I watched the movie, Oppenheimer, the biographical story of Dr. J Robert Oppenheimer and his work on the Manhattan Project which built the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan at the end World War 2. The director, Christopher Nolan made some interesting choices in the movie, as he spent more time on Oppenheimer’s communist leanings and affiliations, then on his work to create a history altering weapon. The movie presented so much of Oppenheimer’s communist past that at times, I felt like I was re-watching the 1981 Warren Beatty film, Reds.
As Oppenheimer worked on the project, he wrestled with the moral dilemma of creating a weapon that promised to end World War 2, but was so powerful that it could kill hundreds of thousands of people. He feared what would happen if the weapon fell into the hands of the wrong people. That’s why the United States military was in such a rush to build the bomb. They were trying to beat the Nazis who were working on one themselves and they knew the existential threat it posed if Hitler got his hands on the bomb first. The horror of his creation became real to Oppenheimer after the United States dropped two on Japan, killing over 100 thousand innocent lives.
Ever since, we have been plagued with the question, should we have dropped the bomb on Japan or not? It is hard to justify the killing of 100,000 civilians, but it was believed at the time, that the only way Japan would have surrendered was if we invaded and took over their country. It was estimated that over 500,000 allied soldiers would have been killed and hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens would have died in a total land war. So, it can be argued that the weapon which killed over 100,000 Japanese actually saved many more lives.
Oppenheimer was haunted for the rest of his life with the knowledge that the device he created had killed so many innocent lives. The question I had that the movie never addressed was, did Oppenheimer ever have the same type of reckoning about his communist beliefs as he did with the creation of the atomic bomb? The record of the history of the 20th century is crystal clear, communism was the deadliest force in the world, even deadlier than the atomic bomb. While the A-bomb tragically killed over 100,000 people, communism killed over 100 million people. And people like Oppenheimer who supported communism throughout the 20th century cannot escape responsibility for those atrocities.
Oppenheimer understood and feared the concentration of so much power in one bomb, but failed to recognize how deadly the concentration of political power in one place can also be. Like the atomic bomb, communism in the hands of the wrong people, in the hands of someone evil, someone without regard for life, someone who wants to rule the world, is an existential threat, as we saw with Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot. That is the genius of the United States system of government, the decentralization of power. But sadly, too many of our leaders continue to work against the very principle of government that has brought so much stability, peace and prosperity to America.
And here we are, not too far removed from the atrocities that communism inflicted on the world in the 20th century and many Americans are once again embracing communism. The deadliest political ideology in the history of the world, never gets cancelled and rarely gets exposed for what it really is. Why don’t we ever have an honest conversation about communism? Why are the atrocities of communism rarely addressed? Why is communism never put in the same category as Nazism or fascism? Why are the communist mass murders ignored? Why didn’t Oppenheimer’s communist affiliation stain him like Nazi affiliation would have? The far left in America has taken over all of our major institutions – the public schools, higher education, Hollywood, the music industry, the media. They control the narratives. They control the people. And they are pushing communism, as a way to lead to one world order.
Communism is always brought to America in a Trojan horse, whether it is class warfare, environmentalism, Critical Race Theory or Radical Gender Ideology – they are all rooted in communism. Communism requires total conformity. There is no true freedom or real autonomy in communism. The state runs everything and tries to indoctrinate everyone.
That is why so many young people on college campuses are pro-Palestinian. They don’t care about the Palestinians. They have been taught to hate the state of Israel because Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. And for the Marxist totalitarians to take over the world, they have to destroy all the democracies in the world. They tolerate the Arab nations for now because the Arab nations are all dictatorships, and they will be much easier for communist totalitarians to take over because their people are already subjugated. They simply have to shift the ideology.
That’s why the Marxists are supporting the mass migration of Third World people into Western countries, like Europe and the United States. They don’t care about the illegal immigrants. They are pawns in their greater plan. They are actively trying to destroy Western democracy. They know that when immigrants from the Third World become the majority in these Western countries, their democracies will be destroyed and they will be that much easier to take control over. And we are witnessing this right in front of our eyes, every day with every illegal immigrant who crosses the border and every pro-Palestinian protest. They are not liberating a people; they are subjugating a world. The greatest existential threat to the world is not nuclear weapons, but a totalitarian one world order that the communists are leading us to, and we are letting it happen.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.