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Remembering Red victims
The Washington Times ^ | November 30, 2003 | Jeffrey T. Kuhner

Posted on 11/30/2003 2:07:27 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife

Edited on 07/12/2004 4:10:55 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

The 20th century will be remembered as the bloodiest century in history. A major reason was the 1917 establishment by Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks of a Marxist regime in Russia. The Soviet Union was the epicenter of a communist empire that, until its disintegration in 1991, spread doctrines of economic collectivism and class struggle to almost every part of the globe. From Eastern Europe to Africa to Latin America to Asia, hundreds of millions suffered the brutality of Marxist-Leninist dictatorships.


(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: communism; memorial
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To: Polybius
I agree that left and right are different depending on the political milieu. But it doesn't change the historic fact that within the nations we are discussing, left meant communist and right meant Nazi. Both Nazis and communists saw each other as being on the right and the left, and they understood why. Those parties had fundamentally different means to achieve state control, and they knew what the differences were, and outside observers knew what the differences were.

But you're welcome to specify any arbitrary spectrum for the sake of discussion, and as you point out, that's what people have been doing all along.
41 posted on 11/30/2003 7:44:26 PM PST by risk
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To: MitchellC
That is, of course, absurd, because Centrism is usually an illusion since there is no real neutral ground in political disputes oftentimes.

This comment goes to the core of the discussion. In any healthy political body, one can never expect complete unity.

42 posted on 11/30/2003 8:04:13 PM PST by risk
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To: risk
Definitely not, but the spectrum is of ideologies. Compromise will always be part of politics, but is itself not an ideology.
43 posted on 11/30/2003 8:10:28 PM PST by MitchellC
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To: risk
"You're making a syllogistic error in stating that because A includes aspects of B it therefore must be the same as B."
    Totalitarianism denies individual rights and freedoms and concentrates all power in a centralized, dictatorial state.

    Fascism is totalitarian.
    Communism is totalitarian.

    This has nothing to do with "aspects." It goes to the very heart of what both communism and fascism are. Totalitarianism is their shared ground of being. All else is secondary and incidental.

    A cobra and a rattler may have different markings and adornments, but they are both poisonous snakes and they will both kill you. And they don't care if you can tell them apart by their surface features. To classify communism and fascism as "diametrically opposed" is as pointless as a biologist classifying rattlers and cobras as two unrelated species because one has a rattler and the other has a hood.

    The whole purpose of classification is to group closely related entities together in the most meaningful and useful way.

    The political spectrum to which you and most western academics subscribe, and which was conceived and developed by the Soviets in an effort to disassociate themselves from fascists, is not logically consistent or useful. It is a product of the "ideological needs" of the left and, far from facilitating "serious discussion of political science," it is more of a hindrance than a help.

    Where does anarchism fall on your political spectrum?


44 posted on 11/30/2003 10:58:27 PM PST by Bonaparte
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To: Bonaparte
My compliments on your clairty. This debate always comes up. I've never seen it explained as well as you have done here.
45 posted on 11/30/2003 11:54:29 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Alter Kaker
Lenin's project resulted not only in unprecedented economic and ecological destruction, but more importantly the greatest system of mass murder ever invented: More than 100 million individuals were killed at the hands of communist regimes. Yet many Western academics continue to deny or downplay the full extent of communist atrocities.
46 posted on 11/30/2003 11:56:33 PM PST by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: Noumenon
Excellent citation, Noumenon! This was exactly what the nazis did, and the Germans of that era were propagandized, brainwashed and bullied just as the Russians were. Tyranny is tyranny, pure and simple -- whether it's communist or fascist, chocolate or vanilla.

Man Boils At Zero Degrees Freedom

47 posted on 12/01/2003 12:11:42 AM PST by Bonaparte
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To: Bonaparte
The political spectrum to which you and most western academics subscribe, and which was conceived and developed by the Soviets in an effort to disassociate themselves from fascists, is not logically consistent or useful.

Source, please.

We're not the first to observe that a a political spectrum is often inadequate. Here's an interesting model that seems to capture personal freedom and state control within a system that describes communism and fascism along the same lines as you:


Nolan Chart

48 posted on 12/01/2003 12:30:57 AM PST by risk
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To: risk
"Source, please."
    I already gave you the source in post 23.

One problem with the Nolan chart is that it represents traditional conservatives as being opposed to personal freedom to the same extent as totalitarians are. "Conservatives" are positioned at the same level as the origin of the y-axis (see explanatory text at your linked page). This is grossly inaccurate. George Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were all traditional conservatives and they did not oppose freedoms of speech, press, association, religion, etc.

Another defect in Nolan's scheme is the positioning of "Libertarian" in the place that should be occupied by "Anarchists." There are different shades of libertarian and even the oft-derided "Peter Pan" libertarians do not go as far as the anarchists do.

49 posted on 12/01/2003 12:58:43 AM PST by Bonaparte
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Let's not forget the most extraordinary genocide of a nation in history -- PRUSSIA! The remnants of one of the great nation-states in history was annhilated, its inhabitants exiled to the West, and tens of thousands exterminated (AFTER WW2!). Today, Kaliningrad (formerly Konigsburg) is a festering sore in the heart of NATO, and a bastion of hard-line communism and Russophilism. Stalinist imperialism hasn't been completely unwound yet -- it lives on in Kaliningrad and Byelorussia (yet another beneficiary of Stalin's destruction of nations -- of Eastern Poland).

These folks should also not forget that America, too, had its many victims of communism, and I don't just mean the obvious wars of the past (and the wars of the future -- North Korea). How about the thousands of Americans who were MURDERED by Red terrorists in America during the 20th century (with waves of violence peaking in the 1920s and 1970s), or the GIs who ended up in the GULAG and never came back, and the AMERICAN territory that Lenin ordered invaded and seized in the early 1920s -- called Wrangel Island (claims on which President Bush [41] signed away at the very moment of our victory and the Soviet Union's imminent collapse).
50 posted on 12/01/2003 1:16:53 AM PST by CaptIsaacDavis (.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
bttt
51 posted on 12/01/2003 1:28:09 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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To: risk
One more defect in your Nolan Chart is that liberalism is represented as favoring maximal personal freedom (again, see accompanying expanatory text at the link you provided). Nolan makes much of liberalism's support for personal freedom in areas such as drug use (marijuana), draft dodging and sexual perversion (homosexuality). But a closer look reveals that liberals oppose personal freedom in such areas as public prayer, self-defense with firearms, access to wilderness areas, speech derogatory of groups, school choice and "right to work" (ie. free of forced union membership).
52 posted on 12/01/2003 1:30:59 AM PST by Bonaparte
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To: sergeantdave
"Our own country is riddled with fascists in the so-called environmental movement. The use of the endangered species act, smart growth and other state mandated controls over property is the essence fascism."

Good call, sd. Even though they bristle at the suggestion, "environazis" is the perfect name for them.

53 posted on 12/01/2003 2:03:36 AM PST by Bonaparte
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To: samtheman
Yes, both were evil and socialist, but is that where the analysis ends? Maybe we can explore what Dante desribed as the Circles/Levels of Hell and Evil. The NSDAP-types wanted living space and a new order in Europe (their own circle of Hell as it were) and the destruction of a greater evil that was Stalinist Bolshevism (without the threat of Stalin the NSDAP would have remained a marginal party and may never have gotten into power). Every communist to this day wants to either rule the world, destroy it to rebuild it (Political Nihilist/Anarchist/Trotskyite/Mao/Pot), or push the world towards their vision of a Utopia (or Hell, in fact). While the Nazi ideology was based on race and state socialism as an end-state -- in central and northern Europe, the communist ideology sees socialism as a transition phase in a WORLD permanently in a class war. Communism is an ideology of class-based war, militant anti-racism and anti-nationalism(internationalism), militant atheism, and terror/terrorism (as Lenin said many times over). There is a qualitative difference to the scope and depth of the evil, megalomania, and terror. Even Churchill, in a war with Germany at the time, pushed to invade Russia (Caucasus) and send troops to Finland (to take on Stalin FIRST) only to have Finland sign an armistice with Stalin at the last moment in March 1940. While H was still speaking on soap-boxes, Lenin and Trotsky were plotting how to start a SECOND WORLD WAR. While Germany was plotting to redraw the map of Europe, Stalin and his thugs were plotting how to start WW2. While we licked our wounds from a proxy war in Korea, Stalin (according to one fascinating new book) was plotting in 1953 to start WWIII. I doubt any Nazi could have conceived of saying what Mao is reported (by Andrei Gromyko in his memoirs) to have said to Khrushchev in 1960 -- to paraphrase, start a global nuclear war because at the end of the day China will only lose a billion people and still have 500MM to rule the world (or have an unstable nut like Castro urge Khrushchev to launch a preemptive nuclear strike during the Cuban missile crisis, which would have triggered a war resulting in the annihilation of Cuba [he was thus offering up the entire nation of Cuba as a revolutionary sacrifice]). To get back to the Circles of Hell analogy...the NSDAP was the largest evil "spawn" in a circle of Hell that includes Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung/Kim Jong-Il, and other lesser demons -- none of which would have existed had it not been for the three beasts of Hell (Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky). By equating the spawn to the Beast or Empire of the Anti-Christ (an oft-used description from 1920s Europe), you make an argument that sounds reasonable in the Leftist PC culture of America today, but "objectively" actually does communism a favor (as the PC thugs want). Communism was, and is, the darkest evil in the modern world -- period.
54 posted on 12/01/2003 2:30:25 AM PST by CaptIsaacDavis (.)
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To: Bonaparte
I already gave you the source [French historian Alain Besancon] in post 23.

Interesting author! But he also doesn't provide any sources himself. What I'm asking about is for evidence that the Soviets planted the idea of a left/right spectrum with communism on the left and nazism on the right. I think it may take some effort to prove that, and I haven't seen a persuasive argument yet.

However, I agree 100% with you that this spectrum has been abused by Marxists in academia and the press. I also agree that it's worth noting whenever this issue arises. But I'm not willing to agree with you that communism is the same as nazism, or that left/right continuum didn't model their differences well for two generations. How that has been abused by academia is a separate issue. Anything can be abused by a professor with tenure or an editor with a socialist ax to grind.

I notice that Balint Vazsonyi cites Besancon's ideas, as well. Richard Grenier mentions him in his "Between Murderous and Noble Ideals" essay in the Washington Times.

I also see a similar debate in this thread. I'm not taking the position that the Soviet crimes against humanity were less than Nazi ones, and I do not believe that the horrors of communism are diminished by distinguishing them from Nazism.

For an illustration of why it's important to examine differences (and commonalities) just consider the Islamist movement today, with its amalgam of religion, racism, and nationalism. It's new, but it has something in common with the Nazis. I would argue that it's distinct from communism, as is described by Paul Longgrear and Raymond McNemar in The Arab/Muslim Nazi Connection.

I would argue that there are an infinite number of possible totalitarian holocausts, and to prevent them, it's almost as important to study how unique they are as it is to examine their differences.

55 posted on 12/01/2003 2:34:03 AM PST by risk
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To: Bonaparte
Correction: Paul Longgrear and Raymond talk about the Nazi link, not the differences between communism and Isamism.
56 posted on 12/01/2003 2:37:07 AM PST by risk
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To: risk
"Interesting author! But he also doesn't provide any sources himself. What I'm asking about is for evidence that the Soviets planted the idea of a left/right spectrum with communism on the left and nazism on the right. I think it may take some effort to prove that, and I haven't seen a persuasive argument yet."

You want Besancon's original sources? Fine. I'll retrieve them for you, on one condition: You first provide me with all the original (not secondary) sources for your claims on this thread, starting with those you've made in your post 21.

I'm sure you won't mind setting a good example and applying the same standard to yourself that you are applying to me.

57 posted on 12/01/2003 2:53:22 AM PST by Bonaparte
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To: Bonaparte; sergeantdave
"Our own country is riddled with fascists in the so-called environmental movement. The use of the endangered species act, smart growth and other state mandated controls over property is the essence fascism."

I'm going to differ with you both here again. In a fascist state, the owner of the timber would have a cozy deal with the government. The loggers would work for him or another conglomerate (or Zaibatsu). As much logging as was required for the state's interests would be conducted, but the individual owner would naturally have a personal preference for doing what the state preferred -- as those in power have by definition, like minds.

However, what we have here are watermellons: green on the outside, but red on the inside. They want the state to own and manage the land to the exclusion of all other interests. This by itself would be odious, since it violates the principle of shared community access, but they take it further. Their secondary purpose is no doubt to increase state control over a significant national resource because power comes with both moving a resource into state control and then taking over its "management." We've seen the suit-happy greenies go nuts in the past 30 years.

Another twist on environmentalism is the Chinese model: the state owns everything and doesn't care about preserving it. For example, the air in some parts of China is horrendous and nobody could do anything about it during the rule of the red communist hardliners. I doubt that's changing under their increasingly fascist Chinese regime of today. By the way, Michael Ledeen's commentary on the differences between fascism and communism are excellent in that link.

58 posted on 12/01/2003 2:54:04 AM PST by risk
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To: Bonaparte
What about the table comparing communism to fascism in post 21 is not common knowledge? I can't believe we have any disputes over that material.
59 posted on 12/01/2003 2:56:17 AM PST by risk
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To: risk
The chart propagates a lie -- Libertarianism is the farthest away from Communism/Fascism. In truth, the chart should be shaped like a globe or circular (you may have seen others like that). For example, take this square and roll it over so that the anarchistic Libertarian and the anarchistic Marxist meet -- that is modern Lib. Party politics. Anarchistic consumerism and "personal freedom" has been expressed by the LP as the liberty to CHOOSE the economic benefits of socialist slavery and fascism (for example, in promoting trade with China and Cuba, as the Lib. Party has). The extreme form of modern Libertarianism is one Jefferson wouldn't recognize (no doubt because so many cultural nihilists and ex-Marxists now populate the ranks).

There is no republican democratic center to the chart -- as there should be. It is in this form of government that the personal and economic freedoms of ALL can be maximized and sustained/defended. Libertarianism and communism are both REACTIONARY ideologies -- one to protect the interests of the radical individualist and the other to protect the interests of the radical collectivists. The path away from one is not in the direction of the other -- it is towards the center of gravity or top of the political evolutionary chain -- republican democracy.
60 posted on 12/01/2003 2:57:39 AM PST by CaptIsaacDavis (.)
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