Posted on 01/28/2019 10:30:54 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
When it comes to understanding the crisis in Venezuela, the new self-proclaimed democratic socialists revert to the old trope of Stalinist era lefties. In the old days of the Cold War, the horror that emerged after the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe—discussed in great depth in Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe—was "explained" in this manner by the fellow-travelers of the Old Left: The purge trials, arrests of dissidents, their torture and years of imprisonment may have been harsh, but were all necessary to preserve socialism and prevent a "fascist" takeover from occurring. And if people they knew to be innocent were caught up in the net, they told everyone they were guilty because the "people's democracies" only arrested the guilty.
In the '60s, the New Left acted in the same way as their descendants, justifying the brutality, the firing squads, and the torture of prisoners engaged in by Fidel Castro's revolution by noting the hostility of the United States to an independent people's revolution against the tyrannical Batista regime. Whatever subsequent infringements on freedom took place, they too were necessary to protect the revolution from CIA attempts to destroy it. Any criticism was unjustified, since it too helped America's imperialist agenda.
The old democratic socialists and social-democrats of that era, however, never went along with that warped logic. True to their belief in democracy as the only system of government worth preserving, day in and day out in their small publications, such as Partisan Review and Dissent magazine, they did what they could to bolster the opposition to Communist tyranny and did not let cries that they were helping "McCarthyism" stop them. So, when it came to the Cuban revolution and Castroism, unlike the New Left, they had no illusions about the supposedly wonderful socialist paradise...
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
Our new socialist can’t wait to enjoy the fruits of their labors as told to them by their school teachers. Unfortunately, their teachers omitted to tell them that the subject matter of the Stalinist purges were people like them with the same revolutionary fervor held right up until the bullet in the back of the head.
Because Socialist leaders have to become fascists to implement their tyranny?
You’re right on.
Most of the everyday supporters of these new Dem-donkey leftists ( Liberal fascists)do not have a clue about their true place in the socialist pecking order. In the Socialist way of things, the tippy top socialists make huge bundles of wealth while the everyday socialists are guess what?
CANNON FODDER !
But I forgot, that true history is not tauught in our high schools and universities anymore. So they are just about royally effed.
To make an omelette you must break a few eggs.
“Why Democratic Socialists Support Totalitarian Regimes”
Because Democrat Socialists are Totalitarians. Look no further than how they suppress our first amendment rights.
We have strict warning labels on anything even remotely hazardous except the democrat party.
Keep making left turns and you end up in the same place.
Birds of a feather...
Because the mask is getting uncomfortable and is losing its opaqueness.
When the Bolsheviks take power then the strongest among them eliminates any who are active enough or smart enough to be a threat the new supreme. It is the same as when the emperor dies in the East- the sons have to seek to kill all their brothers and all their children so that there will be no rival claimants to the throne. Communism is a European invention with European concepts but leads to a very Asian despotism.
It’s interesting. It seems like South American countries elect totolatarian leaders, both extreme left and right. It’s maybe why socialism works in places like Denmark/Sweden/Finland etc but not Venezuela.
I know there’s other factors like the history of colonialism and intervention from foreign governments over the last 100 years, but still. They seem to like those guys that yell from balconies ha
Not the theoretical or philosophical differences, but what differences exist in society/government between the two?
Even Grandin, however, gives the cat away when he says the subdued response occurs because "the Maduro government is hard to defend except in the abstract."
It's that "in the abstract" qualification. Socialism is always argued from the abstract - in the abstract everything is put into a pile from which everyone pulls "according to his need". In practice there is always somebody controlling the pile and doling the contents out according to his or her own abstract precepts, (not coincidentally getting rich in the process). It isn't a one-off, it's inevitable as the day.
Harrington was equally guilty of this:
Harrington refused to listen to those who sought through careful observation to explain the totalitarian drift taking place in Nicaragua...
Thus for Shaw and the Webbs with regard to the Soviet Union, and for intellectuals without number with regard to Vietnam. Those socialists who did observe and were appalled at what they actually saw numbered legion as well from Orwell to Horowitz. To paraphrase Stalin, a single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. And a statistic is an abstraction, especially if it's somebody else and far away.
It isn't difficult to identify those who deal with political discourse strictly from abstraction: their speech is peppered with "should"s and "would"s instead of what actually is. So when the inevitable despot and his ruling cadre come to head the country "freed" from capitalism instead of that abstraction labeled "the people", it's always somebody else's fault.
When the Bolsheviks take power then the strongest among them eliminates any who are active enough or smart enough to be a threat the new supreme.
As I go back and read history it's amazing how this scenario repeats itself so many times. Useful idiots help a person or group come to power then the ones in power turn around and eliminate the useful idiots because they could be useful idiots for somebody else.
In this country it will be the media. Once socialism really takes over their heads will spin at how quickly freedom of the press and freedom of speech will be eliminated. And it will be people like the CNN fake news reporters that will be sent to prison camps. In a way I can hardly wait to see them in prison camps, but of course that would mean that they got their wish and we have full blown communism in this country.
From outside the country or somewhere in the Rockies, I presume, or perhaps from inside one of those prison camps.
Easy to say when you are the chef.
1920’s German communists under Earnest Tellman were very close to takeover.
German establishment allowed National Socialist rivals to crush communists, to save German state.
Everything that Third Reich was, originated with Trotsky theory. Gestapo used NKVD interrogation manuals to train their cadre.
It started in 1917 and we still at it.
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