As you know, today in D.C. it was cold. As I was walking to get some coffee in the Nameless Entity's first floor, I saw a guy with a black fur-trimmed hat way down the corridor. I thought the hat looked Russian, and sure enough, it was — right down to the shiny medallion on the front of it with the hammer and sickle.
I doubt very seriously that the man was a Communist. He probably just liked the warmth, and the hat's provenance made it a good conversation piece. It was, you know, kitsch: if I were to take it seriously, and ask him why he was wearing a symbol of mass murder and oppression, he would have laughed.
Now, if the guy were wearing a cold-weather S.S. hat with a swastika, that would be another story. From his dress, I'd guess that either he worked for the Entity itself or an affiliated entity. Wearing Nazi paraphernalia would be a career-ending move, especially if he worked with any Jews (and there are more than a few at the Entity). However, if he worked with Ukrainians or Afghanis (again, not very far-fetched), their complaints would not be taken as seriously, even though the Soviets murdered millions of their countrymen.
As you know, I am a lackey of neoconservative Zionist cabal that controls American foreign policy, so I have no problem with people looking down on Naziism. But why doesn't Communism get the same treatment? I'm hardly the first person to ask this question, but I've never heard a satisfying answer. Some say that the Nazis are uniquely evil in a way that the Soviets were not; I have no idea how one evaluates such a statement, and I know of no crime (genocide, slavery, tyrrany, predatory war, forced deportation of populations) the Nazis committed that the Soviets rejected.
The best explanation is that since the Left controls the academy and the media, they are the only ones in the position to administer stigmas such as the Nazis have received, and they are unwilling to stigmatize their ideological cousins. After all, if people get turned off by collectivism, they might get squeamish about applying a statist solution to health care. And so Soviet kitsch is still safe in the halls of the U.S. Federal government.
AMEN, AMEN.
My students think I'm strange because I use the words "communist," "red," and "pinko" pejoratively. They don't understand why I seem to be the only teacher on a quest to malign what some of their (history, no less) teachers call "a good system, at least in theory" while ignoring the events of the past century that were a predictable result of forced collectivism.
And not just the bad economics of forced collectivism, but the evil of forced imperialism: the Ukranians never asked to be one of the Soviet republics, so Stalin starved several million of them to death. He saw Polish army officers as a potential threat, so he had thousands of them murdered by his goons. And so on.
I don't want to minimize the Holocaust at all, but it seems to me that if you set it up as a separate, untouchable category, it loses its power to teach us something dark and important about humanity: that the impulse to eradicate one's perceived enemies, including those who could not have possibly committed any wrongs, runs deep within the human heart.
Stalin ordered to murder not only Polish army officers, but also teachers and clergy alongside (altogether groups that might have been called "inteligentsia"). BTW Russia keeps denying a legal status of genocide to those diabolic crimes.
Yet, I personally know intelligent, highly educated Poles murmuring something about this "good system, at least in theory". And each time it lefts me revolted and wondering what's in their heads.
As for the question of the unique status of the Holocaust I refuse to visit any of its Museums until there are similar edifices build to commemorate such atrocities like Armenian genocide or aforementioned countless crimes of Stalin and Lenin, of which international community seems not to care at all. All that was said without any intent to minimize the Holocaust, either.
W.F. Buckley had the best explanation:
The communists killed people without regard to race or religion.
W.F. Buckley had the best explanation:
The communists killed people without regard to race or religion.
W.F. Buckley had the best explanation:
The communists killed people without regard to race or religion.
Thank you, Eric, for pointing out the obvious.
I'm almost retired from homeschooling - the youngest is now doing Gr 12.
Over the years, as I tried to teach a balanced view of history, I was constantly frustrated: while books and articles outlining Nazi atrocities were legion, similar literature portraying the evils of communism continue to be a challenge to locate.
Certainly I wanted the children to know that Hitler was an evil man. But I also wanted them to understand that Stalin, Mao, and their cronies were at least as bad.
BTW - how did Hitler end up as "right wing?"
National socialism is till socialism - as is atheistic communism. Call me slow, but I've never seen much difference between the two - except in our reaction to them.
You're right, Eric. This communist-chic stuff bugs me too.
I wonder if it will ever be chic to be right of center.....imagine what the US would like like then??!! (my christmas wish)
BTW - how did Hitler end up as "right wing?"
Because he was. It's surely relevant that nobody at the time thought fascism was left wing. If you want an intellectual summa, here it is:
(1) Fascism was anti-communist;
(2) Fascism was nationalistic (rather than internationalist);
(3) Fascism centered around the great man, the exception, rather than the great class, the proletariat as a collective;
(4) Fascism rejected materialism and focused on limit experience as the ne plus ultra (and eventually shading into outright bellicism -- violence as good and ennobling in itself); socialism, though is rationalistic and economistic, like socialism;
(5) Fascism was a rejection of political modernity's defining event -- the French Revolution -- in the name of the past, of throne and altar, and against universal equality. But socialism was a radicalization of the French Revolution and its egalitarianism;
(6) Fascism is compatible with global pessimism, believing history can be a mistake, producing a decadence that needs cleansing; socialism is essentially optimistic -- History has an inevitable logic and design;
(7) Fascist thought emphasized creative destruction, will to power, individual charisma, irrationalism, vitalism -- all ideas anathema to the left (at least during those times, meaning before 1946, when it's meaningful to compare fascism and socialism as vital systems of thought).
That's some heady stuff for a mere comment box, Victor, and you really made me thing. However, I think you're equating Marxism, socialism, and leftism. While they share many things in common, not everyone on the Left believes that history is optimistic, for example. I can think of several glib responses, too:
1. You mean like in the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty?
3. The "class" fascism celebrated was the volk.
4. The Left's many pathologies are very ascetic in character (except regarding sex, because they knew that indiscriminate sex tends to weaken the family, the one enduring bulwark against the State). From recycling to the Five Year Plans, they love to sacrifice to their secular gods.
5. I don't know about all fascists, but the Nazis had no intention of combining "throne and altar." Speer reported that Hitler's top priority was to destroy the Catholic and Lutheran churches after he won the war.
Uh, that's "you really made me think," not "thing." I would never refer to Victor as a "thing."
With communism, fascism shares the Enlightenment's rejection of the Christian foundations of Europe. Unlike communism it is fiercely nationalistic and rejects industrial society from the standpoint of a romanitc idealization of the past. Traditional virtues may be valued for their usefulness to the nation-state. Both systems reject free markets in the sense that Christianity cautiously and conditionally favors them = communism on principle. Fascism rejects the notion of objective truth. Communism is schizophrenic about the issue.
Both systems of thought are post-Christian. Is fascism right=wing? In the European context perhaps. There is nothing conservative or Christian about fascism. Some forms of fascism have been less hostile to the practice of religion than communism but perhaps they were more corrupting of religion in subtle ways.
America largely bypassed the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In the American context and perspective, fascism and communism have much in common. Both are collectivist. Both reject a transcendent source for moral values.
Preach it, Eric. As a high school student during the 80's, I regularly heard from my public-school teachers, from the local intelligentsia of my mid-Atlantic hometown in the paper, and from my diocesan officials, that Communism wasn't that bad.
It was Reagan, of course, who was going to get us all killed. He was a dangerous militaristic cowboy. (Sound familiar?) So there were films like "The Day After" and we spent a whole social studies class discussing it, etc. As I wrote at the time of his death, Reagan was right. They were wrong.
And don't even get me started on "McCarthyism," a convenient tar-brush with which to smear conservatives. There *were* Communists in the government, as Whitaker Chambers and others have documented. McCarthy was a megalomaniac, yes, but he wasn't entirely wrong.
Communism is an assault on the natural order and a threat to humanity, as evil as Naziism (and certainly as brutal!). And the ideology and worldview of Communism live on in universities and in several of the professions, even though the red-flag version remains in only a few countries.
It was a very formative experience to me to realize that people held up as my cultural betters could hold such wrongheaded views on a matter of such grave importance to our own national security. It's always a pleasure to read your sound thinking on this topic, Eric.