Why Karl Marx Hated God, and Marxists Hate Christians
Part 1 of an interview with scholar Paul Kengor. The Stream:
A movement led by “trained Marxists,” Black Lives Matter, now dominates the headlines, and thugs fighting in its name control several U.S. cities. So we need to understand Marx. Was he an idealist? A lover of the poor? A brilliant economist? A ‘man for others’? Or something much, much darker … a Gnostic who just “wanted to watch the world burn”? If Marx was in the grips of dark spirits when he drew up his system, what does that say of his followers today? Of churchmen who blindly embrace and parrot the slogans of Marxist groups, like BLM?
To find out, The Stream interviewed conservative scholar Paul Kengor. We talked about his powerful new book, The Devil and Karl Marx.
John Zmirak: Your new book The Devil and Karl Marx is fascinating — and disturbing. One thing you turn up that no one ever talks about: Marx’s fascination with Satan. You quote early works of Marx’s where he obsessively referenced Faust, Mephistopheles, Prometheus. All were figures of rebellion against God. Can you expand on that for Stream readers, maybe offer a few choice quotes?
Paul Kengor: There are so many examples, John. And frankly, that’s the point. There’s too much to shrug off. I hesitate to try to give even one or two examples here, because they won’t be sufficient.
Marx’s poems and plays are rife with pacts with the devil, suicide pacts, violence, vengeance, fire, despair, destruction, and death. Marx waxed poetic about “Hellish vapors,” about the “Prince of Darkness” selling a “blood-dark sword [that] shall stab unerringly within thy soul,” of “Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well, My soul, once true to God, Is Chosen for Hell.”
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