Kill six millions Jews in Germany, your name becomes a synonym with evil. Kill between 44 and 72 million Chinese, you get a café named after you. It’s a funny old world, eh?
– commenter Jill Murphy
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Samizdata quote of the dayJanuary 16th, 2008 |
 91 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Well, you see, the Nazis beliefs didnt inspire legions of hippie idiots, who wound up doing things like owning cafes, and naming them after their favourite dead communist monsters..
Is there a competition?
Could be, Tatyana. Maybe if Mao has hit the 100 million mark, it would have been a whole chain of cafes with a special milkshake named after him too. Oh well, maybe next time.
If Jews were killed in name of socialist-socialism it would have been the same. That happened in the name of socialist PLO oops Palestine…
I think lucklucky is on to something. It is National Socialism as opposed to International Socialism.
What would be your theory about Armenians murdered by Turks, then? Or people of 100 ethnicities wiped out by Stalin?
Turks do not get such a free ride but…
But… but… but… without Stalin, there would be no industrialization (or some shit like that).
Sorry but people killed by the left do not count. harold Pinter kind of liked Pol Pot. If Stalin killed six million Jews, who’d even notice? Think I’m joking?
This reminded me of a trivia story that was in the press a while back; some chap had been shown to be a descendant of Genghis Khan, and he said at least it wasn’t somebody bad like Adolf Hitler.
Ah, here it is.
I like this bit-
Well that’s all right then.
I don’t know Mid. I think the big difference is being killed for what one did (as in not toeing the party line), as opposed to what one was (as in having been born with the wrong genes). I think that it is the eugenics “angle” that makes National socialism the ultimate evil after all.
Another big difference is that great numbers of the victims of socialism/communism were seen as a kind of collateral damage, unfortunate maybe, but necessary for the “greater good”. This in contrast to people with the wrong genes, who were explicitly selected for extermination. This, BTW, may partly explain the lower numbers. In any case, although what ultimately matters are the results, motives should count at least for something.
Very good food though. I usually go there when returnign to Dublin.
I could also stomach a Castro Cafe if their Cuban food was good enough. That is, of course, Cuban food as consumed outside of the country and not within it.
I am sure that Stalin killed quite a few Jews in his various culls of his populace. He killed so many how its inevitable a fair number of Jews were included. And its not like Russia does not have a history of occasional culls of Jewish population.
Midwesterner:
In reality, the Soviets perpetrated a more sophisticated propaganda plot along these lines. Starting with the Nuremberg trials, they and their Western adherents and fellow-travelers managed to push the term “National Socialism” out of broad circulation, because they were well aware that the similarity in name might lead people to reflect on some deeper similarities.
The plot was unfortunately highly successful — outside of scholarly publications, people normally name Hitler’s followers using either the opaque acronym “Nazi” or the entirely wrong label “Fascist” (which was in fact a quite distinct Italian political movement). To make things even worse, the leftists really hit the jackpot with this game of labeling once they realized that they could evoke the worst possible emotional images of Hitler’s atrocities by liberally throwing the “Fascist” label against their political opponents at any time and place. This effectively enabled them to defend and idolize any leftist regime, no matter how bloody and oppressive, by claiming that it opposed “Fascists”, even if these “Fascists” were in fact angelic in comparison with the leftist regime in question.
Here is a very good article that presents a brief historical overview of this issue:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-4629820.html
Interesting article, Ivan. For what its worth, I out of curiosity had a look at :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_socialism
And I found it interesting to see the ‘Socialism in one country’ option, ie a thread of communist ideology. Truly closer than popular opinion thinks.
Ivan’s quite correct. Murderous National Socialism is – quite rightly – a byword for unspeakable evil, while murderous International Socialism is – almost unbelievably – cool. There’s a pub in Glasgow called “Bloc”, with a hammer and sickle logo. I feel ill every time I pass it.
On the other hand, I console myself with the thought that we are free to belittle these homicidal maniacs and utopian schemes by naming pubs after them. Somehow I can’t imagine a Cafe Thatcher or a pub called “Free Trade” in Soviet Moscow.
Assuming that the communist killed people for what “one did” is totally wrong.
They murdered whomever they grabbed in a random and arbitrary fashion, by the millions. See that review of the “gulag testimonial” book for example.
The difference lies in the rhetoric of the commie propaganda machine: Hitler murdered for the benefit of the German Nation. Nobody loves “the German nation”. Stalin and Mao, on the other hand, did it for the benefit of all mankind… for the children…
Does the menu arrive at the table presented in a little red book?
Genghis Khan, long synonymous with the right, was actually a socialist. So that’s alright then!
Just a quibble, but the nazis didn’t kill six million Jews, they murdered eleven million people of whom six million were Jews.
It’s more than a little ironic that so many people who’re against Holocaust revisionism don’t realize they’re defending Rev A themselves.
Look at it this way: if things are collectivized behind the counter, this will be a brief controversy.
There’s also a restaurant named Mao’s down near the beach in Santa Monica, CA (or at least there was six years ago). Big mural of the old butcher on the side of the building.
I didn’t go in, and certainly didn’t want any of their food. The name and artwork were nauseating enough.
people killed by the left do not count
Err, Hitler was a lefty.
Ian B. – Good sidebar.
I particularly enjoyed:
“In addition to being a conqueror, he was a great administrator,” said Robinson, who has been reading up on Genghis Khan…”
LOL!
Doesn’t that just strike you as a ‘pre-industrial’ version of “at least he made the trains run on time?”
PersonFromPorlock, don’t be a complete cock.
“I think the big difference is being killed for what one did (as in not toeing the party line), as opposed to what one was (as in having been born with the wrong genes). I think that it is the eugenics ‘angle’ that makes National socialism the ultimate evil after all.
Another big difference is that great numbers of the victims of socialism/communism were seen as a kind of collateral damage, unfortunate maybe, but necessary for the ‘greater good’.”
This is a true statement if anything the communist or socialist dictator wants/needs/prefers/desires is interpreted as “for the greater good.”
Otherwise, is one of the most naive statements ever uttered.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, natch.
K C Cat, which just goes to show the complete meaninglessness of the terminology, but that is what we are stuck with.
German National Socialism was not the same as Soviet or Chinese Socialism (i.e. nominally ‘International’ Socialism), economically speaking. Their approach to how to run an economy differed in that Marxist (International) Socialism. The Marxists simply seize the means of production and run it at gunpoint. Companies are replaced by ‘bureaus’ either literally or in effect.
National Socialism in the Nazi form did a bit of that too, but it also left much of the economy nominally in ‘private’ hands. People were free to ‘own’ a company, just as long as they did what the state wanted them to do… i.e. it was a form of regulatory statism rather than actual ‘nationalisation;. Thus at least in principle, their view was not that different from the way Mitt Romney would look at an economy. That is why Nazi economics is seen as ‘right wing’, because ‘right wing’ is seen to mean ‘allows private ownership’.
Of course once you decouple ownership from actually control, and therefore impose liability on the ‘owner’ whilst only allowing him to make decisions chosen options from a state approved list, does ‘ownership’ really mean all that much? So to describe Hitler and Stalin as both ‘left wing’ may or may not be true, but does it really tell us anything? ‘Ring wing’ is not, sadly, a meaningful synonym for liberty and free trade.
Sorry Dadmanly but you seem to be disputing what is pretty much a truism. The evidence that most socialists think socialism is ‘for the greater good’ is simply indisputable. That is why they are socialists.
The fact they are wrong on a truly heroic scale does not change the fact that is what they think, hence the weird double standard when evaluating state sponsored mega-deaths.
Oh my goodness! I’ve been quoted! Fame at last! 🙂
*sigh* the Brits used to have balls, what happened?
Maybe the cafe will display Mao’s saying: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” Of course, in Red China the “eggs” were its citizens; that quote reeks of the old Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man.”
In comments to another Samiz-post I cited my own take on to that saying: an omelette is not made for the benefit of its ingredients.
Well, *sigh*, the cafe is in Dublin. That’s not Britain, in case us furrners all look the same.
“an omelette is not made for the benefit of its ingredients.”
BRAVO, Alan K – I’d never heard/read that before.
EXACTLY!
Of course, the truth is, kill 6 million Jews ….
and you get a bar named after you.
http://www.pusanweb.com/feature/hitlerbar/hitlermain.htm
Perry, Dadmanly, this comes back to the argument behind Will Smith’s statement about Hitler. Using good intentions as an excuse for murderous behaviour is a non-starter. No one actually sets out to do evil. Everyone, in their own mind, from their own perspective, believes they’re doing the “right thing”. Arguably, even Hitler.
So the “for the greater good” distinction exists only in the minds of the Left. Will’s remark challenged that, which is why they went bonkers over it. It’s something they should have their noses rubbed in until they get the idea. Evil lurks unrecognized within us all.
From Site:
… and the entire German governments PR department lets out a collective groan and thinks to itself “for years we held back on parades and uniforms and flags, and for what”.
Sure. But all we are doing here (I think) is saying that is exactly what ‘the left’ has been doing, hence the inability of some leftists (as in ‘self-described’ leftists) to abominate ‘their’ (also self-described leftist) monsters.
So far no one in the comments here on this topic has actually said this world view has any merit, but rather are just attempting to explain what the world view is of people who have no problem dissing Hitler yet get annoyed when someone is less than reverential about Mao. It is a discussion about explaining perversity.
Reminded me of a quote in the channel 4 sitcom “Peep Show”.
Mark (a man whose idea of a good chatup line is “did you know that the Red Army killed 16,000 of their own men at Stalingrad?”) is dragged out by his new girlfriend to buy clothes and is initially appalled to see Mao t-shirts. Then later he comes out with this gem:
“She’s good for me, Jez. She’s dragging me into the 21st century, with its meaningless logos and ironic veneration of tyrants”.
Perry De H. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. The left prides itself in attempting to increase the power of the state to promote “The Greater Good”. The left prides itself on increasing regulations and taxes on business in order to protect The Environment and The Children. The left prides itself on “education campaigns” that favor promoting “social justice” and “diversity” rather than a pursuit of the truth. The left prides itself on speech codes that criminalize thought that is not “politically correct”.
Both Hillary and Obama are committed socialists for The Greater Good”.
You can always point fingers at either side, but it seems to me that you pointing out the speck and ignoring the log and I’m wondering why.
You lost me there, Perry. Which worldview does “this world view” refer to. Ours? The left’s? Somebody else’s?
The world view that thinks Mao etc. acted for the greater good.
Well maybe nobody’s said that that world view has any merit, because it just doesn’t have any merit.
“I don’t know Mid. I think the big difference is being killed for what one did (as in not toeing the party line), as opposed to what one was (as in having been born with the wrong genes”
You can’t be serious?? Poles, Ukrainians, Chechens, and Balts were often killed for who they were and not their politics. Stalin like Hitler killed people he didn’t like not just people who posed a threat. You might want to read one of the many books about the Gulag. A very comprehensive one by Ann Applebaum is excellent.
Or order the massacring of the entire world – and become above criticism.
Like the paedohpile prophet, look for his “last words” if you want confirmation.
Oh and in this paedophile prophet’s name over 10 million jews were killed (e.g. they helped hitler, look up “ay aymin al husseini”), at LEAST 80 million hindus (mongol “empire”), at least 15 million boeddhists (thailand, malaysia, …), and at least 50 million christians (turkey, all over eastern europe, iran, spain, sicily, malta, …), and … worst of all, over 100 million muslims (for not being muslim enough).
National Socialist German Workers Party is the term of art.
Yes I can see how the Republican front runner is oh so different from a Democrat. Mitt Romney’s understanding of political economics (and I am only talking economics here) is statist in the essentially fascist manner. All for the Greater Good of the Nation, of course.
Let’s not kid ourselves. The Greater Good is but shorthand for The Personal Power of Me, the Savior and Redeemer of Mankind.
Revolutionaries all mean the same thing.
Jeez. Yeah. Thanks for that. I got the impression from Dadmanly however that he was mistaking description for advocacy. Hence my remarks.
These Chines, they are just copy-cats.
This was said first by Lenin, I think.
Anybody knows of any Lenin or Stalin cafes ?
Perry, I don’t know, that seems like a pretty tortured defense of calling Hitler a right winger. It’s hard to see how taking any of the “right wing” extremists and making them even more extreme would lead you to the government control of the economy as seen in Nazi Germany.
I think on the far side of the right is anarchy, not totalitarianism. I think the Left in this country just doesn’t like having all the mass-murdering nuts on their side of the ledger, hence Hitler is deposited on the Right. There’s not much more to it than that.
Now if you wanted to go back to the robber barons of the 1890s or the French aristocracy of the 1700s, then I’m with you. I would even agree with you giving the credit to the Right for the plutocracies of South America a few decades back.
But Hitler? Nahhhhhhh.
Absolutely true. However… unlike Hitler who actually said he was ordering people killed for being ‘unterermerchen’, Stalin always claimed he was ‘just’ killing ‘class enemies’ (so that’s all right then).
Hence non-ironic tee-shirts with Stalin or Lenin or their glamour boy Che are rather more commonly seen draped over the fucktards of the world that tee-shirts of Hitler or Himmler or their glamour boy Heydrich.
Since the great leap forward lead to massive starvation…
K T Cat, trouble with that is it does not really have any relation to the reality. The whole ‘left/right’ spectrum idea came from from 18th Century France. However in particular in the USA, where you have the controlling elements of the Republican party favouring a vastly powerful regulatory state, in what way does the Left/Right divide in a US context end up with ‘anarchism’ on the far right?
Sorry but other than a self-describing label for people (and that was the sense in which I used it) left wing or right wing does not really mean anything unless you add all manner of qualifiers.
As Joshua said the other day, many leading Republicans are in effect ‘Democrats on Fire for Jesus’. Does that make Romney or Huckabee or their ilk ‘right’ or ‘left’ in any useful way?
Hitler was ‘right wing’ in the mind of many socialists because he allowed a large chunk of the economy to be under the private ownership of his supporters (or at least collaborators). That is not an unreasonable distinction because it *is* a materially different approach to that taken by the Marxists. You do not have to look very hard to find such notions of state direction (as opposed to formal ownership) of the economy in self-described right wing circles.
The terms left and right are really now tribal/cultural designators rather than meaningful indicators of political theory when used without qualification. that is why is you ask a lot of libertarians (and even a classical liberal Republican I know), if you ask “are you Left or Right?” they will say “I am Up”. Political Compass is a (very) unsuccessful attempt to fix that problem.
Yes I can see how the Republican front runner is oh so different from a Democrat. Mitt Romney’s understanding of political economics (and I am only talking economics here) is statist in the essentially fascist manner
Perry, I understand the point that you are making about Mitt and agree with you to some degree – but then it is all a matter of degree. Look at Hillary’s and Obama’s idea of health care. Hillary basically wants to have it be state provided – and I’m not exactly sure what Obama’s health care plan is except that he wanted to force everyone to go to an approved doctor once a year. If that doesn’t scare you to death, it should, because that certainly sets you up to be considered mentally ill if your politics aren’t right.
I have no problem with you noting Mitt’s conservative flaws and I’m not a fan of his. But I think it is dangerous to only equate the candidates on the right with slipping liberties and to ignore the fact that the left is completely entrenched in the idea of growing the state to legislate your every thought, word and deed and has been for decades.
As you say, the Republicans have not been good at allowing the free market to flourish. But to lump your blame on the right and give the Democrats a pass on this issue seems a bit odd to me.
I can’t keep up with this thread and I’ve lost track.
Here is a meme or perhaps a more narrow definition I’ll toss in the air like a skeet for target practice.
National versus International Socialism is the scale of who is include in the target demographic.
Communist versus Fascist is the chosen method for collectivizing control of the economic system.
So National Socialists are not necessarily Fascist but could easily be Communists.
And International Socialists are not necessarily Communists but could be Fascists.
Is this true and if so, is it useful?
Sadly, this cafe is in Dublin, Ireland. Think they’d name a hotspot after Oliver Cromwell??
For sure, I am not saying otherwise.
This is where I must disagree. Firstly because I do not only equate the ‘right’ (whatever that means) with slipping liberties. I take it as axiomatic that the ‘left’ is more dependably anti economic liberty, whereas the self-described right is often worse on non-economic liberty. We are perforce talking in generalisations here.
However pretending that the mainstream Republicans & Tories (‘right’ does not really mean anything) are in opposition to the Democrats & Labour on the basis of political philosophy just ain’t true. They differ in degree, not direction. They are both on the same road and are just arguing how fast to drive.
Is Romney a ‘lesser evil’ that Hillary Clinton? Perhaps he is (although looking at his record and the bare faced open lies his campaign makes, maybe not). But if anyone thinks Romney is not profoundly in favour of more state/less society, they are very much mistaken. The only meaningful differences (to a Godless guys like me) between the likes of Romney and the Democrat mainstream are those of degree… if Romney wins, he will fight with the Dems over a 1 to 2% difference in the state’s share of GDP, if that, and use the word “God” more often in his speeches. Whoopty doo.
Perry, I agree with this:
But I don’t agree with this:
What about gun control, the general right of self defense either at a national or individual level, speech codes, hate crimes, quotas, increasing taxes to the point of running us from our land and turning us into peasants, etc. etc. The Democrats champion those causes! The democrats champion growing the state for The Greater Good.
I don’t like Mitt, and I hope he doesn’t win the nomination. But it is always about “lesser evils”. That’s the whole point of life, is it not? I’d like to live in a real castle, but then I’ll take a cardboard shack v/s the cold.
No candidate will ever be perfect. And at least here in the states, they come in a party package. It’s always about picking the least worst. Just stating why you are against someone is far less important than supporting the best available choice.
This reminds me of a faux-Irish bar in Prague popular with British expats named “O’Che’s”, decorated with various bits of Cuban revolutionary iconography.
I had a similar thought when I saw a place called Mao’s Kitchen open up on Melrose in LA not far from where I live!
I don’t agree that the Soviets only killed their enemies – they pretty much killed whoever they wanted to. They may however not thought what they were doing was wrong… I think the following from: Gulag by Anne Applebaum illustrates this point.
“In the early 1990’s, one of the men who carried out the Katyn massacres of Polish officers was still alive. Before he died the KGB conducted an interview with him, asking him to explain – from a technical point of view – how the murders were carried out. As a gesture of goodwill, a tape of the interview was handed to the Polish cultural attache in Moscow. No one suggested at any time that the man be put on trial in Moscow, Warsaw, or anywhere else.”
But this is merely a function of the length of time involved. Nazi Germany’s pretense to being a world power lasted all of about 6 years. The Soviets occupied Eastern Europe for generations. In the “early 1990s” that order had only crumbled what must’ve seemed like 20min. ago, and lots of collaborators were more interested in escaping consequences.
The same pattern holds in post-Franco Spain. Despite strong cultural opposition to Madrid, there is a real reluctance to face the past unflinchingly in Catalonia because so many people are complicit in some way.
The same would’ve been true of Nazi Germany if it had been able to occupy Europe as long. As it is, they were only occupiers long enough to infect a small part of the population which was easily disposed of in the aftermath. The rabid denunciations of the crimes of the Nazis in places like France has as much to do with trying to ignore just how much collaboration there was as it does with genuine moral outrage. If the pattern had continued longer, the number (and effectiveness) of the collaborators would’ve increased to critical mass, and you would, I think, have seen the same attitudes there that you currently see in East Germany and Poland regarding the Soviets.
I agree but that is irrelevant and you are missing the point… as you are repeating what you already said in this same thread, I will do the same.
Perry:
I’m a 54-year-old American Jew who is non-observant but very much ethnoculturally Jewish, and I’m a rabid Zionist. That being said, I’m not upset with PursonFromPorlock’s comment (although I can’t know his personal beliefs & intentions). I’ve always preferred to talk about the 10 million people Hitler murdered, including the 6 million Jews, as a showing of respect for the Gypsies, Slavs, homos, mental patients, & political adversaries, etc. whose deaths meant just as much as the death of the Jews. That doesn’t mean for one moment that I don’t believe in remembering & pointing out the unbearable horror and uniqueness of what was done by Hitler to all of European Jewry. I really don’t think acknowledging one takes away from the other. And I’m definitely a partisan in this.
Jack
Bush said “I will sign the assault weapon ban renewal if it gets to my desk”. Patriot Act. Real ID.
No for me. Life is about working towards something better, not just putting off death as long as possible. Just agreeing to support whoever will make things worse slower just does not ‘work’ for me.
Yes but they must at least be heading in a different direction to the other guys on key issues. I’m not saying ideological purity is required. I support Ron Paul even though I completely and utterly oppose his views on foreign affairs. The happiest day of my life was watching some Serbian irregulars with mortars on a hilltop get blown into very rare hamburgers by a pair of GR7’s funded with my tax money.
…this is where I think the wheels come off your entire approach: by supporting someone who will still grow the state, you guarantee that no matter who wins, the state gets bigger.
Moreover, by voting for a Big State Republican, even though you want a smaller state, what possible motivation does the Republican part have to give a damn what you want? They know you and anyone who thinks like you is going to vote for them regardless and all they have to be is ever so slightly less ghastly than the other guy. They simply do not need to shrink the state to get your vote. That is a strategic error of the highest order and why you are, in my view, your own worst enemy. You are actually not voting your own interests.
Jack, I’m guessing someone called Jill Murphy is probably not Jewish herself and my hostile response to PursonFromPorlock was not that he was pointing out more than just Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, it was that Jill singling out the Jews in her rather witty comparison constituted ‘revisionism’.
Yes comrades sing!
Dong fang hong, Tai Yang Sheng!
Zhong guo chu liao de Mao Zedong!
Women mei chi fan, mei you wenti!
women you Mao Zedong!!
Haha, the stupid westernerers built temples to our unwashed leader!, May a million tibetan screams sing to him in his eternal slumber!
Yes, the East is indeed Red… keep taking the meds.
…this is where I think the wheels come off your entire approach: by supporting someone who will still grow the state, you guarantee that no matter who wins, the state gets bigger.
The wheels don’t come off my approach here, they come off yours. You know as well as I do that Ron Paul can’t and won’t win. You can make a statement and that’s fine; as long as you are conscious of whom your vote is really going to.
Winners take all. Losers make statements.
Your “winnings” include: higher taxes (whether in the form of a vastly increased national debt or pay takings), endless military and foreign aid commitments, countless petty regulations, countless NON-petty regulations, an expensive and unwinnable War on Drugs, curtailment of civil liberties by a thousand paper cuts.
Congratulations! You must be so proud…
But I’m not supporting Ron Paul because I think he can actually become POTUS 🙂 It is all about ‘building the movement’ and that requires not supporting the ‘lesser evil’. I am taking a long view on this.
But even if the person you vote for wins, you still lose.
You’ve got it all wrong: it has nothing to do with the body count.
It, as usual, comes down to sex.
Hitler was kinda ambiguous about it, and has been declared Evil of Evils.
Mao went out of his way to share his syphillis with 12 year-old girls, and gets a cafe named after him…..
Perry, appreciate the discussion. Question.: Are you British? It’s just such a nice British sounding name.
I see it like a horse race. Sometimes it pays to bet on the long shot, but only if it might win. Otherwise, you are just contributing to someone else’s winnings. In the end, your final return is all about playing the odds. Life is chess, not checkers.
I voted for Perot once. As I look back now, I realize he was a f’n idiot.
I went through the shame and hassle of creating a DooYoo account, all so I could post a review on the site.
Appropriately enough for a restaurant named after The Great Helmsman, the DooYoo censors aren’t allowing any negative criticism to get through.
I travel to China often, and have met people whose lives were destroyed by that Marxist asshole. These people were not incidental statistics, these were not enemies of the state. These are living, breathing wonderful individuals who almost died because of Mao’s idiocy.
And there are Trendoids now roaming the earth who will actually eat in that cafe.
Perhaps Samizdata’s readers can keep plugging away at DooYoo, and post some comments about their decor? Comment on their need to be sent to the countryside for re-education? Comment on Mao’s body count being higher than Hitler’s?
This site is all about Forbidden Knowledge, right?
the DooYoo censors aren’t allowing any negative criticism to get through.
sound familiar, Perry?
I’m polite enough and am making a reasoned debate. But since it won’t further your opinion it is imperative that you eliminate me. lol!
Libertarian and tolerant, my ass.
“Absolutely true. However… unlike Hitler who actually said he was ordering people killed for being ‘unterermerchen’, Stalin always claimed he was ‘just’ killing ‘class enemies’ (so that’s all right then).”
I must not have done a good job explaining myself since I agree with the above statement… Based on what we now know Stalin thought just about everyone was a potential enemy. In fact I thought the quote I used supported the idea that suspected class enemies (Polish elite in this example) were being killed. Finally The reason I repeated myself was because there was more than one person claiming Stalin only killed real political enemies. At least that’s what I thought so if I’m wrong ignore one of my posts.
There are a lot of reasons why people react differently emotionally to the Nazis than to the Communists (or any other genocidal maniac). This is not true of the left only; I think even Robert Conquest, the master chronicler (next to Solzhenitsyn) of Stalinism’s crimes, admitted that he would have a different emotional reaction to a Nazi than to a Stalinist.
We should remember that we fought a war with the Nazis, a war in which the Soviet Union was allied with us; and, while we also fought a war with China, we were getting fairly friendly with the Chinese at the time of Mao’s death.
Moreover, the Nazi atrocities have been shown to the world in great detail in film and photographs and personal recollections; no such exposure (or anything even close) has ever been done in the USSR, or Communist China (or Rwanda or Biafra or the Congo, for that matter). Unlike Mao or Stalin, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge are also seen as more evil or Hitlerlike than your average communists; this is largely due to the movie “The Killing Fields” and the numerous photos that came out of Cambodia after their downfall. Unfortunately, it took a military defeat to allow us to witness the full depravity of the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.
I know it sounds trivial, but the Nazis, unlike the Communists, trumpeted their evil in colorful ways. It’s from the Nazis that we get the “Death’s Head”, the S.S. lightning bolts, the wolf packs, the “Condor Legion”, the Eagle’s Nest and Wolf’s Lair, the Panther and Tiger tanks, and so on (whereas the Soviets just gave us abstract or technical names like the “OGPU” and “KGB” and “T-34”).
Half Brit, Half Yank.
Huh? If you are referring to getting a comment ‘moderated’, I suggest you go here before assuming anything
fair enough.
This is the fundamental problem that followers of any political system needs to address. You can “win” what you don’t want, or cast a meaningless protest vote. What to do?
There was a small discussion a while backaways on the Libertarian Alliance blog, on a post David Davis had made asking “should we form a (UK) Libertarian Party?”. (I see there’s now an attempt to form one, BTW, I think it’s futile). My POV FWIW went something like this-
I think people make the mistake of thinking that forming political parties creates constituencies of voters. I don’t think this is true. If you’re representing only 1% of the electorate, your political party is a waste of time. It’ll just be a string of lost deposits. You won’t be able to promote your party, you won’t get on TV, except after the election once for Paxman to laugh at, you’ll just be a minority joke. There’s no point.
A political ideology can only gain political power when it has a critical mass of “believers”- a constituency. There’s no use forming your party until you’ve got that- when there are millions ready to vote for your view, and they’re looking for someone to vote for.
But, if there is that critical mass, then one of the two main parties will respond to that anyway (in terms of small government, that might be the Republicans or the Tories). This ISTM is how our effectively two-party systems work in the west; the major parties come to represent the major consitutencies within our society. The problem for libertarians is that there is simply no incentive for major parties to represent the libertarian POV because it has no critical mass within society. If that libertarian voting bloc can be created, then a specific libertarian party won’t be needed, because at least one of the main parties will come to represent it. Indeed, if you succeed in pulling the political centre-of-mass of the population towards libertarianism, both may do, and you’d end up with Labour and the Tories competing for how fast they can slash the government. Heh.
The one apparent exception to this in the UK is the Labour Party itself, which arose from the grass roots (it appears, naively) and displaced the old Liberal Party. But early Labour had things nobody is ever likely to have again- they had a massive ready-made constituency/voting bloc in the trade unionists and working class organisations and they had insiders in the poltical class- socialism was sweeping through the intelligentsia, indicated by such organisations as the Fabians, Christian Socialists and so on. The first infection by the socialist viral meme was already raging through society and it so happened that in that cast the political parties didn’t respond fast enough to it, that’s all.
It could be that at some future date there would be a massive infection of libertarianism and the Big Two try to hold out against it, in which case yes you could form a Libertarian Party and “do a Labour”. But probably, you won’t need to.
Ron Paul is acting as a stalking horse for Libertarianism. He can’t win, and probably shouldn’t, but for Americans it’s a first moderately useful gauge of what kind of support libertarianism, or small governmentism, has. So far it looks like about 7%. It’s probably a bit higher, allowing for some people not liking Paul. This is a useful thing about the American Primary system which we here in the EUSSR don’t have, for instance, by allowing “minority” candidates to display their warez for the populace even if they’ve no real chance of winning.
Anyway, the point I’m getting to is that right now for small-governmentists or libertarians, whatever, there’s no pragmatic use of voting. There isn’t the critical mass. The candidates you’ll get the chance to vote for in the general election will all be representing some form of the statist consensus. Waste of time.
So the job for us, (whoever we are) is to build that grass roots consituency and skew the centre of mass in our direction. Rather than waste time debating the minor points of candidates (“is dis guy .5% less statist than dat guy?”) or forming futile parties that just look like crankfests to most people, we have to win the argument at street level. If we can do that, the candidates to vote for will arise within the current political parties and system.
That’s a good post Ian. It’s hard to say how many libertarians there are out there because many are turned off by Paul. No matter how much you love him, or no matter how wrong or right the perception may be, he comes off looking like a loon bird and now he looks like a racist loon bird. Like I said, it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong or right about him, that is simply the perception held of him by a spanking majority. You can’t wish it away.
So what do we do? How do we stop the death by 1000 paper cuts as someone noted above?
Well, it is just my opinon, but I think the only way to do it is to stop focusing on who is NOT a good candidate and start focusing on who is. Who is a viable libertarian candidate that could actually WIN an election and has the power structure to actually do what they want to get done?
The bottom line is that libertarians have already lost this election. The best you can hope for now is to get someone who will do the LEAST damage. But I agree with Ian, the thing to do is to start searching now and giving money and name recognition to a viable candidate for the next election.
Politicians are like horses in a horse race, the only good ones are the ones that can win.
spam bot twice in one day? I can take a hint. Why not just outright ban me and save me the time?
Becky,
I got hit by spam bot twice so far today and I am one of the contributing authors. Trust me, you’re nothing special. It is a very common ‘blessing’ around here.
Becky,
Any references on your part to SSssshhhhhhhhh ! ! ((Ross Perot)) will automatically awaken the slumbering spam bot.
And for good reason.
Jesus Christ Almighty, what a nut case.
Hope this message gets through.
I am sure that Stalin killed quite a few Jews in his various culls of his populace. He killed so many how its inevitable a fair number of Jews were included. And its not like Russia does not have a history of occasional culls of Jewish population.
Stalin was smart enough to keep some Jews like Kaganovich in his politburo, to deflect accusations of that sort. And Providence (finally) intervened in a big way. If Stalin hadn’t died in early 1953, there wouldn’t have been a live Jew at liberty from Prague to Vladivostok.
Nazism was based on racial hatred, while socialism is based on class hatred. By the 1930s, racism was becoming an atavism, whereas the Depression had given socialism renewed appeal to the herd of independent minds. The Nazis never claimed to be slaughtering their millions for the salvation of all mankind. So the luckless victims of socialism were done in on a more resplendent altar in a better-attended political temple, is all.
The different reaction to Hitler vs Stalin and Mao is also due to another factor – to ideology.
Whereas Hitler’s ideology of arian supremacy was totally discredited and has (almost) no adherents now, Marxism is allive and well.
Marxism isn’t considered by most people, and by the intellectuals, a defunct, discredited or vicious and murderous ideology like it is. On the contrary, it is, in one variant or another or in some derivative, the prevailing ideology of most intellectuals and media types.
agree with the distinctions – but on a bigger level it’s all about using the powerful making the powerless feel powerful by simply blaming someone else for their life’s woes.
It’s exactly what Islam does – find someone to blame (in their case the infidels) and then deflect all responsibility for every skinned knee onto them. If you could just get rid of, then all will be ok. The powerful don’t have to solve problems if they can get the angry population mad at someone other than themselves and it is a great excuse to eliminate your competition.
Too often we all play right along when it suits our own purposes.
Jacob,
That may be cart and horse. Discrediting of Nazism was successful because they lost, discrediting of Marxism is ignored by its far more numerous adherents.
Becky,
I’m afraid Islamists are far more deeply flawed than that. They don’t actually blame anyone for anything. There is a huge amount of fatalism in Islam. A company I worked for gave up working in Islamic nations because we couldn’t instill the idea of planning based on forecasts. “Whatever Allah wills” was their only forecast.
Their actions, no matter what their claims, are aggressive and not defensive in nature.
The Katyn Forest massacre (military officers) and the Hue massacre (teachers) were not about killing elites. They were about the Communists’ killing those with enough education and training to have the mere potential to be political enemies.
When the Soviets wanted to kill farm workers (who owned no land at all) they called them “henchmen of the Kulacks”. It was the same with factory workers (inculding ones who had no political opinions) – they served various evil forces (even if they did not know it).
I suppose Hitler could have played the same game in killing Nordic types.
“Yes I know that you are blond, blue eyed and can trace your line back to the German war chief Herman two thousand years ago – but spiritually……”
It is disturbing that the Russian government still praises Stalin.
And it is even more disturbing that the government of the People’s Republic of China holds Mao as the great founder of the state.
The Federal Republic of Germany does not hold Hitler in high regard.