Over 60 years ago Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev declared: “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.” While America and the West were able to outlive the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991, and hence appeared to have defied the prediction, it appears that today in 2021 Khrushchev’s words are indeed coming true. And it is another Russian, President Vladimir Putin, who has dared to speak the truth that the “progressive elites” of America and the West do not want to hear—that the neo-Marxist ideologies of identity politics and the LGBT agenda truly are doing what Soviet communism could not do–destroy the West from within.
In a speech before the Valdai Discussion Club on October 22, 2021, President Putin noted how “progressivism” is destroying the West and how the actions of “progressives” have eerie parallels to what the Bolsheviks did after they took power in Russia in 1917. He stated:
“We look in amazement at the processes underway in the countries which have been traditionally looked at as the standard-bearers of progress…Some people in the West believe that an aggressive elimination of entire pages from their own history, ‘reverse discrimination’ against the majority in the interests of a minority, and the demand to give up the traditional notions of mother, father, family and even gender, they believe that all of these are the mileposts on the path towards social renewal.”
While progressives in the West may believe they are doing something truly novel, Putin noted that they are just merely repeating the same mistakes the communists made over 100 years ago:
“The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness. Godspeed, hoist the flags as we say, go right ahead. The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all. It may come as a surprise to some people, but Russia has been there already. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones–all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today. By the way, the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs.”
Putin then discussed how political correctness and identity politics are leading to crazy absurdities:
“Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices which we, fortunately, have left–I hope–in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity when the works of the great authors of the past–such as Shakespeare–are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood, memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what color or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
He then remarked how identity politics is perverting the work of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Countering acts of racism is a necessary and noble cause, but the new ‘cancel culture’ has turned it into ‘reverse discrimination’; that is, reverse racism. The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people, when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin color. I specifically asked my colleagues to find the following quote from Martin Luther King: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.’ This is the true value. However, things are turning out differently there. By the way, the absolute majority of Russian people do not think that the color of a person’s skin or their gender is an important matter. Each of us is a human being. This is what matters.”
He then commented on how the radical ideology of transgenderism is leading the West down a path of destruction:
“In a number of Western countries, the debate over men’s and women’s rights has turned into a perfect phantasmagoria. Look, beware of going where the Bolsheviks once planned to go–not only communalizing chickens, but also communalizing women. One more step and you will be there. Zealots of these new approaches even go so far as to want to abolish these concepts altogether. Anyone who dares mention that men and women actually exist–which is a biological fact–risk being ostracized. “Parent number one” and “parent number two,” “’birthing parent” instead of “mother,” and “human milk” replacing “breastmilk” because it might upset the people who are unsure about their own gender. I repeat, this is nothing new. In the 1920s, the so-called Soviet Kulturtraegers also invented some newspeak believing they were creating a new consciousness and changing values that way. And, as I have already said, they made such a mess it still makes one shudder at times.”
Tragically, he noted how progressives are targeting transgenderism at the young:
“[T]ruly monstrous things [are] when children are taught from an early age that a boy can easily become a girl and vice versa. That is, the teachers actually impose on them a choice we all supposedly have. They do so while shutting the parents out of the process and forcing the child to make decisions that can upend their entire life. They do not even bother to consult with child psychologists–is a child at this age even capable of making a decision of this kind? Calling a spade a spade, this verges on a crime against humanity, and it is being done in the name and under the banner of progress.”
If the West does not learn from the communist experience in Russia and repudiate these ideologies of identity politics and the radical LGBT agenda, Putin remarked, it risks going down the same ruinous path:
“Again, for us in Russia, these are not some speculative postulates, but lessons from our difficult and sometimes tragic history. The cost of ill-conceived social experiments is sometimes beyond estimation. Such actions can destroy not only the material, but also the spiritual foundations of human existence, leaving behind moral wreckage where nothing can be built to replace it for a long time.”
In his speech before the Valdai Discussion Club, Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced what many conservatives in the West have been saying for years: that the progressive neo-Marxist ideologies of identity politics and the LGBT agenda are destroying America and the West just like communism destroyed Russia in the 20th century. While progressive elites in the West will write off Putin’s remarks as just mere propaganda, this does not mean that his words are untrue; even a flawed messenger can perceptively see the truth. Let us hope that people in America and the West will head Putin’s warnings and not repeat the same tragic mistakes the Bolsheviks made in Russia that ended up destroying that country “from within.”