Nazis And Commies

American Thinker ^ | October 11, 2009 | Bernie Reeves

[neverdem]

Is the fascination with Nazis in Western culture a product of natural interest, or is it an unspoken pact by novelists and filmmakers to obscure the greater atrocities committed by the Soviets -- most notably under Stalin, who ruled in the same era as Hitler?

A recent documentary on the Turner Classic Movie cable channel illustrated the point. Said the commentators, when all else fails in selecting a villain, make Nazis the sinister evil force and success is assured. Yet the idea to create Soviet villains never appears to occur to novelists and filmmakers, except in spy thrillers where each side is usually defined as morally equivalent.

For example, why can't the suspenseful movie "The House on Carroll Street," about Nazi spies in New York City in the 1950s, be about Soviet spies burrowed into a peaceful New York neighborhood in an era when they were indeed a serious threat? Or in the 1989 Gene Hackman suspense film "The Package," why do proto-Nazis plan to assassinate political figures in America 45 years after World War II as the Cold War against the Soviets was still raging? The real danger since the end of World War II has been the KGB, not imaginary Nazis.

There must be hundreds of films and books that rely on or mention the theme that Nazi fascist brotherhoods are everywhere -- even today, more than 65 years after Hitler was defeated. The truth is, as declassified files from the US and the USSR prove, Soviet spies were the villains who infiltrated every department of the FDR administration and continued espionage activity against the US until their collapse in 1991. But no real Nazi threat has appeared anywhere except in books and movies.

It's always the Nazis, never the Communists, although the murderous rampages of Stalin make Hitler seem tame in comparison. The number of non-military deaths under the Nazis is estimated at under 10 million in approximately 10 years. The number killed under Bolshevism surpasses 100 million worldwide, according to the latest estimates. Hitler wreaked havoc for a decade; the Soviets for 75 years.

One apparent reason is the existence of the film archive from the Nazi death camps in Germany, Poland and Rumania. In the USSR, few outsiders witnessed the carnage, and the only film known to exist was staged by Stalin -- the cover-up of the massacre of the Katyn Forest, an effort to pin the blame on the Germans for the execution of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviets.

No one dared say a word or run film as the communists killed their victims routinely, usually in the middle of the night. And the millions of prisoners who died in gulags were located hundreds of miles from scrutiny in the vast frozen tundra. In addition, the saga of the founding of Israel in the post-war period kept Nazi atrocities vividly alive, while those that died at the hands of the communists had no witnesses or advocates.

And we didn't liberate Russia or their death camps as we did Germany's. They were our allies after all. Obscured from view by a tyrannical and brutal system -- exemplified during the Cold War for the West to view by the construction of the Berlin Wall in East Germany -- the post-war Iron Curtain concealed an entire charnel house we couldn't see.

Perhaps a large segment of Western writers refused to expose Soviet atrocities for fear of undermining their belief in the utopian goals of the communist system. If they did not believe, their friends probably did; the fear of being ostracized is a driving force in the literary world. This tradition of ignoring Soviet brutality goes back to George Bernard Shaw and 20 other writers and artists who visited the USSR in the particularly murderous 1930s, causing Shaw to write a letter to a British newspaper:

We the undersigned are recent visitors to the USSR.  Some of us traveled throughout the greater part of its civilized territory.  We desire to record that we saw nowhere evidence of such economic slavery, privation, unemployment and cynical despair of betterment as are accepted as inevitable and ignored by the press as having "no news value" in our own countries.  Everywhere we saw the hopeful and enthusiastic working-class, self-respecting and free up to the limits imposed on them by nature and a terrible inheritance from tyranny and incompetence of their former rulers, developing public works, increasing health services, extending education, achieving the economic independence of woman and the security of the child - and in spite of many grievous difficulties and mistakes, which  social experiments involve at first (and which they have never concealed nor denied) setting an example of industry and conduct which would greatly enrich us if our systems supplied our workers with any incentive to follow it.

Even through the purge of 30,000 Red Army officers by Stalin in the late 1930s; the morally corrupt Nazi-Soviet pact at the dawn of  World War II; the kidnapping of Eastern Europe after the war;  and the instigation of the Korean War, Western Leftists, influenced by Shaw and his ilk, refused to face facts and denounce the USSR. This habit took hold across the literary spectrum and has held on right through the collapse of the communist system in 1991. And, as recent research has verified, Soviet-led American communists recruited literary and film artists to the cause, requiring party members to insinuate socialist themes in their work.

This process led to Congressional hearings to expose communists in the film industry, resulting in the canonization of the Hollywood Ten -- all of whom had been members of the Communist Party -- rather than repudiation of Soviet misadventure. The McCarthy hearings that ensued in the early 1950s to identify communists in the United States government caused the same ironic result: those who fought communism, like McCarthy, became the villains. The result has been a subtle conspiracy to denigrate anti-communists and elevate the guilty. Students today, otherwise ignorant of the history of their own culture, know that McCarthy was bad and the communists were innocent victims.

A cadre of idealists continues to believe communism is the best system to govern mankind, even in the face of the overwhelming truth that the Soviet experiment has no parallel in history for murderous brutality. That millions of people suffered under a doctrine of social advancement should serve as a dramatic warning in today's political environment in the West.

Instead we get Nazis, lots and lots of Nazis.

Bernie Reeves is  editor & publisher, Raleigh Metro Magazine

[YOUGOTIT]

Communist have killed many, many more people than Hitler. But when one considers it both are the same left wing fascist pigs and gods of the left-wing Democrats although they will not admit it in public.

[2banana]

But the communists had such good intentions!!!

[Travis McGee]

And the tentacles of Marx and Lenin continue to grasp, down the years through Frank Marshal and Bomber Bill Ayers, to the traitor-in-chief, the most successful communist traitor mole in history.

[Brugmansian]

Perhaps a large segment of Western writers refused to expose Soviet atrocities for fear of undermining their belief in the utopian goals of the communist system.

Perhaps there never was a belief in the utopian goals of communism. Perhaps communism, from its start, was a criminal conspiracy hiding behind phony ideals. Perhaps those in America, in Hollywood in particular, either themselves or had friends and relatives who profitted from the looting of the USSR and Eastern Europe. Perhaps they all dwell of Nazism to hide what they did.

[Levante]

Never Forget:

The NAZIs AND the Communists were LEFTISTS!

[FreedomPoster]

Two things belong on this thread.

First, Rummel's Leaderboard. Note the ratio of the USSR's numbers to those of the Nazis is about 3:1. Add the Soviets and the Chicoms together, and the ratio compared with the Nazis is around 7:1.

Second, this quote by Hayek regarding Nazis and Communists, from my profile page:

Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under "communism" and "fascism." As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, "the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of un-freedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."

No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.

-- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

[FreedomPoster]

I think you’ll like my post just after yours, specifically the second item.

[Huebolt]

This is so absolutely accurate ! ! ! The Hollywood leftist bias is so ingrained that they are like fish, never actually aware of the water in which they swim. They've never known anything else...

Tom Clancy was outraged when "The Sum Of All Fears" was produced with Nazis behind it. He said "That's so totally rediculous!", to which the producer replied, "Don't you believe that the Nazis are still out there?"

Clancy said "I know they aren't out there, I word with the CIA all the time!"

[Levante]

Thanks, FreedomPoster:

It’s interesting how the Nazis/Communists/socialists and Anarchists hate and kill each other. ALL are of the LEFT.

Have you ever read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia? It’s a great read. Orwell was one of those leftists who SAW THE LIGHT of the reality of left-wing politics, shortly before he died.

[arthurus]

The Communists didn’t commit any atrocities. They were making New Soviet Man omelettes.Anything done in the name of collectivism and sharing necessary and good.

[blackminorca]

Great Post

And yes, there was a big coverup in Hollywood plus an attempt by them to villify the anticommmunists.

“Citizen Kane” was an attempt make Hearst a blithering idiot when in fact, the Hearst newspapers were the only ones to print stories on the communist genocides of the 20’s and 30’s - and try to find a copy of these old papers - nearly impossible.

Like Orwell said:

“Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.”

[chrisser]

"Everywhere we saw the hopeful and enthusiastic working-class, self-respecting and free up to the limits imposed on them by nature and a terrible inheritance from tyranny and incompetence of their former rulers, "

Sounds like a current White House press release (aka propaganda release).

[Condor51]

The writer is wrong on a couple points

1. During the 1950's there were scores of anti Communist movies made. Even a TV Show, I Led Three Lives.

2. Congress investigated Communist (read USSR) subversion and espionage agressively in the 1950's, we had HUAC. They were the real Commie Hunters, more so than Sen McCarthy.

But the dirty little secret is WHY HUAC and the Commie Hunting ended pdq. That was ---- political correctness.

It turned out that so many members of the Communist Party and Soviet Agents just happened to be of a certain Ethnic and/or Religious persuasion, like the Rosenbergs, that the ADL raised holy hell (pun intended) and started yelling ANTISEMITISM & Witch hunt. Well that ended HUAC and the Commie Hunting stat.

The Hollywood Ten and others in 'film' who were also semi-blacklisted were also 'mostly' Jewish (don't know about Sean Penn's father?). Including the likes of Edward G Robinson. He was a big financial supporter of Stalin and the USSR during WWII.

[VRW Conspirator]

<——————————————more-—————————— Government Control -————————————less-———————————>

Communist->Facist->Liberal->Democrat->Moderate->Republican->Conservative->Libertarian->Anarchist

[ripley]

Nazis and Commies. The same murdering, lying, thieving fascist swine. Not to mention psychotic, adolescent punks with no respect for anything except their own arbitrary actions based upon what they “feel” in their intestines.
(Just a bunch of subversive, wise-guy schmucks who will hopefully be exposed, in no uncertain terms, for the totalitarian tyrants that they are.)

IMHO

[Daveinyork]

Don’t forget how Hollywood changed the villains in “The Sum of all Fears” from the book’s terrorists, including Red Brigades, to neo Nazis.

[maryz]

the overwhelming truth that the Soviet experiment has no parallel in history for murderous brutality.

Yet. God preserve us from seeing a worse!

[FreedomPoster]

It’s funny you mention that. I read just a couple years ago, and have been recommending it regularly since. It really gives you the nitty-gritty reality that Orwell lived that led directly to 1984 and Animal Farm. Also, it provides additional practical proof for the truth in the Hayek quote.

[Radl]

You are considered cool if you wear something on campus honoring the Communist party. You are considered dead if you wear something on campus honoring the Nazi party.

[depressed in 06]

I like the definition of Fascist from Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” as anyone right of Stalin. Which, makes the Bolshecratic party lump Republicans and Fascists as being right wing since they are Stalinists. The more government less government, propounded by Beck, makes much sense. But, to make anarchists the ultimate rightest closes the circle and brings less government to total government. Totalitarians trample on everyones rights and democracy tramples on minority rights. We need a right-left distinction along the lines of the rule of law, from strict adherence to whim of a wise latina.

[pnh102]

These guys?

[Major Matt Mason]

Hopefully there are some conservative filmmakers out there that will start a new trend - bashing communism.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Criticize the Democrat party, it’s the same thing.

[a fool in paradise]

Hollywood Reds remain in power. There never was an industry blacklist of known communists. The famous ones still got work, under pseudonyms. The studios knew who was employeed, it was a tactic to stall of boycotts when people read the credits.

Yet there exists a genuine blacklist or pinklist of conservatives and those who oppose the homosexual agenda.

[a fool in paradise]

If you talk about the threats and villainy of Communism, you are lumped in the same boat as truthers and birthers and moon landing conspiracies.

Doesn't matter how much paperwork comes out of the Soviet Union archives.

The Stalinists in America (who took 40 years to admit that Stalin had done some horrible things) have written the contemporary account of history. There never were any Communists in America even though there was and is a Communist Party US. The nonexistent Communists never did knowingly spy and agitate on behalf of the Soviet Union. Fellow traveler Commie sympathizers were never directed by agents, domestic and foreign, to agitate and legislate on behalf of Soviet interests. And besides, Communism isn't “wrong”, it's just never been properly implemented (like the way their hero Fidel Castro did it).

Stalinists lie. Always.

They have lied to advance evil. There can be no debate on the matters with the Left until they are willing to admit their deceit and concede key points of history.

[danielmryan]

There's another reason why Nazis make easier villains than Communists: on-the-scene atrocity footage. We've all seen what horrors the Nazis perpetrated thanks to film and pictures, whereas the Gulag massacres reached us largely in words. Had there been smuggled film footage out of the Soviet camps, we might well have had a better balance over time. Certainly, the 1950s anti-Communist movies and shows would have resonated more.

That being said, even the worst villain can be overexposed. Hollywood could even be chided for doing so.

[antisocial]

Bump

[dfwgator]

Nazis And Commies

What's the difference. You kill Nazis for business, you kill Commies for pleasure.

[neverdem]

Hopefully there are some conservative filmmakers out there that will start a new trend - bashing communism.

A Closer Look At Obama's Odyssey

Yet only in America could an America-hating terrorist conspire with an unskilled writer of uncertain origins on an untruthful memoir and succeed in getting the man elected president. This plot is so absolutely rich, so thoroughly cinematic, that the literary gatekeepers refuse to believe it is true.

I'm wondering what movie will be released about 2.5 years from now.

[Cacique]

The nazis were more interested in race based genocide. Stalin and his followers were more interested in class based genocide. A distinction without a difference that is used by the academic class to elevate Hitler to Devil status and as we all know, there can be only one throne in Hell....