Black Book of Communism - Review by Claire Wolfe

JPFO ^ | 2000 | Claire Wolfe

[jedi]

I wonder if Claire might change anything due to occurrences since 2000? Probably not.

[jedi]

*

[moodyskeptic]

As David Horowitz says, about the last place on earth where communism enjoys any popularity is American universities. The 20th century's 100 million brutal deaths and a billion ruined lives doesn't seem to make it onto the liberal score card. Remarking on communism's atrocities makes you somehow bigoted and oh-so-passe.

I engage college students in conversation from time to time. It is astounding how clueless they are to the biggest crimes in history.

[FreedomCalls]

The failure of the American left as personified in the Democrat Party to comes to terms with its support of Communism and Communist regimes has caused a lot of former Democrats to switch to the Republican Party. It is possible to be leftist, Democrat, and all the rest and yet still oppose the Communist tyranny that existed. The AFL-CIO was rabidly anti-communist back when it really mattered. It's to their credit for having done so. They were instrumental in supporting the exposure of Soviet slave-labor camps.

[HighRoadToChina]

"Why should we care? But with Communism in collapse nearly everywhere, and even China (so the media tells us) on the road to capitalism, why should anyone other than a historian or a crusader for justice care about any of this? Yes, it was awful, but isn't it just about over? Shouldn't we simply nod in acknowledgment, feel sincere sorrow, an appropriate degree of horror perhaps - and move on?"

Communist China is on the road to defeat the US--or so they are mistakened to believe. Inside Communist China today are million of slave Chinese making cheap goods for the West. So, it's not over. It's not "Never Again." Communist China is no different than Nazi Germany before WW II broke out--just more massive and more powerful (nuclear ICBS's)

[cornelis]

utopian will to apply to society a doctrine totally out of step with reality

You can trace this being-out-of-step-with-reality historically, from Faust to Kant to Hegel and on as outlined in Robert Tucker's Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx

It begins with the individual. Take Faust, who has a high opinion of himself. Here is self-esteem seen for what it is. He has such self-confidence that he will go to great lengths to prove this to himself. Most of his actions are an endeavor to substantiate the godlike self-estimation of himself. Whatever stands in the way or just about anything that reminds him of his real self becomes a source of discomfort. This idealization of the self results in a neurosis, an alienation from the reality of human deficiencies.

Likewise the ethics of Kant. Self-actualization is the goal of moral self-perfection. But this self is an also idealized self, a self-sufficient autonomy. The autodictation of a will against the pressure of another's or against the inclinations of natural habits is a struggle for the domination of an idealized person. This struggle, he says, is the exercise of freedom. Freedom, in the end, is the coercion of a will to subordinate all things to its own dictates. Next will be Hegel. And here the individual struggle for moral perfection is raised to an historical level. The entire history of mankind is nothing but the realization of this ideal which continually struggles, because it is "out of step with reality." Marx has said that communism is the utopia wherein mankind is restored to his true human nature, a return to walk in step with reality.

So where are back at the starting point: what is nature, what is mankind, what is divine? Those questions are as important--if not more important--than recognizing that being out of step with reality is bad.

[USNBandit]

I read this book about a year ago. It is very informative, but so dry only the most motivated readers will be able to crank through it. It reads very much like a text book.

For those of us that were Cold War warriors, it justifies everything we were fighting for. It is amazing that while our nation was blessed at its birth with some of the greatest minds ever assembled, the nations taken over by communism were cursed with some of the most power hungry, psychotic freaks to ever walk the Earth.

[CatoRenasci]

I doubt it. This is a very important book that EVERYONE should read, especially all academic leftists. I read it two years ago and have given away several copies since.

[VOA]

Black Book of Communism

Until someone writes The Black Book of Communism,
this might do:

Islam Unveiled
by Robert Spencer (or Spenser?)

[cornelis]

so dry only the most motivated readers will be able to crank through it.

But the introduction is well written and carefully written and accessible.

I didn't read the rest for lack of time. It's a record. This may appeal to people keeping records or those needing records. Solzhenitsyn's record in the Gulag Archipelago is similar in ways. I haven't read volume III and IV of that one either.

[RippleFire]

BUMP

[hedgetrimmer]

Communism is alive and well in the Presidio, San Francisco Mikhail Gorbechev's foundtation works out of it. It is alive and well in Portland Oregon, especially alive and well in Santa Cruz California, where one of the candidates for mayor openly descibed himself as a small C communist.

It is alive and well in the anti-freedom, anti-American legislation and community planning called the Endangered Species Act, the Magnesson Ferguson fishing act, smart growth, environmental justice, community character act,Agenda 21, community action plans, density bonuses for developers, California schools who teach US history as the history of the progressive movemetn instead of the history of a free nation, the list is HUGE.

[monocle]

The lessons taught by this book will be lost and be difficult to convince others of the dangers of socialism by confining the conclusions to communism. The academics so fond of communism intentionally labelled Nazism to deflect the horrors of that government from communism. The real danger is any big government which makes a sizable fraction of its citizens totally dependent on the government so that government becomes the worst form of any monopoly with almost unlimited force to enforce its monopoly. Nomenclature of the different forms of government obscures the ultimate results.

[SSN558]

The founding fathers of the U.S. Constitution were wise and principled men. They risked and in some cases gave all to implement a system of government for future generations that would insure Liberty and Justice for all.

The Constitution is not enough, however. It requires citizens to participate in the government and remain vigilant. It could happen here, it almost happened here, and creeping socialism is always just around the corner.

The liberals in the U.S. became everything they hated, indistinguishable from Nazi's. They siezed power and are the backbone of the Democratic party. Our Rebublican form of government provided alternatives. As much as I would like to think it not possible for the Republican Party to go down the same road to evil, it could happen. Maybe in a different way, but it could still happen.

The Germans who disapproved but remained silent were guilty of only apathy in the 1930's. They chose to avoid confrontation with the creeping political correctness in the begining, a small but excusible form of cowardice. In the end they were all guilty of genocide, and the heros that chose to speak out were executed by the state. Adlof Hitler was a popularly elected leader, democracy is not enough.

[Jonathon Spectre]

But of course we should care for many reasons - above all because trust in the Omnipotent State is still with us, still waiting to darken humanity again.

Buying this book ping.

[SauronOfMordor]

It's a great book. I've assigned it to my home-schooled 13-year-old as her History requirement for this school year

[Billthedrill]

Lots of grist for the mill in this one. This book ought to have shaken them up in France or anywhere else Marxism is still chic; there as well as on U.S. university campuses, Marxism is often merely the psychological refuge of those with such insufficient grasp of their own identities that claiming adherence constitutes something just naughty enough to pump up one's image without the consequences of, and responsibility for, action based on the theory proposed. Where that action actually takes place you have Pol Pot's Cambodia and China under the Cultural Revolution - in theory, punishments are meted out to a class, glossing over the fact that they imply violence toward individuals. In practice, you get what is documented in this book, and it's pretty nasty close up, the more so when you're on the receiving end. Being a coffeehouse Marxist is never having to say you're sorry, it's never having to stare into the barrel of the gun yourself. Collectivism means responsibility for one's actions may be shifted away from self to class. And class violence is what happens to other people.

I'm not speaking of the clubby, ever-changing jargon of various social groups. I am speaking of imposed language...

It should be noted that the main point of this ever-changing vernacular is not necessarily the words themselves, or even what they mask. The main point of this is that one group arrogates to itself the power to change language arbitrarily, and it is the exercise of this power that is significant. Whether you call someone "black" or "Afro-American" is as unimportant as wearing a coat that is in or out of style; but the ability to coerce another to use the term of your choice is everything. That coercion translates to more than language - when it translates to social programs, first money changes hands and then violence becomes justifiable. Which terms are used is unimportant; the power to change them arbitrarily is not, because that power ultimately grows from power over theory to power over activity, and real people die. To me that's what this book, and the Cold War it chronicles, was about.

[GeekDejure]

The Black Book of Communism

Isn't that a racist slur in this modern PC world ???

[jedi]

From the review:

If we are not careful and aware, this pervasive evil may spring in a new form. If we point fingers only at "right" or "left," depending on our own inclinations, we may fail to oppose the same phenomenon when it arises wearing a new face - a face that looks friendly, perhaps even familiar. We must study both the Nazis and the Communists, leaving aside the fundamentally meaningless distinctions of left or right, nationalist or universalist, race-hating or class-hating, and know the shared soul of the beast within.

You say and I agree:

The Constitution is not enough, however. It requires citizens to participate in the government and remain vigilant. It could happen here, it almost happened here, and creeping socialism is always just around the corner.

The liberals in the U.S. became everything they hated, indistinguishable from Nazis. They seized power and are the backbone of the Democratic party. Our Republican form of government provided alternatives. As much as I would like to think it not possible for the Republican Party to go down the same road to evil, it could happen. Maybe in a different way, but it could still happen.

The 17th Amendment eliminated our republican form of gov't by making senators subject to popular election. Now senators are forced to promise benefits to the voters in order to be elected, the same as representatives. Democracy, as a matter of fact.

Here's a heads up from 200+ years ago:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."

Penned by Professor Alexander Tyler, a Scottish historian, who in 1787 wrote about the fall of the Athenian republic over 2000 years earlier.

Unfortunately, we're not far from that collapse over loose fiscal policy, exacerbated by the deliberate debauching of our currency. This is a major reason for the legislative and executive activity that purports to be directed against "terrorism," but just happens to include surveillance and control of our private, public and economic lives. All for our own good, of course.

The main reason I posted this review was to see if anyone would recognize that statism, as contrasted to individualism, can occur in any body politic. And that once the mechanisms of the state are in place, those who want control to attain their own goals will vie with each other for supremacy. In the vernacular, the people will suck hind tit.

[tictoc]

Bump!