December 16, 2010

"When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, the local boss, Xiong Dechang, forced his father to bury his son alive on the spot."

News from half a century ago trickles out. The boy was one of 45 million deaths in Mao's Great Leap Forward. Another death was the father himself, who died one week later — of grief, as people who lived through that time, perceived it.
Starvation was the punishment of first resort. As report after report shows, food was distributed by the spoonful according to merit and used to force people to obey the party...

As the catastrophe unfolded, people were forced to resort to previously unthinkable acts to survive. As the moral fabric of society unraveled, they abused one another, stole from one another and poisoned one another....

One police investigation from Feb. 25, 1960, details some 50 cases in Yaohejia village in Gansu: “Name of culprit: Yang Zhongsheng. Name of victim: Yang Ecshun. Relationship with Culprit: Younger Brother. Manner of Crime: Killed and Eaten. Reason: Livelihood Issues.”

The term “famine” tends to support the widespread view that the deaths were largely the result of half-baked and poorly executed economic programs. But the archives show that coercion, terror and violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward.
Via Instapundit, who writes:
Socialism starves. Capitalism enriches. It’s been proven over and over again. But remember: Communism is about “human dignity.”...

186 comments:

Hoosier Daddy said...

The boy was one of 45 million deaths in Mao's Great Leap Forward.

I suppose Anita Dunn would say there is some deep philosophical meaning to be found there.

test said...

Ultimately there are only two methods to motivate progress: carrots and sticks. Free markets use carrots. Critics of free markets think using carrots is unconscionable. Is it any wonder they refuse to look down the road to understand the alternative?

Anonymous said...

Yes, Marxist apologists get way too much leeway in our society. They should have exactly the same pariah status as Nazi apologists. For some reason, though, they don't. I blame the press, who seem to have a natural affinity for Marxist apologetics.

Scott M said...

You cannot judge them by the outcomes. Their intent was good. Wasn't it? Right? ...Bueller?

vet66 said...

The secret is that when society is centralized it becomes the business of centralization to grow itself at the expense of the increasingly marginalized populace. Left to defend for themselves it is survival of the fittest in all it's worst manifestations.

The "Jaba The Hut" bureaucracy scoffs at the will of the people and the resulting death of the non-elite governed are dismissed as some sort of post-birth birth control. The rationale then becomes something along the lines of society as a whole will be strengthened by the millions of dead outside the hallowed gates of entitlement and elitism.

The question I have always pondered is why the peasants didn't rise up en masse and torch the palace?

I'm Full of Soup said...

"Great Leap Forward"?

Interesting that Obama and the Dems and No Labels and MSNBC are also emphasizing & using the word "forward" in their speeches, ads and promos.

Scott M said...

The question I have always pondered is why the peasants didn't rise up en masse and torch the palace?

Eastern cultures have some innate hierarchy issues. Far more so than our individual-based society. Confucianism, if memory serves, reinforced obeying superiors and was used effectively by Mao and his ilk.

Anonymous said...

This brings back the memory of the Mao Christmas ornament on the White House Christmas tree last year.

We're in the best of hands.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)

In 1949 "China stood up"...in order to remain standing in the face of counter-revolutionary wreckers and roaders, inspite of Capitalist-Monopoly Finance Imperialsim trying to subvert and destroy the People's Haven, eggs had to be broken.

Progress, held back by petit bourgeoise slugs, was being impeded. The log-jam needed to be broken, even if some human logs were lost in the process.

In the end, it was justifiable as the ineviatble cost of advancing from the Feudal Asian Mode of Production to Socialism, in one generation.

ricpic said...

Make no mistake, the likes of Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank and of course The Won would have made model commissars and party bosses, carrying out the Great Leap Forward to the last peasant.

Tank said...

vet66

The question I have always pondered is why the peasants didn't rise up en masse and torch the palace?

Why don't we. If you're reasonably successful in the US, the various gov'ts are TAKING 50% or more of your income every year.

Why don't we torch the White House and Congress?

virgil xenophon said...

All anyone has to do is get themselves a copy of "The Black Book of Communism" and read it from cover to cover. Written by French academics, it is probably the most complete extensive compilation of Communist mass crimes extant. Especially compelling are first-hand accounts by survivors of Mao's "Great Leap Forward." They will water your eyes.

Hoosier Daddy said...

Yes, Marxist apologists get way too much leeway in our society.

Because Marxism was always about 'fairness', each according to his ability and needs and all that fluffy stuff. I mean its not 'fair' that there are millionaries when someone somewhere is living on $20K a year. All you have to do is listen to Bernie Sander's filibuster speech the other week about the wealthy and you can see how easy it is to start burying those who have more than you do.

bagoh20 said...

Pretty simple: Mao was a progressive.

Original Mike said...

"This brings back the memory of the Mao Christmas ornament on the White House Christmas tree last year."

Really?

traditionalguy said...

Does state rationed "Unemployment benefits" and Health Care tie into state rationed energy and food production based upon permissive only energy? In the great Obama's values they are the magic trick. So we MUST rise up and burn the palace the moment they next try to shoot us with "Clean Energy Standards". The Dems under Soros and Obama are toay in the final phase of their long march to see the USA's power buried alive. But what a glorious victory that will be for the America haters.

Opus One Media said...

The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be.

Reynolds performs no service to anyone in writing this.

The Dude said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Crimso said...

"The question I have always pondered is why the peasants didn't rise up en masse and torch the palace?"

2nd Amendment.

"Why don't we torch the White House and Congress?"

Primarily because there's still plenty of time to reverse course, and the nonviolent means to do so. Past that point, who can say? I had a dear (now departed) friend who was a very reasonable man, and yet was still convinced that Bush would become a dictator and rule on after 1/2009. I asked him where he got such a crazy idea, and he said I should watch more MSNBC and less Fox. I told him that if Bush did that, I would happily march alongside him with my shotgun to Washington and put an end to it.

Still, one must wonder how many of the Founders (if any) would look at the state of this country today and wonder the same thing.

AllenS said...

Wait a minute. Doesn't Michelle Obama want to control what and how much we can eat? Coincidence? I think not.

Opus One Media said...

@AllenS....oh please. you can do better than that. I know you can.

Crimso said...

"The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be."

The dark night of genocide and totaliarianism is constantly descending on capitalism, but somehow always landing on socialism and communism.

Sixty Bricks said...

Makes you wonder if Truman did the right thing when he fired MacArthur.

jerryofva said...

HD:

It has everything to do with communism. The historical record is remarkably consistant on this point. All socialist systems eventually break down to mass murder and poverty.

Socialism sees the people as the enemy that obstructs the building of utopia. If the people can't be molded they must be destroyed.

Scott M said...

Reynolds performs no service to anyone in writing this.

Then you completely missed the point of him doing so. Assuming your claim is true, for the moment, do you suppose that the American apologists mentioned knew how little Mao had to do with socialism/communism? Or do you think it's more likely that they were defending him because he claimed to be a communist and they felt any attack on Mao was an attack on them?

Anonymous said...

This brings back the memory of the Mao Christmas ornament on the White House Christmas tree last year."

Really?

Google "Mao Christmas Ornament" and get a good pic. I can't do links.

AllenS said...

Mr. House,

That was some of my best stuff.

Go ahead, your turn.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be.

So it's just a coincidence that everywhere ( at least of any notable size ) communism is tried, totalitarianism results?

It's either carrots or sticks, and communism doesn't use carrots, at least not for the masses.

Opus One Media said...

@rsb...yes he did do the right thing. did nixon do the right thing?

Original Mike said...

Why am I surprised?.They must do this stuff just to piss people off.

Opus One Media said...

@jerryofva

socialism and communism aren't the same thing.

please try and be accurate.

Triangle Man said...

Ah, the economic slippery slope straight from a marginal income tax rate greater than zero percent to Mao's slaughter.

How about the cultural slippery slope? Mao was also a big fan of pitting rural people against urban liberal elites.

Original Mike said...

Communism is not even capable of putting carrots on the grocery shelf.

pst314 said...

"The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism."

Soviet communism was socialism right up until Western leftists found its crimes too embarrassing to explain.

Chinese communism was socialism right up until ditto.

Likewise communism in Vietnam and everywhere else.

HDHouse performs no service in peddling his moth-eaten lies.

Sixty Bricks said...

I thought about Nixon too - is that why everything at Wal-Mart comes from China? I just remember Nixon, Chou En-Lai and some champagne.

jerryofva said...

HD:

Yeah, Socialism is the stage in the development that proceeds Communism. Socialism is the stage where the Vanguard Party builds the condtions for the state to wither away into true Communism.

Perhaps if you want to be a red ou should actually read Marx and Engles instead of parroting somebody's notion of the Party line.

pst314 said...

"socialism and communism aren't the same thing."

That's true, in the same sense that poison and cyanide are not the same thing. In both cases, the latter is a subset of the former.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
socialism and communism aren't the same thing.
CORRECT, we must pass thru “Socialism” on the way TO Communism…Socialism is only a way-station to the final point of Human History, HD. Only Mensheviks and Bernstein Revisionist think otherwise, and we have “places” for them. True they are useful tools along the way, but, in the end, must be discarded, like the Kulaks, in order to make REAL Progress.

TWM said...

"The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be."

Socialism and communism are natural perversions.

Hoosier Daddy said...

The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be.

Funny how every country that seems to dabble in communism seems to leave behind a mountain of corpses and it never has anything to do with communism.

Sometimes where there is smoke, something is on fire.

Original Mike said...

"HDHouse performs no service in peddling his moth-eaten lies."

Sure he does. It's important to remember there are people in the world who think like that.

Hoosier Daddy said...

socialism and communism aren't the same thing.

Communism is the red-headed stepchild of socialism.

So to speak.

pst314 said...

"All anyone has to do is get themselves a copy of "The Black Book of Communism" and read it from cover to cover."

Good citation, Virgil Xenophon.

For further insight into the depraved state of the current Left, note that the book was received with great hostility by much of the left, something that would not have happened if the left had truly abandoned its allegience to evil.

Sofa King said...

"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."

Michael said...

HD House: Are you suggesting then, as an apologist for communism, that the Great Leap Forward was just a perversion of communism, the good type of which you approve? You are very sick. And very gullible. And very much a dupe.

Sofa King said...

HD: Sooooo predictable. Next step: he or one of his fellow travelers blames the United States for causing communism to fail, along with the resultant holocaust.

Michael said...

Were HD House a German of a certain age he would argue that the holocaust really had nothing to do with real Nazism.

MayBee said...

Barack Obama and Bill Ayers spent a lot of Annenberg's money enriching their Maoist friend, Mike Klonsky.
They bonded over education.

I know it all sounds nutty, but it's true. Forward!

Unknown said...

Another great boon of the Internet. The truth coming out about Communism. Hitler, bloody-handed in his own right, was a piker compared to Stalin and Mao, but is held up as the most evil being in history - thanks to the same media which gave a Pulitzer to Walter Duranty.

HDHouse said...

The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be.

No, Mao was the "pure" Communist. Everybody said so. That was the gospel of all the hippie types back in the 60s.

Didn't Grace Slick name her baby, China, for "the most beautiful country in the world"?

jerryofva said...

Michael:

You are mistaken. A real Nazi would be proud of the regime's accomplishments. Nazis are honest about their intentions. Communists are pathological liars.

J said...

Maoism should not be considered synonymous with socialism, which still exists in many forms--ie, the EU. Or work place/health laws/collective bargaining in the US for that matter.

Atrocities did occur under Mao and the Red Army, and the real history should be known, yet in many areas the famine was beyond human control. Read between the lines and one realizes Mao and his officers at times were not really in control of the Peoples' army.

The US itself is hardly out of the running on the Atrocity-meter (ie, count the civilian dead of 'Nam, for starters. Then natives. and slavery)

traditionalguy said...

A point of view that may be mine alone is that man is seeking an authority that empowers him to rule, at whatever expense it causes to others. We pity animals that Mike Vick ruled over, but we fail to pity populations of men and animals that the Marxist Cult disguised as a Environmental Movement takes over with its simple Propaganda Message that it is absolutely necessary to kill off surplus others. That same message is now enmeshed into the Harvard Phds version of how man must rule within the post modern digital age. The good news is that there are Alaskans who seem to be totally left out of the Cult.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)

It’s good, now Cedarford has a “pal,” HDHouse. One’s an apologist for atrocities on the Right and one for the Left. Both of them can be suspicious of the Jooos. I hope they can have a wonderful correspondence and meet, like Althouse and Meade, and bond.

You are mistaken. A real Nazi would be proud of the regime's accomplishments. Nazis are honest about their intentions. Communists are pathological liars.
Oh REAL Communists are no different, once they’re behind closed doors, I’m sure.

Hoosier Daddy said...

Read between the lines and one realizes Mao and his officers at times were not really in control of the Peoples' army.

Good one. That's right up there with 'Hitler never personally ordered the Holocaust'.

And yes, the US is right up there with Vietnam. Tell that to the couple million sent to communist re-education camps or the roughly half a million boat people who died trying to escape that worker's paradise.

Hoosier Daddy said...

As for the native Americans and slavery, you're hard pressed to find anyone whose going to give the country a pass for those actions like your kind does for the 100 million or so killed by communism.

Scott M said...

Hoosier,

You're being purposefully combative. Everyone knows that slavery and conquering a continents first immigrants has just never been done correctly.

Cedarford said...

A few eggs had to be broken to create the omlette that American consumers and the US government seeking IOUs feasts on.
Remember - free trade for Freedom Lovers is a win-win that lifts all boats. And every shut down US industry just means workers are made beneficiaries of great new opportunities freed to take more challenging, better-paid, High Tech wonder spositions!!.


Of course everyone knows the story of those eggs getting broken.
For every thousand movies of the bad Nazis and poor Jews --there were PLENTY of movies, documentaries on TV, feature news articles of the bad commies and their poor victims, Right?

No? Then a pity that Asian and Russian and E European peoples did not have much of a say in Hollywood or media..let alone regular Americans that care about things like Gulags, secret police, killing fields, and mass starvation of Ukrainians or "mandarin class" CHinese.

Actually - wasn't there some movie about Cambodia back in the 80s that Hollywood adored? Or was that more about the courageous journalist selling movie rights to the story about him taking risks and seeking the truth than the actual genocide itself?

MayBee said...

Atrocities did occur under Mao and the Red Army, and the real history should be known, yet in many areas the famine was beyond human control.

Mao, the passive communist.

Mistakes were made. Atrocities did occur. Things happened while Mao was otherwise engaged.

Can a famine really be beyond human control? In a country not shut off from the rest of the world, I mean.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
Atrocities did occur under Mao and the Red Army, and the real history should be known, yet in many areas the famine was beyond human control.
Why HDHouse, you have a “son.” Yes the Famine was beyond human control…just like the Ukrainian Famine, funny how these “unfortunate” famines always seem to strike Worker’s Paradises like the USSR, The PRC, or the DPRK, and the COLLECTIVIZATION of Agriculture and confiscatory State Policies had NOTHING to do with it!
Read between the lines and one realizes Mao and his officers at times were not really in control of the Peoples' army.
Undoubtedly, those Commissars they’re just Morale Officers and the State Security Services don’t have their own informers within the various Red Armies of the World, do they? Yes, those Red Armies, almost ALWAYS on the verge of anarchy in these People’s Democracies.

The US itself is hardly out of the running on the Atrocity-meter (ie, count the civilian dead of 'Nam, for starters. Then natives. and slavery)
Oh the Moral Equivalence Card, well played Sir. IF the dead civilians from 1954-1975 are a black mark, what shall we say of the 2-3 MILLION Vietnamese, Hmong, Meo, and Montagnard casualties post-1975? And slavery, is there a Statute of Limitations on Slavery? As Slavery has not existed in the US since 1865, and no person living today has EVER been a Slave, and I dare say no one living in the US has even known a person who WAS a slave, can we ever be free of Slavery? I mean the GLF and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution occurred within the last 60 years, there are many who still can remember and discuss them, but Slavery, that’s a dead issue in the US.

Scott M said...

Cedarford,

You must make a mean batch of donuts. You do wonders for my eyes.

Rialby said...

But.. but.. real communism has never been attempted. Those who claimed to be communists were really just right-wingers controlled by Goldstein.

Down with Goldstein. Up with the people!

J said...

GOLDANGIT, Hoosier! Ya done got me.

Actually it wasn't only Hitler, sodbuster-vati. Goering, Himmler, Goebbels, Waffen at times nearly as powerful (Goering more so at times). The nazis were voted in. google "willing executioners".

Funny the sodbuster christian (mormon, jew, catholics, etc) still attends church, notwithstanding Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Nixon-Kissingers. Genocide and dictators: All of of his Mysterious ways, presumably.

Saint Croix said...

It's always worth pointing out that the Nazis were Socialists. They were National Socialists, racist socialists. And that's why the left hates the Nazis. The racism. If they were just ordinary Socialists killing millions of people, the left wouldn't have a problem with it. They would happily fly the Nazi flag.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
GOLDANGIT, Hoosier! Ya done got me.

You want to translate that gibberish, J? Because your “defense” if that’s what it was, was incoherent and weak…..

Larry J said...

HDHouse said...
The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be.

Reynolds performs no service to anyone in writing this.


Spoken like a true apologists for mass murderers. Stalin ordered the starvation deaths of millions in the Ukraine and millions more died in his gulags. Mao ordered the starvation deaths of millions and millions more died in his prisons. Pol Pot ordered the deaths of 1-3 million Cambodians. Millions are starving in North Korea.

According to some reports, Alinski and his minions were planning the deaths of 25 million Americans if they came to power.

Coincidence? I think not.

Ralph L said...

One region was so terrified of not meeting its steel production quota that they melted down their farming tools, and then starved.

jerryofva said...

There goes J with the moral equivalence again. Just think Nixon-Kissenger = Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Genocide and dictators. Yes we all know the GULAGs and mass murder apparatus set up and committed by the Nixon-Kissenger dictatorship!

Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon fought a war to prevent the rise of another genocide dictatorship and they were undermined by people like you who worshiped the long line of genocide dictatorships founded by Lenin and Stalin. They failed because people like you supported the murders

MayBee said...

It's worth pointing out that leaders who have the goal of controlling everything shouldn't be given the excuse that their problems were beyond their control.

It reminds me of Obama, who seeks to increase government exponentially, but complains that the American people are becoming ungovernable. (not comparing Obama to Mao, by the way. But his early influences were indeed Marxists).

J said...

Nein! Goldberg's full of scheisse.
Night of the Long Knives ring a bell? Purge of the labor oriented brownshirts, ie socialist elements. The german capitalists and old aristos mostly supported Hitler (including the aged Kaiser Wilhelm)


The nazi brass were primarily ...altar boys, catholic, tho a few turned away later (Himmler became a type of nordic pagan).

Nazi Infantry was mainly Lutheran evangelicals (as was Jodl). And even some Misschling jews.

MayBee said...

AJ Lynch said...

"Great Leap Forward"?

Interesting that Obama and the Dems and No Labels and MSNBC are also emphasizing & using the word "forward" in their speeches, ads and promos.


Isn't it weird? The very group that seeks to make it completely unacceptable to discuss these things uses the same rhetoric.

J said...

Yeah Ill translate it into hick-moralist herstory for you:

STFU about topics you know nothing about, like world history, politics, science, etc.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)


J, that’s it, no response to you after this. You want to talk COMMUNISM, feel free, defend it if you want, play Moral Equivalence Games to your heart’s content, but simply talking about the Nazi’s and whether or not their Infantry was Lutheran, well that’s simply a diversion. It won’t work with me.

J is being an idiot fellow Capitalist Roaders, please ignore his barely coherent ramblings.

jerryofva said...

J:

And Stalin was a seminarian so there!

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
Yeah Ill translate it into hick-moralist herstory for you:

STFU about topics you know nothing about, like world history, politics, science, etc.


J, I MUST ask was this a general comment or did you have anyone in particular in mind, your Almighty All-Knowingness….WOW, so someone, all of us (????) may not discuss Politics, History, or Science, even IF we have degrees in those areas?

You ARE a Good Communist aren’t you, no need for debate, just tell the Proles to “STFU.”

Hoosier Daddy said...

GOLDANGIT, Hoosier! Ya done got me.

Well it wasn't much of a challenge.

KCFleming said...

It took a mere 80 years for the NY Times to go from Walter Duranty's Pulitzer-winning lies to Frank Dikötter's exposure of those same lies.

Good for them, after long last.

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
Duranty, NY Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
Duranty, NY Times, August 23, 1933

"In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths."
Dikötter, NY Times, December 15, 2010

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)

Now I DO think there is a way to get Lefties to condemn Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot…Sarah Palin needs to praise them!

dave in boca said...

By coincidence, I'm reading Bloodlands by Tom Snyder and am right now reading about the '32-33 mass famine in the Ukraine that killed five million called the Holodomor, a mirror of the holocaust we hear so much of, during the relocation of peasants to collectivized farms. At the same time two-three million kulaks, or wealthy [meaning more than one pig] farmers, were being exterminated as a class, causing more deaths in the millions.

Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs is the Commie way of death.

If Anita Dunn had a brain, she'd be ashamed.

Hoosier Daddy said...

You want to translate that gibberish, J? Because your “defense” if that’s what it was, was incoherent and weak…..

I'm still trying to figure out what a 'sodbuster-vati' is and what they had to do with Hitler.

J said...

Whoop!

Xtia-zionist Sodbusters of Althouse, unite

KCFleming said...

Socialism's answer for the 100 million deaths it caused in the 20th century boils down to 'It wasn't me!!'

Like two-year-olds and the personality-disordered (but I repeat myself), it's never their fault.

Original Mike said...

"We did not find any results for Xtia-zionist Sodbusters"

Joe said...

The Crypto Jew)
Pogo said...
Socialism's answer for the 100 million deaths it caused in the 20th century boils down to 'It wasn't me!!'

And often, “It wasn’t them either.” And, “It would have worked out better if I HAD been in charge.” Also, “SQUIRREL” (transl.: “Slavery, Nazi’s, Inquisition, etc., etc.”)

dave in boca said...

@fkcom

"Yes, Marxist apologists get way too much leeway in our society. They should have exactly the same pariah status as Nazi apologists. For some reason, though, they don't. I blame the press, who seem to have a natural affinity for Marxist apologetics.

I was watching the Hitler Channels "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" the last two nights and thought to myself that my MA in Modern European History at the U. of Michigan had taught me that Stalin had killed about ten times as many Soviet citizens as he had killed Germans---at least Hitler concentrated on killing foreigners...!

But the History Channel gives nary a peep about Stalin, except to offhand mention what a bad dude he turned out to be, while not even mentioning the fact that Mao's paranoid insanity may have killed 100 million of his own citizens during The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution ten years later. Only now are the Chinese even beginning to confront the evils of Chairman Mao, while he's idolized by dope-smoking slackers at US univesities.

My wife told me while watching the Hitler Channel last night that nobody got rich marketing to Russians or Ukrainians in the USA, so why bother to publicize Stalin or dramatize the Holodomor?

Unknown said...

The moral relativists among us might want to recall that, at the time America adopted and participated in slavery, it was considered a norm throughout the world. Only Britain, in the early 19th century made any move to outlaw it and stop the slave trade. Abolitionism in this country started in the late 1830s and a few Euro countries abolished it during the period of the Civil War.

As for the Indians (they're no more native than you or I, they're Siberian-Americans), the clash of cultures was as much on their side as ours. The Indians took few, if any prisoners; the US Army always did. The Indians treated their prisoners as slaves, the US government created the reservation system (flawed and corrupt as it was) to find a way to integrate the Indians into the white man's world.

And, as several have noted, 'Nam was another Communist abattoir.

KCFleming said...

A well-done first-hand account of a young man living through the Cultural Revolution:
Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard, by Fan Shen.

Harrowing. He eventually escaped to the US.

Alex said...

Yup. The libs always say that China, North Korea, Cuba, Angola, USSR, etc... are ALL perversions of GOOD Communism. I mean fuck, maybe all those countries were CIA plots!

Alex said...

According to some reports, Alinski and his minions were planning the deaths of 25 million Americans if they came to power.

That would put the Jew Alinsky in the same category as Heinrich Himmler who planned the extermination of 10 million Jews + 30 million Slavs. But Jews have always had traitors to their race.

KCFleming said...

Shocking photographs of the Cultural Revolution, taken in secret and hidden for 40 years:

Red-Color News Soldier.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

In the Soviet days, a rumor went through the village that the local store had received a shipment of meat. The entire village lined up at the store to try and buy some meat.

"There is not enough meat for everyone", said the Party boss. "All Jews must get out of line and go home." This was done.

Looking again at the line, the Party boss said, "There is still not enough meat. If you are not a Party member, get out of line and go home."

Once again he appraised the line. "Still not enough meat. If you are not a Party officer, get out of line and go home."

Addressing the much-diminished line he said, "You are all trustworthy Communists. I can tell you there never was any meat to begin with."

Said one commissar to another, "Isn't that how it always is? The Jews get the best of everything."

KCFleming said...

Go to hell, Alex.

Cedarford said...

One cannot understand Fascism without understanding Lenin and the Jewish Bolshevik theories of state terror and mass liquidations as necessary to advance Societal Transformation by bloodshed and transnational Revolution.

What was happening as fascism developed as a reactionary force was well-understood by the Europeans in the West. By the time fascist parties started gaining steam, 15 million had been liquidated in the Soviet Union, inc. 5.5 million Ukranians. The White Sea canal project done by class enemy slave labor under Yagoda took out 600,000 people. The Berman Bros's Gulags took out 3 million souls. Churches were dynamited, priests killed, synogogues spared (as non-oppressors, unlike the Orthodox Church).

Revolutions outside the Soviet Union and discovered death lists made Westerners understand the sort in their own lands who would live and who would die if the Communists took over.
Stalin and his allies, who wrested power from the transnationals, actually was the reason why certain leaders, who once saw Jewish Bolsheviks as the main enemy (like Churchill) shifted to seeing the Fascists as the greater threat. While Stalin and friends embraced the State Terror created under Lenin and the Jewish Bolsheviks, Stalin saw the bloodletting as best confined to the Soviet Union and not exported. Dissenters like Buhkarin, Sverdlov, Leon Bronstein (Trotsky) still advocating global export of revolution and terror were executed.
For nations like Britain, USA, France - that meant the fascists became an external threat while the Soviets, sad as it was, were not as great a threat as they focused only on filling gutters and unmarked graves with fellow Soviet's blood.
While the fascists were driven by WWI revanchism and fear that the Soviets would shift and once again seed the West with bloody revolutions like Hungary, Bavaria, Spartacists aided by a 5th Column. Fascists were supported by segments of the population that saw what happened to people like them under Communism. (church leaders, business owners outside financiers too valuable to liquidate, large farm owners, etc)

This "fascism is the true threat, not the Commies" thinking of the West in the late 1930s was a little short-sighted, as Soviet leadership still "green-lighted" training the emigre revolutionaries of many countries, especially China, Korea - while avoiding cultivating emigres in nations then in "Great Powers" orbits, spheres of influence. These Soviet-trained cadres were then the source of "spin-off" democides. And formed the Soviet-loyal leadership the Russians installed in E Europe and N Korea.

dave in boca said...

Everybody seems to forget that lapsed Catholic Himmler modelled his SS on the Jesuit Order. And Goebbels came from a strongly Catholic family in the middle of Lutheran north Germany. Hitler too came out of a Catholic Austrian milieu, though hardly a religious dude even though he had some Benedictine schooling.

And according to Simon Sebag Montefiori, Stalin's mom really slept around and his natural daddy may have been the local Georgian Orthodox priest...! And Stalin was a published Georgian poet in his teens while he was possibly an agent for Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police. Read Conrad's brilliant Under Western Eyes about the amazing situation in Geneva around 1910 when Lenin, Stalin, et al. were skulking around playing at being revolutionaries, even though Conrad wrote a parallel novel depicting it as fiction. Ever wonder why Conrad's prescient 1910 book on how Communism would destroy Russia isn't taught in American colleges even on a suggested reading syllabus?

KCFleming said...

Feminist writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulic described Soviet socialism's effects on women and the poor:

“Every mother in Bulgaria can point to where communism failed, from the failures of the planned economy (and consequent lack of food, milk), to the lack of apartments, child-care facilities, clothes, disposable diapers, or toilet paper. The banality of everyday life is where it has really failed, rather than the level of ideology.

Newspaper headlines declared “No Bread”, and there was a "lack of sugar, oil, coffee or flour”, even decades after World War II.

After all these years, communism has not been able to produce a simple sanitary napkin, a bare necessity for women. So much for it’s economy and its so-called emancipation, too. ...What can one say except that it is humiliating?

Communism failed, she concludes, because it was “a system that was continuously unable to provide for its citizen’s basic needs for forty years or more,” a condition of egalitarian poverty that “cannot be changed by words, declarations, promises, or threats from politicians.

Joe said...

The Crypto Jew)
a condition of egalitarian poverty that “cannot be changed by words, declarations, promises, or threats from politicians.”
Don’t take this as an attack, but Communism is NOT egalitarian poverty. The Nomenklatura live GREAT lives, Brzhnev had Mercedes-Benz’s and Krupp appliances, Fidel Castro has MULTIPLE domiciles, in Cuba, who’s square footages vastly exceed the amount allotted to the Narod. As Suvarov says, “Comrades of proven worth and the offspring of Comrades of proven worth” live D@mned pleasant lives…Brezhnev’s son was a Major-General (Having never served an actual day in the Krasny Armiya) and defended the “Bulwarks of Socialism” in Stockholm…good work if you can get it, eh?

Fen said...

The moral relativists among us might want to recall that, at the time America adopted and participated in slavery, it was considered a norm throughout the world.

Yes, and they miss two important points:

1) America's culture EVOLVED. We didn't start out demanding animal rights. We began with rights for the merchant class, and later extended that to all white males, then to slaves, then to women.

2) We wrongly treated the slaves and natives as sub-human, the same way the Left treats the unborn as sub-human. You'd think the Left would choke on its hypocrisy.

Cedarford said...

Tyrone Slothrop said...
In the Soviet days, a rumor went through the village that the local store had received a shipment of meat. The entire village lined up at the store to try and buy some meat.

"There is not enough meat for everyone", said the Party boss. "All Jews must get out of line and go home." This was done.


===============
Story in unlikely to be told in Russia or the Ukraine, as in the Soviet Union, more than any other ethnicity as a percentile of their net population - Jews were Party members and otherwise privileged.

If the story was told in the USSR, the Soviet person telling it would be "The people of the village were told to assemble and told there was little food. All but pregnant women, Red Army pensioners, Jews, and Party members were sent home.

The pregnant women were told they could go out and glean overlooked potatos and cabbages left in the field and not be arrested, but best get moving before the freezes. The Red Army pensioners vets and widows alike, had their hands warmly shaken by the Jews and Party members for their Great Patriotic service, then sent home hungry. The non-CP Jews were handed out food save pork, on their assurances that Party members would get all the shoes, clothes, and lightbulbs they wanted from "under the shelves" state store inventory the Jews maintained. And Party member children would get outstanding grades and references from Jewish teachers.
Then the bulk of the food was distributed to Soviet CP members, including pork to Jews who argued as CP members, they were officially pork-eating atheists.

Fen said...

Jews were Party members and otherwise privileged.

Sure they were. Thats why so many of them fled the country...

Cedarford said...

Larry J - "According to some reports, Alinski and his minions were planning the deaths of 25 million Americans if they came to power."

Not true. Alinsky was a Socialist who was utterly repelled by the Red Terror.
A Russian Jew by ethnicity, Alinsky
rejected the tactics of his kindred ethnic Jewish Bolsheviks. He favored the ideas of Antonio Gramsci over the ideas of Leon Bronstein, Yagoda, Lenin, or Bela Cohen.
Saying Alinsky favored a death list to liquidate 25 million Americans is a logical fallacy. It goes like this:
The Weather Underground read Alinsky. The Weather Underground favored mass liquidations if their Revolution triumphed and talked of 25 million white people having to be killed or Gulag'd. ERgo, Alinsky must have endorsed their hare-brained ideas.
No.

And Marx-Engels would have vomited if they had lived to see what Lenin, the Jewish Bolsheviks, Stalins Cadres, Mao's people, or the NORK leadership trained in the Soviet Union did.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
Sure they were. Thats why so many of them fled the country....
Sure haven’t you seen “The Eternal Jew”? They’re like rats, fleeing the sinking ship, carrying their infection with them…SHEESH dood/doodette are you that ignorant? EVERYONE knows that the Joos are Commies, unless they’re Plutocrats…….

Chef Mojo said...

In the end, I think the point is that people should treat Marxists/Socialists/Communists the same way we treat Neo-Nazi skinheads; with contempt and derision. They should not be able to stand in polite society, nor should they be tolerated intellectually or academically. The socialists posting here on these comments are no better than the skinhead scum hanging out on the street nursing their twisted fantasies.

Fascism and Nazism are Socialist constructs. To deny that is to be blind to history. Fascism is simply a fork in the road on that journey to Communism and beyond. All the Socialist/Fascist ideologies are intertwined in an incestuous knot of human horror.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
And Marx-Engels would have vomited if they had lived to see what Lenin, the Jewish Bolsheviks, Stalins Cadres, Mao's people, or the NORK leadership trained in the Soviet Union did.
Merciful Yhwh! It IS true, the Left and Right meet at the margins! I’m sure that the Dictatorship of the Proletarians was going to be NOTHING like the USSR or the PRC…well it WOULD HAVE BEEN because they’d have been speaking German in them…after all the Revolution was to come to Germany, America, and Great Britain, first…not the agrarian societies of Russia, China, or North Korea…

Hey I see it, Cedarford IS supporting the Revolution, properly….he’s a Nazi, and they were guys and gals who were supposed to bring about the Socialist Revolution, and they did, starting in 1933…Foolish me….OF COURSE, as the Commie Apologists point out, the Revolution went astray and began to pay heed to the rich German Industrialists and Bankers, no doubt many of whom were Jooos…

Cedarford IS HDHouse, he’ll be apologizing for the German Socialist Revolution soon and explain that that really has NOTHING to do with TRUE National Socialism….

Finally C4 Marx WAS A JEW…You Anti-Semitic Maroon! He was as Joo-ish as many of the other folks you like to proclaim Juice…..

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
I think the point is that people should treat Marxists/Socialists/Communists the same way we treat Neo-Nazi skinheads;
I agree, it’s one of the reason’s I’ve never warmed to Hitchens, being on “our side” as far as the GWoT Terror and Islamo-Fascism goes…

I see NO difference between him and Oswald Mosley…both were apologists and supporters of unspeakable regimes.

Chef Mojo said...

The Nazis were pikers. Oh, they were efficient, I'll grant, but nothing beats Socialist/Communists for full-on mass murder.

To all the lefties tossing out their moral equivalency cards like a game of 52 pickup: There is no possible equivalency for the slaughter committed by the combined ideologies of Socialism in the last 100 years. Not even close.

J said...

¡Viva Mao!


Sodbusters of Althouse, Unite

:|

MadisonMan said...

Pogo, yes yes yes to Gang of One. An absolutely fascinating book. I just returned it to the library, thanks for mentioning it weeks ago.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
The Nazis were pikers. Oh, they were efficient, I'll grant, but nothing beats Socialist/Communists for full-on mass murder.
Oh they weren’t even efficient, Chief...They had Death Camps, dood/doodette…I mean they KILLED people at these camps..Helllllooooooo waste of resources!

You get all the Zeks to dig the White Sea Ship Canal…bingo 600K dead, right there AND no wasted resources spent on killing them…they dig, meet their quota or they get no food….they die. Kolyma, they dig, we get gold, they don’t dig, they starve, they die…and any way most of them will die, even WITH the food, but we still get the gold…no Zyklon B to purchase, no ovens to build, we just work them ‘til they drop. NOW THAT’S EFFICIENCY and that Himmler fellow can just put that in his pipe and smoke it! The GULAG, nothing like good ole’ Soviet Know How…..

MadisonMan said...

yet in many areas the famine was beyond human control.

Possibly true, at least for initial causes: that is, a sustained drought.

Response to a drought, or the resultant famine, however, is entirely within human control. Central Planning just isn't flexible enough (to put it mildly) when it comes to unforeseen disasters.

Cedarford said...

Crpto-Jew: Finally C4 Marx WAS A JEW…You Anti-Semitic Maroon! He was as Joo-ish as many of the other folks you like to proclaim Juice…..
===============

No shit, moron. Everyone knows Marx was a Jew, though many are unaware Engles was not, and that Engles deserves far greater credit (if that is the appropriate word) for his own intellectual and personal contribution to Communist Theory. Almost as important as Karl Marx and an almost equal, if not slightly greater contributor than Marx to "Das Kapital"

Not all Jews bought into what the Jewish Bolsheviks concocted. Like Karl Marx - who would have been the 1st to list the perversions of classic theory that happened in the Soviet Union. And vomit. Notably the slave labor projects of Yagoda, the Jewish Bolsheviks creation of State Terror that victimized worker and owner alike into a life of fear, the Gulags, and the liquidation of the Kulaks, who to Marx's theory were the proletariat of agriculture, not the bourgeoisie.
Stalin and his crowd just inherited the whole deal. His sin was in liking the death apparatus he was given as useful to his bunch's own purposes..

jerryofva said...

MM:

Don't fall for the weather excuse. Many studies were done in the 1950's and 1960's between the yields in Western Canada, which heavily Ukrainian and yields in Ukraine. The climate and soil conditions were the same. Even some the farmers were the same. Canadian yields were similar to the the United States while output in the Ukraine was 19th century.

jerryofva said...

Cederford:

Marx and Engles plagerized most of Das Kaptial from a German economist named von Robertus. You can check the footnotes in the introduction of Das Kapital for M&E's denigration of his work. a sure sign that they stole it.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)

Words Fail Me…now we have a Nazi Apologist for the Soviet Union, their problem, understandably, the Juice….You are nothing if not consistent, Cedarford. You like Cooke are obviously evil and deranged humans, BUT you have the strength of your convictions…I can respect you both, even if I think you are both evil and reprehensible

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
Marx and Engles plagerized most of Das Kaptial from a German economist named von Robertus.
Typical Jooooos, stealing a good Aryan’s hard work, probably seduced his virgin daughter, too…

Unknown said...

dave in boca said...

Everybody seems to forget that lapsed Catholic Himmler modelled his SS on the Jesuit Order. And Goebbels came from a strongly Catholic family in the middle of Lutheran north Germany. Hitler too came out of a Catholic Austrian milieu, though hardly a religious dude even though he had some Benedictine schooling.

And according to Simon Sebag Montefiori, Stalin's mom really slept around and his natural daddy may have been the local Georgian Orthodox priest...!


Of course!! It was all a plot by the Catholic Church!!!

My God, what drivel!!!

You'd think the Know-Nothings would have died off after Gettysburg.

MadisonMan said...

jerry: Weather in Canada != Weather in China != Weather in the Ukraine for the late 1950s. I think your point is more a long-term average thing.

My point is very narrow. The initial cause of the famine may have been drought. The response to the drought was not in any way beyond human hands and that response was the real cause of the famine.

Maybe I didn't say it so explicitly the first time around.

Automatic_Wing said...

Stalin and his crowd just inherited the whole deal.

So you're saying that Stalin inherited a mess, eh?

Sounds familiar.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
The initial cause of the famine may have been drought.
It IS important to pick nits, words mean things. The famine was NOT caused by draught, a food shortage was caused by draught. A Public Health Hazard was caused by draught. A relief effort would have been caused by draught. The FAMINE was caused by Stalin and the Bolsheviks:
1) Who collectivized agriculture, FURTHER reducing food supplies;
2) Who killed the Kulaks, removing effective farmers from the market, and FURTHER reducing food supplies;
3) Who did not cut the quota of grain flowing from the Ukraine to the newly industrializing cities, FURTHER reducing food supplies;
4) Who EXPORTED Soviet grain, as a propaganda ploy, rather than admit to problems with food production, FURTHER reducing the food supplies.
A problem that may or may not have been caused by draught, became a Famine because Stalin and the CPSU wished to accomplish many things, and allowed 5 million Ukrainians to STARVE TO DEATH. The FAMINE was man-made.

J said...

You ARE a Good Communist aren’t you, no need for debate, just tell the Proles to “STFU.”

Why, yes, rather good insight for a plebe such as yourself, Joe. One doesn't debate with the kulaks, or the mere rabblement. Put them to work in the fields, factories, gulags, or...as fertilizer. Old-school Leninist tactics.


Though, in some areas a bright peasant might rise through the ranks--say by defeating a few party members, honorably, via a series of chess matches. Meritocracy, rather than mere capitalist fortune, ie Madoffism.

Michael said...

@J: "Though, in some areas a bright peasant might rise through the ranks"

Notwithstanding the fact that your fury likely derives from your peasantry you would not rise through the ranks. Your disappointment with life is too apparent to qualify you for advancement. Sorry.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
Stalin and his crowd just inherited the whole deal.
Didn’t notice that one….lost in the other inanity. Poor ole Stalin just inherited the whole Cheka/OGPU thing, and then expanded it exponentially into the GULAG. Probably “just happened;” the whole Death State Apparatus just became the New Normal, I guess….Those tricksy ole’ Juice got good Ole Joe to go along with their genocidal visions. Genial Old Joe didn’t want to, no, he was tricked into killing or imprisoning 10% of the USSR. Man O h Man, Joooooooos sure are dangerous, if they aren’t exploiting their fellow man via inhuman financial shenanigans, like the Rothschilds, they’re exploiting their fellow man vie inhuman State Apparati….I sure wish we could come up with some Solution for these Juice…something Final.

jerryofva said...

Joe:


Your namesake leader was working on that but then the Jew doctors got to him first!

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
Joe:


Your namesake leader was working on that but then the Jew doctors got to him first!

*ROTFL* Tears started down my face…

Anonymous said...

"Your namesake leader was working on that but then the Jew doctors got to him first!"

They weren't 'Jews'; they were 'Cosmopolitans'. Please use correct Newspeak for that era.

J said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
J said...

Mikey, you're too stooopid for witty banter. Maybe stick to the seed catalog discussion down at the Des Moines Home Depot, or whereever the f*ck y'all are.

History should never be entrusted to moralists--whether whiny sally Fields lib-rawls or christian-zionist crusaders for Truth, Justice, and Bloomybergism.

There were positives, and negatives to the Bolsheviks. Then, after 10 centuries of czarism, that's to be expected, even dialectically speaking. As per Jefferson: payback's a byatch.

(Merry Xmass Miss A)

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
They weren't 'Jews'; they were 'Cosmopolitans'. Please use correct Newspeak for that era.
INDEED…”Rootless” Cosmopolitans…if you can’t get the Dear Leader’s terminology correct, mayhap you haven’t been paying close enough attention during the Workers and Peasant’s Council Meetings, eh Comrade?

Michael said...

J: Perhaps you should look into a different career, a place where you could make some money, a place that might take a bit of the bitterness away. Anger is very bad for the old ticker.

Saint Croix said...

There were positives, and negatives to the Bolsheviks.

And Hitler took Germany of a depression. Also, I heard he was nice to his dogs.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
And Hitler took Germany of a depression. Also, I heard he was nice to his dogs.
Was a vegetarian, didn’t smoke…cared about his niece..gave us the Volkswagen, both the “Bug” and “The Thing”…

jerryofva said...

Now in all fairness we have to say that of three old cronies to survive the death of the Boss two were Jews. (Lazar Kaganovich and my friend's maternal grandfather.) Beria's survival was a mere technicallity since the Politburo quickly took care of him.

Kaganovich almost made it to the end of the worker's paradise dying just days before the attempted coup in 1991.

Scott M said...

Hitler, apparently, could also paint a mean tree.

J said...

Anger? Heh heh. You too feeble and pathetic to be angry at (and yr entire schtick depends on Ad Hominem, as with most Althousers). As Mr T once said, pity the foo.

J said...

Bogus comparison, St Croix. The bolsheviks weren't nazis (tho they made a few deals with the prussians)

Then logic isn't typically the altar boy's forte (e.g., he even forgets the cliffsnotes to Aristotle. Or never got 'em)

Michael said...

J: Not ad hominem at all. For that I would glance at your "comments." No, I am trying to be helpful. You clearly are seeing a lot of people who are not as smart as you getting way ahead of you in lots of areas of life. It is discouraging, but anger is probably the wrong emotion. Pull yourself up by your boot straps, son, and try something different!!

jerryofva said...

Actually J you are wrong. (what a surprise) Ever hear of something called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939? This pact created an alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They agreed to attack Poland and divide up the rest of Eastern Europe. Stalin was so loyal to his ally Hitler that he had the various Communist parties around the world engage in political and economic sabotage against Hitler's enemies. After the fall of France the French Communists were in full collaboration mode turning over Vichy opponents and Jews to Petain and the Nazi occupiers. It is safe to say no Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, no Holocaust.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)

During the Battle of Britain, the factory that was making Oerlikon 2cm Flak guns was organized under Labour/Communist auspices. With the Nazi’s knocking at the door, the union shop stewards threatened work stoppages, because this was a war of Capitalism and End-Stage Capitalism (Fascism)…of course after 22 June 1941, it was a GLORIOUS Struggle to Defeat Fascism.

Fellow Roaders, Toadies, Hooligans and Slugs…I am forced to conclude that J:
1) Either simply pulling our legs; or
2) Certifiably insane.
As I really cannot believe it is 2) above, I am forced to conclude that this is an elaborate jape, a jest, a bit of fun at our expense.

Anonymous said...

"1) Either simply pulling our legs; or
2) Certifiably insane.
As I really cannot believe it is 2) above, I am forced to conclude that this is an elaborate jape, a jest, a bit of fun at our expense."

OR
3) a recent product of our 'higher' education system.

Automatic_Wing said...

Joe - Your story about the Oerlikon factory reminds me of a certain Pete Seeger record that was briefly released, then withdrawn and destroyed, in June 1941:

Somehow, the award makers forgot to tell everyone about Seeger's most famous record -- the Almanac Singers' very first album -- Songs for John Doe. Released during the week in June 1941 when Hitler broke the pact with Stalin and invaded the USSR, the antiwar album was filled with hard-hitting songs that called for no intervention in European battles on behalf of British imperialism, and condemned Roosevelt as a warmongering fascist who worked for J.P. Morgan...The reason so few people know of the album's existence is easily explained: In true Communist fashion, Pete and his comrades had to respond immediately to the change in the party line that occurred when Hitler invaded the USSR. That meant a recall of the album just beginning to be introduced. All pressings were destroyed, leaving only a few for posterity.

Gotta love the commies...so principled.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)

“We've always been at war with Eastasia”
Remember "fascism is a matter of taste".

kent said...

"When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, the local boss, Xiong Dechang, forced his father to bury his son alive on the spot."

"We can't just leave it up to the parents."

Opus One Media said...

well it still seems like some wackos on here confuse socialism with communism and think that what was going on in china per the example and subject of thread was something other than a perversion.

oh well.

Scott M said...

A perversion of what, HD? And please show an example of it actually working out somewhere in the in world.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
well it still seems like some wackos on here confuse socialism with communism and think that what was going on in china per the example and subject of thread was something other than a perversion.

oh well.

HDHouse still doesn’t grasp that both Mao and Stalin said they had Socialism and that the one was a step to the other. And it bears repeating, that EVERYWHERE this Marxist-Leninist Socialism thing has been tried, somehow, it just seems to happen, genocide breaks out…and it is always a PERVERSION of the real thing. Here’s a clue, when “A” is ALWAYS followed by “B”, however reluctantly we, we must conclude “A” CAUSED “B”, HDHouse.

Now Euro-Socialism only produces slow growth, inequality, and environmental degradation. It’s Communism-Lite. But if you want to defend that, feel free to do so HD.

Chef Mojo said...

@HDHouse:

Oh, please, enlighten us as to the differences in socialism and communism! Please!

You'll give us the usual leftist dictionary tripe.

But you'll always bypass the point - the only point that matters - that Socialism is not an ends unto itself, but part of a process that includes Communism. Socialists, simply put, are Communists with training wheels. Socialists, by their very definition, love Communism because that is what they are striving for! They're all for it, but they just haven't yet found the balls to do the real heavy lifting that Communism requires; namely the total liquidation of enemies of the state.

What part of that distinction do you leftist morons not get?

Michael said...

HD House: No, I think most of us understand the difference between socialism and communism and understand the failure of the former and the depravity of the latter. I believe it is you who would like to think that the Great Leap forward, and the deaths under Stalin are really mistakes in nomenclature, errors of identification. You, I believe, are the one with the problem here.

Opus One Media said...

Socialism - n
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

Communism - n

1. a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.
2. ( often initial capital letter ) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

The differences are subtle - they are massive.

gen·o·cide   –noun
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

got it yet?

Chef Mojo said...

Just as I predicted. HDHouse gives us the dictionary, but not the process.

Intellectual coward.

Joe said...

The Crypto Jew)
well it still seems like some wackos on here confuse socialism with communism and think that what was going on in china per the example and subject of thread was something other than a perversion.

oh well.

Socialism – n=Communism – n=gen•o•cide   –noun

We’ve got it HDHouse, you’re the one who won’t see…I like how under socialism it’s community ownership, but under “communism” it’s “Staet ownership” But there’s no difference HDHouse! For the Left The Community=The State…

Opus One Media said...

One of the things I find as a hoot on this blog is the inability of some to be precise. It is if some of you see the world as some sort of blur without distinction or edges - everything just runs into each other like a tiped over set of watercolors.

I always wonder if you would be happier if you stopped and thought things through a bit before you spew forth...but I guess not.

Joe said...

((The Crypto Jew)

A better definition HDHouse is that under socialism the state controls the commanding heights of the economy but there is STILL private ownership of certain businesses and property. Under Communism there it TOTAL state ownership….

Many European Socialists want to stop at the commanding heights, so they merely end up with costly, unequal, dirty, and inefficient systems, rather than the wholesale genocide of their more dedicated Marxist-Leninist associates.

Opus One Media said...

@chief mojo

you ain't got no cheese kid. if that is the best you got, you got nuthin'

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
One of the things I find as a hoot on this blog is the inability of some to be precise. It is if some of you see the world as some sort of blur without distinction or edges - everything just runs into each other like a tiped over set of watercolors.

I always wonder if you would be happier if you stopped and thought things through a bit before you spew forth...but I guess not.
HAsn't stopped you yet has it?

Opus One Media said...

Joe said... "A better definition..."

Geewhiz Joe, I'm sure the dictionary folks all over the world eagerly await your version of the meaning of words that have been accepted in usage for decades...a fresh insight into words and their usage/meaning so to speak....reminds me of Ms. Palin..ya'betcha!

Chef Mojo said...

@HDHouse:

Seeing as you're the one throwing out dictionary definitions instead of honest analysis, I'd say you're the one left empty handed. As such, I'd suggest you use that worthless appendage to slap your face a few times. Maybe you'll shake something loose.

You're an intellectual coward. You're also a filthy socialist and worthy only of the contempt and derision we afford your skinhead cousins.

Opus One Media said...

@ Mojo

you have skinhead cousins?

Opus One Media said...

This thread reads more and more like breaking events on faux noise.

Robin said...

It is always infuriating to see defenders of Communism assert that every single person who acquired power in the name of Communism (and then gave us the mass murders that have occurred in every instance) just happened to be the ones that misinterpreted it. Of course, the next ones won't ...

More than a 100 million dead puts paid to that BS.

Opus One Media said...

who is defending communism? i don't see anyone doing that. are you reading the right thread?

see, Mojo, when you sling words around that are ill-defined you confuse everyone.

Shame on you.

jerryofva said...

HD:

You are wrong as usual. Communism is the final state where the state whithers away. Under Communism there is no state. The phase where the communist party avant guard takes over after the revolution is called socialism and the state owns the means production in the name of the proletariat. Your definition you cite has it ass backwards.

Remember future socialism will always succeed where historic and existing socialism has failed!

Opus One Media said...

@jerryofva

i gather english is your second language. how about you try that paragraph again and see if you can make it come out in sentences that humans can understand.

i'm not trying to be mean here jerry but what you wrote makes no sense whatsoever.

The Dude said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
jerryofva said...

HD:

A very poor attempt at denigrating someone who exposes your ignorance.

I will make it so simple even a dummy like you can understand it.

Communism = states has withered away leaving only the community.

Socialism = State run by vanguard party and owns the means of production in the name the working class.

The exact opposite of your definitions.


Got that dummy?

Wince said...

Lefty Billy Bragg laments the harsh reality of waiting for the great leap forward that never seems to come. Original lyrics.

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a T-shirt away


Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathise with her but he thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of someone stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards

Jumble sales are organised and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?

waiting for the great leap forwards

well here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

waiting for the great leap forwards

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole

waiting for the great leap forwards

If no one out there understands
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

waiting for the great leap forwards

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so get some room

waiting fort the great leap forwards

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a T-shirt away
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

kent said...

Wow, just wow. HDHouse is lecturing someone about how they write. That is priceless.

It is rather like listening to Helen Keller cluelessly expounding upon the principles of successful skeet shooting, isn't it...?

The Dude said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Opus One Media said...

jesus jerry..who writes your stuff?

jerryofva said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
jerryofva said...

HD:

I have a lot experience with reds. You have a playbook to deal with troublesome opponents who are conversant with communist methods of argumentation. It only works in friendly and or controlled audience. It won't work here because the people in this forum are not sympathetic to your point of view.

It is clear that you either have never read Marx or are engaging in evasions. Virtually everybody hear is laughing at you.

12/16/10 5:21 PM

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
HDHouse, you do grasp don't you that though Mao and Stalin ran COMMUNIST Parties, they called their societies, SOCIALIST right?

So you want to trot your definitions on over to the SOCIALIST Leaders and explain how they got it all wrong?

Again your definition is off...because FUNTIONALLY they are the same....

Socialism=OMMUNITY ownership...
Communism=STATE Ownership...since they are the SAME thing, community=state in any organized society practicing socialism/social democracy/communism...what you have said PRACTICALLY is that Socialsim=Communism.

That's not correct....Socialism allows for SOME ownership of private property...we'll go with YOURS if you want, but what you're proposed is Socialism=Communism....

I'm sorry to say that my Poli Sci classes always advanced the private property defintion of Socialism, not the Webster one you trotted out...because for all it's flaws, Poli Sci can be RIGORUOS, and practically your definitions don't pass muster.

Thank you for playing though.

Opus One Media said...

wow guys, let me think about all those excellent points you just made. hmmmmm

yes? no?

nahhh...you're entitle to your opinions but you aren't entitled to your own set of facts.

The Dude said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael said...

HD House: Do you think that because genocide has a different definition than communism that communism cannot execute genocide? Or do you think that a definition of communism that does not include genocide as a part of the definition rules out genocide by communists? It is Beethoven's birthday today so I will forgive your idiotic postings if you are drunk in celebration.

Joe said...

(The Crypto Jew)
nahhh...you're entitle to your opinions but you aren't entitled to your own set of facts.


Wow you've become as incoherent as J...UNLESS you're trying to say that ONLY your definition of "Socialism" or "Communism" counts? You're not THAT arrogant are you?

Saint Croix said...

a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.


Yes, exactly. Socialism turns human beings into commodities. Cogs in the ideological machine. And this is why, I think, people are murdered when you go down this road. Again and again and again.

Hitler was a socialist. Stalin was a socialist. Mao was a socialist.

The only reason socialist countries in Europe today aren't murderous is because there are people on the other side pushing back, fighting for individual rights and trying to limit the size of the government.

Wake up.

Methadras said...

jr565's kind of people.

Methadras said...

HDHouse said...

The great leap forward had zero to do with socialism and very little to do with communism. it was as perverted as can be.

Reynolds performs no service to anyone in writing this.


You certainly don't perform a service by being an apologist for either socialism or communism. So genius, how would classify the Great Leap Forward then? Montessori gone wrong?

William said...

It does seem, though, that opposition to Communism doesn't seem to inspire artists and musicians the way opposition to capitalism and fascism does.....Can you name a single person who died in China during these atrocities? They are all faceless and unmourned. Only victims of bourgeoise capitalism get to be Sacco and Vanzetti.

Saint Croix said...

Check out Billy Wilder sometime. He wrote Ninotchka. This was in 1939, when Orwell was still a libtard and Reagan was a union boy. In 1954 he wrote and directed Sabrina, which is so romantic and beautiful that most people don't even notice how he's mocking class divisions. And then in the 60's Wilder made One, Two, Three, which is a hysterical ode to the capitalist spirit. Wilder is the bomb.

Opus One Media said...

Definitions are the commonly accepted meaning of words found in dictionaries, NOT in Das Kapital for Dummies. you can define things any way you want but, like here, no one will know what you are talking about and your rantings will make no sense, as here.

i have never defended socialism or communism.

the great leap forward was party purging and a perversion. it has no place and no basis in communism as defined. that isn't embracing communism you nitwits. that is noting that communism is one thing and Mao's actions quite another.

Hitler's 'national socialism' isn't related to anything whatsoever and if you have that moronic interpretation going on in your pea brains just watch the military channel for a week and maybe you can learn the basics - that is if reading is beyond you.

The USSR was such a hot-house version of communism it was so in name only and again had very little to do with communism as defined.

You guys have simply been reading too much propaganda and falling for it without inspection. That is not a good sign.

Opus One Media said...

William said...
It does seem, though, that opposition to Communism doesn't seem to inspire artists and musicians the way opposition to capitalism and fascism does...."

Hmmm Shastakovich, Horowitz, Rastrapovich, Kousssevitsky, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov,Prokofiev, Solzhenitsyn etc. spring to mind but hey, who am I to correct you.

Opus One Media said...

Joe said...
"UNLESS you're trying to say that ONLY your definition of "Socialism" or "Communism" counts? You're not THAT arrogant are you?"

Not as arrogant as you are stupid. IT IS THE DICTIONARY DEFINITION you bozo. You got your own dictionary? The supersecret "i'm joe the dolt" dictionary that you keep tucked inside a mayonaisse jar on funk and wagnals porch dictionary? pow zoom that went right by I'll bet.

dick said...

HDH,

Think 5-year plans.

Michael said...

@HD House:
"the great leap forward was party purging and a perversion. it has no place and no basis in communism as defined. that isn't embracing communism you nitwits. that is noting that communism is one thing and Mao's actions quite another."

In which HD House proves again that he believes that communists, Stalin, Mao, Fidel, et al, were not bad just that some of their policies went astray. In which HD House confirms what you already knew. So, fuck the 200 million or so people who just happened to live under a regime defined as communism and just happened to run afoul of one of its errant principles. Communism itself was just fine. Moral midget.

Michael said...

HD House: Try it another way. Get the definition of "Republican" and from now on do not criticize Republicans unless the action of the Republican is within the definition.

test said...

"You guys have simply been reading too much propaganda and falling for it without inspection. That is not a good sign."

The truth of course is that HD has internalized his indoctrination to such a degree that returning to reality is hopeless. It's amusing that those who are first to shout "propoganda" are so often incapable of recognizing it.

William said...

@hdhouse: As I understand the biographies of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, they were more noted for their cooperation with the Soviets than for their opposition. I am not familiar with the others you mentioned with the exception of Solzhennitsyn. He is the only literary figure I can think of whose moral presence had the kind of grandeur we associate with Tolstoy and Dickens......So far as Wilder is concerned, Ninotchka is a fine film. But for all that, he treats the apparatchiks of Communism with a kind of bemused tolerance that he would not grant minor functionaries of the Nazi Party....I repeat my earlier point, the endless crimes of Marxism in the twentieth century, simply do not excite the artistic imagination.