Welcome to Catallarchy?s annual Day of Remembrance. Contrary to the promises of ideology, nations whose governments pledged to create a workers? paradise usually became places of rampant slave labor. The plight of the less fortunate became even less fortunate. Today, we chronicle a small part of their lives.
Good column on “totalitarian chic” today in the Boston Globe from Jeff Jacoby:
EXCERPT:
[i]What can explain such ''communist chic?" How can people who wouldn’t dream of drinking in a pub called Gestapo cheerfully hang out at the KGB Bar? If the swastika is an undisputed symbol of unspeakable evil, can the hammer-and-sickle and other emblems of communism be anything less?
Between 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis slaughtered some 21 million people, but the communist nightmare has lasted far longer and its death toll is far, far higher. Since 1917, communist regimes have sent more than 100 million victims to their graves – and in places like North Korea, the deaths continue to this day.
The historian R.J. Rummel, an expert on genocide and government mass murder, estimates that the Soviet Union alone annihilated nearly 62 million people: ''Old and young, healthy and sick, men and women, even infants and the infirm, were killed in cold blood. They were not combatants in civil war or rebellions; they were not criminals. Indeed, nearly all were guilty of . . . nothing."
Yet communism rarely evokes the instinctive loathing that Nazism does. Prince Harry’s swastika was way over the line, but Tim Vincent’s hammer-and-sickle was kitschy and cool. Why?[/i]
[i][Ilya Somin, May 1, 2007 at 4:47pm] Trackbacks
A May Day Proposal:
Today is May 1, AKA May Day ( May Day - Wikipedia ). May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their regimes. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism ( http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087 ) estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day ( Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Memorial Day ). It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so. I suggest that May Day be turned into Victims of Communism Day. I am, of course, open to suggestions for the official name of this day of commemoration. Maybe someone will come up with a better one than I have.
The main alternative to May 1 is November 7, the anniversary of the communist coup in Russia. However, choosing that date might be interpreted as focusing exclusively on the Soviet Union, while ignoring the equally horrendous communist mass murders ( MURDER BY COMMUNISM ) in China, Camobodia, and elsewhere. So May 1 is the best choice.
UPDATE: I don’t claim that this idea is original, as I suspect that it has been suggested before. But whether original or not, I think it should be pursued, perhaps in conjunction with the opening of the Victims of Communism Memorial ( http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/ ), scheduled for June 12.[/i]
Welcome to The Distributed Republic’s 5th annual remembrance of the victims of communism. Our busy personal lives made this year’s event a bit sparser than usual, but we hope you enjoy the postings.
It is also a day of remembrance in Israel for the Victims of the Holocaust,I believe.Sirens sound for 2 minutes country wide and the country comes to a complete standstill for that time.
[quote]lixy wrote:
May those killed in the name of capitalism, and those who starved in need because of capitalist actions of inactions, rest in peace.[/quote]
You missed one. Fixed.
And we have a day for that. We call it Memorial Day.
[quote]lixy wrote:
May those killed in the name of capitalism, and those who starved in need because of capitalism actions of inactions, rest in peace.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
lixy wrote:
May those killed in the name of capitalism, and those who starved in need because of capitalism actions of inactions, rest in peace.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Good column on “totalitarian chic” today in the Boston Globe from Jeff Jacoby:
EXCERPT:
[i]What can explain such ''communist chic?" How can people who wouldn’t dream of drinking in a pub called Gestapo cheerfully hang out at the KGB Bar? If the swastika is an undisputed symbol of unspeakable evil, can the hammer-and-sickle and other emblems of communism be anything less?
Between 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis slaughtered some 21 million people, but the communist nightmare has lasted far longer and its death toll is far, far higher. Since 1917, communist regimes have sent more than 100 million victims to their graves – and in places like North Korea, the deaths continue to this day.
The historian R.J. Rummel, an expert on genocide and government mass murder, estimates that the Soviet Union alone annihilated nearly 62 million people: ''Old and young, healthy and sick, men and women, even infants and the infirm, were killed in cold blood. They were not combatants in civil war or rebellions; they were not criminals. Indeed, nearly all were guilty of . . . nothing."
Yet communism rarely evokes the instinctive loathing that Nazism does. Prince Harry’s swastika was way over the line, but Tim Vincent’s hammer-and-sickle was kitschy and cool. Why?[/i][/quote]
I’m pretty sure he dusts this column off annually, my folks subscribe to the Boston Globe and I feel like I’ve read this before.
But he’s right, I always find it moronic if not offensive when I see hammer and sickle shirts, and I find the Che stuff even worse.
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a book everyone ought to read in high school or college.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
lixy wrote:
May those killed in the name of capitalism, and those who starved in need because of capitalism actions of inactions, rest in peace.
Actually, I hope that you all know that May Day began here in the United States (in Chicago) to celebrate the struggle for the 8 hour day. You guys do remember the 8 hour day, right? I vaguely remember it.
[quote]lixy wrote:
May those killed in the name of capitalism, and those who starved in need because of capitalism actions of inactions, rest in peace.
[quote]entheogens wrote:
Actually, I hope that you all know that May Day began here in the United States (in Chicago) to celebrate the struggle for the 8 hour day. You guys do remember the 8 hour day, right? I vaguely remember it.