“The philosophy of Karl Marx, when applied, has created some of the greatest episodes of human suffering in all of history,” Marion Smith, director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said in stunned response to the announcement that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will join in a celebration of Marx’s 200th birthday on May 5, in Trier, Germany. Trier was where Marx was born and raised.

Juncker (shown) is slated to give a speech at the unveiling of a statue of Marx in Trier. The statue was a gift from the Communist government of China. Juncker's participation will give the event a lot of stature, considering that he heads the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU). And it perhaps will also serve to illustrate the totalitarian mindset at the top of the EU.

“Marxist states like the Soviet Union and Communist China are responsible for more than one hundred million deaths as a result of their insane quest to implement Marx’s utopian ideas in practice,” Smith said.

Marx was hired in the 1840s by a group of socialist revolutionaries known as the League of the Just to write the platform of the Communist Party they were launching. The League was composed of various radical subversives, apparently wishing to build on the ideas of secret societies such as the Jacobins and the Illuminati that brought on the bloody French Revolution. Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto, forever tying his name to the communist movement that would lead to horrific miseries for the human race in the next century.

But apparently, Juncker, the president of the European Commission, thinks Marx is a man who merits honor upon the occasion of his 200th birthday.

Juncker is a politician from Luxembourg, who has long been a strong supporter of a more centralized European Union. He was a key architect of the Maastricht Treaty, and is credited with the clauses on Economic and Monetary Union that created the common currency for Europe — the euro.

Juncker is certainly no anti-socialist. In 1995, his Christian Social People’s Party formed a coalition with the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party, making him prime minister in Luxembourg. In 2005, Juncker rose to become the first permanent president of the Eurozone Finance Ministry. Then, in 2014, he became president of the European Commission, over the no votes of Britain’s David Cameron and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

While Juncker has protested, “I do not want a United States of Europe,” he has also said that national “borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.” Not surprisingly, Juncker is a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, strongly supporting her open-door policy concerning the immigration crisis.

Even the former General Secretary of the old Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, has expressed amazement at the lurch of the EU to the Left. He said, “The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in western Europe.”

Given this apparent desire to implement Marxism in western Europe, Juncker’s decision to celebrate the birthday of the man whose ideology has driven the two bloodiest dictatorships in human history (the Soviet Union and Communist China) is not surprising, but it is still shocking.

Juncker is an honorary citizen of Trier, the birthplace of Marx. The minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, invited Juncker, and will join him in honoring the communist icon.

But Paul Nuttall, a member of the European Parliament, offered a harsh rebuke for the decision to honor him. “It is appalling that Jean-Claude Juncker feels it is necessary to commemorate a man whose ideology — Marxism/communism — led to more than 100 million deaths. Both Marx and his warped ideology should not be commemorated; they should be consigned to the dustbin of history.”

The Commission issued a statement defending the decision to commemorate Marx’s 200th birthday. “Not speaking about him would come close to denying history.”

The statement added, “After decades of experience in politics at a national and European level, President Juncker is very well aware of the historical facts and sensitivities and whatever people’s views on Karl Marx. I think that nobody can deny that Karl Marx is a figure who shaped history in one way or the other.”

Of course, no one is denying Marx’s role in shaping history, but it is unlikely that Juncker will ever travel to Linz, Austria, to honor Adolf Hitler on his birthday, who also “shaped history.” A British Conservative MP, Daniel Kawczynski, was particularly incensed at Juncker’s intention to honor Marx. He escaped to the UK from Communist Poland as a seven-year-old boy. “I think it’s in very poor taste. We have to remember that Marxism was all about ripping power and individual means away from people and giving to the State. Marxism led to the killing of millions around the world as it allowed a small band of fanatics to suppress the people.”

Certainly, we should not forget Marx, just as we should not forget Lenin, Mao, Hitler, and other totalitarian fanatics. We need to learn about them and their monstrous crimes, and avoid anyone like them from ever gaining the reins of power. That doesn’t mean celebrating their birthdays.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker: AP Images