“It is possible that those of us who fight for the dignity of mankind will lose our fight. It is not possible that we must lose our fight. That is the white pill.” – The White Pill
There are pills for every ill under the sun, whether medicinal, psychiatric, or now, with the advent of the red/blue pill dichotomy, cultural. The modern-day contrast between the two pills comes from the 1999 film, The Matrix, where Morpheus offers Neo a choice to remain docile in his simulated world (the blue pill) or to return to reality and learn actual truths (the red pill). Today, to be blue-pilled is to continue to believe the establishment narrative, while to be red-pilled, is to reject that propaganda and return to the truth. Now two more pills have been introduced to modern parlance, the black pill and the white pill. The black pill is taken by those who have lost all hope. The other is the subject of Michael Malice’s most recent book.
In Michael Malice’s 2022 book, “The White Pill”, Malice, a Russian immigrant born in Lviv, but raised in the United States, tells the often-heinous history of the Soviet Union, from Lenin’s Bolshevik takeover in 1917, through the collapse of the USSR in 1991. For those who think the current state of the world can never get better, Malice relives the decades of depravity that rained down on the Soviet Socialist Republics for nearly 75 years, before good prevailed over evil. Although the demise of the Soviet Union is largely forgotten, it is a great triumph in history.
Prominent in the rise and fall of communism are the book’s four cover girls. Emma Goldman, a Russian-born anarchist who fought the government from the far left, would return to Russia, only to flee a system that failed the workers, she so vehemently fought for. Ayn Rand, another Russian-born immigrant to the US, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 warning of the soft promotion of communism that was seeping into society. And who, despite her lived experience during the Bolshevik Revolution, was dismissed by elites for her apparent lack of understanding of socialism. Next was Elena Ceausescu, the wife of Romanian despot, Nicolae Ceausescu, whose country was the last holdout for communism, at a time when the House of Cards was already beginning to fold. Their exit by firing squad was a fitting end to the chronic terror they brought to their countrymen. Finally, Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s first female Prime Minister and a partner in diplomacy with American President Ronald Reagan served prominently in the downfall of the Cold War.
Beginning with the Bolshevik revolution, the twentieth century became a battle between the Communist East and the Capitalist West. The leftist slide was championed by the likes of Lenin/Stalin, Mussolini, and even for a short time, by American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While the West, and particularly the US, advanced a philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism and property rights, the East split the difference between communism and fascism. It was Lenin who started a worldwide worker’s revolution in hopes of spreading communism around the globe and Stalin who proposed a union of Soviet socialist republics, to be ruled by Moscow. Both regimes were controlled by violence, censorship, and a complete disregard for life. Little formal surveillance was needed when the population was taught to fear the regime and gladly turned in dissidents, even when they were family. Western values like the institution of marriage, families, privacy, and free speech, were considered bourgeoisie, and targeted for extinction. Fascism in Italy and Naziism in Germany differed only by degree, mimicking communism’s worst aspects. Yet, throughout it all, when given a choice, the people always chose the West.
Recognizing how naive Americans are about true evil, Malice sets out to expose the depth of wickedness that the Soviets were subjected to daily. Gulags, or forced labor camps, were a death sentence themselves with 97-98 percent of prisoners dying in captivity. This rounding up of dissidents was a practice that began under Lenin, and then ballooned under Stalin, with populations reaching into the millions. Their torture included not only beatings and deprivations, but more extreme violence ala burning, raping, and mutilation using hammers to break bones and pliers to pull out fingernails and teeth. In some of the worst recorded cases, eyes were gouged, and heads were scalped. Solitary confinements lasted for years and resulted in prisoners losing muscle function, and even their ability to speak. Confessions were forced, and on some occasions hastened with the rape of their own children in front of their very eyes. Because of these false admissions, many innocent people were also tortured and killed. Since it was illegal to be associated with a resister, violence against families was commonplace. Before it was over, everyone who was privy to Stalin’s reign of terror: his interrogators, the secret police, and military leaders would also face a similar fate. Yet, during these decades of torture, famine, and death, American journalists and elites, continued to support and back the regime, even going so far as to falsify history.
For the Soviet Union, the dam began to break following Stalin’s death, when the new President Gorbachev’s promise of rebuilding through perestroika and openness via glasnost allowed Warsaw Pact members: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, to extract themselves from under the boot of the Soviets and claim their independence. The domino effect that followed led to the liberation of nearly half the world ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as Reagan implored Russia to “tear down this wall”. Against all odds, what seemed impossible became possible, with the collapse of the Communist Party, and eventually, the end of the USSR.
At its peak, the USSR, which began in 1922 and ended in 1991, was the world’s largest country by area, covering one-sixth of the earth’s land mass, made up of 15 countries, and controlled by an authoritarian regime in Moscow. With nearly 300 million people, the first Marxist-Communist state in the world grew to become the third largest by population. Yet, despite its once boundless influence, its system failed spectacularly.
As Malice’s book reveals, a review of history can give us fresh optimism about the future. In the 1997 James Bond song, Tomorrow Never Dies, Sheryl Crow sang: “The sun will rise, the moon will fall, tomorrow never dies”. The white pill is a risk worth taking.
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