Home The Dirty Red Secrets of May
Home The Dirty Red Secrets of May

The Dirty Red Secrets of May

American leftists celebrated the venerable Communist holiday of May Day in the traditional fashion. Portland grad students, who have never worked a day in their lives, marked International Workers Day by smashing the windows of local businesses. There's a long proud tradition of the revolutions of the working class being led by rich leftists like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Castro to whom work is an evil mystery that they spent their miserable lives resolving never to become acquainted with.

The New York Times, which has far too many of its own windows to go around smashing those of others, instead offered some sickening nostalgia for the red dead past with a little piece titled, "When Communism Inspired Americans."

Which Americans did Communism inspire? Communists and their fellow travelers. Despite the news stories cheerfully reporting on May Day protesters in the United States waving Soviet flags, there aren't very many Communists in this country. Communism is a demanding mistress. It requires knowing a whole lot, not so much about the real world, but about Communism.

Most leftists are dilettantes. They admired and admire Communism's commitment to murdering millions of people and arguing the esoteric dogmas of the party line. It's this latter that Gornick's New York Times piece bleeds with nostalgia for. She tells us, again and again, that the Communists were wonderfully inspirational because they sat around kitchen tables arguing about ideas.

So did the Nazis. But the New York Times doesn't print fond recollections of debates over whether the Japanese really counted as Aryans and how National Socialism should approach the rights of workers. Nostalgia for the Third Reich is rightly regarded as abominable. And the hobby of those who have a soft spot for its murderous totalitarian ideology.

Curiously, the left never applies this same indictment to its own fondness for Communism. Instead it traffics in nostalgia for Communism's idealism, as if its ideals were any nobler than those of Nazism. But the left believes they were. And how could it not? Communism is just the left taken to its inevitable conclusion. And so the left excuses Communism's excess of enthusiasm for the cause.

Mistakes were made. The mass murder of millions being one of them. Generations of repression being another. Forced abortions, mass starvation, forced labor, slavery, death camps, virulent racism, psychiatric torture, invasion and terrorism being a few others. But their ideals were so idealistic.

Communism didn't inspire Americans, it did inspire the left to try and turn America into a totalitarian state. It still does. This is the dirty little secret that leaks out of the left. When the media runs these evocative nostalgic pieces about Communism, it's the equivalent of a pedophile sharing snapshots of summer camp. It's the disgusting secret of truly vile people leaking out.

And the vile people are the cultural leftist elites claiming to be our moral superiors on account of their commitment to total government control of everything... for the benefit of the people.

Sound familiar?

The double standard is why Nazi historical revisionism is evil, but Communist historical revisionism gets a wink and a nod. It also makes a mockery of the conviction that the mass murder of Jews for the sake of a totalitarian ideology during the 20th century was a bad thing that we ought to deplore.

The Soviet Union began murdering Jews when the Holocaust was just an evil twinkle in a mad Fuhrer's eye. It went on murdering Jews long after he shot himself in the head. Stalin liked Hitler's Holocaust so much that he tried to plan his own version of it. He would have gotten away with it too if he hadn't died, throwing the Soviet Union and his various malicious plans into chaos with it.

The left doesn't believe that Hitler was bad because he killed Jews. Mass murder isn't a crime in the left's eyes. Just ask Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of the gang of monsters whom the left defended in papers just like the New York Times until they had committed the worst of their crimes.

As long as the Hitler-Stalin pact held, leftists vehemently campaigned against war. There were plenty of "Hitler is bad, but" pieces of the sort that they're running about North Korea or Iran. Hitler only became truly irredeemable when he invaded the Soviet Union. And then everyone, except the Trotskyists, decided that Nazi Germany was utterly evil. Leftist fellow travelers went, in the span of days, from protesting "warmongering" and "militarism" to demanding action yesterday.

And that too is another dirty red secret of the left.

It's inconceivable that the New York Times or any paper would run a glowing piece titled, "When Nazis Inspired Americans". No fond recollections from participants in the Madison Square Garden rally. No fond memories of Bund camps. No sugar-coated recollections of how the Thousand Year Reich would create a better world... only to then learn that Hitler wasn't a very nice man.

But "When Communism Inspired Americans".regurgitates the same exact message. And it remains acceptable because the left feels an emotional and intellectual connection with Communists.

That is the ugly truth at the root of our conflict.

Liberalism, the old vintage that actually stood up to Communists, is as dead as the dodo. In its place are smug leftists eager to repeat the same old sins.

Nazis don't get a forum to pour out their romantic nostalgia for attending Hitler rallies. Communists do because the left sympathizes with them. It must offers occasional apologies and disavowals, but the love for a horrifying ideology that was totalitarian all the way down, whose mass murder of millions was not an accident of fate, but was always an integral part of it, tells the truth about the left.

"The party was possessed of a moral authority that lent shape and substance, through its passion for structure and the eloquence of its rhetoric, to an urgent sense of social injustice," Gornick writes.

Gornick begins with individuals and concludes with the ugly collectivist mass of the party. It is always the party in the end. The individuals are disposable. They are, as Stalin said, statistics.

The rest is tiresome. The same recitations of "We knew nothing". As if the crimes of Communism had been some sort of mystery until Khrushchev admitted them.

And what were the Moscow Trials? What were the decades of reports about abuses and atrocities?

Like Pol Pot's crimes, an outraged left denied it all.

After all the mass murders and crimes have been admitted, the left always returns to this nostalgia. To that emotional linkage to the total commitment to a totalitarian state.

To the party.

This is the left. It returns, like a dog to its vomit, to the dream of the true radicalism of a totalitarian leftist state. It occasionally deals with uncomfortable truths. Circles around them. And then it lapses back into an opium dream of Marxists sitting around a kitchen table and debating which windows to smash first and whom to shoot first.

Comments

  1. Anonymous3/5/17

    I wanted to puke when I read that article Monday. To think an American publication would publish that trash. The left is becoming more brazen. Trump is the excuse for them to unveil themselves for all to see. There's no hiding. And it included the hammer and sickle. They're an enemy inside the wire. Call them what they are.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Infidel3/5/17

    Good point about Marx/Engels/Lenin not having experience with work. Led them to underestimate the difficulties involved. Lenin said something about how work was so simple that any reasonably intelligent person could do it, hence confiscating the means of production was justified, with the well-known disastrous results. Can see it in Venezuela, the best current example.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've always tried to get my head around my leftist aquaintances who say that communism would work here in America. It's only those other countries that couldn't make it work. Geez.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jean-Francois Revel would have loved this analysis, as I do.

    ReplyDelete
  5. D.D.Mao3/5/17

    "When Communism Inspired Americans"


    And here I thought it would be an article about Bernie Sanders!


    The point I'm attempting to make is ideologies don't have the same readily stark identities today as they had years ago mainly due to the quick snap shot of events portrayed on the numerous means of social media. Case in point I recently spent a good amount of time arguing with young people on a forum concerning the incendiary rhetoric of the John Birch Society. When we went in the military back in the 60's they asked us if we belonged to the J.B.S. or any other organization who's agenda was to over throw the government. Another case in point is how Conservatism morphed into Trumpism with the younger generation of voters. It's no wonder Bernie Sanders brand of socialism attracts younger crowds when the old political parties views are considered nihilistic but "working for what you want" and giving government back to the people resonates. They feel they can accomplish this with comforting the afflicted by afflicting the comfortable. Or selling "redistribution of Wealth" to the gullible.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Which Americans did Communism inspire?"

    Um, let's see. I counted the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Whitaker Chambers, Alinsky, Noam Chomsky, Bill Ayers, Bernie Sanders, and the inevitable "luminaries" from the entertainment industry, like Woody Guthrie and Michael Moore.

    " ... there aren't very many Communists in this country."

    What a relief. Look at the mess the "few" on my above list have made in this country. And the few we have now are not doing badly, either. I hate to think where we'd be if there weren't very many communists in America. Ok, forgive the sarcasm.

    There may not be very many people who openly profess to be communists. But there certainly are A LOT of communists who go by such euphemisms as 'progressive,' 'socialist,' 'liberal,' 'anarchist,' etc. And yes, these communists by any other name are every bit committed to the most important communist tenet: the complete elimination of dissent/dissenters, either by murder (though they prefer to call it execution), abortions on demand (helps the environment), slavery (e.i. government-dependency), virulent racism, psychiatric torture, persecution ... the possibilities are endless and leftists are not particular. Just as long as the goal is achieved.

    "Communism is a demanding mistress. It requires knowing a whole lot, not so much about the real world, but about Communism."

    Not anymore, I don't think. As Daniel well said, all the horrors of the Soviet days are now brushed under the carpet and referred to as "aw shucks." Uncle Joe had a couple of loose tiles, but his heart was in the right place, bless him. Hey, we're all human.

    These days all lefties need to know is that "communism cares for and helps the poor." This fantastic idealization ... nay, this obfuscation of the truth about communism, is the modern leftist's get-out-of-jail card. All the horrors of communism are excused and/or white-washed because, as Daniel said, their "ideals are so idealistic."

    Perhaps I'm too pessimistic. But I still believe that although Reagan may have defeated the Soviets, Communism is still alive and kicking (pardon the pun), thank you very much.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Infidel3/5/17

    Actually Uncle Joe was the perfect example of a "real" Communist: street thug, criminal,killer, who worked his way up the party apparatus, backstabbing and assassinating his opponents, after seizing power, instituting a reign of terror, and genocides.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous3/5/17

    Kitchen tables must be evil. I have watched even "libertarians" in their deliberations. Only those knowing ALL of von Mises, Hayek, Rand, et al would be accepted to the tabernacle. Only the anointed would wield the wand of power. And once again, we are led by narcissists for whom ends justify means.

    True liberty prevails in inverse proportion to size of government. Prospective tyrants posing as adherents of some doctrine always acquire, never relinquish power.

    Liberty only grows outward from individuals, not imposed from above. As counter-intuitive as this is, we should consider how a social species can hold on to individual liberty.

    ABSJ1136

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous3/5/17

    DDMao- Yes, ….’selling "redistribution of Wealth" to the gullible…’ is still collectivism-socialism or communism - by any name, and always at the endpoint of violence, as things go always wrong, with way over a hundred million lives in evidence everywhere on the globe throughout history, one version or another has been tried. ALWAYS destined to failure, as IT IS FUNDAMENTALLY AGAINST HUMAN NATURE, God’s design, to be free of other’s dictates, always, “or what’s a brain for?” The ‘bus driver’ and all the rest learn that truth, eventually, after the blood, torture, starvations, and pain inflicted, especially the many millions of victims, and those ‘les gullibles’ who didn’t pay the price, always find the excuse to try the mythology again-the eternal loser’s argument to “deny truth, marginalize, distract”!

    The true agenda of both leaders and members of the democratic party, in its many lost stripes, has finally degenerated into lawlessness, criminality, and collectivism (currently a combination of fascism, and anarchy), from its immoral roots in the uncivil War, trying to save slavery, in its beginning. The climate warmist marchers, got the message, as explained by a woman secretary of a part of the UN, which is to “bring down capitalism” for climate warming excuses, which is seen well here, the uneducated having gotten the message-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khvjz3vh8lc 2.5 minute vid., interview of climate marchers.
    https://www.iceagenow.info/goal-destroy-capitalism-official-admits/
    http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/

    Jack I am

    ReplyDelete
  10. Since the evaporation of nearly all communism in the real world the left is able to leverage that to their own advantage because there are few real world examples left to contradict their theories.

    ReplyDelete
  11. D.D.Mao3/5/17

    Jack I am:

    Thank you for your kind acknowledgement of my post. I appreciate the links you enclosed to substantiate your points..........D.D.M.

    ReplyDelete
  12. D.D.Mao3/5/17

    ABSJ1136:


    Thought you may enjoy this quote I recently read. The name of the author escapes me at the moment:

    "It is worth remembering that, before someone decided that the perilous complexities of the modern world left us with no choice but to trust the government, we built a governing system on the premise that it can't be trusted".

    ReplyDelete
  13. And people continue to wail about "the Blacklist"! According to conventional wisdom today, actors and writers were blacklisted not because they were Communists or members of front groups, but for various other reasons, like A: they were Jewish, B: they dared criticize the status quo, C: They had compassion for the "little Guy", D: they refused to "conform", or various and sundry other reasons, everything except taking orders from a government that killed, I think, 50 million people. ("Oh, but we had no right to talk, maaaaaan, we killed the Indians and had slaves, and were bad to a lot of people, and........")

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous3/5/17

    The trifecta of evil and oppression and genocide: nazism, communism and islam.

    KingWestern Man

    ReplyDelete
  15. Appalled by NYT's "nostalgia" piece. It really drives home how leftists like violence. The talk about a better world quickly turns into Gulags (if not summary executions) for those that seem hesitant about this better world.

    The recent violence is completely NYT approved.

    ReplyDelete
  16. There are three things all good lefties hate above all else. Consistency of thought, history and truth - when that contradicts their latest narrative - which may not last as long as the latest ladies fashion. The only solid moral foundation the left consistently embraces is to do or say whatever it takes to get power and control everyone's life. And since history clearly demonstrates leftism is a disaster everywhere in the world it was imposed - and that history is incontestable - for them to keep promoting it means they must be insane.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous5/5/17

    Dear D.D.Mao;
    Thank you friend; the Framers did indeed craft our Constitution to withstand the scoundrels when Statesmen were scarce. Also, per Breitbart, "Politics is downstream of culture". Let's hope the kids get wise to the seduction of leftist sophistry.
    ABSJ1136

    ReplyDelete
  18. Anonymous6/5/17

    Frau Katze touched on the real reason why the Left is still hanging around causing trouble:

    "The talk about a better world quickly turns into Gulags (if not summary executions) for those that seem hesitant about this better world."

    It's all about rejecting the world as it is, and the desire to build a better one - a perfect one. That is the meaning of Saul Alinsky's dedication to the "original revolutionary, Satan". That is why the continuing crisis (to borrow a phrase from Bob Tyrrell) only seems to grow worse. It goes beyond a "total commitment to a totalitarian state". That is only the means to a visualized glorious end - a perfect world where injustice is stamped out forever. Of course you need the totalitarian state to do the stamping. But if there was another way, that would become the new means to the same end. It's a religion in every sense of the word, that is paradoxically against all religions, because religions tend to separate, and make distinctions, and uphold the individual as opposed to the collective. (I like the story Jesus told about the shepherd who left the 99 sheep - the collective - to go find that one lost sheep. Jesus was no collectivist!)

    Anyway, great article, as always.

    Marko

    ReplyDelete
  19. Y. Ben-David8/5/17

    I was really astounded when I saw this in the NYTIMES. This really shows how radicalized the "mainstream" Left/Liberal/"Progressive" camp has become. Watch for extremist Left candidates getting the nomination for Congress, and state and local governments in the 2018 elections. Trump's going back on his promises and general ineffectiveness is going to make it easier for them.

    ReplyDelete
  20. AesopFan20/5/17

    for DDMao and ABSJ1136 -
    Your quote came from Andy McCarthy here http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446767/fisa-reauthorization-federal-intelligence-surveillance-act-trump-administration-spying-scandal-national-security

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

You May Also Like