In their 2018 exposé, Forbidden Facts shockingly revealed:

“Did you know that the origin of Valentine’s Day comes from a red plot to weaken Western defenses on a predictable day, to aid with an invasion? It is not a coincidence that we are giving RED roses on this holiday!”

Valentine’s Day is a Bolshevik conspiracy! . . . Or is it? Communist plots are a dime a dozen and enemy agents really do lurk around every corner. Fortunately, though, Valentine’s Day is not one of their schemes. Cupid was not commissioned by the Kremlin; you don’t have to fear the sweet sting of his arrow. Forbidden Facts was simply practicing its satirical skills. However, this satire hits closer to home than the authors are likely aware. The communists actually do have a plot to crush the very notion of love and replace it with unrestrained hatred.

The Soviet chief of “education,” Anatoly Lunacharsky, gave piercing insight into the communist mentality when he raved:

“We hate Christians and Christianity. Even the best of them must be considered our worst enemies. Christian love is an obstacle to the development of the revolution. Down with love of one’s neighbor! What we want is hate. . . . Only then can we conquer the universe” (W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist, 308).

To hate is what the Soviets actively taught their subjects to do. They used schools as indoctrination centers. In these brainwashing factories, Christians were depicted by their Judeo-Bolshevik overlords as dangerous radicals and threats to justice, peace, and unity. The controlled press also kept up a constant barrage of virulent anti-Christian diatribes.

Lunarcharsky was not alone in his Satanic sentiments. In the Congressional Record, we find this blunt quotation from Bolshevik dictator Vladimir Lenin: “We must hate – hatred is the basis of communism” (Introduced into the Congressional Record April 12, 1933 by Senator Arthur R. Robinson, 1539). Lenin is also said to have remarked: “Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.”

Lenin was a sadist. He was cruel and brutal. He relished the suffering of his fellow human beings. He forced them into starvation, cannibalism, concentration camps, slavery, and the killing fields all to further his Marxist agenda of world domination. We have this anecdote from socialist Bertrand Russell who visited Lenin in Moscow:

“When I put a question to him about socialism in agriculture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer peasants against the richer ones, ‘and they soon hanged them from the nearest tree – ha! ha! ha!’ His guffaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold” (Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution, 209).

Hatred for others and a glaring lack of compassion for suffering are common traits among the communists. Stalin was particularly devoid of compassion and love toward others. He once described his thought process for murdering his associates:

“When I have to say good-bye to someone, I picture this person on all fours and he becomes disgusting. Sometimes I feel attached to a person who should be removed for the good of the cause. What do you think I do? I imagine this person s***ting, exhaling stench, farting, vomiting – and I don’t feel sorry for this person. The sooner he stops stinking on this earth, the better. And I cross this person out of my heart” (Richard Wurmbrand, Marx & Satan, 52).

“Callous disregard” for others is too light a description. Rather, “Satanic hatred” is perhaps more apt. When we cross others out of our hearts and cease to love them, anything and everything cruel and degrading becomes possible.

The Jewish Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg learned his craft well from Lenin, Lunacharsky, and Stalin. During World War II, he wrote a screed titled “Убей!” or “Kill!” It was distributed to the rapacious Red Army hordes on the front lines in 1942. In it, Ehrenberg encouraged the troops with similar thoughts to those voiced by Stalin:

“Germans are not humans. Henceforth, the word ‘German’ is the most horrible curse. Henceforth, the word ‘German’ unloads a gun. We have nothing to say. We will not get excited. We will kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day . . . If you cannot kill a German with a bullet, then kill him with your bayonet. If your part of the front is quiet and there is no fighting, then kill a German in the meantime . . . If you have already killed a German, then kill another one – there is nothing more amusing to us than a heap of German corpses. Don’t count the days, don’t count the kilometers. Count only one thing: the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the Germans! – This is what the old woman asks. Kill the Germans! – This is what the child cries for. Kill the Germans! – This is what your motherland demands . . . Kill!”

As recently as 2018, the Israeli news outlet Haaretz had the audacity to call this murderous order “poetry.” The poetry of hell, perhaps. It was, to any normal person, a command to destroy human life, to cross love out of one’s soul, to act like a devil.

Having lived in Russia from 2006-2008, I can personally attest that foreigners are routinely cursed at with the term “Немцы!” or “Germans!” Ehrenberg’s foul words not only enticed the Red Army of the Second World War to gangrape two million German women and brutally murder millions of other innocent Germans, but still wield influence over many in the modern Russian generation.

What we’re dealing with in all of these examples is not mere disdain, but pathological, violent, savage hatred. Remember, “hatred is the basis of communism,” according to Lenin. But why did the Bolsheviks hate their enemies so virulently – virulently enough to murder them to the tune of 160 million or more? And why are they so enraged to this day that they’re willing to start wars, release plagues, crash economies, murder their opposition, and repress billions of souls? I mention but two reasons.

First, and most importantly, communists then as now are filled with demonic hatred because they have rejected God. “God is love,” as John told us (1 John 4:8). To reject Him is to reject His attributes such as love, mercy, and compassion. Many high-level communists are not only atheists and Darwinistic humanists, they’re outright Satanists. They’re literal anti-Christs – high priests to their Dark Master. They know God exists and they resent Him and wish to crush Him and His followers.

Now and then, communists admitted their true affiliation. Karl Marx, the Jewish Satanist, wrote, “I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above” (Wurmbrand, Marx & Satan, 7). A Soviet general once told a captive Christian priest one of the most intriguing things I’ve ever read. He said: “We are Satan’s elite, but you, are you God’s elite?” (Wurmbrand, Marx & Satan, 74). When the Bolshevik savages tortured Christians, they sometimes branded them with pentagrams or forced them to deny Christ before killing them. Why would communists make these hapless Christians deny a being they don’t believe exists? Is it perhaps that they do know He exists, but that they hate Him and, on orders from the Dragon, make war against His followers? (Revelation 12:17)

The second reason why communists are so filled with hatred is that many of them are Jews. This is not “anti-Semitism,” it’s historical fact. Karl Marx, the author of The Communist Manifesto, was a Jew. Marx was converted to communism by the Jew Moses Hess, who was an early founder of Zionism. Hess also converted Engels from Christianity to communism. Lenin was part-Jewish, was married to a Jewess, and spoke Yiddish. Stalin was married to a Jewess. Most of the early Bolshevik higher-ups, from Trotsky to Radek to Zinoviev, were Jews or married to Jewesses. Even in foreign lands, from Spain to Hungary to Mexico to Germany, Jews led local communist movements and uprisings. And of course these radicals received significant funding from Jewish bankers and businessmen abroad (synagogues around the world also raised money to support the Bolshevik coup in 1917). Again, this isn’t a smear; it’s a statistic.

Don’t doubt for one moment that the Jewish upbringing of the early Soviet leaders didn’t play a major role in their enduring hatred of Christians. It absolutely did. They particularly hated the Christian tsars and the Russian Orthodox Church because Jews had been, in the distant past, relegated to second-class status within the Russian Empire. This had changed, however, and Jews were allowed to enter normal professions within the Empire, often coming to totally dominate many sectors long before the Soviet days. In fact, so ironclad was their control that organic pogroms sometimes erupted for the ruthless way Jews took advantage of non-Jews. Their grievances, therefore, were ancient history and largely unfounded. Indeed, it was the average Russian peasant who had a real grievance against the minority Jewish population that came to power over them.

The Bolshevik leaders were mostly Jews, yes, but predominantly secular or Satanic Jews; that is, non-practicing. But they grew up in the materialistic, eye-for-an-eye Jewish culture and some certainly imbibed Judaism’s occult teachings found in the Kabbalah and Talmud. If you have never researched the anti-Christ nature of the Babylonian Talmud and the Kabbalah (specifically, see Sabbatean Kabbalism), do so. Those Jews who divorced themselves totally from their religious roots adopted either Gnosticism (founded by the Jew Simon the Sorcerer) or communism as their religion, their purpose, their mission. The promise of a worldwide communist state became their desired utopia – their new “promised land.”

These amoral Judeo-Marxists ran the infamous GULAG. They headed the Soviet intelligence apparatus. They dominated in leading positions within the bureaucracy and leadership organs. For many of them, their newfound power was used to exact what they considered “revenge” against Christians for the way Christians had supposedly treated them for centuries.

Nuns and priests were singled out for horrific defilement, sexual abuse, torture, and slaughter. Christians were stripped of their churches, which were often turned into museums promoting atheism and paganism after they had been looted of all valuables. A favorite Bolshevik method of tortuous murder was crucifixion – a form of mockery against the Christian population. Christian scriptures were taken and bastardized by the Soviets. For instance, the Lord’s Prayer was rewritten as a worship of the USSR with words like: “Our Party which rulest in the Soviet Union, Hallowed be thy name.” Nothing was too crass, blasphemous, or evil for this lot of vengeful Soviet Jews.

Whether because of cultural revenge or because of spiritual sickness, the fact is that the communists made a concerted effort to preach hate and crush love. They hated “Christian love” and recognized it as a legitimate obstacle to their global revolution. Instead of love and happiness, communists sought the misery of all mankind. They were like their father the Devil, who was a murderer and liar from the beginning (John 8:44). Because they were anti-Christ, they were also inevitably anti-love and opposed to all the goodness, geniality, selflessness, mercy, and honor that flows from the loving heart.

When we reject the radiant allure of love and wholesome relationships, we begin the tragic trek towards godlessness and communist thinking. Society is slipping into the Marxist morass because it is forgetting how to love. Our hearts are growing cold. We’re becoming numb towards others and even towards things of beautify, light, and truth.

This Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity to take a gut check and evaluate how well we qualify as the Savior’s disciples. He said: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). Yes, Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to recommit to love of God and love of one’s neighbor. It’s the perfect time to rekindle the flame in our relationships and to extend the hand of friendship to strangers, mercy to those who have offended us, and love to all we meet.

According to the legends, Emperor Claudius Gothicus of Rome outlawed marriage because he needed soldiers, but married people were often excused from military service. A Christian named Valentinus, or Valentine, supposedly disobeyed the emperor’s edict, secretly marrying couples and promoting the institution of marriage, the ideal of chastity, and the virtue of Christian love. For his rebellious deed, Valentine was executed on February 14 in the year 269 A.D. In later centuries, the mythological character Cupid (aka Eros) and various pagan traditions were blended with the story of “Saint” Valentine to produce Valentine’s Day.

The story of Valentine performing secret marriages may well indeed be embellished. We have very little actual, verifiable information about this man or the reasons for his martyrdom. Several accounts do, however, tell of one Christian named Valentine who was arrested and murdered in Rome. Regardless of the reasons or the particulars, the Catholic Church made Valentine’s Day, though unknown by that name until centuries later, a formal celebration in 496 A.D.

In that year, Pope Gelasius I ordained this holiday. The reasons he did so are obscured by rumors and myths. One of the prevalent theories, though likely only partially true, is that Valentine’s Day was created to offset the Roman pagan holiday of Lupercalia. The Feast of Lupercalia was in part a fertility festival. During this three-day revelry, the Luperci, priests of Lupus, the she-wolf that legend says nurtured Rome’s founders Romulus and Remus, performed ritual animal sacrifices promoting both fertility and purification.

This article was never meant to be an exhaustive history, so, in essence, we can say that Valentine’s Day is a melange of Catholic religious veneration, Roman paganism, and more modern effusions of love by Chaucer and others. Consumerism has shaped the holiday in its own image, turning it into a day to spend money on chocolates, flowers, fancy dinners, jewelry, and sappy movies. Modern hedonists also use the holiday to promote their amoral ways, transforming love into lust.

This Valentine’s Day, set back the Adversary’s agenda by remembering to love. To love is not to lust or use others for your own amusement. Love is a Christlike quality. Love is the most powerful force in the galaxy because “love is of God” and “God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). We need this power more now than ever before.

Love changes people. Love uplifts. Love animates. Love lets light into the soul. Love casts out fear and pumps courage through the veins. Love motivates us to self-sacrifice for that which we love – for our Faith, our Families, and our Freedom.

As the wise Professor Dumbledore once said, we are often protected by our ability to love. Love is the most powerful kind of magic in existence; the prime motivating force in the universe. God loved us so He sent His Son Jesus Christ (John 3:16-18). Christ loved us and laid down His life for us. Each drop of His holy blood is a drop of divine love that can heal, cleanse, and save.

Without love, we’re nothing as individuals or societies. Without love, we walk in darkness. Without love, life is bland, undesirable, and a constant drudgery that leads us into the downward spiral of selfishness. Without love, we have no chance of defeating communism, the rising tide of societal filth, or the machinations of the Evil One. To the Devil, Christian love is the supreme obstacle. If we have this pristine love in our souls, he has no power over us.

Dear reader, we need love! This Valentine’s Day, let’s let love into our lives. Said otherwise, this holiday, let’s let God into our hearts. When we love God, He loves us and manifests Himself to us in a million beneficial ways (John 14:21, 23). Let’s love God. Let’s love our spouses and families. Let’s love our neighbors. Let’s love truth, beauty, light, success, virtue, honor, righteousness, and Liberty. In a word, let’s love life and live in love!

Zack Strong,

February 13, 2021