(no subject)

[fpb]

Anyone who thinks that I was too harsh about Jonah Goldberg's repulsive and politically motivated rewriting of my own country's history ought to read today's Thomas Sowell column, where it is taken entirely at its own valuation and highly recommended as summer reading for the children of conservatives. This unhistorical, culturally imperialistic propaganda, that distorts my country's and my continent's history in the service of provincial American concerns, is going to enter the bloodstream of a whole American party, If it has not already done so. This will increase further the mutual incomprehension between USA and Europe, because you cannot stand on your two hind legs and inform anyone who knows anything of continental history - France, Italy, Germany, etc. - that Nazism and Fascism were "left wing". This sort of rubbish, especially if spoken with the arrogance of Goldberg and Sowell, will increase European contempt for American viewpoints and culture. Do we really need this sort of trash further complicating our already difficult relationship, and all for the sake of a few Republican votes in the next election?

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

When it is European politics, yes, I bloody well do. Since you insist that there is no difference between Communism and Fascism, I can see the need for it even more. Have the goodness to remember that you are speaking about MY COUNTRY AND MY PAST.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

No difference between Communism and Fascism? I have not said any such thing. I have said that they are both forms of totalitarianism, which is unquestionably true, and that if you are not a member of any of the particular groups they prefer on ideological grounds to oppress, it makes small odds which system you live under; which is supported by abundant eyewitness evidence — I have read a fair bellyful, and have furthermore known people who lived and suffered under totalitarian rule of various kinds, and in some cases risked their lives to escape.

Your second point does not even deserve an answer, but I am in sufficient dudgeon to give one anyway: If I am not allowed to say anything about YOUR country and YOUR past, then you should shut the hell up about the Americans.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The viciousness and cruelty of Communism in terms of economic suppression is unique. There is a difference between State intervention in the economy and total State possession of everything, and that can be certified in a dozen different ways. I read, for instance, a book that described the brief impact of Soviet Communism on the parts of Romania, Poland and the Baltic countries that the Russians occupied in 1939 and from which they were driven in 1941. The difference that two years of Communism made to the daily lives of everyone, and to the societal leadership (this was the period of the Katyn pits) was immense. Statalization of everything began on day one, and within a few weeks British diplomatic personnel were reporting empty shops, devastated properties and a general air of sullen despair. And all of these people had come to Communism from various kinds of tyranny, which, especially in Romania and the Balts, had strong Fascist connotations. And what about the Cuban experience? Are you telling me that the Cubans never felt a difference between the tyrannies of Batista and of Castro? The difference between Fascism and Communism is exactly in the far more profound and annihilating penetration of the latter. And Communism begins with the murder of capitalists (or landowners), just as Fascism begins with the murder of Socialists. In places like China, the public slaughter of identified local land or business owner was the rite of introduction of Communist power to the local peasantry. If this does not seem to you to make any difference....

[superversive.livejournal.com]

I do not deny for a moment that there is a difference of degree between Communism and Fascism. The difference in kind has been greatly exaggerated. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were both brutal, tyrannous, aggressively militaristic police states. The principal difference between them, as I have already tried to point out, is that in Germany economic collectivization was aborted in the interests of military efficiency, whereas in Russia it was pursued above all else (and the state was almost destroyed by invasion as a result). If Nazi rule had lasted for seventy years, as Soviet Communism did, I doubt you would be able to speak so glibly of the ‘freedom’ of German industrialists.

I could quote Hitler himself on his reasoning and intentions, and why he considered himself a genuine Socialist — a thing, please note, that I do not grant, except in the sense that he had as much right to call himself a Socialist as Stalin and his thugs. But I have not time; I have an appointment across the city in less than an hour.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Is that why you have not made the least effort to understand what I was trying to say? If so, I would ask you, next time, to take more time and actually read.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Suuurrrrre Hitler was a true Socialist. He also was a true Christian and a true Pacifist - and I could quote you long and eloquent passages on both from his own speeches. To quote CS Lewis, I did not realize that I would have to deal with the disarming naivety of critics who quote as gospel things said by the master of lies to his army during war speeches. In all your readings about Hitler, did you never come across anything that suggested that truth was not exactly sacred to him? Have you never realized that he was always using words as weapons, and primarily to displace his enemies, deprive them of the ground to criticize him, and possess this ground himself - however unsuited he may have been to it? Hitler was out to destroy Christianity, but also to claim its mantle for himself. Hitler was out to create a militarized world, but he repeatedly made the most ardent, the most touching confessions of love for peace, and never stopped trying to pretend that he had simply been forced into going to war. And if you think that your way of taking Hitler seriously in his claim to Socialism is any different from that of anyone who would take his claim of pacifism seriously, compare your attitude to that of NIcholson Baker - a writer who has recently published an anthology (!) of contemporary texts trying to prove that Britain and Churchill were the warmongers and that Hitler was left with no choice but to react to their aggression.