They start with the New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Walter Duranty,who wrote in the New York Times that there was no mass starvation in the Ukraine, that Russia was an awesome socialist paradise, when in fact hundreds of thousands of people were starving to death, and Duranty knew it. They continue on through Mao, throw the left a bone by covering Apartheid South Africa and Chile under Pinochet, and end up with Saddam in Iraq and the Iranian theocracy.
They interview many of the surviving Useful Idiots themselves, some of whom have repented and some of whom still cling to their favored dictators. Useful Idiots seem to be mostly found on the Left/Liberal side of things as they are prone to favor strong governments to force the desired change on the nation; being so well-educated, they think they can take a nuanced view of things and accept that you need to "break a few eggs to make an omelet" as Lenin said. Hmm, can we see any cases of this in present-day America? How 'bout you current New York Times Pulitzter Prize-winning journalist Tom Friedman? How about you famous movie star Sean Penn? As the reporter says, Conservatives tend to be generally skeptical and independent so are not as naturally drawn to these Strong Men, but it happens. A Liberal would of course say, "oh yeah, what about Hitler you right wing neanderthal?!" Any RTP&GGer would quickly slap that shit down by pointing out that Hitler was a Socialist too, and not Conservative at all.
Part 1 you can play from the link above. It covers the worst cases (Stalin and Mao). The later cases are covered in Part 2, which I can only find as a download version, but is also very worth your time. There is no coverage of Hitler, maybe because The Left hated him anyway, so didn't apologize for him. Of course, Stalin and Mao's atrocities dwarfed Hitler's (as horrible as they were).
I think these are Must Listen. They're about 20 minutes each.
This is a deep topic. I just finished up "Modern Times" by Paul Johnson and the Left's support of totalitarianism is one theme that was pointed out. "The Forgotten Man" points out how this love affair transformed America during the 1930's. A good number of the creators of the New Deal were communist: Harry Hopkins. Even Hitler was loved to some extent and praised in his early career. The tape was a little hard to follow but it did convey the point.
ReplyDeleteThe fact and the manner in which some people can become enamored with totalitarianism is very interesting. Communism can sound attractive in theory and some of its goals are something that are somewhat noble . But the way in which it goes about trying to achieve its goals go against human nature by denying this nature and by trying to refashion man into the "new man". Politicans appealing to things that people generally support like helping the poor or creating a utopia is one way people get taken in by these diseases and will be the downfall of our civilization: it will come with promises of prosperity, equality, change, and love for all. Read Tocqueville to see the form of depostism a democracy needs to fear, most of it has come to past.
The scary thing is that close to over half of American's hold believes that are counter to what made and make a free nation possible all thanks to the education system and popular culture. Capitalism is the evil object of hatred and socialism and communism is "well, we don't really know if it is all that bad or it is just as good as capitalism" in the majority of people's eyes. Capitalism and a free society can not survive when it is viewed as a evil, hated thing by such a large majority. I can not really describe how educated people who have done much research or put much thought into this can view communism, socialism, collectivism as a credible and workable political and economic system in light of its historical failures. I have read that most people just believe that the "right people" have not been the ones to implement this. I like Ayn Rand's take on it: it is the morality of death. It is one thing for these idiots to be fooled into believing the lies of totalitarianism and it is one thing to know the true nature of the system and to purposefully lie and cover up the crimes committed against humanity.
Actors are professional fake humans.
ReplyDeleteI just saw this in the news recently:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=185381
Seems like everyone is getting pissed at the BBC lately. I sincerely doubt it, but could it be possible that Cameron's government has anything to do with this?
If you can't count on the BBC for anti-Israeli bias, who can you count on?!
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