When Americans defend free markets, they analyze real-world outcomes and quote economists. When radicals defend communism, they ignore history and those who experienced it firsthand.
The omissions are deliberate. Survivors of communist regimes are dangerous to the argument because they are proof of its outcome. They know what happens after the government acquires the power it promised to use only for the public good.
I recently gathered survivors of communist regimes in the Capitol to hear their stories. They came from Cuba, Venezuela, the Soviet Union and China. One endured torture in prison. Another watched grocery shelves empty as his community decayed. Others saw schools converted into instruments of indoctrination and churches treated as enemies of the state.
THE MEN WHO FLED THESE SOCIALIST REGIMES HAVE A TERRIFYING WARNING
José Daniel Ferrer spent more than 12 years in Cuban prisons. He endured physical and psychological torture, and watched fellow citizens die from the same abuse and malnutrition he experienced. He understands the deception communists employ that made those prisons possible.
“Its the best evidence that the communists who try to get to power in democratic nations are scam artists,” Ferrer said. “Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez denied what they were until they had secured power.”
Castro denied being a communist before consolidating power for himself. Chávez sold himself as a democratic reformer before turning Venezuela into an authoritarian state. The radical label is hidden while votes are needed, then embraced once the institutions capable of restraining them have been weakened.
We see the same deception among American politicians who call themselves “Democratic Socialists.” They insist the label separates them from communism while embracing the concentration of economic and political power that has defined every communist movement.
DEMOCRATS’ SOCIALIST SURGE PROVES AMERICA’S 250-YEAR FIGHT FOR FREEDOM ISN’T OVER
Communisms advocates respond to witnesses like Ferrer by reaching for an excuse. They blame sanctions, corruption, foreign interference or the supposed betrayal of an otherwise noble idea. Their theory is always innocent. The people who suffered under it are somehow mistaken about what happened to them.
Daniel Di Martinos family suffered from the same communist deception in Venezuela. Before the Bolivarian Revolution, they had an apartment, steady work, and an ordinary middle-class life. Then the promises were replaced by empty shelves and government rationing. Milk disappeared from stores. Meat became scarce. The government assigned citizens shopping days and required them to scan their fingerprints before determining what they were allowed to purchase. This is how communist control enters daily life. It doesnt always begin with soldiers in the streets. Sometimes, its just a few regulations at the grocery store.
SOCIALISM WILL ‘CONTROL PEOPLE’ AND ‘TAKE EVERYTHING AWAY’ FROM AMERICA, ACCORDING TO THESE EXPATS
“The common denominator is that they destroy
