I’m not a credentialed historian, but I have read many, many books about Nazism and Communism over the years. So many that I have lost count. It is numbing to read about mass killing, especially the details. Most of the books I’ve accumulated are in boxes, but here are a few I took off the shelf earlier:
Koba the Dread, btw, is discussed here by Cathy Young, who mentions the book’s criticism of Christopher Hitchens (longtime left-wing friend and colleague of author Martin Amis). I loved the book, and I think a portion of the introductory background is well worth quoting here:
In time, Kingsley [Amis, the father of the author] left not only the Communist Party, but also Britain’s Labour Party and became a vocal supporter of Margaret Thatcher. That his father was briefly duped into defending mass murderers is not nearly as troubling to the younger Amis as the persistence of the romantic myth of communism among people who have no excuse not to know better. This is a parallel conversation, held 50 years later, between Mr. Amis and his friend Christopher Hitchens.
“I’m wondering about the distance between Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany”
“Oh don’t fall for that Mart. Don’t fall for moral equivalence.”
“Why not?”
“Lenin was … a great man.”
“This is going to be a long conversation.”
It has been. And the conversation is, distressingly, still far from over. But as Mr. Amis notes, “progress has already been made. The argument, now, is about whether Bolshevik Russia was ‘better’ than Nazi Germany. In the days when the New Left dawned, the argument was about whether Bolshevik Russia was better than America.”
Lots of people have debated which of the two mass murder machines was worse, and for many reasons, Nazism seems to come out on top as the number one villain. That’s because there is something indelibly awful about lining up men women and children and machine-gunning them into giant pits, or gassing them and then burning them in ovens in huge death factories — simply for having been born Jewish. The images involved capture the human imagination in a way that Siberian gulags, Chinese Laogais, and even Cambodian killing fields just don’t.
So, Nazism just plain seems more evil than Communism. Moreover, it has been marketed that way, oftentimes by apologists for Communism. The appeal of such an argument is obvious, because if Nazism is the ultimate, defining form of human evil, then Communism becomes “not as bad.” And those who are sympathetic to Communism are somewhat off the hook. Which just plain sucks, because if we look at total numbers of people killed, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot make Hitler look like a piker.
This issue is not new to me, and I have grappled with it for years. It is no fun to discuss, because there are always people who will come along and say that equating Stalin with Hitler tends to minimize the Holocaust — something I would never do. Evil does not minimize or excuse evil. Nothing that Stalin or Mao did minimizes the malevolence of Hitler’s crimes, or vice versa.
So I really don’t like the comparison of evil argument. What I find more disturbing is the notion that Communism is better than Nazism because it springs from “good intentions,” (good gone wrong, if you will) whereas Nazism is pure unadultered evil.
In a post occasioned by a recent New York Times piece about Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” (in which 45 million Chinese lost their lives), Glenn Reynolds takes a look at some of the apologist memes, and concludes that both forms of murderous totalitarianism are equally bad, and so are their apologists:
Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.
And,
Communism’s mass murders have gotten less condemnation precisely because academic Marxists and sympathetic journalists continue to cover for them.
I couldn’t agree more. Nazis and their apologists are considered beyond the pale of civilized society. That they are even allowed free speech is considered by most people to be a regrettable aspect of the First Amendment.
Contrast this with the approach to Communists and their apologists. They are systematically portrayed as victims of an evil oppressive regime called “McCarthyism.” To directly criticize a Communist is to run the risk of being accused of “red baiting.”
Has anyone ever heard such terminology applied to Nazis? Will any movies be made lamenting the plight of well-meaning Americans who belonged to the Bund back in the 1930s and whose careers suffered as a result?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course.
Because we all agree that Nazism is evil, indefensible, and so morally egregious that no defense of its sympathizers is tolerated. Sure, we wouldn’t put them in jail, but anyone who actually defends Nazis risks serious career damage, and if his views became known, he would not be likely to find employment in academia, the media or anyplace in the professional job market.
To the many defenders and apologists for Communism, no such rule applies. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. A great way to suffer career damage or preclude employment prospects (whether in academia, the media or anyplace in the professional job market) is to do precisely what Glenn suggested:
When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.
That last remark may have already gotten Glenn in trouble with an influential blogger who calls himself a conservative, who claims to generally agree with Glenn, but who feels obliged to add a little snark,
What does that last sentence mean? Is it some kind of threat?
Is it? God forbid that Glenn should threaten defenders of mass murder with career consequences! (The most he could do would be to expose them to public shame at Instapundit — which considering the way the left operates might have positive career consequences!)
But FWIW I don’t think it reads as a threat, but rather as Glenn’s statement of opinion, which Andrew Sullivan finds somehow threatening.
I agree with Glenn. I don’t think that apologists for mass murder should be enjoying the consequences, but they are.
Defending Communism is a good career move.
Of course, if I said “apologizing for mass murder is a good career move,” some people would take issue, pointing out that Communism isn’t supposed to be about mass murder, because of the good intentions. They didn’t mean to kill the Kulaks; they only wanted to solve the Kulak problem and move them to Siberia!
(Right. And Hitler really didn’t want to kill the Jews; he only wanted to help them move to Madagascar…)
UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.
Glenn’s remark about Walter Duranty and Michael Moore couldn’t be more apt. (The former was an apologist for Stalin whose lies about the Ukrainian famine won him the Pulitzer Prize, while the latter is an unabashed Communist who has made millions.)
Comments appreciated, agree or disagree.
Comments
40 responses to “Defending evil can be a good career move!”
The big difference as far as I can see is that the Nazis had better uniforms. The Soviets were so proletarian.
Plus there is a certain sense that the Soviets found what they “had to do” at least somewhat regrettable. The Nazis seem to have taken great joy in their work with no regrets.
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=340
But I thought you were a Communist!
there is a certain sense that the Soviets found what they “had to do” at least somewhat regrettable.
There is? I rather suspect that the communist murderers were drawn from exactly the same psychological slice of humanity as the nazi ones.
I think Andrew Sullivan misunderstood (whether intentionally or unintentionally) what Glenn meant. I think his remark might be better phrased as, “They should not find the consequences of their behavior enjoyable.”
There is this theory that communism, both in theory and in practice, was opposed to the persecution of people on the basis of their racial or ethnic category.
In practice things never worked out this way. Look at the fate of the Chechen people for one example
In 1944 Moscow’s oppression reached its apogee as all Chechens, together with several other peoples of the Caucasus, were ordered by Joseph Stalin to be deported en masse to Kazakhstan and Siberia and at least one-quarter and perhaps half of the entire Chechen nation perished in the process. Though “rehabilitated” in 1956 and allowed to return the next year, the survivors lost economic resources and civil rights and, under both Soviet and post-Soviet governments, they have been the objects of (official and unofficial) discrimination and discriminatory public discourse. Chechen attempts to regain independence in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union have led to two devastating wars with the new Russian state since 1994.
As for communist theory, Karl Marx (himself a Jew) wrote about Jews in a fashion remarkably similar to Adolf Hitler. Read his essay On The Jewish Question for some eye-opening examples of this.
What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that with the exception of Baen Books, (if you haven’t, go to their website and consider buying a few books, e or otherwise. They often have trouble getting on shelves) you couldn’t sell a science fiction book or series that equates communism with nazism on a moral plane (ask me how I know!) or even casts any aspersions on communists’ intentions and deeds. A series that glorifies communism? Well, there are many. They win awards and are pushed until they become bestsellers. And that is so, not because the reverse isn’t being written, but because the er… controllers of the means of production won’t let it through (I always get very upset when people try — earnestly — to figure out why all creative people are leftist. It never seems to occur to them all artistic professions have gatekeepers and most less… conventional artists, like all other artists, tend to be too broke to publish, promote and distribute themselves [and don’t get me started on the distribution channels, either.]) It is what it is.
Beyond that, communism is not more moral, but it is a vampire that keeps rising from its grave because it panders to our sense of “justice” which might have been evolutionarilly sound in a SMALL band of mostly related people, but now just assures hell on Earth. You know, to each according to his needs, to each according to his ability. Only in a group larger than… six? ten? what you get is a bureaucrat deciding what you can do and what you need and you’ll like it or else — because some animals are more equal than others. Now excuse me, I feel nauseated.
(Sarah — proudly overthinking it!)
I think one reason why Communism doesn’t have as bad a rep as Nazism/Fascism here and elsewhere is that the West fought a “hot” war with the Nazis but only “proxy” wars with the Reds.
If there had been a “hot” war between the West and the Reds, and the West prevailed, things would be lot different. Imagine Hollywood churning out 300 war movies a year depicting the hows, the wheres and the whys of the war, like it did with WWII. With actual direct combat and the US’s mass media behind such a war, I think the Reds would have been reviled just as completely as the Nazis are reviled.
Don’t forget, Randy, that we were allies for years with the kindly “Uncle Joe” Stalin against the wicked Hitler. After the war, Stalin’s murderous henchmen sat in judgment on the Nazis side by side with our finest judges, while the US media proudly told gullible Americans that the Soviet flag was among the “flags of freedom” now flying over former Nazi areas.
It is one thing to have a temporary coalition with evil, but quite another to imagine evil is good.
The wartime alliance made for much mischief.
Flenser,
You can stop being a capitalist and become a communist.
You can’t be Aryan other than by birth.
If there had been a “hot” war between the West and the Reds, and the West prevailed, things would be lot different. Imagine Hollywood churning out 300 war movies a year depicting the hows, the wheres and the whys of the war, like it did with WWII.
There’s a “hot” war between the West and Islamists right now, and no such movies ever seem to appear…
“You can stop being a capitalist and become a communist.”
Not always. In China the Chicoms identified “hereditary enemies of the People” and persecuted them accordingly. In ‘Ivan Denisovitch” which Solzhenitsyn based on his own expeiences in the GULAG and the characters on people he met there, the brigade leader of Ivan’s work team was booted out of the Red Army for being the son of a Kulak. Commie designations of who was bourgeois and who proletarian were pretty arbitrary sometimes.
I wonder how much difference it made to a shopkeeper in Lodz whether he and his family were killed because the Nazis were killing Jews and he was a leader of the local synagogue, or because the Commies were killing capitalist oppressors of the proletariat, and he employed five clerks in his shop.
I read GR’s last sentence as meaning, simply, that the decision to defend communism must not be a costless one.
That it is now fashionable and chic and intellectual and brave to do so (among some communities) is a consequence of decades of our having allowed that decision to be made without approbation or criticism or expressions of disgust as the answer to such a defense.
Whether we allow it out of a polite distaste for confrontation, or out of a belief that the defender only loses esteem amongst the world because such a position is so facially evil and stupid, or because we believe that everyone has the right to express their beliefs, the result of our forbearance is always a shortening of the time between periods of general worldwide loathing of communism and the willingness to see it tried once again.
Even the casual position that true communism simply means sharing amongst all ought not be received politely and gently, unless we’re willing to also accept that true Nazism simply embodied a quest for us all to be better Men.
Randy said:
“I think one reason why Communism doesn’t have as bad a rep as Nazism/Fascism here and elsewhere is that the West fought a “hot” war with the Nazis but only “proxy” wars with the Reds.
Excepting Korea and Vietnam, which were not called wars, officially, till after they were fought.
If there had been a “hot” war between the West and the Reds, and the West prevailed, things would be lot different. Imagine Hollywood churning out 300 war movies a year depicting the hows, the wheres and the whys of the war, like it did with WWII. With actual direct combat and the US’s mass media behind such a war, I think the Reds would have been reviled just as completely as the Nazis are reviled.”
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The largest component in lengthening the “Cold War” (WWIII) was the resistance *inside* US society to winning that conflict. That came largely from the street cred the USSR got in WWII fighting Hitler, even after collaborating with Hitler before Barbarossa.
IMHO, it would not even have taken a hot war with the USSR. In our timeline, Hitler declared war on the US on Dec. 10th, 1941. this was in spite of the fact that he did not have to, under his treaty with Japan, because they struck first.
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If some event involved us in his war with Britain (perhaps US help to the British in finding/sinking pocket battleship commerce raiders that ends in extensive combat by the US Navy?)it is not impossible that Hitler in a rage could have declared war on us before Dec. 10th, 1940. Barbarossa is then cancelled.
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In that case, the USSR would get *no* street cred during WWII from US academia. Instead, it would be quite properly seen as the manipulative silent partner behind Germany. The US vaporizes a set of German cities in 1945, as well as any forces in front of Patton’s Army, and that war ends. Except that the USSR still has all it got in its secret Treaty with Hitler, eastern Poland and the Baltic States. It also still has the GULAG that is now correctly described in academia as the prototype for the German concentration camps and slave labor system.
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“Class warfare” against groups like Kulaks is now, properly, seen on the same level as genocide. Resistance to opposing “the socialist camp” in the third world-wide conflict of the 20th Century would not be 1/10th of what it was in our timeline, IMHO.
The US keeps expanding its forces from 1945 onwards, in the face of Soviets holding Poland and the Baltic States. We make serious efforts to speed up rocketry, and by 1965 there is a US Space Force for orbital ballistic missile defense.
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The Cold War is over when Bulganin expands his attempt at market reforms between 1955 and 1960 into larger changes to try to match US productivity. Sometime between 1965 and 1970, under the gaze of the orbiting defensive and offensive weapons of the US Space Force, the USSR breaks up. In 1965, Mao is excluded finally from power in China by the rest of the Politburo. That world is still a long way from paradise, but tens of millions of lives are saved.
Communism at it’s core means the individual is a slave of the collective.
Communists have good intentions? I suppose it could be spun that way for those that choose submission. But what about for those that choose otherwise?
I’ve often thought that Hitler has been hyped as the most evil dictator intentionally as a distraction from Stalin, Lenin, and Mao.
M. Simon wrote, ‘Plus there is a certain sense that the Soviets found what they “had to do” at least somewhat regrettable.’
Bertrand Russell, “Eminent Men I Have Known”: “When I met Lenin, … my most vivid impressions were of bigotry and Mongolian cruelty…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.”
“Communism isn’t supposed to be about mass murder, because of the good intentions.”
Instead of taking Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, now they just want to “Lean Forward”. Or was it Bend Over?
Excellent post. Like you, I have bookshelves full of books about the atrocities of Nazis and communists. I’ve also got books written by communists detailing the glory of these governments, written at the same time they were slaughtering and starving their own peoples. For a real education, read the works of Sidney and Beatrice Webb defending the Soviet Union and Stalin, written at the height of the Great Terror. After reading them, I couldn’t agree more with Glenn that “When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest.”
Understand something about communists: they are religious fanatics, albeit in a secular religion. Evidence, logic, nothing penetrates the armor of their belief that they’ve found the way to create a better world. They are historically and economically illiterate, arrogant, and filled with hate. I’ve argued with a lot of communists over the years (for a while, it was something of a hobby), and they are remarkable in their ability to simply dismiss communist regimes of the past with a simple “Oh, those nations weren’t really communist.” In fact, now that I think about it, virtually every single communist I’ve ever argued with has used some variation of this argument, the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Communism fails every time it’s tried, and ends with mountains of corpses, but the communist will insist that next time it will work… provided, of course, we follow that particular communist’s version. They don’t question the fundamental flaws in the theory itself, and never wonder why it fails.
“Angela Davis was set free, as you know. Although she didn’t have too difficult a time in this country’s jails, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts. Some Soviet dissidents, but more important, a group of Czech dissidents, addressed an appeal to her: ‘Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You have such great authority now. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those people in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?’ Angela Davis answered: ‘They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.’ That is the face of Communism. That is the heart of Communism for you.”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Communism continues to have its defenders because the distant because Communism’s goals and Socialism’s goals is the Gulag. To admit that Communism is evil is to admit the ends don’t justify the means. When combined with the implacable opposition of free peoples to Socialism, the Gulag becomes the only workable method to march towards Socialism’s glorious future. Thus: without the Gulag, Socialism is impossible, and is indicted as Evil.
“What does that last sentence mean? Is it some kind of threat?”
Of course in the glorious EU, they prosecute Nazis. Is Andrew against the EU’s anti-Nazi laws? With his online presence, I’d expect at least 50 mentions of the awful anti-Nazis laws by now and how he wants them abolished.
And if it were a threat, so what? I don’t see the problem with threatening Nazis and Communists. Wasn’t part of that threat called WW2?
If an applicant argues children should be molested, she can be denied a teaching job; if she argues Jews should be killed, she can be denied a teaching job; if she argues the Gulag kills only the right people, she gets tenure.
“stop being a capitalist”
I suppose that theoretically possible, were I tortured by O’Brien. As long I wish to free, however, I must be capitalist.
The Chinese, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Russian Socialist/Communist parties persecuted the children of capitalists. Capitalism: it’s in the blood. And, in China, the party continues to do so: the children of party members are privileged; a system which combines both Jim Crow and Affirmative Action.
“Plus there is a certain sense that the Soviets found what they “had to do” at least somewhat regrettable. The Nazis seem to have taken great joy in their work with no regrets.”
I think this sense is misguided. Read this: http://agentintellect.blogspot.com/2010/03/quote-for-day.html
I think Andrew Sullivan doth protest too much. He may have persecution issues. A little understandable maybe, but they’re “issues,” just the same. Ask Andrew if he has a right to shun homophones, or if he should be required, by law, to hire someone who is a member of the KKK as his personal secretary, or be required to rent his garage to Fred Phelps.
There is a logical disconnect with the idea that a free-thinking people, a nation of individuals, cannot express the opinion that communism is evil… and be allowed to act on that opinion by refusing to associate with communists, including the right not to hire them.
It is because, as we’ve discussed before and at length, we have this strange idea that you cannot discriminate in this country. The GOVERNMENT cannot discriminate, but that restriction is on the government, not the people.
People have a fundamental right to discriminate in hiring, housing, and with whom they choose to socialize (list not exhaustive!!!).
Discriminating tastes or a discerning palate was once highly regarded–it was the successful outcome of experience and education (aka: wisdom). The concept has been successfully jaded and turned on its arse by people who don’t understand the difference between bigotry/prejudice and discrimination.
I could understand Andrew Sullivan’s knee jerk reaction to something that smacks of bigotry and prejudice, but it is just that: knee jerk.
When someone declares their support of groups like the KKK they are shunned, yet when someone declares their support for communism (and its sister, socialism) we’re supposed to…? Do what? Invite them home to meet the daughter?
We have a RIGHT to be discriminating in our choices (with whom we associate, in all facets of our lives). If all we have is the ability to SAY what we like/prefer (or dislike/hate) then what good is it? Having opinions, without being able to act on them, is pointless… and making laws against it only forces people to go underground. A compromise might be to require that people put up a sign or something, but that’s about it.
The only thing we cannot do (legally) is slander or libel, but I can certainly cry “EVIL!” when someone has expressed an infinity for communism.
Shunning has gotten a really bad rap. Far too many folks have chosen to allow the government to do our shunning for us! Talk about arse-barkwards!
We’ve let things get really whacky. We have the right to say we dislike something our government has done, but not petition it? Going from saying to acting on? We are allowed nouns, but not verbs? The ability to express, without the ability to act, has turned our understanding of rights on its ear.
I’ve been attacked/criticized in the past (don’t care… just makes me giggle) for suggesting that even bigots/racists have a right to exercise their opinions by excluding certain people/groups from their social circles. What is astonishing is that people *get* that THEY have a right to disassociate with racists, but then they’ll do an about-face when you suggest that racists can also choose with whom they disassociate. Currrazy!
Liberty always includes the Yin and the Yang: the freedom to fuck up along with the freedom to succeed, the freedom to choose to associate with people of noble and educated minds and the freedom to associate with scoundrels and pigs. It is easy to champion liberty when it is easy, or when the idea is noble. It is damned-difficult (and a bit inconvenient, I might add) to champion them when it is ugly.
I think many people just don’t like freedom very much–when it means they might not get picked to play on the baseball team.
I don’t think, as Sarah suggests, that we have an innate sense of fairness. I think we have an innate sense of fear that WE might get caught in the net of being shunned, so we want to eradicate that fundamental right from everyone (see Andrew Sullivan comments above). Must be something primal, relating to not like the idea that the big gorilla might get to make us sit in the corner so we don’t get the pretty chicks. (Can you say “chicks” when it applies to female gorillas?)
Maybe the real test of understanding what liberty truly means is to ask people if an individual has a right to discriminate in who they hire or rent an apartment to. If they say “no” then they don’t really get it, do they? It might be technically correct to answer “yes,” because we have allowed these rights to be eroded by unconstitutional laws, but it wasn’t what our Founders meant, or what liberty truly means.
The fact that we’ve allowed our government to restrict these freedom just shows how willing many people are to give up our fundamental right of association when it feels good, or sounds “fair” or “nicer” (and especially when it is individuals in our group that may get set on the sidelines). Liberty isn’t always pretty. It is sometimes ugly and vulgar, in both speech and deed.
(Oh, and just in case someone attempts to take this to illogical extremes… insert the usual caveats/clichés of rights do not extend to the “end of my nose” and “Shouting Fire” etc.)
Geesh that was long. Sorry, Eric!
HA! HomophoNes? Meant, homophoBes, of course.
HomephoNes are iPhones, of course. :p
Setting its unsurpassed body count aside for a moment, communism is orders of magnitude worse than fascism for the simple reason that to this day some continue to defend it, and will probably continue to do so in perpetuity.
The greatest evils are delivered packaged in seductive veneers designed to appeal to the gullible. In the case of communism, the veneer appeals to that special class of fool endowed with a brittle intelligence that shows well on standardized tests, and is often found in hothouse faculty lounges.
Don’t ignore the influence of actual living-and-breathing (in their productive years) American communists.
The author of the most popular history textbook for example:Howard Zinn
Actually Hitler loved and cared deeply about Germany. Of course it was a sick twisted love that resulted in the death of millions and the destruction of Germany.
Stalin? I think Stalin only cared about Stalin which resulted in the death of millions. One could argue that Stalin didn’t destroy Russia like Hitler destroyed Germany. However, he didn’t do it any favors.
Where did this idea of good intentions for Communism come from? Because they say so? Communism appeals to envy and greed to set one group of citizens against another in order for the bosses to grab and hold absolute power. No would-be communist ever says “Join us and you can work hard to enrich your neighbor.” He says “Join us and you can take what your neighbor has.” Good intetntions? No way.
As for which is worse, Communism or he Nazis, it depends on who you are. If you were Jewish or one of the targeted minorities, the Nazis were probably worse, but otherwise, the communists were. The reason is that under the Nazis you could probably avoid trouble by absolute obedience (usually), but under communism, the arrests and deportations were so sweeping, so random and so unrelated to any actual offense that no one was ever safe.
Another reason that Nazi evil is properly understood is that many Jews in Hollywood (the ones that are actually there, as opposed to the conspiracy) were personally touched by the Holocaust, losing relatives and friends, and have expressed their horror in countless films.
And many were also personally touched by McCarthyism and the Red Scare, so they portray communism as the victim and communists in America as martyrs.
Someone really needs to base a movie on The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia by Tim Tzouliadis, wherein he follows starry-eyed American immigrants to the USSR, who are at first welcomed with open arms and their “people’s sport,” baseball, embraced by the government.
And then you see it all fall apart, and you see how feckless U.S. bureaucrats ignore the plight of those who disappear in the night, one by one.
He follows a few people to the gold mines of Kolyma, and enumerates the bleak fate of others who were trapped in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s purges.
But being on the Left means never having to say you’re sorry, so I’ll not hold my breath.
You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the pass given those on the left for their “good intentions.” To the leftist, good intentions matter most, not the eventual outcome. Interestingly, I had much this same conversation with my 12-year old son just yesterday. He said “Liberals are the bad people, right?” I replied that no one is necessarily good or bad, it’s just in their point of view: Liberals don’t care so much about results, as long as the intentions are good, whereas Conservatives don’t care about intentions, as long as the results are good. In the end, which is better for the greatest number of people? I would hope the question answers itself (but then, the Liberal’s capacity for self-delusion is monumental).
Great line, that.
I’ve been musing the past couple days at how wonderful Communism must have seemed to intellectuals in those early days. Equality! No one going hungry! A fair distribution of resources! And end to racism and competition! It’s easy to see the attraction Communism had before the 70 years of mass murder and grnding poverty.
I think a lot of people are over-thinking this. Both communism and national socialism are flavors of collectivism — taken together, and by body count alone, the greatest evil ever encompassed by the mind of Man. Don’t ever forget that.
People who seek to parse one from the other attempt to distract you from that fact. Neither one is “better” than the other, because that presupposes that either one of them is in ANY way “good.” That is simply not on. Both are unalloyed evil and not to be trucked with.
The reason that communism gets a better rap than national socialism (or fascism) here in the West is because the agents of international revolutionary Leninism managed to do a better job of infiltrating and perverting our institutions.
(Notice I don’t say “subverting.” I like to pity the Left. It has this conceit that it is subversive when really it’s only subjunctive. Butennyway…)
We need to move on from this to what liberty-loving patriots can do about it. And that is this: confront the bastards. Don’t let them get away with it.
Remember that they cry loudest when you pink them on the tenderest spots. Don’t ever give up. They deserve no mercy — they’d offer you none if the tables were turned. Call them on their lies, their subversions, their anti-Americanism, their anti-human stances.
When the death cult calls for blood, tell them, “By all means; you first.”
M
On June the 19th, 1940 the America First crowd was all in favor of us staying our of “Europe’s War”. The 20th, Hitler invaded Russia. Suddenly America First turned on a dime, wanting war, war, WAR!
There is no difference than Nazism and Communism. Communism was “International Socialism. Nazism was National Socialism. No difference. Do you want Hell in one country or all countries? That is the only difference between them.
Our United States Congress is sprinkled with Communists, and Communist sympathizers. In addition, the Political Philosophy of the Democrats today seems to be Socialism-Marxism backed by a growing Centralized Power in Washington DC.
Thank God for the resurgence of the American People, Tea Parties and Conservative Republicans. These people, whether they believe it or not, are supporting ideas that have murdered MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.
Walter Duranty was head of the New York Times Moscow Bureau during the forced starvation of the Ukrainians; 8 to 10 million men, women and children were murdered by starving them to death. Duranty filed false reports with the NY Times for years denying the Genocide. To this day even after the Ukrainian government has asked repeatedly to return the Pulitzer Prize given to Duranty the Times has refused. The Times had to know from other sources what was going on and they suppressed the news for propaganda purposes. Now we have the “Journalistas” of the main stream media doing the same thing, suppressing news like the good propagandists that they have become. The communists make nazi’s look like pikers, they have murdered over 200 million of their own citizens, in just one place like Kolyama, they murdered over 3 million [“Kolyama Tales” Amazon.com] and that was but one Gulag of over 300. Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin the head executioner of the NKGB or KGB in one 28 day killing spree personally shot over 7000 Polish Officers in the Katyn Forest and blamed it on the Nazi. This has to be a world record for executions. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin ] We still have apologists for the Communist, even more appalling we have people who think these murderous thugs have gone away; they haven’t!
Flenser,
You can stop being a capitalist and become a communist.
You can’t be Aryan other than by birth.
Simon, did you read and understand what I wrote? You come across as a “former” communist who is still trying to defend his “former” comrades.
I just have one question: why do you keep treating Sullivan as if he’s meaningful or even sane? One shouldn’t feed trolls nor like to the mad.
Along the Commie/Nazi access, I remind my academic friends that during the Eastern War many welcomed the Nazis originally as rescue from the Communists.
Nazism happened in our backyard, in Europe, using the language of Western Culture, of science, and of Christianity to sell its wares. At some level, most westerners just shrug that barbaric stuff happens in Asia all the time, and so what? Combine this general unconcern with the pro-communist propaganda of some, and the USSR always seemed a bit dark and threatening, but nothing like so dangerous as Nazis. Even in the heyday of the USSR, when the west cared about communist countries at all, it focused on the European ones.
Would that we had focused enough to actually do something, of course.
AVI:
“most westerners just shrug that barbaric stuff happens in Asia all the time”
and
“when the west cared about communist countries at all, it focused on the European ones”
Which is why we commited troops in Korea and Vietnam but not in Hungary or Czechoslovakia?
My view is similar to the last post. Of course, almost all self-described socialists, marxists, etc try to distance themselves from the mass murderers, saying that those were all mistakes, and certainly wouldn’t happen under their up and coming revolution.
But back on track, it’s really a symptom of a sense of Western superiority. Too many of us still don’t think enough of non-westerners to hold them to our standards. So Mao’s regime caused tens of millions of deaths? Well, the end result was pretty good, etc. And look at Africa: if you combine the condemnation of all the medal-strewn, bloodthirsty dictators on the continent from the last 40 years, it still doesn’t match the condemnation reserved for Apartheid-era South Africa. Why? Because we expect more from our own.
I believe Vladimir Putin said “The west seems to have a double standard for people who look like them” at a news conference a few years ago. It’s a mentality that needs to go away soon.
1. I agree with flenser. Although an unrelated topic, how can anyone look at Sullivan’s Trig Palin birtherism and conclude this man is sane?
2. Let’s keep in mind, the Nazis were the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Another form of leftism, and in no meaningful way “rightist” in the sense of where the clerics and nobles sat in the Estates General. The easiest way to understand the question at hand is that Bolsheviks defined class enemies, unconstrained by facts about the people in question (e.g., there was no kulak class until they invented one), whereas Nazis defined race enemies, also unconstrained by facts (e.g., German Jews were overwhelmingly very supportive of Imperial Germany and its WW1 war effort).
Give Hitler a couple of million empty, barren square miles and he would have set up a Gestapo-run prison camp system just like the Gulag, and sent the Jews and other racial undesirables there to work until they died. The main moral difference between Stalin and Hitler just boils down to Stalin had his Gulag to deal with a large number of his “enemies,” Hitler didn’t have an equivalent. Each had no problem killing millions.
The “good intentions” argument is particularly odious. In its own terms, Naziism was no more nor less evil than Bolshevism, each intended to perfect the world by purging it of a very large number of people of certain “groups”. It’s the millenarian drive to perfection that is dangerous and leads to evil.
btb, I’m Jewish and decidedly NOT of the self-hating variety.