Conservative Taken Aback At President’s Reaction To Death Of Seeger

On the subject of Seeger and Communism, I like Bhaskar Sunkara’s take: “It’s not that Seeger did a lot of good despite his longtime ties to the Communist Party; he did a lot of good because he was a Communist.”

Taking the neo-con line, the New Republic quotes with approval an academic paper in which Seeger’s supposed 1994 Kennedy Center award supposedly “froze him in amber” as a nostalgic symbol of a long lost age that has no possible contemporary relevance. New Republic readers take note, these are your talking points now!

Even Seeger’s biographer David King Dunaway concludes his execrable, error-ridden biography in this way: “In the twenty-first century, the appeal of Pete Seeger is akin to that of a nineteenth-century Romantic figure, the rustic innocent with the magic flute, who appeals to those unable to live fully for the frantic quality of their lives,” How Can I Keep From Singing, p. 42.

Seeger said of this book when it first published , “I say it’s spinach!”

In recent years, however, the author corrected a few of his mistakes and published in a new edition, claiming that Seeger had approved and was even a collaborator (in reality, he was just being good natured).

In truth, Seeger is not a nostalgic figure at all. His songs have lost none of their power as contemporary events prove.

Not that his judgements were right about everything — far from it.

@”I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it” is the full quote (borrowed from a well-known New Yorker cartoon.).

@otpup @6

Wait…

“The important fact and discussion about US communists is not that they had good politics and values (which they often did) but that they had those values and still ended up sympathizing (and some of them for a long time) with perpetrators of a world-historical tragedy.”

Why is that the important fact? On what basis do you make that assertion?

Eh.. no. Their support and in many cases blind adherence to the Moscow party line is part of what they did, so it is part (not all) that needs to be judged. Although at this point I think it has been judged already – including by themselves, as in this case

In any case, I missed the part in which at Nixon’s funeral they spend a lot of time saying how he was a crook. Which seems to me more appropiate to political discourse than crashing the funeral of a citizen to demonize him for past SINCERE mistakes to get a theoretical approval from your enemies.

I beg to differ. The important fact and discussion about US communists is not that ended up sympathizing (and some of them for a long time) with perpetrators of a world-historical tragedy, but that they had those sympathies and still on the whole had good politics and values.

Lots of lively discussion going on over there in the comment section.

I used to comment there once in a while, Harold, but they’ve blocked me.

OMG, MY FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS!!!one1!

http://s24.postimg.org/od2vcfcvp/Totalitarian_Troubadour_National_Review_Online.jpg
~

The important fact and discussion about US communists is not that they had good politics and values (which they often did) but that they had those values and still ended up sympathizing (and some of them for a long time) with perpetrators of a world-historical tragedy.

As rea has already pointed out, this assertion is difficult to make sense of. Their “good politics and values” can be seen in their actual political priorities, and occasionally in their contributions to important social accomplishments: advancing the rights of women, African-Americans, workers, etc. There is scant evidence that whatever misguided admiration they may have had for the Soviet regime translated into a hope for a similar transformation in the US, and insofar as some of them may have harbored such a desire, it didn’t seem to manifest itself in the concrete political activities of communist identified groups. So what you describe as “the” (?!) important fact about them seems, in the context of actual history, considerably less important than several of the other ones.

the mouthpiece of one of the most reactionary counterrevolutionary regimes in the Middle East

I don’t think this is a reasonable characterization of al Jazeera, at least its English language outlets.

Oh, so THAT’S who Ronan was grumbling about. I thought he might have meant Haaretz.

Depends on the topic as well, a lot of its foreign affairs stuff is good and its bits on the US especially, but vis a vis the Arab Spring etc it’s began to push the Qatari regimes line afaik

I bet you wouldn’t bring this up had he talked to the US corporate media.

It’s strange to pitch Al Jazeera as counterrevolutionary with its journalists being locked up an actual counterrevolution in Egypt.

Did I miss J. Otto being banned, and has he now re-appeared as “otpup”?

@23
There’s a lot of talk about the extent to which Al Jazeera has begun to push al-Thani interests in the region. That doesn’t mean organisationally they speak with one voice (so mouthpiece, of course, was hyperbolic) but there’s been a good bit of dissent from within the network, and from those involved in politics regionally. That can manifest itself differently in different contexts, how it plays down trouble in the Gulf, where its sympathy align with the West (to some extent) in Syria etc
I’m surprised this is so controversial. It’s much like the criticism of RTV

I don’t think Bhaskar Sunkara should boycott them. But isn’t:

“but when you boycott media for pushing the government line,
well, then you have to boycott most media sources, case in point Iraq war coverage.”

the logic usually used against BDS?

I think BDS is a really bad idea but my main gripe is the astonishing hypocrisy of Westerners – the apparently unshakeable belief that we are superior even if we’re clearly not.

If it hadn’t been for the Soviet Union we would all have flags with swastikas on them now.

*an outlet that can drop, that should read

Our economic system has created the highest level of inequality in the OECD, and lags behind most of it in median and average income and wealth.

While I have no interest in defending the US economic system, I’ll note that every single statement in this sentence is wrong (with the possible exception of median wealth, I’m not aware of any comparable data on that, but given the traditionally low savings rate in the US it’s not unlikely that median wealth is quite low).

adam.smith,

I posted the stats/data above. Check the link at #32.

The single person median salary is 27K. That’s either at the bottom of the OECD or very close to it.

Median wealth in America is 45K. Again, at or near the very bottom.

See above on median wealth.
Link doesn’t have anything on int’l inequality or median income:
Median income data is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
US is third in PPP, still in top 3rd when using nominal numbers. Individual income doesn’t change much, you can dig up the data yourself (though equivalence household is the better unit)
You’re also wrong on inequality. US inequality is high, but only somewhere between 3rd and 5th highest in the OECD depending on exact measures.

Further clarification: It’s not just the family. “Household” income can and does include roommates, too.

It’s a misleading category.

I’m not making any value statements about what the US should take comfort in and I said so quite clearly in my initial post. I’m just saying your “facts” are wrong and I believe facts matter.

So far you have conceded that you were wrong on inequality. I’m assuming you’ll also concede average wealth and average income.

For median wealth we have a single data source that covers 7 OECD countries, so while I think there’s a good chance you’re right, we don’t know.

For median income, you’re wrong on the most widely accepted statistic for international comparison. (You also don’t seem to understand household income statistics, which measure “What each equivalent adult in a household in the middle of the income distribution earns in a year.”)
I believe that you found 27k for individual median individual income, what I don’t believe is that that’s low compared to other OECD countries as to the best of my knowledge the two correlate tightly in advanced industrialized countries, so unless you have some comparable data that means nothing. Also, by itself that number means very little, as income statistics depend a lot on specific metrics (e.g. what age do you start, what age do you stop, who do you count etc.).

A good collection of links on the topic, from bookforum.

http://www.bookforum.com/blog/12841

Seeger and J. Edgar Hoover both equated communism with basic human decency. The fact that they were both wrong isn’t nearly as interesting as where they came down vis a vis human decency.

I’m going to link to J Otto

http://jpohl.blogspot.ie/2014/01/who-cares-if-it-is-decent-interval-i-do.html

as he cant.

Plume. I can’t believe I’m doing this because you’re just being lazy, but here we go. The Credit Suisse report that WaPo links to has profiles of 8 OECD countries with mean wealth numbers in the back (US, UK, Japan, France, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile). The mean (i.e. average wealth) of the US is 300k and with that third among those. On p. 16 it also has a table with Eurozone average wealth, by the Credit Suisse stats, they’re also all lower than 300k. So according to the data you linked to, the US ranks in the top three in terms of average wealth. I’m sure there’s some give or take depending on the data source, but I doubt you’d find anything that lowers the US to the lower half of OECD countries.

Average income: Again unclear what’s measured here, but doesn’t matter. The US leads the OECD in average income as PPP: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AV_AN_WAGE# It is number 4 in the OECD – after Luxemburg, Norway, and Switzerland, in per capital gross national income: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_%28PPP%29_per_capita

Household income: You didn’t even bother to check, did you? The list I link at Wikipedia is in “median equivalised disposable household income”. What that means is that the household income is divided by the discounted number of people living in the household. The OECD currently uses square-root equivalence, meaning that the income of a two person household is divided by 1.4, the income of a three person household by 1.7 etc. The Wikipedia article both explains that and links to more details. So again, pretty much all of this:

It includes all persons under that roof, and doesn’t average out their earnings. It collects and totals them. Family, roommates, friends, etc. So a household with four people contributing income is compared with a household with one person contributing income.

is entirely wrong.

My last word on this, I hope this is interesting to someone. I work with income statistics, so I perhaps care about them a little excessively.

adam.smith,

Do you agree about the problems with “average” wealth or wages, as mentioned in the link above?

If a Bill Gates emigrates to your country, he increases that average. If he leaves, it declines.

The “median” is more revelatory. And I should have stuck with that from the start. Like many people, I sometimes use “average” when I’m really talking “median.”

Average really doesn’t tell us all that much. Obviously, it’s the sum total of all wealth — or income — divided by total persons in that pool. Median is the half way point between the bottom and the top. As you would know, given your occupation.

Our 27K is obscene as a median when our top is in the billions. Same goes with our median wealth at 45K.

And, you haven’t yet addressed the issue of our standing amongst other developed nations. I think you played a bit of “gotcha” with the use of OECD.

Let’s stay with “median” and “developed” nations. What is your view with regard to comparisons using those metrics? Do you defend our current levels of inequality or the piss poor median income?

js,

Whenever I see the median household income listed for Americans, it’s roughly in the 50K range. But when it’s listed for an individual, it’s roughly 27K.

This confuses many. I’ve been in many discussions where people use the former for the latter, thus making it sound like we, as individuals, make more than we really do.

Household income is derived from total income under one roof. It makes no sense to use this method when some households have one income and others many.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_INC110212.htm

Median household income

The median divides the income distribution into two equal parts: one-half of the cases falling below the median income and one-half above the median. For households and families, the median income is based on the distribution of the total number of households and families including those with no income. The median income for individuals is based on individuals 15 years old and over with income. Median income for households, families, and individuals is computed on the basis of a standard distribution.

I’m a little confused. What’s this dividing by 1.4 stuff?

“This is probably the right way of looking at it, but how we should view people who supported Stalinism. Shouldn’t we see them as moral monsters ?”

Doesn’t it really depend on what they thought ‘Stalinism’ was? I’m under the impression that while a few show trials were public spectacles, much of the Purges were conducted behind-the-scenes, and the extent of the carnage was largely unknown until after the fact. Lots of ‘Stalinists’ were genuinely disullisioned when the facts became clear. Then, suddenly, Stalin was an ally, and there were lots of people supporting ‘Stalinism’ because ‘Stalinism’ meant Stalin pouring millions of Russians into the meatgrinder of the Wermacht.

Rob in CT,

That’s how I understand household income as well. As defined by your article.

Ronan,

But, again, if those who supported Stalinism from afar are moral monsters, what about those who support the American experiment, which involved even worse genocidal slaughter, included centuries of slavery, and centuries of the oppression of women and minorities?

Not to mention our endless wars, which we keep instigating.

Our invasion of Korea, for example, led to the slaughter of 2-4 million Korean civilians. In Vietnam, the number was roughly 3 million. We know from the Nixon tapes that that number could have gone radically higher, as he discussed with Kissinger. Nixon wanted to nuke Vietnam. Kissinger, who seemed just fine with fire bombing civilians to death, drew the line as nukes.

And then we have two invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, dozens of conflicts in South and Central America, Africa, etc. etc.

There really isn’t much to choose from between the two. A pox on both “houses.”

Rob in CT – there is median household income, which is what your link describes (and which is, as .js says, in the mid 50s in the US, and the “median equivalised disposable household income”, which is the standard metric if we want to make meaningful comparisons. It’s about 29k in the US. The list of International Median Houseshold Incomes on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income ) uses the latter (and is _very_ clear about that) and that includes the division by the squareroot of household members (that’s the equivalised part). As for “disposable income” – that, too is clearly defined (by the US Census, the OECD, and pretty much any other relevant data gathering authority) as “personal income minus personal current taxes” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_income
This:

The usual meaning of “disposable” income is money left over after you pay your recurring bills.

is discretionary income, which is significantly harder to measure for obvious reasons. I’m not aware of any international numbers on this, though BEA I believe has a measure for the US.

I don’t think we have good stats for pre-tax income, but why do you think the US would be towards the bottom there? That’s almost certainly not the case.

Specifics not really: hobsbawm, Du Bois, Cockburn? institutionally in a number of western European and US communist parties? It was more implied in the comment at 11 that I was quoting, that people continued to sympathise / support even after the truth was known. And that’s the context here, I guess.

Ronan @ 70

Not to quibble, but there’s a difference between ‘sympathizing with’ goals and ‘supporting’ means or actors. I ‘sympathize with’ the goals of the French Revolution, but that doesn’t mean I support Robespierre & the Reign of Terror.

Conservative dictionary of proper names: Fund; what remains after “a mentalist” is ironically removed due to a lack of use.

That article provides the contemporary evasive “No” answer for this generation of Red-Master baiters to the classic “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

It’s a little bit late to be respond to JCF @9, but Hunter Thompson’s obit of Nixon in Rolling Stone did begin with “He was a crook.” (Although in general I agree with your point.)

sure, anyone who still supports slavery in the US is a moral monster.

Wait, why is that the standard? What about people who practiced slavery?

What year did slavery become wrong?

Harold @33

“If it hadn’t been for the Soviet Union we would all have flags with swastikas on them now.”

while you are certainly being hyperbolic here, there is a certain truth in this statement. say what you want about the problems of Stalinism, and there are many, but it is a misrepresentation of history to pretend like there was no logic underlying the USSR’s slide into totalitarian rule. a nation born into imperialist war and aggression, sliding into civil war, facing widespread devastation, poverty, and famine – and a blockade by the major powers to boot. less than a generation since escaping monarchy, and looking a generation before that serfdom still had not been fully eliminated.

the totalitarian aspects of Stalinism naturally yielded excesses of the highest order. but i am to this day unconvinced that if Stalin had decided to enact a series of anarcho-syndicalist workers’ cooperatives (instead of breakneck industrialization through extreme labor discipline) that the USSR would have been able to survive WWII. The battle for Stalingrad was a slog, a pitched battle between the military-industrial complexes of the two powers, and the USSR could very easily have lost.

Stalin desired the liquidation of the Kulaks as a class, and the body count was massive. Hitler desired the extermination of the Russian people, tout court, to open their lands up as lebensraum. if they were really lucky and some of the more practical minded Nazis got their way he might have settled for just wholesale enslavement.

its easy to talk about ideals and freedoms when you are in an advanced nation protected on all sides by bodies of water. i do not find it surprising that the politics of states with hostile neighbors tend to fall short of the ideals held by their judges sitting safely across the ocean. none of this is to ‘justify’ what Stalin did (whatever that even means), but instead to remind people that a Soviet Union that ‘stuck to its ideals’ could very easily have been the end of an independent Russian state, or even the majority of the Russian people.

America needed more people like Seeger. not just for their advocacy for social issues at home, but for their sympathies for the USSR. had the US not engaged in such despicable behavior toward the USSR, and instead practiced some modicum of sympathy and/or understanding, perhaps that nation would have emerged from that terrible period in history and grown out of it. instead, we have the deplorable situation seen today, where Russia is run by a cabal of former KGB agents and sliding further backwards into economic and political destitution.

Support from a few US folk singers did not feed Stalinism or its decedents. On the contrary: what fed into Stalinism and its descendants was the reactionary hatred of US elites, across the political spectrum. The White armies, the Cold Warriors, the Best and Brightest and the Harvard Boys – just because you state that you are ‘against’ something does not necessarily mean that you are not simultaneously giving it life. Geopolitics just isn’t that simple.

To the OP, this is concern trollery for the ages.

Belle – sorry to say, my knowledge of British literature is pretty much limited to Shakespeare, Austen, and Zadie Smith, so this is lost on me.

Collin Street,

Very true. And that’s why the capitalist powers that be did as they did. They couldn’t abide any alternative systems that might freeze them out and, heaven forbid, prevent them from ransacking the natural resources of the nations in question.

So they froze out those alternative systems instead. And they (we) vastly outnumbered the “upstarts.”

Ironically, it seemed Lenin was all too amenable to capitalism, and used it to rapidly (hysterically, even) industrialize Russia at warp speed, using primitive accumulation himself. He and his descendents seemed more than willing to compete with the west on capitalist grounds, despite differences in terminologies.

The counterfactuals break my heart.

OK, I have a question for anybody who knows more about this than me. How much of the Soviet war effort was based on their own industry and how much on help from us? I’d thought to some extent it was, we supplied the cannons and they supplied the fodder.

Can’t give you sources at the moment, but the USSR produced the vast majority of its own wartime goods. Important exceptions were things like spam (a delicacy due to food shortages), motor vehicles (the automotive industry was busy with tanks) and contraband leather jackets. Tanks and planes also helped, of course, but were less needed.

During the war the Almanac Singers were employed to go around the country and give concerts promoting racial equality. The CIO was the only integrated union and white workers were sometimes ambivalent about it.

@84″Of Human Bondage” was also a Hollywood movie starring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard (1934). It was remade in 1964 with Kim Novak, Lawrence Harvey, and Robert Morley .

P.s. For instance it’s possible that the apparently cavalier attitude to nukes was a (misguided) attempt by Nixon to impress Kissinger and whoever else might have been in the room with his ‘toughness’. Kissinger himself, at the height of the E. Pakistan (Bangladesh) crisis in December ’71 when they ordered a carrier task force to move toward the Bay of Bengal, said to Nixon “at least we’re coming off like men.” Nixon might have thought (consciously or otherwise) that musing aloud about using nuclear weapons was a way to exhibit masculinity. (I’m just speculating obvs.)

The western powers, primarily the US, split the Korean peninsula in half after WWII, played god, thus setting the table for the inevitable future war.

Nonsense. Korea was split by the western powers AND the Soviet Union. At Potsdam and at Moscow. And the only reason the SU was anywhere near the peninsula is because the US asked them to come, so they could help fight the Japanese.

The west instigated, funded, supplied and helped sustain the Russian civil wars after the very popular 1917 leftist revolution. We supported the whites, etc. etc. . . .

Also nonsense. Russian civil war (wars?) began without any help from the west. And the initial uprisings against Bolsheviks were actually by *leftist*, just not-Bolshevik, groups, such as the SRs or the Czechoslovak Legion. The support for the Whites was of the “too little too late” nature. 90% talk and 10% actual help. By the time Kolchak and Denikin got any kind of meaningful help, they had already lost.

Yes, the south provoked the north’s invasion with its atrocities. And then we invaded to help the south, which was a brutal dictatorship at the time. The dictator’s name was Syngman Rhee, who ordered mass killings and major oppression of civilians, especially leftists, some of which the US allowed to go forward:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap-us-allowed-korean-massacre-in-1950/

Notice also this section, which talks about before the war. The massacre, which is the main subject of the article, happened near its beginning.

In 1947, two years after Washington and Moscow divided Korea into southern and northern halves, a U.S. military government declared the Korean Labor Party, the southern communists, to be illegal. President Syngman Rhee’s southern regime, gaining sovereignty in 1948, suppressed all leftist political activity, put down a guerrilla uprising and held up to 30,000 political prisoners by the time communist North Korea invaded on June 25, 1950.

As war broke out, southern authorities also rounded up members of the 300,000-strong National Guidance Alliance, a “re-education” body to which they had assigned leftist sympathizers, and whose membership quotas also were filled by illiterate peasants lured by promises of jobs and other benefits.

Commission investigators, extrapolating from initial evidence and surveys of family survivors, believe most alliance members were killed in the wave of executions.

On June 29, 1950, as the southern army and its U.S. advisers retreated southward, reports from Seoul said the conquering northerners had emptied the southern capital’s prisons, and ex-inmates were reinforcing the new occupation regime.

My view expressed above may not be right in some respects. I just found this passage in the opening of 1993 paper published under the auspices of the Cold War Int’l History Project:

…the army of North Korea, … though clearly armed by the Soviet Union, was nevertheless attempting to reunify its own country, not engage in aggression against a neighboring state. Moreover, it had been obvious for at least a year that war would break out in Korea; the bitterly opposing governments of the North and South were both determined to reunify the country under their own control. Indeed, the United States refused to supply South Korea with offensive weapons because it feared that Syngman Rhee would use them to march north.

Even accepting this, I still think it’s misleading to refer to the U.S. “invasion” of Korea.

Also, South Korea, under Rhee, planned to invade North Korea prior to the North’s invasion of the South:

http://www.japanfocus.org/-mark-caprio/3482

Most important, this research often fails to mention, much less critically examine, Syngman Rhee’s aspirations. Nor does it consider the possible effect that South Korea’s belligerent actions along the 38th parallel may have had on North Korean actions. Documents demonstrating Rhee’s interest in engaging the North in war predate the earliest record of Kim’s military ambitions by at least one month. On February 8, 1949, the South Korean president met with Ambassador John Muccio and Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall in Seoul. Here the Korean president listed the following as justifications for initiating a war with the North: the South Korean military could easily be increased by 100,000 if it drew from the 150,000 to 200,000 Koreans who had recently fought with the Japanese or the Nationalist Chinese.52

Moreover, the morale of the South Korean military was greater than that of the North Koreans. If war broke out he expected mass defections from the enemy. Finally, the United Nations’ recognition of South Korea legitimized its rule over the entire peninsula (as stipulated in its constitution). Thus, he concluded, there was “nothing [to be] gained by waiting.” Muccio replied by advising, as Stalin would Kim, that Rhee first explore peaceful options. The ambassador also warned that “no invasion of North Korea could in any event take place while the United States had combat troops in Korea.”53 With U.S. combat troops initially scheduled to leave the peninsula in May (this departure was later pushed back to the end of June), did Muccio’s reply leave room for the possibility of a South Korean invasion after the United States military withdrew as Stalin predicted during his discussions with Kim the following month? Perhaps. Around this time North Korea began to lay mines along its side of the 38th parallel.54

We’ve been led to believe this was a war of aggression with only one side at fault, the North. That was always a fairy tale.

We’ve been led to believe this was a war of aggression with only one side at fault, the North.

I agree that that view is much too simplistic. Apparently, the division never having been accepted by either side, each was contemplating the use of force against the other. But I don’t nec. agree with all of your glosses.

How precisely did the U.S “permanently blockaded” the USSR after the end of the Russian Civil War?

Also, it seems to me that Pete Seeger’s inventive First Amendment defense may have been a critical innovation to our modern understanding of the rights of everyday citizens, though his testimony is (at least until now) one of the more obscure events at the HUAC proceedings.

Apparently a bunch of people are falling over themselves to get into the disgraceful act of spreading sour grapes at the passing of a great and influential man. Click only if you have a strong stomach: http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2014/01/30/the-two-worst-tribute-articles-to-pete-seeger/

“Not a right-wing conservative” indeed.

“So much for the “Conservatives are big on traditional values” angle – speak no ill of the dead, as people say.”

Well this is what happens Ed. When Hitchens died – younger, in sadder circumstances, leaving behind young children the left reacted with tough, unsparing criticisms. And they were right. They were right to do Buckley as well. If we could get
But if right the obits, somewhere between hagiography and hatchet job, somewhere between Bhaskar Sunkara’s output and the national reviews, that would be the ticket. But its all ideology nowadays

People on the left did not offer up tough, unsparing criticisms of Hitchens when he died, despite the fact that he explicitly used the death of Mother Teresa as a book re-release/tour advertisement. People on the left offered up firm, unsparing rim jobs when Christopher Hitchens died. They noted in passing that he went from shithead Trotskyite to shithead neo-con with nothing but a thousand bottles of gin and 18 months between, but then swiftly moved on to how smart he was, even when he was drunk, and wasn’t it jolly good fun, him having that English accent and everything and sounding smart even when he was drunk, and how he was always ready to take young fledgling [WHITE MALE SORRY] journalists under his wing and whatnot. Also WILLING TO MAKE TOUGH CHOICES!

We should aim to follow the Breitbart obituary principle, as articulated by that important internet Republican and inspiring hack extraordinare, to whom no depths were too low to stoop in the service of ridiculing those on welfare. From ThinkProgress in 2009:

Early this morning, news broke that Sen. Ted Kennedy had passed away after serving in the U.S. Senate for nearly 50 years. Soon after, conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart began a sustained assault on Kennedy’s memory, tweeting “Rest in Chappaquiddick.” Over the course of the next three hours, Breitbart unapologetically attacked Kennedy, calling him a “villain,” “a big ass motherf@#$er,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.” “I’ll shut my mouth for Carter. That’s just politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement,” wrote Breitbart in one tweet.

Quoted elsewhere, “I’m more than willing to go off decorum to ensure THIS MAN is not beatified,” Breitbart wrote. “Sorry, he destroyed lives. And he knew it.”

So, if right-wingers want to talk shit about admirable public figures on the left, fuck’em, but let’s get the spine stiffened up enough so that the ostensible media representatives of the left don’t suffer simultaneous, repeated orgasms on-screen when the next Ronald Reagan analogue dies.

I was thinking more along the lines of Greenwald and Michael Lind, who wrote pretty harsh (and funny) obits, but I guess they’re not *really* on the left. But yeah, I agree in general with your point, my sympathies are more with hit jobs than maudlin four week wakes. Also, having said that, we’re then just going to have to accept that the obit will then no longer be a source for useful information. Which is fine, I guess

People on the left did not offer up tough, unsparing criticisms of Hitchens when he died, despite the fact that he explicitly used the death of Mother Teresa as a book re-release/tour advertisement. People on the left offered up firm, unsparing rim jobs when Christopher Hitchens died.

My favorite Hitchens obit

Corey, couldn’t that second review swap Iraq for Stalin and war on terror for Soviet communism and apply to the CPUSA ?

Ronan: I’m not sure what you mean.

afaict (though Im not sure if its the whole story) the US communist party, despite their good works domestically, were quite strong supporters of Stalin, even through the height of the purges etc If we judge Hitchens primarily by his support for Iraq and the WOT why don’t we judge CP members by their support for Stalinism?

I don’t think Hitchens reputation will hold up that well either, fwiw, and I’ll keep an open mind on the US CP if I read more on it. Thanks for the response

Ronan(rf) @ 122: Is the topic of your post Communist Party USA (the political organization) or members and former members of Communist Party USA (individual humans). It need not be the case that every member of CPUSA was familiar with the implications of every position held by CPUSA. There’s no evidence that Seeger set policy for CPUSA, correct? Nor that he was its president/chairman?

By comparison, Hitchens can be taken to represent exactly himself.

I suppose if Seeger had written songs like “All hail the glory of Stalin’s purges!” or “Gulags ain’t so bad!”, then it would be fair to compare Seeger and Hitchens, but he didn’t, so it’s not.

Sometimes, Hitchens turned his insufferable, drunken, self-righteous priggishness on targets that I also did not like.

“Sometimes, Hitchens turned his insufferable, drunken, self-righteous priggishness on targets that I also did not like.”

Bingo.

I would urge people to avoid using the language of recantation. It has an unsavory overtone, linked to precisely the evils it is meant to oppose.

Die Gedanken sind frei

http://youtu.be/dbwQXVcbkU0

I’ll happily swap recant for consider ones positions in a morally serious way

do people have obligations to disown the monstrous positions held by the party they belong to ? I would say yes. Should they recant on those positions if they held them themselves ? I’d also say yes.

What “monstrous positions”, precisely, were held by the CPUSA in the period of Seeger’s membership thereof? What are you actually referring to here? And are we suggesting that the same kind of self-criticism should be demanded from known supporters of Oh Say For Instance Just Off The Top Of My Head the Reagan administration? If not, why not?

Pete’s uncle was a rather famous poet who was killed fighting for the French in WWI, Alan Seeger, author of “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” (According to wikipedia it was one of JFK’s favorite poems). Pete had a pretty developed poetic (and musical) sensibility though he personally abjured the roles of professional artist and composer (I think he must have declined to do second takes in his recordings, which are frequently inferior to his live performances). At any rate, I think his sense of language was among the reasons reason he was so rhetorically effective.

And just to add, I’m obviously no expert on the US communist party, so any complications on the ‘CPUSA’s slavish support for the Soviets’ is welcome.

I’d sure like to see members of the Bush and Reagan administration publicly renounce their former positions, among many others. Not to mention “reinventing welfare”, repeal of Glass Segall, and NAFTA, to name just a few.

“But do you not think that people who were members of an organisation that supported Stalinism (and who did so themselves) should have that as a blot in their obit ?”

Haven’t I already responded to this once? You’re making inferences which aren’t justified – that appreciation for Marxist goals is Stalinism; that membership in the CPUSA is Stalinism; that ignorant support for Stalin is Stalinism. It seems to be your position that every single member of the CPUSA understood that Stalin was a monster and that the CPUSA was his tool; and that this was the reason they belonged to the organization. Really? There were no people in the CPUSA because it was pro-union? There were no people in the CPUSA because it was for gender equality? There were no people in the CPUSA because it was anti-poverty? Anti-racist? They all joined & remained because they wanted to help Stalin murder Russians?

No layman that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that if you’re member of an organisation for reason X (pro unions, pro gender equality, whatever) but the organisation has another reprehensible position, in this case being close to the Soviet Union and sympathetic to Stalinism, then you are making a moral tradeoff. ie I want to push the case for unions, so Im willing to live with the fact that the organisation supports the Soviet Union. There are, of course, other places you can go to push your list of policies without being compromised by this tradeoff.
Yes, you could go member by member and find out who supported X to what extent. So I wasn’t trying to personalise it initially, but was speaking organisationally. But still, in small ideological disciplined parties, staffed by people who are informed and intelligent, there’s a level of moral culpability that probably doesn’t exist if you just vote thoughtlessly every 4 years.

elm – but so what if the NYT mentioned it? Im saying it here, where it wasn’t really mentioned in the initial OP or the Al Jazeera link above. If I was arguing this case at the NR, that would be a different kettle of fish
And (1) I wasn’t personalising it to Seeger initially (2) Hitchens has no real influence over US foreign policy

Layman
This blanket statement

“‘close to the Soviet Union’ was once considered laudable”

just isn’t true. As ignorant as I may be it was not considered laudable by all but factory owners

js
Maybe you’re right. See my 150, if you don’t agree then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree or someone can school me on it (genuinely) I have to bow out now though for the time being

This blanket statement

“‘close to the Soviet Union’ was once considered laudable”

just isn’t true. As ignorant as I may be it was not considered laudable by all but factory owners
_______

Yes, Ronan, it is hypberbole to say that; but no more so than to say membership in or support of the CPUSA was knowing support for Stalin’s atrocities. Perhaps now you’ll understand my objection to your line of thinking.

BW, Roosevelt supported Stalin. Moral monster? Churchill? Moral monster?

You’re right elm I misremembered Sunkara’s article. Perhaps I’ve ended up trolling myself. The ‘its all ideology nowadays’ was OTT as well. I do think it matters, though. Would you agree with that?

I think it depends on how involved and important the individual was — as well as the nature of the individual’s work.

By that standard, I think Seeger has had much more than his share of culpability for the Gulags and Purges put upon him.

It’s also disgusting and dishonest to see calls for Seeger to recant and denounce Stalin decades after he has actually done so.

So, Seeger wasn’t a saint — and he didn’t claim to be one either. His official obituary was still far rougher on him than those of Hitchens, Reagan, or Strom Thurmond — I actually just looked at Thurmond’s obituary in the NYT and the word “segregation” appears two times total, on page 3 (of 4).

js 158,

If you’re talking about the goals of American leftists . . . I’ll take that over our country’s version of “freedom and liberty” any day of the week. To the extent that the CPUSA were about social justice, racial equality, feminism, etc. etc. . . . they were and still are head and shoulders above American supporters of the “free market.” And, for me, it’s not close.

Harold,

Seems fair.

If the people asking for the repentance, actuate their own, it might hold more water. I don’t think there is that much difference between blindly supporting America or blindly supporting the Soviet Union. We both have massive atrocities in our history. America, in fact, has a worse record when it comes to genocide, slavery, racial oppression and oppression of women. It has also instigated more wars and has a worse record on civilian casualties due to those wars.

Which makes me think about the obsession with Iran, currently. What a great big glass house we live in. When was the last time Iran invaded another country? etc.

I actually just looked at Thurmond’s obituary in the NYT and the word “segregation” appears two times total, on page 3 (of 4).

I was seriously shocked by this, but it’s not really an honest summary of the obit: The obit is titled “Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100” and it covers his resistance to civil rights and integration at length and as the central feature of his legacy.
When you look at what gets covered in mainstream publications as “dark spots” on someone’s legacy, it’s a bit of victors’ justice, no? If conventional wisdom agrees something was bad (support for Stalinism, support for Jim Crow), it’s a bigger spot than more contentious issues (including, rather puzzlingly to me, things like Iran-Contra)

Here is an excellent Bob Clampett cartoon about gremlins from the Kremlin kicking Hitler’s ass.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/83003891/

That’s really interesting. The idea of gremlins sabotaging aircraft was originated by Roald Dahl who was an RAF pilot at the time, according to a biography of him that I recently finished reading. While recuperating from back injuries incurred during an airplane crash, he wrote a children’s book to that effect that was picked up by Disney (though the the full-length film they planned to make of it never happened). Dahl was then assigned to Washington by the British Secret service to spy on Henry A. Wallace, whom the British disliked because of his anti-Colonialism. There’s a lot more, one imagines, if only people would open their archives.

Phil -I agree with your points in general, but I’d look at this differently:

“unlike the CPUSA, the Republican Party actually held power in the USA and used it to support those governments financially and militarily.”

*The Republican Party actually held power in the USA*, and so had to make decisions as a political party in power. The CPUSA didn’t. They had no hope of getting into power, no real geopolitical pressures, no political or public pressures, and yet they still choose to align with a brutal dictatorship.
I do, though, accept the criticisms above that this was ‘political’ or ‘built into the structures of the Party’, or that it was a ‘compromise for the greater good’ * All fine, but then I’d expect the same leeway given to US admins when they make their next catastrophic decision.

* I still don’t see what this greater good is though. Good on race and gender, better contracts in specific unions ? This really doesn’t cancel the bad out.

But I agree, a blot on the obit of every party member is stupid. A blot on the obit of every Republican is stupid (but it does happen, in some circles) A blot on the obit of every libertarian is stupid. A blot on the obit of those who supported Stalin I think is justified, but only so far.

Finally, this isn’t comparable to the kill list, or Iran/Contra, but closer to a Confederacy dead ender or (as per notsosneaky and Coreys post which initially set this off) a sympathiser with Nazism.
This was the comparison (I personally think) Corey should have drawn in the HUAC post, not the machinery of oppression in Nazi Germany, but the machinery of oppression in the Soviet Union. That would have complicated the morality tale, imo, and have been more relevant.

anyway, I’m done there

ps elm, thanks for the accusations of COMPLETE BAD FAITH while misrepresenting the Thurmond obit yourself.

Corey, I didn’t mean to imply that neither you nor anyone else had written a decent (which is to say, scathing) obit of Hitchens, just that I had read a lot of sloppy wet kisses from people who theoretically ought to have known better. elm: “Sometimes, Hitchens turned his insufferable, drunken, self-righteous priggishness on targets that I also did not like.” 10 points to Ravenclaw.

There just aren’t that many examples of people saying “whoo-hoo, Stalin really stuck it those counter-revolutionary elements!”.

Hmm, well, supposedly Langston Hughes signed some letter supporting Stalin’s show trials (I’m curious who else signed it, but haven’t been able to locate it). Sartre described Stalin’s terror as “artistic expression” and made up excuses for the same. Seeger himself opposed FDR, because FDR opposed Hitler, and Stalin supported Hitler. He almost tripped himself up by releasing a song to that effect just as Operation Barbarossa made Stalin “reconsider” and word came on down to change the party line tune. Walter Duranty of course. But sure, at least in US there weren’t that many. You’d have to pick at some scabs in Western European intellectual history to really find’em.

There are examples of people whose political sympathies led them to prefer not to rush to condemn the stories coming out of Russia

That’s one way to put it.
(the double negatives are making it a little hard to understand which way that sentence wants to go).

“but many, many more examples of people taking exactly the same attitude, for exactly the same reason of political sympathy, to horror stories coming out of Chile, El Salvador, Indonesia, etc.”

I agree. And, say, Hayeks behaviour in Chile has been covered here. The same was true to some extent of Coreys initial post ‘look how moderate liberals were implicated in the HUAC’. Absolutely ! But look how Pete Seeger was morally compromised by support for Stalin!
But this probably isn’t a game worth playing, I don’t think. So I wont do.

“So yeah, in lots of ways being a Communist sympathiser was just exactly like being a Nazi. (Have you read anything I’ve written on this thread at all?)”

I didn’t say that. I said continuing to sympathise/support *Stalin* after the purges, the deportatations etc is closer to being a Confederacy dead ender or to continuing to support the Nazi’s after the full horrors began to be known, than it is being someone implicated in US foreign policy. That doesn’t mean I think communism (ideologically) is comparable to white supremacy, slavery or fascism, but it’s an argument limited to continuing to support Stalin when these crimes were occurring.

re US imperialism. I agree, more or less. So I can accept that the US and Soviets were as bad as each-other in terms of military interventions in the Cold War, and that the Soviet Union was vital to the WW2 war effort, that the Soviet Union post Stalin was not morally comparable and that most communists were decent people – but still think that supporting *Stalin* after the Terror is morally unconciable. As, of course, is supporting white supremacy in the US or fascism in Europe.

I’m going to have to leave it there for a while Phil, so mightn’t be back. I always like your comments here, and I don’t think these are easy questions, so I’m not trying to be arsey or self righteous. Sorry if it came across that way. I can accept I’ve probably not thought this through fully. So I’ll have to think about it, as they say

Layman, the extent to which the Soviet Union had stopped supporting Stalin is a little overstated here. And there were other communist dictatorships around ruling hundreds of millions of people, and killing tens of millions, right? OK, one, but China? Not like Romania was just quietly murdering people minding its own business; there were…well, Romania was loudly murdering people, and Tibetan monks were being worked to death in camps, and really the whole nine yards. You don’t have to march around the house every morning singing “it’s a grand old flag!” in order to recognize that horrible Communist dictatorships all over the world just kept on setting one half the population to spy on the other, and, well, they didn’t tear Lubyanka down exactly, and in fact I think Iron Felix was standing out there till the end, nu? We’re neither forced to support apartheid in South Africa nor pretend any of us would have been willing to be a citizen of Cold War Albania. Let’s hold hands and agree everyone was horrible, horrible, horrible people.

“Let’s hold hands and agree everyone was horrible, horrible, horrible people.”

Hey, I’m happy to agree that dictatorships were horrible, and the people who ran them were horrible, and the people who supported them while understanding their nature were horrible. If I haven’t said that before, I do so now.

Layman @183, you’ve answered your own question. The CPUSA did organisationally up until 56. Logically that would lead one to think at least *some* within the party did. I also gave some names above. Also Pete Seeger, who made this mealy mouthed reconsideration:

“Today I’ll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was simply a ‘hard-driver’ and not a supremely cruel misleader. I guess anyone who calls himself or herself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. could consider apologizing for stealing land from Native Americans and for enslaving blacks … for putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps—let’s look ahead.”

You appear to be implying that official CPUSA policy of, in Corey’s words, ‘slavishly following the Soviet Unions line’ existed on it’s own with no human input ?
There is also, clearly, no real comparison with the pressures to conform to the party line in Stalinist Russia, and the pressures to do so in NYC.

All good then and I’m with Belle’s statement, we’re all horrible people. Which is great and my initial point.
Although I still hold there’s no moral equivalence between 20th century US and 20th century Soviet Union (domestically, institutionally, in terms of human rights at home – you could argue outside of the US/Soviet Union a lot depends on where you were standing. And I’d agree) It was the choice between a bad and a worse.

Barry – I don’t know the specifics of lost causers in US politics, I’m sure they’re there and I’m sure they’re reprehensible assholes. I still don’t think the existence of X excuses Y.
If its legitimate that Hitchens be remembered primarily for his support of Iraq (fine) then its legitimate as per the NR that Seeger be remembered primarily for his support for Stalin.

And yes we all have to make compromises with the reality that we live within socio-economic systems that chew up and spit people out on a regular basis, and that domestically, but particularly internationally, decides your life chances at birth. If you’re working within the system you’re implicated in that, if you work outside of it you are as well. There are no clean hands is all.

> Listen, there were plenty of American who supported Hitler until 1940 or 41.

Yes, and they included the Communist Party of the United States of America, who supported him from the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1039 until he invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. I don’t know why on earth anyone would give them a pass for that.

“People like otpup & Ronan are arguing that anyone who is or has been a Communist – or, if you like, anyone who has ever supported Stalin’s brand of Communism – should be held to account for this, and after death it should be “a blot on the obit”. ”

That ‘if you like’ is doing a lot of work. Two different things. Not every communist, no. I never said that, though I did at one stage say every CP member in a fit of foolishness, which I backtracked on. Every one who publicly supported Stalin. People like Seeger, why not? Does Chile not deserve to be on Hayeks obit ? Cambodia on Kissinger ? Holocaust denialism on Irvings ? It’s called being a public figure. I don’t think what the HUAC did to him was justified, and Im sure he was better than his worse moments, but Ive no idea why all this hand holding for people who publicly politically active throughout their life ?
Should Iraq not be on Hitchens obit?

Hayek vs. Seeger is not at all a fair comparison tho. It’d be more like going on about drone killings at Springsteen’s death.

And, Ronan, it’s obviously not hagiography. I really don’t see where you’re getting that. Look, Springsteen is surely a comparable figure: socially conscious musician, pretty much on the good side, v much allied with the Democratic party—presumably registered member. Should the deaths of innocent Afghani civilians killed in the Obama era be a blot on his obit? I think that’s a fairly crazy position.

Another: “Anti-Communism is alive and well.”

Ronan: ” And no its not. It doesnt concern me in the slightest. I was just annoyed by the hagiography and moral posturing in the original OP. The *outrage* that anyone should bring up a *political activists* politics, in this thread. Thats it.”

Actually, this is another sign that you don’t know much about US politics; anti-communism is still alive and well.

As for your annoyance, you seem to express ‘annoyance’ by dozens, if not a hundred, comments on this post. Sorry, you are the most involved person here, by sheer volume.

Ignore the second part js that got caught in there. was going to write something a little longer.

Well, (a) Seeger didn’t support Stalin _for_ the purges either. He supported socialism for, let’s say, reasons that needn’t be rehearsed, and he presumably supported CPUSA because it was part of an internationalist socialist—or communist—organization. (b) You’re right that the current day US is not morally equivalent to Stalin’s USSR, but (c) this seems irrelevant because you want to say that the crimes of a regime should be a blot on the obit of informed and involved public supporters of that regime. This, far as I can tell, is what you’ve been arguing all along.

Given this, I’d think it follows that the crimes of Dem administrations like Obama’s should be a blot on the obit of well informed and very public supporters like Springsteen. Of course we can agree that Stalin’ crimes were much greater than those of the Obama administration, but all that follows is that the blot on Springsteen’s obit is smaller. It’s still something we need to talk about in his obit, or in blog posts when he dies. Right?

Has no one mentioned thus far that people like Bertrand Russell, E. E. Cummings, and Malcolm Muggeridge were trying to warn people about the real nature of the Soviet Union as early as the 1920s and 30s?

My 204 was directed to Ronan’s previous, by the way. And the last 2 sentences of the first para should read as follows:

How is he not culpable by the very standards you’ve been using? How is this not a blot for him?

I actually think we just disagree on the essentials, on the importance here of the nature of the Soviet Union under Stalin. And I *genuinely* dont mean that to imply that you arent considering the nature of the regime seriously, just as likely Ive gotten carried away or am not thinking clearly. I might just have backed myself into a corner and am defensive over this, but this is the only position I can see.
I dont think there was any moral equivalence, during these years, between the US and SU (domestically, I dont think foreign policy is relevant here. And I dont think the ideological capitalism/communism argument is either) I think there should be a different standard for highly informed, ideologically committed party members. Perhaps Springsteen falls into this category, and perhaps he’s culpable, but again I cant see the equivalance between supporting Obama and supporting the SU under Stalin.

I dont actually think this is a convincing answer to your questions, and I dont think its a sophisticated position, but its all Ive got. And Im going to leave it for a while (I know Ive said that before, but .. )

@Ronan:

Fair enough.

@Jacob McM:

I’m pretty clearly not presenting any apologetics for any Communist regime.

Btw,

The ideological right deals with the burden of Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Fascism, etc. etc. very handily. They simply rewrite history, turn it on its head, and say that these were all left-wing phenomena. They take what were clearly right-wing demagogues and ideologies and recast them as left. Presto chango!! Problem solved.

This, I think, has helped them immensely to become loud and proud of being righties. When I was growing up, that wasn’t the case. There was still the sting of WWII and the Nazis in the air, and not that many people were all that eager to proclaim their wingnuthood.

Completely flipping history via opposite-day devices — changed that. That’s my theory, anyway.

Tyrone,

The difference being that, by definition, the Soviet, Chinese and Cambodian systems had zero to do with actual communist or socialist theory. And you can’t, by definition, have a communist state. Communism is the absence of the state, after socialism has set the table for it.

Socialism means that the people — not a single political party or dictator — own the means of production and there is full democracy, including the economy. The economy is fully democratized. None of that happened in the Soviet, Chinese or Cambodian systems. They were totalitarian, which is the opposite of socialist, per socialist theory. Much less communist. And they did, in fact, try to compete, as capitalist nations, with the rest of the capitalist world. Lenin talked about how capitalism was necessary for the industrialization of Russia, and he basically applied a form of “primitive accumulation” as was seen in Britain and other nations in their transition to capitalism. He wanted to force “the peasants” off their lands, out of their villages, and into the factories, as Adam Smith and others had pushed for in other nations.

OTOH, Nazi and fascist systems sync up pretty well with the Social Darwinism of the right, its anti-democratic ideology, its racism, nationalism, xenophobia, jingoism, etc. The right has long been the home for that, welcoming movements that seek to crush minorities, the working class, labor, environmentalists, feminists, liberals, socialists, communists, etc. The right is more than cool with inequality and social injustice. It sees that as based upon natural law. And it tends to believe in a golden age that must be recreated.

This is not what the left believes.

Thanks for the reply. First off, Communism was not some ready-made system waiting to be implemented out of the box – it had never been tried in the real world, and Marx and Engels had only vague notions of how, exactly, that withering of the state would transpire, and within what time frame. Lenin accepted it, and so did Stalin – they just held that a communist-operated state would need (much) more historical time to achieve the correct parameters for that withering to be feasible – but it was still a communist system, in a communist-controlled state. You cannot reasonably say that because an end-point that had never been given a strict temporal positioning in the process did not come about, all of the other elements that were directly of that system can no longer be so counted. Soviet Russia considered itself Communist; the members of it and its successor states called themselves Communists; their system was operated according to Communist principles and methodologies; other nations deemed them Communists. You are making a point of theory about a point of fact.

As for what you say about Nazi, and Fascist systems, I think you’ve missed what I was getting at: the Right makes their arguments by positing that key components of those latter two are derived from leftist political theory; you’re making the same claim for Communism in the obverse as to Capitalism. And both claims go against what the general majority consider to be the case. That you don’t like their revision and don’t believe it holds any water doesn’t change the case that they, like you, are involved in making revisions.

Tyrone,

No. Again, the system as it was actually implemented had nothing to do with socialist or communist principles. The fundamental, core principle of socialism is democracy and democratic control of the economy. The people must own the means of production, not a political party, or a dictator, or private concerns. On the most fundamental basis, the most profoundly central of conditions, the Soviets failed to come remotely close to socialist principles. Communism was even removed as a possibility.

And, again, Lenin admitted how much he liked capitalism for its ability to dynamically “modernize” and “industrialize.” He believed that capitalism would have to be expanded significantly in Russia before socialism could be implemented. Marx said late capitalism, advanced capitalism, mature capitalism, had to come first. Socialism couldn’t be created on top of Feudalism. It couldn’t skip a phase. And Russia was roughly a century behind the West in capitalist development. It was virtually a Feudal state.

In short, the Soviets never transitioned out of capitalism into socialism, because they were still shooting for the advanced capitalist phase prior to socialism. And, they never allowed democracy, which is the central core principle for socialism and communism. You literally, and by definition, can’t have socialism without full democracy.

Thanks, js. – reading your comments made me feel a bit less like I’m banging my head against a brick wall.

Ronan – if you “don’t think foreign policy is relevant” there’s not a lot I can say, particularly since you don’t think American Communists’ actual political beliefs or activities are relevant either. In fact, all you think is relevant is (a) everything bad that happened under Stalin and (b) everything positive any Communist ever said about Stalin. And when people object to this insultingly reductive approach, you say we’re expressing “*outrage* that anyone should bring up a *political activists* politics”.

You mentioned Hayek. Hayek was a major cheerleader for Pinochet both before and after the coup, with full knowledge of what Pinochet was doing (or at least, every opportunity to find out) and never repented of any of this – but mentioning these facts is still hugely controversial and when Corey documented them in some detail the outrage and the pushback was immense. Pete Seeger supported Stalin’s regime in relative ignorance of its crimes, and publicly repented his support a few years later. And that’s supposed to be a blot on his obit? Any popular artist who’s campaigned for Obama – let alone Bush or Reagan – has more to apologise for than Seeger…

…but I forgot, you’re not interested in foreign policy. A sadly common attitude – particularly among people who want to make unfavourable comparisons between the US and the USSR; as I said in my original comment on this thread,

You could say exactly the same damn thing about US Republicans, if your definition of “world-historical tragedy” is broad enough to include people with brown skin.

And if not, not.

The main problem I have with Communist apologetics is that they inevitably open the door for Nazi and/or Fascist apologetics.

Communism at its most idealistic is a vision of freedom, equality and plenty – hunting in the morning, philosophy after dinner and all that. Fascism at its most idealistic is a vision of nationalism, order and hierarchy. Nazism, ditto, is a vision of brute force and extermination.

On the level of ideals there’s not much common ground. Individual fascists may be nice people and help out in the local community, but what they believe in is necessarily vile.

Everyone and their mom on the right has taken this opportunity to piss on Seeger’s grave. Why anyone else would join them in this opportunity to denounce communism for the trillionth time is beyond me.

phil and djr – I said I wouldn’t come back in but again phils 121 is a complete misrepresentation Here was that foreign policy argument (1) I don’t think there is a moral equivalence between the SU and US which is why we disagree so fundamentally (2) I don’t think FP is relevant in *judging a moral equivalence* because FP is usually held (unfortunately) to a different standard than domestic politics. IF Stalins SU was ‘better’ than the US internationally then yes, that might be a case for the defence. But it wasn’t. I will settle for they were both as bad as eachother, although that clearly isn’t true, but sure
Phil – the first part of you response is a nonsense misrepresentation . Enough to say that isn’t my position. Yes their other activities are important for the historical record, but so is this. That’s it.
The second bit makes no sense to me. Why do I care if libertarians cant come to grips with Hayeks support for Chile ? You don’t seem to be disagreeing that he should be rememberd in part for it ?

Ronan(rf) @ 188

“Layman @183, you’ve answered your own question. The CPUSA did organisationally up until 56. Logically that would lead one to think at least *some* within the party did. I also gave some names above. Also Pete Seeger, who made this mealy mouthed reconsideration:”

Sorry, I don’t think that’s enough. If you want to claim that Seeger supported Stalin while at the same time knowing Stalin’s nature, then show that. Showing he was a member of CPUSA isn’t enough, as surely it was possible to be the one while being ignorant of the other. Showing that the leadership of CPUSA was complicit isn’t enough – you have to show that Seeger himself was complicit. You’re making a specific claim – that Seeger is morally accountable for Stalin’s actions – but you’re doing nothing to demonstrate the connection. When did Seeger learn Stalin’s nature, and what did he do then? Isn’t that the question you need to answer to make your claim stick?

Ronan: “I don’t think there is a moral equivalence between the SU and US which is why we disagree so fundamentally”

I don’t think nations should be judged on their moral aspirations (which in the case of the USSR were very high indeed) but on their actions.

“IF Stalins SU was ‘better’ than the US internationally then yes, that might be a case for the defence. But it wasn’t. I will settle for they were both as bad as eachother, although that clearly isn’t true”

If you don’t believe it’s true, I guess you won’t settle for it after all – presumably you take it as established fact that the USSR was worse *in foreign policy terms* than the USA. So tell me: what did the USSR do that was worse than supporting mass murder in Central America and Indonesia, just for starters?

That the USSR was, arguably, a less bad influence on the world as a whole than the USA isn’t “a case for the defence”; it’s my entire argument, and has been since my first comment on this thread. If Seeger should have Stalin’s actions hung round his neck, so should Bellow Reagan’s and Springsteen Obama’s – and that must logically include actions affecting people in other countries.

Now, clearly we don’t take this unforgiving approach to supporters of (say) US presidents; we ask, what were the person’s own ideas and achievements, and praise or condemn those. But that minimum of respect – the basic courtesy of thinking “this man doesn’t appear to have been a monster, so let’s not assume he supported monstrosities unless we’ve got very good evidence that he did” – isn’t extended to Communists, Communist sympathisers, former Communist sympathisers, etc. Why not?

“So tell me: what did the USSR do that was worse than supporting mass murder in Central America and Indonesia, just for starters?”

But I’m not looking to defend US policy in Indonesia or Central America, and have said explicitly (internationally) a lot depends where you were standing on who was worse during the Cold War. I have said here the judgement is primarily on ‘the regime’ – and there is no human rights equivalence between *Stalin’s* SU and the US at the time. I think trying to show one power as being *much* worse internationally in the *grand sweep* of the Cold War is very difficult to do, but I think if we did get into that conversation I’d agree more with you than not.
But go back to the bit you quoted from me:

““IF Stalins SU was ‘better’ than the US internationally then yes, that might be a case for the defence. But it wasn’t. I will settle for they were both as bad as eachother, although that clearly isn’t true””

I emphasised *Stalin*, specifically. So what was worse than the US in human rights abuses at that time ? Support for Mao, for Kim Il-sung, the deportation of the Chechens, Dekulakization .. ?
Domestically was the worst of the United States, (Jim Crow, gross inequality, blacklists etc ) anything compared to the purges or Stalins various campaigns of ethnic cleansing? No, I don’t think so, personally.

“That the USSR was, arguably, a less bad influence on the world as a whole than the USA isn’t “a case for the defence”; it’s my entire argument”

I don’t agree with you here and I don’t even know how that argument could be made, but I agree it becomes more nuanced after Stalin. But it’s a different argument. From the start it has not been about the Soviet Union, but about Stalinist Soviet Union and the special kind of evil it represented. You could be a communist and be clear eyed about Stalin. People were.
I don’t think this is *the only thing* that Seeger or the CPUSA should be remembered for, I dont think it should necessarily be the primary thing, but if NR want to dedicate their obit to this aspect of his life (as Corey did with Hitchens re Iraq) then that’s fine by me. I think its a moral blindspot, personally. I think if we mention the CPUSA’s great work on racism and poverty, we do the same with their stance on the SU under Stalin.

layman

Dude, re Seeger it’s the conventional argument. His acknowledgemet that he understated what Stalin was doing:

“Today I’ll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was simply a ‘hard-driver’ and not a supremely cruel misleader. ”

His positions during WW2 which mirrored the SU line. His joining a party which was explicitly connected to the SU during Stalin, after Stalin’s crimes were known.

You are making the same defence that people defending the bloke from Duck Dynasty were making (after he said he saw no mistreatment during Jim Crow) ‘How do we know what he knew ? ‘ Well, its plausible Seeger didn’t know much (although the information was available if he wanted to) and how much he knew is an open question, I guess. I think you’re being incredibly generous to him, but perhaps I’m just being the opposite.

Again, we disagree because we have different rankings of how brutal Stalinist SU was. That’s fine. I think it belongs among the worst regimes in recent history. People who allied with him were allying with an ideological project that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. They weren’t voting in the context of a two party state which had to make morally difficult choices* internationally, they were allying to a specific ideological project. Not theoretical communism, but Stalinism as it was occurring.

* and this (morally difficult choices) is a different topic, again one I’m sure Id find a lot of agreement with people here on. But we just disagree fundamentally.

I don’t think respect has to be paid on the death of politically active public figures. Corey wrote a scathing obit for Hitchens linked above, based around his support for Iraq, and I think that’s fine. Perhaps communists are scapegoated more in death than others, I don’t know. Seeger was praised by Obama and in a number of obits. Hobsbawm was almost universally lauded. I just think *this* aspect of his life is legitimate for obituary writers to concentrate on, even the way NR did (by focussing on little else) I wouldn’t memoralise him that way only, but I think its legitimate. His alliance to Stalinism, not his communism.

I haven’t stood up for ‘US foreign policy’ and I don’t even know why its relevant. The question, from day one, was how do we remember people or organisations that allied with Stalin. I.dont.know. But I dont think the right starting point is comparing it with Bruce Springsteen supporting Obama.
I think getting into a conversation comparing US/Soviet foreign policy throughout the cold war is a different argument. Again, one I think I would agree with you on a lot, but a different argument.

I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I know I started this and I’m sorry for that but I think we’re talking past eachother at this stage (which is probably my fault)

Q234The question from day one was “how do we remember people or organisations that allied with Stalin” — um, the so-called “greatest generation” was allied with Stalin, our wartime ally in WW2.

Hobsbawm was almost universally lauded.

Hobsbawm’s Communism was repeatedly and insistently brought up in obits, etc., when he died (including on comment threads right here).

I’m going to stop going on about this after this comment, but I still don’t get why you think that the kind of argument you’re presenting can’t be plausibly generalized. I can do this without drawing any US/USSR comparisons, in fact—if you’re right about Seeger then it seems I should be able to generalize to the following principle:

Public and informed supporters of a murderous regime (or a regime guilty of grievous crimes) should be accountable for the murderousness or the grievous crimes of the regime they supported, even if the basis of their support was unrelated to (and even opposed to) the grievous crimes.

Why not? (And again, it seems both ad hoc and unfair to demand that these crimes must be targeted at the domestic population. Why don’t grievous crimes committed against foreigners count?)

(Phil — thanks!)

At the time that Seeger was a member of the CPUSA, we were at war with Hitler and Stalin was our ally. Previously, during the popular front era, many people were drawn to the CPUSA because of the reluctance of the Socialists to condemn racism and anti-Semitism. The CIO, which Seeger and his group, the Almanac Singers, supported, was the only union that was racially integrated. According to Almanac member Bess Hawes, quoted on wikipedia:

Every day, it seemed, another once-stable European political reality would fall to the rapidly expanding Nazi armies, and the agonies of the death camps were beginning to reach our ears. The Almanacs, as self-defined commentators, were inevitably affected by the intense national debate between the “warmongers” and the “isolationists” (and the points between). Before every booking we had to decide: were we going to sing some of our hardest-hitting and most eloquent songs, all of which were antiwar, and if we weren’t, what would we sing anyway? … We hoped the next headline would not challenge our entire roster of poetic ideas. Woody Guthrie wrote a song that mournfully stated: “I started out to write a song to the entire population / But no sooner than I got the words down, here come a brand new situation”.

My point is simply that the NR obit is fine to my eyes. Ive made that in a longwinded, annoying and stupid way. But thats all Im saying.

I don’t think respect has to be paid on the death of politically active public figures. Corey wrote a scathing obit for Hitchens linked above, based around his support for Iraq, and I think that’s fine.

I believe that, if somebody (alive or dead) who seems not to be a monster appears to have links to policies whose implications are monstrous, we should give that person the benefit of the doubt and judge him/her by what he/she actually does. I also think that we do in fact do this almost all the time. For instance, Louis Proyect wrote an obituary of Saul Bellow; he criticised him as a racist and reactionary writer, without ever trying to pin responsibility on Bellow for the real-world implications of Bellow’s conservative politics.

I think this is as it should be: Bellow is important as a novelist, not as a novelist who also supported policies with horrible outcomes; insisting that he be judged by the actions of the governments he supported would be inappropriate and disrespectful. But apparently when it comes to Communists and former Communists – even someone who outlived his Communist period by fifty years – this elementary courtesy and this sense of proportion don’t apply.

The post-mortem attacks on Hitchens aren’t an exception to this rule. Corey wasn’t dragging up half-forgotten political positions and overlooking what Hitchens actually did; to a large extent, advocating aggressive war and torture was what he did. If you want a Pete Seeger parallel, Hitchens supported Bush and Blair in much the same way that Pete Seeger supported Odetta – openly, vocally, consistently and without any later rethinking or recantation.

As for Hobsbawm, who was informed enough to know better, I’m not ‘informed’ enough to tie Eric Hobsbawm’s shoes, and I’m pretty sure you’re not either. It’s true that one of the great historians of the twentieth century chose to remain for decades in a party which had been guilty of monstrous crimes. I don’t know why – and it wouldn’t have been my choice – but to suppose that fact undermined Hobsbawm or his work, or to treat it as a stain on his reputation, would be disrespectful and inappropriate to the point of stupidity.

I really don’t understand why you object to being called “anti-Communist”, Ronan. I can’t understand your comments any other way.

Jesus Phil, I didnt say it undermined his work (although people more intelligent than me argue it did, in his later books) I said its worth noting in his obit

As you say (rightly) I cant judge his work. Some peole, like Judt and De Long I think (?), argued that his politics undermined his focus in the Age Of Extremes (but that was more along the lines of ‘he didnt write the book I would have’) I havent actually read the book so couldnt say. I read the Age Of Capital years ago and remembering liking it, but Im not really qualified to give any sort of an analysis.

Indeed. Why doesn’t that bastard Proyect hurry up and die so we can get to pissing on his grave?

Herzog isn’t about politics and neither is Ravelstein. Mr. Sammler’s Planet is about “cultural politics” and is an awful book. Thinking wasn’t Bellow’s strong point — he was an artist.

Bellow’s essay is very good but doesn’t make Trotskyism seem attractive (which it isn’t).

Or much more simply: why do you think Seeger supported ‘Stalin’s regime’, as you put it? Given everything else that’s known about the causes he supported throughout his life.

@Ronan:

To avoid misunderstanding: I entirely respect you as a commenter here and think you have good things to say. Also, while I don’t know if I’d entirely describe myself as a commie at this point, I was half brought up as one. So a sort of anti-anti-communism runs deep and comes naturally. I don’t disavow it. (Just by way of explanation.)

Dude, re Seeger it’s the conventional argument. His acknowledgemet that he understated what Stalin was doing:

“Today I’ll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was simply a ‘hard-driver’ and not a supremely cruel misleader. “
———–

Sorry, but I don’t read any admission of knowledge in that statement. In order for him to ‘understate’, he would need to know the truth. Instead, this statement says he was wrong about Stalin. Wrong about what? Wrong about Stalin’s nature.

When did Seeger leave the CPUSA? When did the extent of the purges begin to become generally known?

a) 1950 b) 1956

And really – I’ll repeat myself from upthread – even if we were talking about somebody who heard Khrushchev denounce Stalin’s crimes and didn’t leave the Party, would that person necessarily deserve our denunciation? Because if so it seems to me that pretty damn few of us would ‘scape a whipping.

As I said earlier…

Somebody who heard about the purges and thought “that sounds troubling, but we need to reserve judgment until we know the full story, it was a difficult situation and I’m sure those involved had their reasons” – is that a moral monster, a sympathiser with the doers of evil? If so, how does our Communist monster compare with all those who heard the stories coming out of Nicaragua and El Salvador and Guatemala and South Africa and Indonesia and reacted in exactly the same way?

(Ronan’s answer to this specific question seems to be that horrors committed in foreign countries don’t count, so we’re all OK.)

“Ronan’s answer to this specific question seems to be that horrors committed in foreign countries don’t count, so we’re all OK”

No my point was it was obfuscation to bring up US foreign policy when I was talking about CPUSA leaderships support of Stalin. Plus 56 it became know ? Just like that, in 1956 ? Seems to be contradicted by the rest of your post.
Anyway, I have no idea why youre objecting here Phil, considering you (rightly imo) support Proyects obit for Bellow.

js – thanks for your kind words above, and right back at you ! (although tbh, Id be happy to admit the vast majority of my own output is overwrought nonsense ; ) )

“Or much more simply: why do you think Seeger supported ‘Stalin’s regime’, as you put it? Given everything else that’s known about the causes he supported throughout his life. ”

This is the *exact* point I was trying to make initially, look at reas comment at 11 which i extrapolated from. How could this dichotomy exist ? re Seeger, sure there’s an argument about *how much he knew*, but is there not at least an obligation for the leadership of the CPUSA to try to know ? And I dont believe they didnt know, there was enough information out there, i would have thought. I think this is an extremely generous standard of proof people are running with.

This goes back to a point you made in the thread on Coreys post, that the democrats have not come to terms with what their leading party members etc have supported in the past (in this context the HUAC) and I agree, I just think the same applies here. But people keep changing the subject – to US foreign policy, or to the fact that ex communists get a hard time in obits etc as is. All Im saying is its a legitimate part of the historical record and deserves to be acknowledged.
Phil thinks its a ‘disrespectful’ tone – when used against his allies – I dont.

re anti communism – look, I dont mind any one interpretating my comments as they see fit, as anti communist or whatever. (I have repeatedly stressed support for Stalinism, however..) No one can look into ‘my heart of hearts’ nor are they expected to. The words are there and peoples interpretations are what they are. I really *dont know* what it would mean to be ‘anti communist’ in terms of my lived life (I guess Im not a communist, if for nothing else than lack of intellectual engagement with it ideologically, so thats obviously framing my point of view here)

And Ill leave it there (please god) so please (looking at you Phil) try not to completly misrepresent what Im saying. I take full abuse for lack of clarity or coherency throughout, and as an olive branch (to end the argument) ill except the burden of proof being expected here vis a vis the CPUSA – no one knew nufink. So all above is irrelevant. (I joke on the last bit, but we’re not going to agree, so we may as well carefully edge away .. )

No my point was it was obfuscation to bring up US foreign policy when I was talking about CPUSA leaderships support of Stalin.

It’s not obfuscation, it’s a perfectly straightforward comparison (and it’s a comparison I drew in comment #8, before you’d entered the thread, so you can hardly say I was trying to change the subject). You can argue that it’s not a legitimate comparison, but I don’t know how – unless you took the view that you can’t compare what government A does to its own citizens to what government B does abroad, or in other words that “horrors committed in foreign countries don’t count”.

Plus 56 it became know ? Just like that, in 1956 ?

Good grief. Yes, just like that. 25th February 1956, to be precise. (Do you ever think maybe your confidence is outrunning your grasp of the material?)

Anyway, I have no idea why youre objecting here Phil, considering you (rightly imo) support Proyects obit for Bellow.

I’ve already explained this at least once. (Apologies if my tone gets a bit sharp, but I seem to have to repeat myself rather a lot when I reply to you.) My point in bringing up Proyect’s obit is that, as critical as it is, it doesn’t attempt to link Bellow to real-world politics he had no influence or control over, and it doesn’t delegitimate or undermine Bellow as a writer. And that’s the Left at its most critical (Proyect isn’t famed for his moderation). Yet both of these things are absolutely SOP when it comes to Communists and ex-Communists, as you’ve demonstrated yourself. If Seeger the former Communist didn’t disown the reality of Stalin’s policies, then we can’t celebrate the life and achievements of Seeger the folksinger and activist without also considering this blot on his reputation. We take this approach to no other group of people.

Nor is there any comparison in this respect between Seeger and Hayek, or Seeger and Hitchens – both the Hs were committed, vocal and influential advocates of appalling policies (to be implemented in foreign countries), and never repented their advocacy.

I really *dont know* what it would mean to be ‘anti communist’ in terms of my lived life

What I’m saying is that your argument here is anti-Communist, in the sense of singling Communism out for delegitimation and challenge.

Finally: you missed the point of the ‘moral monster’ argument. Let’s use hypotheticals. King Ahab of Azkaban has a huge art collection and is known around the world as a connoisseur. He is also widely known to imprison dissidents without trial and strongly suspected of ordering them to be tortured. Your next-door neighbour, Terry, is a mild-mannered accountant who leans to the Right politically and has a passion for the Impressionists. You bump into Terry one day and are surprised to hear him express approval for King Ahab – “he’s a smart guy, he really knows what he’s doing”.

Now, everyone knows about King Ahab’s prison regime, but only a moral monster would positively approve of it. You’ve got no reason suddenly to start thinking of Terry as a moral monster – he may be right-wing, but he’s not that right-wing (very few people are). So you give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was the art thing that he was expressing approved of.

Pete Seeger and Stalin, same same.

You say you don’t consider Seeger a moral monster. But your argument does – if you didn’t think he was at least under suspicion of being a moral monster (positively approving of the Great Purges, etc) then you would have forgiven and forgotten the whole thing – just as you would with Terry next door, and just as most people already have done with Seeger.

“If Seeger the former Communist didn’t disown the reality of Stalin’s policies, then we can’t celebrate the life and achievements of Seeger the folksinger and activist without also considering this blot on his reputation”

Its a part of his life, yes. AGAIN NOT THE ONLY OR EVEN PRIMARY PART.
But YOU CAN celebrate what you like, i disagree – to me this aspect of his life as a political activist is relevant. How are his politics not relevant ?
We have very different readings of the Proyect obit.

It is an obfuscation because Im talking about Stalinism as an ideological project which killed millions, which had the support (to varying degrees of knowledge) from people on the western left. I am talking about the regime type, which you agree was *not* the moral equivalent of the US.
You want to talk about US foreign policy, fine. Then we will also talk about Soviet foreign policy, *which was not* that much better (if at all), and considerably worse during Stalin. Stalin, who I was talking about. If you want to talk about US foreign policy, fine.

re 1956 – I am *saying* of course people knew prior to 56. Wasnt 56 a structural shift in the communist party ? There was surely an increased level of what people knew about Stalin post 56 but are you arguing nothing was/could be known before ? Thats clearly my point, that people *knew before 56*. But your answer to

“When did the extent of the purges begin to become generally known?”

was

“(b) 1956”

Sure. But not the whole story.
Yes some in the CPUSA knew, I thought this was historical fact. Seeger claims he understated it, thats all.

My neighbour in Azkaban is, by your story, neither a public figure or politically active in any meaningful way

“We take this approach to no other group of people.”

Oh spare me. He was lovingly remembered by Obama. The only obit I ve seen in the UK (the Times this weekend) didnt even mention Stalin.
The NR did ! ? OMG who could have guessed.

How are his politics not relevant ?

I celebrate him for his politics, which informed a long and important career. I’m saying that whether or not he was prepared to stand up and say he renounced Stalin is irrelevant to his politics.

It is an obfuscation because Im talking about Stalinism as an ideological project which killed millions, which had the support (to varying degrees of knowledge) from people on the western left.

Whereas I’m talking about US imperialism as a politico-economic project which killed millions, which had the support (to varying degrees of knowledge) of millions of people on the Right and elsewhere. People aren’t killed by “regime type”s. As I said – not obfuscation, comparison.

are you arguing nothing was/could be known before

Khrushchev confirmed a lot of suspicions. By and large that was what they were, suspicions.

The NR did ! ? OMG who could have guessed.

And you’re defending them. And nobody – not even Louis Proyect – takes this delegitimating, loyalty-oath, are-you-prepared-to-denounce approach to public figures whose right-wing sympathies can be connected with comparable real-world horrors.

We can all support policies that lead to terribel outcomes (and in the SU it was terrible) and not be moral monsters.

That’s my point. Lots of people do, and they’re not treated as if they were – or should be suspected of being – moral monsters.

My neighbour in Azkaban is, by your story, neither a public figure or politically active in any meaningful way

True, but not relevant to the analogy – not sure why you think it is. But I think that’s the real problem with Seeger for a lot of people – the Communist smear is a means to an end, of discrediting a highly popular and successful left-winger.

Ok. Fair enough.
Good to leave it on that I think ? Sorry if I got carried away Phil or if my argument has been annoying/stupidly made. I still disagree, I think, but thats not the worst thing in the world.

Im not American though bro, so Im easy. I wouldnt say it about Luke Kelly or anything ; )

Most Germans were not consciously seeking to dominate other people, they had been convinced by years of right-wing propaganda that Germans were the ones being persecuted by the rest of the world

Fredy Perlman, in his (somewhat provocative) pamphlet Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom, makes the point that the victims of pogroms are typically pictured as being the ones with the power – in their own minds the oppressors are acting in self-defence, stamping out the conspiracy before it can take over and destroy them. There’s something similar going on in the nationalist mindset you’re describing – as if to say, the German people want nothing more than peace and security (who could deny them that? who would want to deny them that?) – and they can only be secure when the land they live in is ruled by Germans and inhabited exclusively by Germans. J. P. Stern said that one of Hitler’s key words was “ruhig” – “quiet(ly), peaceful(ly), calm(ly)”; in his speeches he would lead into the big finish by saying “and let me [quietly] say…” or “and I say to you [calmly] that…”, after which of course all hell would break loose. Aggressor as victim – and a victim who has been quietly suffering all these years, and has quietly decided not to take it any more. Other historical settings aren’t hard to find.

Perhaps ‘brute force and extermination’ was too strong, but I’m not sure how happy-happy Nazism could ever be, even in theory. Once you’ve said that

Nazism also promises peace, plenty and equality, but only to ethnic Germans

surely you’re also saying – if only sotto voce – that everyone who’s not an ethnic German can (and will) get stuffed? Couple that with the persistent emphasis on personal aggression – there’s a story of a loyal Nazi who wrote to party HQ complaining about the local Gauleiter, and got a reply saying ‘if you’re any good, why haven’t you got rid of him yourself?’ – and I think you’ve got an ideology which says that successes are rewarded and failures are trampled into the dirt, with the proviso that good Germans were all successes.