The EU chief defended Marx from responsibility for the evils of the communist system that took the lives of many tens of millions of individuals in the Twentieth century. “Marx isn’t responsible for all the atrocity his alleged heirs have to answer for,” Juncker said.
Hungary was one of the eleven nations that lived under the communist tyranny imposed by the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain.
The European parliamentary group of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance on Thursday called on European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to cancel his speech at anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth 200 years ago, calling for “more respect for the victims of Communism”.
In a statement, Fidesz said: “Marxist ideology led to the death of tens of millions and ruined the lives of hundreds of millions. The celebration of its founder is a mockery of their memory.
“This is particularly appalling for the citizens of countries which suffered for decades under Communist dictatorships. We oppose the EC head’s supportive presence at the celebration, especially since his party family, the European People’s Party, is fighting for the EU to condemn the sins of Nazism and Communism,” the statement continued.
Juncker was in Trier, Germany where Marx was born on May 5, 1818, to join in the celebration of unveiling of a statue of Marx. The statute was donated by the Communist Party of China.
The EU chief’s remarks were not received well by others either, even in the church. A protester interrupted Juncker’s address, furious that Marx was being honored, and security personnel quickly removed him from the building.
During his laudatory speech in a Trier church, Juncker said that Marx’s philosophy taught Europeans that it was the “task of our time” to improve “social rights” suggesting that the EU policy towards immigrants should be deepened.
Marx was indeed a strong believer in the abolition of national borders. To Marx, the international socialist, this open borders provided a way to break down the independence of nations, helping to pave the way to an international socialist state.
Juncker echoed this notion: “The European Union is not a flawed, but an unstable construction. Unstable also because Europe’s social dimension until today remains the poor relation of the European integration. We have to change this.”
In Marx’s Communist Manifesto, he had called for an end to private property, the abolition of all rights of inheritance, the centralization of credit in the hands of the state, and a “more equitable distribution of population over the country”.
At the 1864 International Workingmen’s Association, known as the First International, Marx called for a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This particular future that Marx had envisioned meant the Gulags of the Soviet Union and the Cultural Revolution of Mao in China.
“Anyone would do well in remembering Marx because remembering and understanding are part of securing the future. Without memory and thought, without understanding memory, there will not be much for the future,” Juncker said.
Writing to his friend Friedrich Engels, Marx – himself a Jew – also speculated that Jews were “hucksters descended from the Negroes who joined in Moses’ flight from Egypt”, something Juncker did not touch on.
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