Jan Jekielek

I mean, it just, it was a, it was a, it was a fascinating, fascinating, uh, uh, documentary to make one, a bunch of awards, highly recommended finding many.com.

Right.

Like, why does it always go there?

Why does it always end up there?

This is your question.

You know, it's a... I would say two-thirds of my book try to kind of wrestle with this exact situation.

One piece is that the Communist Party always tries to put itself in the place actually of God, of what traditionally the place where, you know, we, for example, if you happen to be Christian,

You understand that there's going to be a final judgment and that you have to be accountable according to the rules that are found in the Bible.

And it doesn't matter what government is out there.

You know that there's a higher power that's going to be your judge.

So even if your government is forcing you to do terrible things, you have something that will restrain you, which is those rules and ultimately your creator, as you think about it.

in communism communists and and actually want to put that system put the party in the position of god and that has a whole a series of terrible effects one of them is you end up with this utilitarianism that i just described right you don't have this that every human being is made in the image of god you have something where you know

human beings ultimately can be reduced to just kind of chattel, to something material that can be used, okay?

It's not quite that simple because as human beings, we also, not all of us are psychopaths and ready to use other human beings that way.

So there's also this incredible ability and I guess sort of effectiveness in communist societies to use propaganda to dehumanize a particular group of people.

In communist societies, there's always someone

that's sort of the external enemy, right?

And you'll look at 1984, you find exactly the same pattern.

And there's someone that's the internal enemy.

Now for China, the specifics are this, that the external enemy is always the United States.