And if we focus on the sanguinary consequences of the two movements [communism and the KKK], the imbalance is even greater. The famous Black Book of Communism, published in 1991, claimed that across the 20th century, Communist regimes had racked up a peacetime total of roughly 100 million human fatalities, and although that latter figure has been widely disputed as a considerable exaggeration, the true number is surely in the many tens of millions, with merely the famine deaths induced by Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward of 1959-1961 usually pegged at 35 million or more.Fifteen Klan deaths versus 70,000,000 deaths caused by communists . . . . Hmmm? Do we have some kind of a massive con job going on here?Meanwhile, the victims of the notorious KKK seem rather fewer in number. The Wikipedia entry for the KKK is over twice as long as that for Communism, and hardly seeks to airbrush the misdeeds of that violent organization, but only manages to provide some 15 murder victims, all listed by name, drawn from the combined decades of the 1950s and 1960s, which represented the height of the Klan’s modern power. This apparent gap between 15 deaths and perhaps 70,000,000 or so seems rather wide.
Not only does the KKK total pale in comparison with Stalin and his considerable body-count, but during its two decades of greatest infamy all those hundreds or thousands of armed Klansmen accounted for fewer victims than the number sometimes sent to the Chicago city morgue over "a long holiday weekend these days . . . .[1]
It's the same with "Fascism" and "the Nazis." Those are left-wing phenomena firmly and dishonestly planted on "the far right" to obscure the true nature of homicidal leftism. ONLY Nazis are possessed of a terrible viciousness. The horrors of the 20th-century left are simply to be ignored like the queen's inexplicably telling a camel joke at a state funeral.
Notes
[1] "American Pravda: The KKK and Mass Racial Killings." By Ron Unz, The Unz Review, 9/19/16.
Inconsistency noted. But it's not just from the the usual suspects: Democrats and the Soviet-style media. The same Republicans hostile at Trump for pardoning Arpaio (for contempt of court) were sanguine about Obama's pardoning known killer terrorists.
ReplyDeleteYou are probably fed up with the uniparty colonel. And will Trump ever be?
I wonder if it's a case of "If only Trump knew!"
DeleteThat I am.
ReplyDeleteThe Bible has the last word where it talks about people who will strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. -- Matthew 23:24.
The dreadful toll of totalitarian government seems dispositive to me in all arguments about the relative merits of liberty versus authoriatarianism. But it isn't so with millions. Something like "health care" or "inequality" seems to trump the horror for some reason.
I despair of piercing that particular bubble.
Yes, it's a giant nut roll for the left on Arapaio. It never quits.
PS - I don't know about Trump. When he gets back to the WH he seems to breathe the Washington miasma. He's a different guy on the stump but seemingly clueless on personnel issues. He IMMEDIATELY surrounded himself with GS people and there's even a Soros connection.
ReplyDeleteThat is troublesome.
DeleteI'm hoping Trump has not been suborned.
DeleteEvery nattering, squalling voice on the Left needs to be reminded of a quote from the Original Fascist™:
ReplyDelete"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."
Adolf Hitler, May 1, 1927
Mr. Bonderenka, Pascal Fervor kindly sent me a link to a Codevilla article that does a good job of showing the extent to which Trump HAS been co-opted. By the GS, neocons, and/or Deep State. There's also a question of the influence of Ivanka. Her and Jared's presence in the WH is just weird, as is the evidence of there being a strong Soros element in Trump's past and present.
ReplyDeleteAs to whether Trump knows anything of these realities, my view is that he is a man with no intellectual depth. I'm not saying he's stupid but he was completely ineffectual when dealing with the charge that he was sympathetic to "white supremacists." C'ville was a plain vanilla instance of legal, peaceful First Amendment activity. The people with a legal right to be there were attacked by vicious, leftist thugs. The former came prepared to respond to the violence they correctly assumed would be visited by AntiFa and BAMN. They did not come prepared to initiate violence. The original C'ville protest was a minor event with a limited focus. AntiFa, however, is a poisonous, national presence whose very masked, weaponized MO is a direct affront on self-government and the legal order.
Trump does not and and did not see it for what it is and could have used the violence to call for all states to criminalize appearing masked in public. Does it take a genius to understand that no one should be allowed in the streets (outside of religious festivals and Halloween) wearing a mask, the sole purpose of which (along with identical clothing and hoods) is to avoid arrest and prosecution for criminal acts?
The same with health care. It's not in the Constitution but Trump treats it as a legit area for federal legislation. Apparently the Chief Executive hasn't heard of Art. I, Sect. 8. This man is a leaf in the prevailing wind.
I like Trump and think he is indeed a patriot with a good sense of what deals (even international "deals") are good for us and a vague but shallow understanding of the problems of the country. He's BTH (Better than Hillary) but his time in office will be four or eight years of wasted opportunity. As Codevilla points out, however, the election wasn't about Trump and others will appear to articulate the real problems in a way that Trump cannot.
Thanks, Reg. That quote goes into my box in the attic for keepers. The left has as its prime directive the goal of obscuring the crimes of the left and discrediting anything and everything that smacks of bourgeoise (aka middle class) common sense, decency, thrift, industry, and patriotism. Thus the fanaticism about characterizing National Socialists as "right-wing" or part of Christian civilization. Since right-wing on any meaningful spectrum of politics is the opposite of "left-wing" with its reliance on dictatorship, secret police, and a command economy, "right wing" must necessarily entail politics characterized by consent (including consent to laws freely enacted), life without police and other government coercion, and free markets.
ReplyDeleteBut the left works hard to locate National Socialist criminality on the "right" to smear the option of liberty. That is what the right is about. Liberty. Thus, when you read Mussolini the fascist's words, “All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”, you know you are not dealing with a political system that involves limited, consensual government.
The result of this successful leftist strategy is that the monstrous crimes of communists are not shouted to the heavens and "conservatives" are always ineffectual and on their back foot at ALL times. "Conservatives" are so witless and corrupt anyway so, like Trump in my view described above, they can't make an ideological argument in favor of breakfast. I'm afraid the wealth of America has given inordinate power to the wealthy and so our politics serve "the rich." Tens or thousands of our factories went to China there were nothing but hosannas about that -- or complete silence -- from "conservatives." It happened and continues to happen. The fate of the nation be damned for short-term sinecures at "conservative" think tanks.
It's odd for a right winger like myself to say but there are moments of cold sweat in the early hours of the morning where I can see that the early Marxists had a point. Free markets are a blessing but they can also be co-opted by people who don't give a tinker's dam about the larger society. They were clueless about what to do about it -- state control to the stars -- but their basic view was not stupid.