MM#390--Unveiling History's Dictators: Paul Kengor on the 'Hall of Evil' and the Realities of Marxist-Communism

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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

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Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute.

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Prager University, along with the great historian Paul Kangor from Grove City College, has kicked off a wonderful six-part video series as part of their infamous five-minute video collection.

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They're titling this video series the Hall of Evil Now.

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The series dives into the world's worst dictators and guess what?

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They all share one major connection between themselves they were all Marxist-Communist, shocking right.

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And the first two videos are out, and they are fantastic.

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First one covers one Vladimir Yulich Yulanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin.

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He got his pseudonym while working undercover for the Communist Party.

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Lenin was simply put a monster.

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Now the second video was just released this past veneranovich du shah gasveli, aka joseph stalin.

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He took the name stalin, meaning man of steel, in 1912 to signal his strength and commitment to the revolution.

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He was down for the cause, and boy the cause it was.

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If you count mass murder and widespread terror, joseph Stalin surpassed even Lenin in the number of lives lost under his regime.

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The series is also going to cover Adolf Hitler, mao Zedong and Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro.

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It's aimed at educating viewers, especially younger audiences, about the horrors these tyrants unleashed and the risks of totalitarian ideologies.

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Make sure you check it out.

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It's an eye-opener for sure, especially for the younger folks who have been reading from the Howard Zinn drivel for the last five decades in their world history classes.

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And before we go on, I just want to make sure that we are all on board with an important podcast update.

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After three and a half years and 500 plus episodes, we're changing our podcast schedule and 500 plus episodes, we're changing our podcast schedule.

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That's right.

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Starting next week, new episodes will drop on Wednesdays and Saturdays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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This change is going to allow us to create for you better content and explore new platforms, as well.

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As we got some beta, exciting beta updates coming, possibly for a Mojo 3.0 announcement.

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So for now, we want to just thank you for your support, your incredible support.

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Stay tuned for those exciting updates.

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And again, starting next week, new episodes are going to be live on Wednesdays and Saturdays and, as always, we appreciate your incredible loyalty.

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Now, getting back to PragerU and the Hall of Evil, prageru picked the great Paul Kengor for their Hall of Evil video series for a few key reasons.

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First, back in 2018, kengor worked on a video on Karl Marx for Prager University that racked up an incredible 8 million views so clearly that collaboration worked.

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He's a well-known expert as a political science professor at Grove City College and a certain well-known Cold War historian.

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Kanger brings serious knowledge and credibility to the table when it comes to discussing 20th century dictators and their communist regimes and their communist regimes.

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Prageru's goal is obviously to educate people, especially the younger crowd, on the topics that they feel schools and universities don't cover enough.

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Kengor's deep understanding of the communist history aligns perfectly with that mission.

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So both PragerU and Keng Gore were worried about the lack of education among the young people as to the dangers of communism and socialism and frankly, prageru was impressed with Ken Gore's past contributions and enjoyed working with him.

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As PragerU co-founder Alan Estrin put it, who better than Paul to explain the death and destruction that communism wrought in the 20th century?

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It's clear that they saw Kengor as the ideal person to deliver the series message to their audience, especially the young ones.

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Now Kengor's Hall of Evil video series for PragerU dives into some very big topics, especially those that might not know a lot about the darker chapters of the 20th century.

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In fact, did you know that Vladimir Lenin told his communist radicals after World War I we can't expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism.

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That's a shocking statement, but almost always overlooked by Western historians, especially in meager world history classes.

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I'm going to put a link to the Lenin five-minute video in the show notes and by profiling leaders like Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Castro, ken Gore is going to make clear just how destructive these totalitarian systems, especially the communism and the socialism, can be.

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The first two.

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He pointed out the death, the oppression and the suffering that these ideologies cause, and certainly no public school university professor is ever going to talk about that.

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Great thing is is Cangor pushes back against the idea that leaders like Lenin and Castro started out with good intentions that somehow went wrong Right, in fact, he argues that they were very destructive from the very beginning.

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Sirius is also going to take aim at what Kengor sees as that lack of proper education about communism and socialism that we had already talked about.

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So here's looking at you, howard Zinn and the other radicals who have been indoctrinating our young folks in schools and universities for the last five decades.

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By laying out the facts about these dictators and their impact of their actions, one would hope to get young people thinking critically about these radical ideologies and how they play out in real life.

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And how they play out in real life, in fact.

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Did you know that Joseph Stalin in 1932, 1933, starved to death over 5 million Ukrainians?

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They called it the Ukrainian Holomador.

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The Holomador is derived from the Ukrainian words meaning death by hunger.

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It was a man-made famine.

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It wasn't natural.

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It was a man-made famine.

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It wasn't natural.

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It was man-made, orchestrated by Joseph Stalin's Soviet regime, and began to take place early 1931, lasting all the way to 1934, peaking in the late spring of 1933.

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Cause of the famine was Soviet state policies, including forced collectivization and unreasonably high grain quotas.

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It was finally recognized in 2006 by Ukraine and 33 other UN member states as a genocide against the Ukrainian people.

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There's just one fact that seems to be missing from most of the reporting on Joseph Stalin.

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In fact.

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Did you know also that Stalin has another notorious factoid to credit to him?

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He's responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler and any other human being to ever have walked the face of the earth.

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Lastly, most people don't know this Joseph Stalin had his chief rival murdered after being his friend for over 16 years.

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Crazy stuff, in fact, diabolical stuff.

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Over 16 years.

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Crazy stuff, in fact, diabolical stuff.

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I'll put a link to that five-minute video for Joseph Stalin that was just released in the show notes.

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And although this series is focused on the past, it also ties in these historical events to our modern issues.

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Now, paul does a great job and warns against the resurgence of these similar ideologies, and he emphasizes their potential dangers to today's world.

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So overall, the Hall of Video series is off to a great start.

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It's got a lot of mojo, but it's just not about history.

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It's not about history at all.

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It's about understanding the lessons of the past to make smarter decisions in the present.

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Now we're certainly going to be diving deeper into Paul Kengor's books.

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He's my new favorite historian here at the Academy and be sure to check him out in future Mojo Minutes and Liberty Minutes as well.

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But for today's Mojo Minute, let's remind ourselves to always read with the goal of uncovering and seeking deeper truths.

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It's important to seek the deeper truths, especially when it comes to understanding some of the worst people that have ever walked the face of the earth.

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By learning about these individuals, we can figure out how to avoid their influence and make sure they never gain power again.

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The more we read and listen to the truth about these tyrants, the better equipped we're going to be to understand the horrors that they've caused and work toward building a better future.

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Let's learn from the past so we can keep those dark chapters from repeating and, as always, let's keep fighting the good fight.

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Thank you for joining us.

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We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast.

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Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources.

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Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.

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Thank you.

MM#390--Unveiling History's Dictators: Paul Kengor on the 'Hall of Evil' and the Realities of Marxist-Communism

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