Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: HostileTerritory
"Some Communists have been put on trial, particularly in East Germany, but the problem is that you have thousands or millions of people culpable in the crimes and it tears a society apart. Justice can't happen when so many people are tainted. I think 1 in 6 East Germans informed for the Stasi."

Exactly the same situation as Nazi Germany. I think Nazi's should be prosecuted, but so should Communists. They have killed millions more people than Nazi's.

How do you explain that while Nazi parties are reviled virtually everywhere and are illegal in most European countries, Communist parties, far from being reviled or illegal, are considered legitimate political parties in much of the world? Where is the justice? Societies who fail to learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

I don't care if it "tears society apart". A society that tolerates Communists deserves to die!
32 posted on 02/06/2006 7:11:14 AM PST by monday
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies ]


To: monday

It is very difficult to reconcile democracy with justice for the crime committed by groups in the past. You can't argue away this contradiction; if people have the right to vote, they have the right to vote for groups that in the past committed terrible acts. It's especially difficult when the current groups do NOT intend to commit mass murder, but are guilty only of softpedaling past crimes and wanting to enact policies that fall far short of what their predecessors did.

If you ban a party that calls itself Communist, its members will regroup and call themselves Democratic Socialists, and present themselves to the voters. Nazis were banned after World War II, so their followers created Populist Parties or Nationalist Parties which did not say "we're going to kill all the Jews" (since that problem was "solved" anyway) but did put forth nationalist, anti-capitalist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. You can't keep human nature down. It's just not that easy.

Where would you even find trained judges in post-war Germany to try Nazis, when every judge has been a Nazi? A very high percentage of judges, years after the war, had been party members. Being trained in the law in the 1930s and 1940s meant being entwined with the Nazi state. These obstacles are real and enormous.


33 posted on 02/06/2006 7:40:33 AM PST by HostileTerritory
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson