Dean's World

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how some people will excuse any amount of torture, any amount of butchery and murder, so long as it's done by a Marxist. Indeed, not only that, but they'll do anything they can to smear and silence those who speak up, especially in places like Hollywood.

Val Prieto calls it, rightly I think, The New McCarthyism.

A few months ago I noted that one of the big problems for America's left wingers is that, while the right was forced long ago to confront the fascists and such in their midsts, the left had yet to fully confront the communist apologists among them. A bunch of people on the left laughed at me. Are you guys still laughing, or are you finally starting to see it? (And please, dispense with the "well they're not talking about me!" baloney. Are you seeing it yet or aren't you? Because it really is a problem, gang, and it only speaks to your own intellectual integrity if you can't or won't acknowledge that it's there--and very real.)

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Ronald Coleman (mail) (www):

Here's at least part of the problem, Dean. Marxism is a lot like a religion in the sense that (a) faith, not facts, are at the core, and (b) it posits a perfect world. In terms of the second, because Marxism -- unlike routine authoitarian regimes (for there have been few right-wing totalitarian regimes, thankfully) -- is always positing this workers' paradise, it has eternal plausible deniability: "No one has really ever tried communism."

So they don't have to confront or apologize, because even if there were "abuses," it was the fault of the fallible humans in (not of) the church, not the creed itself.

3.31.2005 9:28am

Dean Esmay:

Yep.

The excuse is always the same too: whatever the monsters did, they did it with the intention of making the world a better place. So all is automatically forgiven, those "ultimately" at fault are the "oppressors" who the "revolution" opposed.

Never mind if those running the revolution killed more, tortured more, brutalized more, terrorized more, destroyed more. It was all in the name of a bright shining vision of a better world, so all is forgiven.

3.31.2005 4:51pm

darren norris (mail):

Ronald and Dean, you're pretty much right on about this. There's a double standard and it needs to stop. It wouldn't be hard to imagine going to a party and being introduced to someone like, "Meet Bob. Bob is a communist." But can you imagine someone saying, "Meet Bob. Bob is a fascist"? One is sort of quaint and the other is pure evil. Is Stalin any better than Hitler, really? But you still have people running around calling themselves Stalinists and Maoists. It's no different from calling yourself a "Hitlerist". I consider myself a lefty and maybe I share a lot of opinions with people who are further to the left than me. But one I don't share is that any ideology can be used to justify human rights abuses or the abridgement of basic freedoms. I actually had one such good friend tell me he was a communist (yet he talks about the importance of free speech? What purportedly communist society--including Cuba--ever had free speech??). And, I said, trust me, you're not or you'd better not be.

3.31.2005 7:35pm

Good for you, Darren. We need more people on the left to wake up to this. It's not funny, it's deadly serious. We're talking about a worldwide movement that butchered over 100 million people in the 20th century--which is likely more people than all the people killed in all the religious wars of the previous 19 centuries combined. If you meet someone who actually grew up in one of these countries, you ralize it's not cute, clever, funny, or quaint in any way, shape, or form.

3.31.2005 8:06pm