With another surge in gun violence in Philadelphia, local police, government leaders and othersare now calling for residents to turn in their firearms in order to save lives. HereA man was seriously injured when a violent crowd of Portland protesters brutally assaultedhim after he crashed his truck in the downtown area. hereCHAPTER 5 “WE DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD” LENIN’S NECROPHILIA“Communism begins where atheism begins,” declared Marx.253 In theCommunist Manifesto, he and Engels remarked, “Communism abolisheseternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.”254 The apostlesof Marx and Engels took that to heart. In communist Russia, theBolsheviks in particular picked up the spear. “A fight to the death mustbe declared upon religion,” asserted Nikolai Bukharin, founding editor ofPravda and one of Lenin’s and Stalin’s leading lieutenants, addingcounsel to “take on religion at the tip of the bayonet.”255 Bukharinspoke for the Bolsheviks: “Religion and communism are incompatible,both theoretically and practically. … Communism is incompatible withreligious faith.” He also spoke for Marx: “‘Religion is the opium of thepeople,’ said Karl Marx. It is the task of the Communist Party to make thistruth comprehensible to the widest possible circles of the laboringmasses.”256 The Bolsheviks would do just that. Communists worldwidewould do just that. Such was the atheist legacy bequeathed by Marx. Oneof the most brutally restricted rights by communist governments was,and remains, the freedom to worship, which communists always andeverywhere have attacked with a wild fervor and devotion. In a sense, it LIVE NOTES FOR THE RAGGED EDGE RADIO . COM by Russ Dizdar 3is strange that atheistic communists felt so mortally threatened by theirpeople believing in something they insisted did not exist. Yet,communists not only cared about that worship but became utterlyobsessed with stopping it. Belief in God stood in the way of thetotalitarian desire to transform human nature. God was a competitor tocommunist control of the body, mind, and spirit of man that Marx andLenin wanted to redefine in their own image. In other words, thecommunists rightly recognized that belief in God was the chiefimpediment to the imposition of their atheist creed. “That Religion ofTheirs”Kengor, Paul. The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March ofDeath, Deception, and Infiltration . TAN Books. Kindle Edition