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Red Dusk
New Republic ^ | 24 sept 08 | Martin Peretz

Posted on 09/24/2008 3:38:23 AM PDT by rellimpank

As both doctrine and praxis, to borrow from the old vernacular, communism may have been the most vicious phenomenon of the twentieth century. Part of the viciousness was its canny competence in purporting to be the chalice of hope for mankind. Nazism was also cruel, very cruel and industrially proficient in the mechanics of mass death. But it had no pretensions to universal humanitarianism. It was a master race ideology. Given this undisguised basic principle, its enemies and victims were evident at the near-start and they were by definition counted in the multitudes. Perhaps that is one reason why Hitler's demented regime lasted a bare dozen years.

But the world is not quite done with the epigones of Leninism, some still governing in a few benighted, if enormous jurisdictions and others still fighting, poor deluded folk, in the mountains. How much longer can a lie like this last?

(Excerpt) Read more at tnr.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: commies; communism; communist; geopolitics; leinternacionale; leninism; marxism; rats; stalin

1 posted on 09/24/2008 3:38:24 AM PDT by rellimpank
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To: rellimpank
How much longer can a lie like this last?

It's alive and well in Seattle, apparently.


9 foot tall bronze Lenin, Seattle


2 posted on 09/24/2008 3:50:08 AM PDT by XR7
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Correction: 16 feet tall


3 posted on 09/24/2008 3:51:29 AM PDT by XR7
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To: XR7

I recently read a really good mystery, Child 44, by a new writer, Tom Rob Smith, set in Stalin’s Russia (although the action takes place over the years up to Kruschev). He obviously did a lot of research, and one of the things that comes across is the thoroughness of the terror instilled by Stalin and his state and their complete control of everything in the lives of the citizens. At the same time, it was random, and you never knew what you might do that might, at any moment, offend the Great Leader or the State charged with enforcing his whims.

I don’t know how anybody can adore Lenin, Stalin, or for that matter, Castro or any of the goons of the Communist state. But the left really is in love with them. The thing that leftists always believe is that they will be the ones on top, they will be the dictator’s pet, and clearly what happens to the rest of society doesn’t matter or is their own fault anyway for their moral failing of not adoring the Great Leader.


4 posted on 09/24/2008 3:57:59 AM PDT by livius
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To: XR7
"Correction: 16 feet tall"

I guess this statue is the one thing I missed when I spent five days in Seattle on business about twenty years ago.

I know that they considered themselves a sister city with Managua, Nicaragua but that was only when the Sandinista Communists were running things from 1979 - 1991.

5 posted on 09/24/2008 4:17:38 AM PDT by wmileo (I miss Ronald Wilson Reagan. POTUS #40)
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To: rellimpank
It's a bit surprising to find this piece in The New Republic.
6 posted on 09/24/2008 4:25:27 AM PDT by Steely Tom (Without the second, the rest are just politicians' BS.)
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To: rellimpank
It's not Nazism Marty - it is NATIONAL SOCIALISM!

Call it by it's real name. Socialism is control, poverty and death, and it was the MAJOR cause of the world's suffering in the 20th century.

7 posted on 09/24/2008 4:33:12 AM PDT by keithtoo (GOP - Our Veep candidate can kick your Veep candidate's @ss!)
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To: livius

Anyone who has spent any time in/of the American Left has experienced the sudden purge that can come in a nanosecond and is the result of doctrinal incorrectness. The PUMAs are now experiencing this en masse. At the social level, young people only have to espouse Republicanism to be shunned.

I have begun to believe that, at least in their current incarnation, the Left is really eating its own and leaving many people with an ability to see them for what they are. It is one thing to institute state terror on poor people with a feudal history only a generation removed from serfdom, but entirely different to attempt societal control by peer pressure on middle-clas, educated Americans who do really believe that they are free individuals.

The treatment of Georgia is also illustrative in the present tense of the Soviet mindset, which is obviously alive and well in Russia.

I expect to see the ranks of those espousing communism to be reduced even further as they see it close up and personal in their own lives and times.

Socialism is slightly different, being, in the mind of the believer, the *best* portion of communism minus the state terror apparatus. However, I do not see any constituency for the bailouts attempted to be perpetrated here right now. Instead, we have a massive outcry against it.

It may be irrational hope, but perhaps reality will not jibe with fantasy, here and now.


8 posted on 09/24/2008 4:36:30 AM PDT by reformedliberal (God bless Saracuda America, speaking truth to power.)
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To: wmileo
I guess this statue is the one thing I missed when I spent five days in Seattle on business about twenty years ago.

It wasn't there 20 years ago.
It was erected after communism was discredited in most of the world and the USSR came to an end.

9 posted on 09/24/2008 4:40:09 AM PDT by XR7
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To: XR7

Please let me know where in Seattle this monstrosity is so I can go and spit on it.


10 posted on 09/24/2008 4:51:39 AM PDT by Mr. Jazzy (The United States Marines. The finest and most feared fighting force in the history of mankind.)
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To: reformedliberal

There was a tantalizing mention in this article of the lives of American leftists who had thrown it all over and emigrated to the Soviet Union. Apparently the glories of the all-encompassing socialist state seemed a little different when applied to them, and the author makes it seem as if many of them did not find it paradise. It would be interesting to know more about that.


11 posted on 09/24/2008 4:58:46 AM PDT by livius
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To: rellimpank

Naziism was simply Communism for Homosexuals. They hated Jews because Hebrew law said homosexuality is an abomination.


12 posted on 09/24/2008 5:03:24 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (The ObamaMae/Bide">nMac scandal is growing!!!)
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To: rellimpank

Naziism was simply Communism for Homosexuals. They hated Jews because Hebrew law said homosexuality is an abomination.


13 posted on 09/24/2008 5:03:24 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (The ObamaMae/Bide">nMac scandal is growing!!!)
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To: Mr. Jazzy
Please let me know where in Seattle this monstrosity is so I can go and spit on it.

Go for it.
Click on the photo in #2 above.

14 posted on 09/24/2008 5:04:36 AM PDT by XR7
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To: rellimpank

15 posted on 09/24/2008 5:25:14 AM PDT by Travis McGee (--- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com ---)
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To: XR7
"It wasn't there 20 years ago. It was erected after communism was discredited in most of the world and the USSR came to an end."

The only thing which gets my blood up more than a statue of Lenin or Marx is a tee shirt with Che on it. Guevara was in real life a Coward as well as a butcher but the average kid is too ignorant to know that.

I blame it on Hollywood since they define the popular culture.

16 posted on 09/26/2008 10:29:09 AM PDT by wmileo (I miss Ronald Wilson Reagan. POTUS #40)
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