October 7, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The year 2020 has brought an unprecedented attack on freedoms all across the world.
In this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, Rod Dreher outlines the similarities the United States shares with Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia, calling the US a “pre-totalitarian state.” Dreher also warns Christians, “there is persecution coming.”
Listen to the full episode to discover the similarities between the US today and Nazi Germany:
A few years ago, Rod Dreher wrote The Benedict Option, a book outlining the need for Christians to withdraw from society in order to preserve their Christian beliefs and values. Now, Dreher has published a new book, Live not by Lies, outlining the urgent situation Christians face in society today.
“There is persecution coming,” Dreher tells Van Maren, “Christians need to right now prepare for it.”
Dreher warns the situation is becoming more urgent for Christians, already it is difficult to be a physician or lawyer as these professions demand a compromise of Christian morals. It will soon be that Christians can’t attend certain schools, hold certain jobs, or perhaps even shop at the grocery store.
He tells people to “pay attention to what is happening in your church, your work place, your local schools, it is becoming distinctly more hostile to any kind of social conservatism and religious conservatism.”
We are already in a state of ‘soft totalitarianism’ in America. In fact, we have many of the conditions that led the Germans to accept Nazism and the Russians to accept Bolshevikism.
A large factor that made Germans ripe to accept Nazism was loneliness, “mass loneliness and alienation” made them “sitting ducks for people who came in with sweeping new ideologies that could replace the thing that they thought they were missing”
Loneliness has been on the rise in America and has been magnified by the prolonged coronavirus shutdowns. The shutdowns have showed our low trust in society and others, another magnifier of loneliness that makes people ripe to accept totalitarianism.
Another factor present in Nazi Germany, Bolshevik Russia, and here in the United States is a mania for ideology over the truth. We see this especially on the left with the LGBT agenda, the denial of the life of a child in the womb, and many other ideologies that deny the truth.
You “see people even being willing to falsify history for the sake of coming up with narratives to suit their ideological preferences,” Dreher tells Van Maren.
Dreher also warns against the surveillance state. Technology can surveil us in a way that is pretty much ‘invisible’ to Americans. We are currently voluntarily giving our information to Google and other companies for convenience and they’re using this data to manipulate our behaviors.
The next step is the implementation of a social credit system like the one seen in communist China, or a coronavirus tracking system that quickly evolves into a social credit system.
In addition, new school curriculum is being proposed that includes scandalous sex-ed, new Black Lives Matter propaganda, and pushes leftist ideologies. Curriculum changes in Virginia, are “ going to turn these schools into indoctrination factories,” Dreher warns.
Dreher and Van Maren also discuss how situations across America are happening that would make people who lived under communist rule cringe.
A big problem is that we’ve lost the ability to discuss and debate different ideologies because we don’t speak the same language. The way ‘gender’ is defined by the left is completely different from the way it is defined by the right. The terms love, hate, violence, oppression, all mean different things depending on ones social views.
This divergence of language is slowly forcing people to accept socially liberal ideology and makes it impossible for liberals and conservatives to understand each other. Without the ability to discuss and debate, society will continue to rapidly move away from socially conservative ideals.
You don’t want to miss this packed episode of The Van Maren Show.