I spoke with Dr. Peter McCullough at the annual Florida Parent Educators Association in Orlando over Memorial Day weekend. What he said disturbed me. “Irrational thinking and the embracing of absurdity as a way of life has spread to every corner of the globe—way beyond the first-world countries to the most remote islands in the world. There is no normal anymore, anywhere. Insanity has infected the entire human population.” It’s worse than I thought.

His words brought to mind several seemingly unrelated conversations. At the same conference the previous day, I had spoken with a physician who told me he has flown on over 100 aircraft in the past 12 months, both domestic and international, for speaking engagements.  “Everywhere I go, it’s the same,” he said. “Understaffed restaurants, hotels, businesses. No city is operating normally anymore.” Following that conversation, I spoke with a retired pilot who revealed that due to the recent mass retirement and firings, commercial pilots are being asked to work twice as many hours as usual. “Very soon, they will hit the FAA annual cap on hours—1,400—and then we’ll really start to see our national air transportation system collapse.” Soon after that, a podcast I had scheduled with a man in Johannesburg was cancelled at the last minute because the South African government had ordered rolling blackouts across the country. “Thank you, government of South Africa,” he wrote me before his computer went dark. What do understaffed restaurants in Europe, cancelled flights in the United States, and power outages in South Africa have to do with one another?

All of the above represent different facets of what Dr. McCullough spoke of, which I believe to be a new incarnation of communism. The new communism may initially appear to be quite different from the murderous systems of Lenin, Mao, and Stalin, because this revolution is being ushered in quietly, under the guise of “pandemic necessity.” Don’t want to get a shot? If you attend Granada Hills High School in Los Angeles, you don’t get to participate in any graduation activities—senior prom, awards night, commencement ceremony. If you want to fly to Australia sans mRNA injection, Qantas Airlines will bar you from the aircraft. You are a counter revolutionary. And we all know what happens to counter revolutionaries…eventually. But this is only the beginning. How do absurd pseudo-medical mandates lead to worldwide disruption in labor, transportation, and energy markets? More importantly, what does any of this have to do with contemporary communism?

Note what has happened recently.

In the wake of the Uvalde school mass shooting, Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau both announced, nearly simultaneously, that they would attempt to ban handguns in the United States and Canada, respectively. Specifically, Biden proposed that all 9mm pistols be made illegal, and Trudeau promised to freeze the sale or purchase of any handgun anywhere in Canada. Biden has repeatedly violated the U.S. Constitution in his policy positions, but this is the first time he has openly moved to eliminate the second amendment. His goal is to ensure that only federal police, a force he controls, carry weapons, making it physically impossible for the American citizen to successfully resist unlawful government force. No communist system allows the people to arm themselves.

As the price of gas continues to surge to record highs due to Biden administration energy-killing policies, Elizabeth Warren has proposed “anti-price-gouging” legislation to force refineries to sell gasoline at below market prices. She would then personally determine what a “fair price” is, not only for fuel but essentially any product produced and sold in the U.S. Government price-fixing would then necessarily lead to shortages and a black market for any product affected by the legislation. Beneficiaries would be criminal gangs and anyone connected to the politicians managing the artificial price controls. Everyone else loses. Mass starvation here at home becomes a real possibility. It has been a reality for every communist system of the 20th century.

As “green energy” policy continues to eliminate all viable forms of domestic energy from the market, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has announced that this summer, Americans will face rolling blackouts across the nation. This is a direct consequence of Biden’s ban on drilling, elimination of refineries, closure of nuclear power stations, and continued federal subsidies for environmentally destructive, unreliable wind and solar farms. Already, annualized inflation is approaching 40% , due in large part to a doubling of fuel costs since Trump left office. Everything that must be made or transported uses fuel. Without a change in course, the United States will become a third world nation, as purchasing basic goods will become beyond the reach of all but the rich and well-connected, and there will be no power to light or heat homes. As with every communist nation in history, mass poverty always follows the depletion of resources and destruction of a once productive economy. All communist economies underperform, at first, and collapse in the end.

Property rights have served as the foundation of a free nation for hundreds of years. They may soon end here in the U.S. Mortgage interest rates have doubled since Biden came to office. New homes are often bought for cash by corporations who then rent them to Americans unable to qualify for a mortgage due to the 41% increase in U.S. monetary supply from Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar spending spree. Currently, over 20% of all homes in America are owned by institutional investors. No private home ownership means no reliable vehicle for wealth accumulation, no investment in local communities, and no eviction protections. Eventually, all property passes to the state, whose power is then absolute. Property rights do not exist in communist systems. The state owns all property.

This new communism is anti-social, anti-freedom, and anti-human. People are subsumed under government policies that are only ideologically, not practically, driven. The needs of the state become the priority of government, rather than the needs of the people. This is an inversion of the vision of the founders of our country, all of whom distrusted government, knowing that if left unchecked, its power would grow so large that the nation’s citizens would ultimately lose their freedom and become slaves to a corrupt system of government.

We are now living in the least free period in U.S. history. When I bring up these challenges to Americans today, in most cases I am met with one of two responses. The first is a minimization or dismissal: “It’s just a _____.” That last word could be a mask, a tax, a ban, a doubling of gas prices. It simply doesn’t matter to them. The second is a rationalization: “It’s necessary for the common good / to keep us safe.” These people both acknowledge what is happening and support it, because they are told to. Young Americans, in particular, appear to be largely unaware of the implications of the new communism. They have neither lived through the old communism nor studied it. They are ignorant of the consequences of granting unlimited power to the state during a perpetual declared emergency.

A little over two years ago the world shut down. It’s now reopened but under an entirely new set of rules. The new rules are dehumanizing. They are destructive. They are evil. They should not be rationalized, tolerated, or obeyed. They should be fought at every level, exposed for their immorality and their cancerous effect on our nation. If we do not stop the new communism here, it will take hold throughout the world, and we will enter a new Dark Age from which we may never emerge.

Mark McDonald, M.D.

Psychiatrist and author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis