll try to find your film recommendation.
“Billy Budd” is an exquisite little novella written by Herman Melville; I remember reading it in high school and understanding the casus belli for the War of 1812 far better.
“Billy Budd” was the first really well done film about the 19th C. English Navy IMHO. I was a kid when I saw it but it has remained with me throughout my life. I was even able to get a copy on VHS and then transfered it to DVD.
Personally I though Budd should not have been hanged.
You will say anything to disparage Christianity, with a sop to Islam to keep yourself in check with the Muslims so they don’t behead you. You are, and will always be, a coward.
Who says the West has been predominantly secular since the Age of Enlightenment? You? The Church in Europe was doing just fine during the Enlightenment. Science was doing just fine as well and the two existed concurrently.
And yet their were also the endless wars in Europe. I guess those wars were inspired by reason only. Tell that to King Sobieski.
Fortunately the world doesn’t fit neatly into your shoehorned world of pre and post Enlightenment.
The West is “Enlightenmentally” secular now, thanks to the Atheist Left. What passes for science and reason today, is what passed for science and reason in the old Soviet Union. Science quackery. People get to choose their own gender, men can have babies, masks protect us from Covid and, stray from the party line, and you get canceled and fired. You and your kind have done a great job. Congratulations, jerk.
That this guy was never a Christian was obvious from the beginning. No Christian would ever invoke Christ’s name to stab children. Of course, no Christian would ever believe that every woman (including the Mother of God) would have the right to abortion up to and after birth. They might, as this fellow did, claim to be Christians. But they are not.
Christians don’t generally think of ourselves as “slaves” of Christ. Servants, brothers and sisters, followers of Christ, yes. But “slaves”? Not so much.
Actually, God often uses the term translated “slave” to describe his people and prophets. And there were different kinds of slaves designated by different words. The word God uses most often is the lowest form of slave — the slave of slaves. Only Moses was, at times, designated as God’s friend – a very high honor conferred on no one else.
The Legacy Standard Bible, a recent literal translation, corrects the western misunderstanding of our relationship to God by consistently translating the word for “slave” as “slave.”
Your relationship with God will be characterized by the way you understand Him. Jesus was indeed our friend and brother. But Jesus also is God, the great I AM, a consuming fire, who created all that is, invisible and invisible. The same hands stretched out on the cross stretched out the heavens with the Logos of His power. John, who leaned upon Jesus’ breast at the last supper fell down as a dead man at Jesus’ feet when he saw Him in His glory. Fear and awe are proper in our relationship with God.
So Kynarion’s exegesis is the correct exegesis and how can we be sure of that? If someone else gives a different exegesis how can anyone be certain which exegesis is really what Jesus and God meant?
Christians persecuted, killed, and waged war with each other over exegesis.
How can we be sure anyone using words can be accurately understood?
What do I say to KenPF that you judge as poor exegesis? What is the better exegesis and why?
What Christian wars do you believe were fought over exegesis?
You have no answers or understanding, THX. Not really. Because “It is difficult to get THX to understand something when his desires depends upon his not understanding it.” You are a slave of your desire – the opposite of manly virtue.
Your mind is flaccid, parasitic and unreasoning. Prove me wrong. Without a Rand or Peikoff quote, can you answer my simple questions?
“Christians persecuted, killed, and waged war with each other over exegesis.”
Always living in the past to justify your neurotic, sclerotic, selective bigotry.
So did the Jews. So what.
The only ones you never go after are the Muslims, because you are a coward.
I was wrong. Moses and Abraham were both designated as friends of God. Apologies.
KenPF, I have gotten into a tiff with THX over my comment to you. I want you to know that I do not disagree with you. What you say is true! It even makes me a little jealous of you.
I do love the LORD, but I am also very much in fear also. The idea of standing and looking at the very face of God, when even the Holy Angels do not look upon His face, fills me with wonder, longing and quite a lot of FEAR. The LORD says no one can see His face and live. Ex. 33:20
It’s rather obvious which is that dangerous and violent guy from Syria is a Muslim terrorist who is masquerading as a “Christian” to give Christians and Christianity a bad name. Those actions of violence he committed are in direct contrast to the teachings of Jesus, Mathew 5::7.-9.
Matthew 10:34 “Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.”
No group of Christians in the whole history of Christianity as far as I know has ever simply, only, and exclusively followed the precise words of Jesus and only his words. They have relied on the whole Bible, the Old and the New Testament, and since the Bible is filled with contradictions they have had to rely on subjective interpretation and subjective exegesis to figure out what to follow.
The Bible is filled with contradictions and can be interpreted in contradictory ways, Christians persecuted and killed each other for centuries over exegesis and orthodoxy.
“No group of Christians in the whole history of Christianity as far as I know has ever simply, only, and exclusively followed the precise words of Jesus and only his words.”
As far as you know? Since you know next to nothing about Christianity except for what anti-Christian screeds tell you, perhaps you should keep your bigotry to yourself.
He doesn’t even know how to answer a question with reason and evidence. He simply re-states his erroneous opinions – as though that settles it. I guess when you believe your mind is reason itself. then your opinions have the weight of fact. Stunning. And yes, he actually defined “reason” as “man’s mind.”
His little quote of Matthew 10 is Jesus describing how the non-Christian world will hate and persecute Christians. Exactly what THX is doing with his hateful, ignorant screeds. He eisegetes it to mean Christians will persecute one another — exactly as I predicted he would. You would think he would be a little more clever.
You would think you would know Christian history like the 300 years of massacres and wars of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation.
Clearly THX thinks he’s John Galt. I’ve got news for him: I know who John Galt is, and it ain’t him.
“You would think you would know Christian history like the 300 years of massacres and wars of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation.”
Since you insist on repeating the same tired criticisms over and over again, as if that justifies your hatred of Christianity today, it would be helpful if you would man up and say the same things about Muslims.
But you won’t and we all know why. You aren’t a man. You are basically nothing.
Okay. You have now twice asserted a naked opinion – that Christian wars were fought over exegesis. I have asked for one evidentiary example. I have predicted you would come up with zilch, zero nada as you have done. Just as you have done when I asked for one example in Scripture of faith being “reason without evidence” or “leading to knowledge.” You are limp and helpless in the face of these simple questions.
Can you not come up with even one example of that which you assert so ardently? If you cannot, then is it possible that your brain is corralled in autonomic functions? I thought man’s mind was reason itself? Surely reason and evidence must support your allegations?
Dear Kynarion, please explain the following to me by using reason, logic, science, and the facts of reality —
How does a body dead for three days come back to life then rise through the sky to a supernatural, eternal, utopia?
How did Moses part the Red Sea? How did Noah find two kangaroos and two platypuses in the Middle East?
How does an Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth happen?
You think your belief in a closed system – the natural world of the senses, contains nothing more than what you can perceive. Is this not hubris?
I believe there is much more to reality than what I know or what I can perceive with my physical senses and brain.
I believe in things like immutable truth and unchanging morality. This requires belief in something beyond man, who is evanescent and changing while he lives.
The universe, with all its beauty, complexity, order and balance gives powerful evidence of intentionality rather than chaos and chance. This is the evidence of nature.
Jesus claimed to be God. He did things and said things that only God could do and say (without lying or madness). Liar, lunatic or Lord.
You say you are selfish, and yet you will not invest in the one thing that could bring you more than you could ever desire or wish.
You are pitiable. I need to retreat again. No one tolerates pity well.
Maybe I could climb out of pity for you if you could give one evidentiary example of your claims that faith is “belief without evidence or reason”? Or perhaps you could identify one war between Christians killing each other over exegesis? I know these are cherished beliefs of yours, which you need for your own comfort – but reality doesn’t care about your cherished preferences.
Good luck, THX. And God bless you. I mean it. He loves people like you.
I can answer one of those: Moses did not part the sea. That was Charlton Heston. In the real world, G0d parted the sea.
Anyone who actually reads the Bible knows that the sword of Christ is His tongue that slays Satan and sin. Those who pick a verse to prove falsehoods about God do satan’s work. By their fruits, you shall know them.
The faithful trust that, in God’s good time, the Holy Spirit will enter the hearts of those who will be saved, and they will spend eternity in heaven, separated forever from the unsaved – whose eternal fate is just and dreadful.
The Bible actually speaks with an amazingly consistent, unified voice. Many “contradictions” are easily resolved by context. Go ahead and give an example. I am waiting….
Dear Kynarion, please explain the following to me by using reason, logic, science, and the facts of reality —
How does a body dead for three days come back to life then rise through the sky to a supernatural, eternal, utopia?
How did Moses part the Red Sea? How did Noah find two kangaroos and two platypuses in the Middle East?
How does an Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth happen?
Do not fall for the “Dear Kynarion” garbage. He is being condescending to you and he is ridiculing the pillars of faith in Judaism and Christianity. And it’s the second time he has done that in the same thread.
You asked him why the Christian wars were fought and he had no answers. But he expects and demands answers to his childish Sunday School questions. In other words he doesn’t want to play fair. you got him on that. Well done.
He doesn’t want an answer and he won’t accept the concept of faith. In his limited world everything must be defined by logic and “reason”…..his version of reason. That is why he told me that Spock is his favorite Star Trek character.
I love the paraphrased Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his desires depends upon his not understanding it.”
I would extend that to “when his desires and desperation depend on his not wanting to understand it.” He is lost in an Objectivist fantasy world of his own making. I doubt that even Rand went off the deep end as clearly as THX has. But I don’t know for sure and don’t much care.
I know he is being condescending, but I am one of those people who cares very little about the opinions of others. I begin to care when the opinion comes from someone who brings facts and reason to the table. He never does this. Or, I care about the opinion when coming from someone who knows me well and is motivated by love for me. Those people I can count on one hand.
This forum has people who know more than I and are obviously very intelligent. When they push back on me, I am grateful to learn more and adjust my opinion accordingly. I have no shame when I am ignorant or my thinking is lacking. I find the older I get, the less my shame in these things as the field of what I understand I do not know gets larger and larger.
The gifts of different people are also palpable here. I love to read what “Algo” says because he is very strong in aptitudes where I am weak and his opinions are always strongly evidentiary and precise. He also has deep gratitude, which always comes from wisdom. I love Jeff Bargholz, because he is raw, passionate and intelligent with a gift for nicknames and boiling information down to a point with flare (usually crude!). I love your indefatigable energy and intolerance for stupidity – something that takes too much energy for me, but your intolerance is beautiful to me.
I am motivated by love and hope for THX. He does not understand the way I love, and is mostly disgusted and angry with me – but doesn’t that make him perfect for the One who died while we were unrighteous sinners? When I “slap” him, it is a form of tough love, because he refuses to use the tool of reason to think things through. This makes sense in an odd way. If “man’s mind” is reason, then everything he thinks is “reasonable.” That would also explain why he spouts naked opinions and wonders why everyone does not applaud. Did not his mind produce it? Is it not therefore “reasonable”?
Not once has he ever been able to answer my questions aimed at exposing the underlying weaknesses of the foundations of his beliefs (which I devoted a few weeks to uncovering). He cannot extrapolate his core beliefs to anything other than the rule of “reasonable” men and a relative morality based upon the “reason” of rational men. This is no different than any tyrannical communist society which he claims to hate.