Posted on 08/04/2021 4:25:34 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Those who fail to meet the Left's political expectations are all enemies to the Left -- whether they see themselves as such or not.
It is sobering to recognize how many crimes against humanity first recommended themselves as admirable courses of action prompted by the benignly framed ideological obsessions of activist intellectuals. It would seem that there is nothing inherently civilizing in the pursuit of what has been called "the life of the mind," especially if the mindful individual is merely looking for a more solid foundation on which to ground and justify his hatreds. V.I. Lenin stands as the paradigmatic exemplar of this. His place in history is secure, but only owing to his improbable success in seizing, holding, and then ruthlessly exercising power in an exhausted and fragmented Russia. Had his gamble failed -- had his coup fizzled -- history would have remembered him (if at all) as a minor journalist and political organizer operating on the fringes of the international socialist movement. Yet with his triumph, history decided otherwise, leaving us stuck with Lenin and his legacy. A thoughtful examination of that legacy, and of the monomania that drove it, is key to understanding the Left.
As a Marxist, Lenin held that the whole of human history is driven by class struggle. If any teaching were central to Lenin's thinking, it was this. Indeed, for Lenin virtually every aspect of the human experience could be identified with this one thing. Not only politics, but also art, science, and philosophy were all reduced to arenas of class struggle. The political supervision of all cultural activity would be one of the ways in which victory would be consolidated once the Bolsheviks seized power.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
If you want to understand how communism swept over countries and destroyed them then just pay attention to what is happening here, right now.
I always thought that a lot of Lenin’s hatred was due to the tsarist government justly hanging his brother for conspiring to bomb tsarist officials. His name wasn’t Lenin; it was Ulyanov and typical of many of our privileged today, the Ulyanov family was the wealthiest in the city where he grew up. His hatred and mass murder paid off - Stalin wanted him out of the picture and he probably killed him by slow poisoning.
An dramatization of a portion of Russia’s past, and possible future for a number of us
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8emZjgD2uCc
5 minutes. Set Closed Captions for English
Lenin’s hatred of the Tsar seems to have mostly reflected his father’s resentment of Russia’s corrupt and aristocratic nature and its rigid class structure. These placed a definitive limit on the potential for him and the Ulanov family to rise in the world and in the Tsarist bureaucracy that he worked in. At its worst, the Tsarist system put the brighest people in service to stupid, theiving aristocrats with appointemnts or connections. Of course, Soviet Russia eventually recreated that system, as has Putin’s regime.
Lenin, in the guise of Communism, recreated the Tsarist system. Stalin ramped it up to a whole nother level.
While Lenin was genuinely a revolutionary determined to spread Communism, Stalin was more narrowly and ruthlessly focused on personal power and the development of a commanding, centralized Russian state. HBO's 1992 production Stalin starring Robert Duvall seems the most accurate film portrayal to date. Stalin comes across as the crude leader of a gang of thugs, quite unlike the diffident, well-mannered Louis XVI or Tsar Nicholas II.
As you suggest, such differences can be disregarded so as to recognize commonalities between the Tsarist and Soviet regimes that are not unlike those between the French Bourbon monarchy and Napoleon. In both examples, there is a dedication to centralized state power, absolutist personal rule, and systematic suppression of dissent and resistance of any sort. The laws and prisons of the French monarchy and the Tsars were less brutal than those of their revolutionary successors, but they were prisons nonetheless.
Excellent film. And it's on YouTube. The scene where he visits the local Council, and orders them to seize the grain from the peasants is the most chilling.
Another movie that just came out is called “Dear Comrades” about the massacre at a factory in 1962 after the workers went on strike.
A terrified and desperate Bukharin says that he and his wife are being arrested for some unknown reason. Stalin asks how this can be since he ordered no such thing, telling Bukharin to put the commanding secret police officer on the line. Stalin chews the man out and tells him to leave Bukharin and his wife alone.
Stalin's side of the conversation plays out like a comedy act in the presence of his snickering cronies. As Stalin puts the receiver down, he chuckles "and they say Comrade Stalin has no sense of humor."
I have read of instances in which FDR similarly delighted in humiliating rivals, enemies, and even friends. I do not mean to suggest that Stalin and FDR are equivalents, only that both seemed to sometimes show a feline sense of malice and delight in using their power to toy with others. Alas, I doubt that anyone will produce a film showing that unsettling aspect of FDR's character.
Thanks. I’ll have to track it down and watch it.
Also the scene were Beria comes into the room, with Stalin and the rest of the Politburo, mocking and crying like Zinoviev did when he was pleading for his life before Beria shot him.
Of course the story is, when it was Beria’s turn to go, he cried like a little bitch, too.
I rented on Amazon Prime Video for 2.99.
What vile men they were. No small part of my Cold War era education in history was learning the ideological distinctions between various Soviet leaders and factions. The truth of course was that they were more gangsters than anything else, with their supposed ideas a form of drapery over the wretched nature of the Soviet regime.
Thanks.
He didn’t recreate the Tsarist system, he tore it down and tried to make it into an anarchist state. Remember, he insisted on gutting literally ANY law and order at all, insisting on it even AFTER being forced to implement the NEP. Stalin you could argue tried to recreate the Tsarist system, but solely due to pragmatism on his part (Lenin’s unlimited abortion legalization and rampant promotion of homosexuality within Russia forced Stalin to put a restraint on it to prevent Russia itself from going extinct).
What Lenin desired, let alone implemented, was something MUCH worse than the Tsarist system.
And yet Communists kill off all undesireds and deviants once they are firmly in power. See Stalin and Mao, they purged the gays and anarchists.
Exactly. Though that being said, Stalin and Mao had no problem funding gays and anarchists outside Russia if it subjected the world to Communism sooner. That’s why I don’t trust Putin’s talk here. Unless he goes as far as to make sure gays and anarchists are stopped not just in his own country, but everywhere else as well, he’s just talking from two sides of his mouth like Stalin, Che Guevara, and Mao were.
There’s a reason “Envy” is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. All Communism is based on the concept. Somebody has more than I do and therefore they must suffer for it.
I’ll give Stalin credit that he DID restrict abortion to some extent, though such was purely out of pragmatism since obviously Russia and thus Russian Communism would have gone extinct if he hadn’t.
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