Surely it is the prospect of murdering people that Lefties like about these movements? As the old joke about the USA visa questionnaire used to go Q: “Do you intend the armed overthrown of the US government?” A: ‘Sole purpose of visit’, the sole purpose of these movements is tyranny and with that murder. If the movement did not support murder, the Lefties would regard them as soft, Mensheviks, Right Oppositionists, or whatever.
The Left always have a Socialist paradise one 5 year plan away, Cuba in the 1960s (until he was ‘pushed into the arms of the Soviets’ (my arse)), Chile in the 1970s, until the Congress declared Allende’s rule illegal and the military stepped in, Nicaragua in the 1980s until the election went wrong and the 1990s was spoilt by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Wall. Now we have Venezuela, which looked fine for the Left until they put a ex-bus driver in charge and he’s turning out to be an uncharismatic loony thug unlike his loony thug predecessor, like ‘Brezhnev’ Brown after Blair, and let us not forget that the Labour Party is far closer to these thugs than is good for us.
And never give Lenin a pass either, he was, in Victor Suvorov’s words, the most bloodthirsty degenerate who ever lived.
– Samizdata commenter Mr. Ed.
“Witch hunters” our enemies sneer at us, Mr Ed.
However, if someone flies into a room on a broomstick and turns human beings into toads – turning to the survivors and saying “you are paranoid to believe in witches” is not impressive.
Just as if someone attends Communist meetings, and actively works with the Communists trying to make people hate “the rich” and “big business”, at a time (such as the of Stalin and Mao) when the Communists were murdering tens of millions of human beings – writing plays pretending that Cong Hunters were like “witch hunters” is not impressive.
Lefties do not believe in human nature. We are what we are because of the system we live under, they claim.
Well, Lenin and Stalin were non-entities under the Tsarist system but mass murderers under the socialist system they created. Therefore they were made into mass murderers by their own system.
Similar arguments can be made about any other leftist tyrant such as Mao, Castro etc.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that socialism itself is evil. It has been evil everywhere it’s been tried and the evil cannot be blamed on the the individual failings of the leaders or others implementing it, unless you reintroduce human nature.
You could try to claim that these tyrants were made bad by the pre-socialist system, but other socialists either did not have a problem with their tyranny or else proposed to replace it by a tyranny of their own that was a mere variant, killing and oppressing a slightly different group of people. This means the murder and oppression are standard features of socialism.
Therefore socialism condemns itself.
Mr Power.
The socialists really do pretend that all evil things are from the “capitalist” past.
For example, Channel Four (a leftist television station in Britain – not that there are any non leftist television stations in Britain) sent a journalist to report on the vast increase in murders in Venezuela under the current socialist regime. The spokesman for the regime said that it was nothing to do with the regime’s constant propaganda that the rich are evil (therefore hint-hint it was O.K. to murder people declared “rich” in order to steal their stuff – even if these people were not actually rich at all) because most of the murderers were born before the regime came to power.
That was the “argument” – that most of the murderers were born before the Reds came to power. Not even the lady from Channel Four was impressed – indeed (to be fair to this journalist) she was deeply unimpressed.
By the way……
All of Latin America is dominated by propaganda that poverty is “injustice” and that anyone who regards themselves as poor (or was once poor – or claims to represent poor people) has the right to take stuff (by force) from other people. And have a “right” to punish “the rich” (i.e. anyone who has stuff the criminals want), by abduction, rape and murder.
The Church, at least in recent decades, has been as guilty as other institutions in spreading this “Social Justice” propaganda (i.e. this justification for robbery, rape and murder). The Church passionately denies that it supports robbery, rape and murder – however its teaching (at least in recent times) is that poverty is an “injustice”, if that is so then the “rich” are violators of justice and should not just be looted, they should be PUNISHED also (and the rapists and murderers are doing the punishing of the “rich”).
Philosophy (and theology) has consequences – and those who spread the poison of “Social Justice” (“Liberation Theology”) can not, honestly, deny blame for the robberies, abductions for ransom, rapes, and murders. Often of people who are (in reality) no “richer” than the criminals (sorry – than enforces of Social Jusice).
And these ideas do not stop at the American border – not only are they already in to the United States (to a lesser extent than in most of Latin America) and the illegal immigrants mostly carry these ideas with them.
“But they are fleeing from the results of this culture”.
They, mostly, do not understand that.
It is like Americans who flee from California – they often support the same “Social Justice” policies (in the new places they go to) that undermined the place they fled from.
Just watching “Al Jazeera” – it is reporting about Mexico (the Islamic station loves Latin American stories – as it can do the masses-suffering-injustice tap dance) and the poor peasant being interviewed (of course!) blames violent crime in Mexico on the…..
“chain of exploitation that reaches down from the big corporations in the United States”.
Do not laugh – the local priest most likely would say the same thing.
Does anyone really think that such people change their demented opinions (change the things they have been taught all their lives) when they cross the American border?
Why should they?
After all the American media and education system say much the same thing.
Perry sometimes asks why I cite organisations such as “Russia Today” and “Al Jazeera” – I do so not because they are more blatant (in a way actually more honest) in their support for the evil of “Social Justice” than the BBC or than ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN organisation (let us face the truth these supposedly separate four stations are really part of the same hive-mind position).
I dislike having to wade through the subtle language of organisations like the BBC or the ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN organisation. The evil in Al Jazeera and Russia Today is more “up front”, one can see what the “educated” are pushing without having to burn through all the polite evasions. By the way…. RT and Al Jazeera actually hate each other (different criminal gangs often do).
Fox News?
Soldiers defending a wall – without knowing (because of the noise of battle) that the other walls have already fallen and the enemy are INSIDE the fort.
A bit like the 1960 (John Wayne) version of “The Alamo”.
The dying man dragging himself to David Crocket and forcing out the words “Crocket – North Wall” was not bringing welcome news.
I’m always curious why the killing of millions of kulaks by Communists is shrugged off as the price to be paid for the glorious socialist ideal, whereas Pinochet’s killing of thousands of avowed Marxist revolutionaries is the most eeeevil thing that ever happened.
When I was in Chile back in 2005, I asked a middle-class woman why Pinochet remained a revered political figure by all levels of Chilean society. After all, didn’t he cause the deaths of poets and folksingers? Her answer: “Those poets and folksingers owned AK-47s.”
The most confounding thing for the Left is that Pinochet was loved by common people, more so than the elitist and aloof Allende. I saw for myself that the general’s house in Montevideo (a small, modest bungalow in a working-class neighborhood) is a shrine — women passing by will make the sign of the cross, or place tiny bunches of flowers on the sidewalk in front of it. And they’re not just old women, either: they’re of all ages.
And the Chileans still drink toasts to Pinochet as “the saviour of Chile”. But of course, to the Left all these people count as much as the Russian kulaks.
Kim, Pinochet is hated for destroying the next paradise, for winning, and also for being proud of his country and for standing up for his people, everything that the Left hate is embodied in their projection of him, including his Prussian bearing (like any Chilean Army officer). I would have preferred that the Chilean Air Force General Frei, an honest man, not hungry for power, who did all he could to ensure that Argentina lost to the UK during the Falklands War, (and I have seen the interview in which he says that), had been given power long before Pinochet left power to ensure a smooth transition, but coming back to your point, the Left cannot say that they oppose murder and torture, that is the modus operandi of the Left, it is only that (i) ‘Who, whom?’ as Lenin said, who does the killing and who gets killed that matters, and (ii) a dream stealer is the cruellest thief of all, no matter how many lives he saves.
What is seen and what is not seen: Had Chile remained under Allende, it would now be, at best, the Belarus of South America.
“Had Chile remained under Allende, it would now be, at best, the Belarus of South America.” …and like Venezuela or Cuba, at the worst.
The thing about the Left is that it’s all about intentions. Consequences are irrelevant — hence, the deaths of millions for the Cause are unimportant, as long as the ideal is salutary. But when the Right (or conservatives) advance the same argument, that’s just awful.
So where is the American Pinochet?
“So where is the American Pinochet?”
Nowhere. If an American Pinochet were to arise, he’d more likely be a Democrat.
In the Daily Telegraph (Wednesday) Mr A. Massie was broadly (although not totally) supportive of the view of a socialist novelist that the Cambridge spied (who worked for the NKVD against Britain) were working to make the world a better place.
Although he (Mr Massie) did say that “Stalinism” was wrong – not understanding that there is NO SUCH THING as “Stalinism”, it was just the continuation of socialist rule (Lenin and Karl Marx were fundamentally the same). Mr Massie then went on to say that Kim Philby’s motivation was “unclear” and “personal”.
Neither is true. In reality “Kim” was an anti British Red (like his father).
And all this was in the leading “conservative” newspaper – it is difficult not to despair.