Monday, November 10, 2008
The Crime that Never Was (On Communist Crimes Denial)
Tens of millions were murdered in its name through forced famine, murder and expulsion. Hundreds of millions more were subject to impoverishment and mass abuse of their human rights, on a scale never known in the democratic world. Life for all but the self-appointed leaders was one of hardship and repression.No, I am not talking of fascism or even hard nationalism. I am referring to the victims of those who lived and those who are still living in states with a professed communist ideology. I do so because no-one in Israel, especially on the left or in academia seems willing or able to do so.We have scholars and intellectuals calling for recognition of the Armenian genocide. We even have those who lehavdil claim Israel should stop its alleged "Nakba denial" and commemorate the Paletinians. However, I have yet to hear of anyone suggesting we should dedicate time and effort to commemorating the many people and peoples who were victims of communist atrocities.This has been building up in me a long time. It started when a teacher of mine dismissed communist crimes with the excuse "I wouldn;t want to live there, but at least they narrowed the [socioeconomic] gaps" and at least "the leaders didn't live that well". Prying a little deeper, all the usual excuses came out: Lenin wanted something else. Stalin was nuts, Mao was nuts and so forth. Look how "good" Cuba is. Pitiful stuff that would be laughed out of court when it comes to Nazis is apparently acceptable when it comes to Communists. In another instance, a teacher of mine went on and on about the dangers of nationalism. When I mentioned communism, he gave me a blank stare and then excused it as simply "a dictator" who rose up, as if there was no underlying ideology.Apparently intelligent people are meant to believe that all the communist leaders, subordinates, soldiers and carriers-out were all, at different times and in different places, seized by a mass psychosis. None of them was driven by ideology or capable of making moral choices. Forget the evidence. Forget the facts. They "meant well". They "really believe in what they do". They "dream of a better world", so to hell with all the people who need to be destroyed to get there. If all the excuses fail? Pretend it never happened.Words can not describe how much I detest people willing to defend the crimes of genocide, democide and mass repression committed in the name of the "well-meaning ideology", all while condemning every supposed crime of democracies.No-one who is genuinely serious about human rights in Israel can avoid the challenge of making "communist crimes denial" as illegitamite as Holoaust denial. We can start by translating "The Black Book of Communism", but to avoid the issue is, for me, tantamount to justifying it.We screamed "never again". It's time we proved we meant it.
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3 comments:
Just be careful not let sinah be mikalkel here. I realize that you may be surrounded by Leftists with blinkers to the horrors of communist-ideology-based crimes and that you therefore feel the need to roll out the canvas of those crimes for the world but you really should be careful (for the sake of intellectual honesty, and accuracy) to view communist-ideology-based governments relative to other governmental styles of the past century in crime comparisons.
For example, was the average Soviet citizen really worse off under the Communists than he was under the Czars? Is the average Western European citizen not better off (in terms of practically every life and health-related standard) than his American counterpart despite the fact that Western Europe is halfway to Socialism? etc.
I obviously don't mean for this tiny comment to be all-inclusive any more than you meant for your short blog-post to be such but I just want to say that while I agree with your frustration with the blinkers of those on the intellectual left, I also believe that it's equally important not to fall into the shurah of the blinkered right.
Kol Tuv,
mnuez
>>but you really should be careful (for the sake of intellectual honesty, and accuracy) to view communist-ideology-based governments relative to other governmental styles of the past century in crime comparisons.<<
No. The crimes of right-wing regimes and other style repressions have been, and continue to be described in detail on every possible forum. "Intellectual honesty" in this case demands a counter-balance, not constant hedging.
>>For example, was the average Soviet citizen really worse off under the Communists than he was under the Czars?<<
This is a very slippery slope. One could make similiar arguments about right-wing regimes such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, some of the military regimes in South America. I refuse to do such to them, and I will avoid doing so here.
However, in this particular case - YES, the average Societ citizen (certainly in terms of economic opportunity and freedoms) was worse off than under the czars.
>>Is the average Western European citizen not better off (in terms of practically every life and health-related standard) than his American counterpart despite the fact that Western Europe is halfway to Socialism? etc.<<
I was talking about communism, not social-democracy or socialism. Please do not conflate the two.
YES, the average Soviet citizen (certainly in terms of economic opportunity and freedoms) was worse off than under the czars.
I believe that my question remains.
"Opportunity", like "Jesus", is a favorite buzzword of the plutocratic right but is absolutely and entirely meaningless. Only achieved standards are of any relevance.
Were regime A to outlaw levitation while regime B allowed all citizens the opportunity to practice it at their leisure, we'd still have no reason to prefer regime B to regime A. My question was whether the average Russian citizen lived a longer, healthier and happier life under the Czars or the Commissars - regardless of their allowances for levitation.*
I was talking about communism, not social-democracy or socialism. Please do not conflate the two.
Here you're entirely correct and I concede that my assumptions as to your views on the subject were inaccurate. Usually when people take on Communism (particularly when they do so as a backlash against their leftist professors) they clearly mean to conflate Communism with lesser degrees of Socialism (why else take on a dead and defunct ideology?) and I therefore inaccurately assumed that you meant to conflate the two. I'm pleased to see that you do not.
mnuez
* To be clear: Meritocratic opportunity is a rather worthless thing if only one in every ten thousand citizens has the luck of location, connections, education and brains to take advantage of it. What counts is not whether a Baby Bill Gates has the "opportunity" to become a billionaire but whether his 300 million co-citizens end up happier or healthier than under one regime or another.
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