I see now it changed from “compared leftist writers to neo-Nazis and anti-Semites” to “linking left-wing journalists & activists to neo-Nazis” which is more accurate even though the article never “attacked” them. It literally just said they associated with known anti-Semites from Russia that were celebrated by neo-Nazis for their public-facing antisemitism, which is what the retraction also says but without the supporting details.
I get that hearing things that happened (and continue to happen) is not great for your side, but the ACEWA is directly linked to antisemitism and continues to deny it which is not what someone like Greenwald or Johnson claims to want for the world.
But if someone begins to argue that Stalin was uniquely monstrous, or that his monstrousness somehow taints all socialists, then I’m going to start talking about Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine etc.
Marxist-Leninists generally claim that the USSR doubled Russian life expectancy. Wikipedia backs that up:
Some of that change is likely due to technological advancement in medicine. OTOH, in Tsarist Russia, technological advancement usually wasn’t accessible to the peasantry.
That would counter the first argument (uniquely monsterous) but is whataboutism on the second (Stalin killed millions. Well, what about all the people Churchill killed?)
Well, put it this way: Stalin taints communism no more than Churchill/Pinochet/etc taints capitalism.
You can use Stalin et al to support an “all states suck” anarchist theory, but he doesn’t work for a “capitalism is better than communism” argument. The capitalists have a hefty lead in the bodycount stakes.
Yes, a lot of the antiwar/anti-imperialist left regularly appears on Al-Jazeera, RT and Fox. The reason for this is because it’s their only access to mass viewership TV; socialists are pretty much banned from MSNBC and CNN. There is plenty of intra-left critique of them doing so; in particular, Greenwald gets a lot of stick for going on Fox.
There’s an ongoing issue with online pseudo-left Strasserists trying to manufacture an alliance between the white left and the fascists. Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) is the most prominent of these. They don’t really get any traction, but they provide easy targets for anti-socialist propagandists.
There is a view amongst some of the more conspiratorially-minded lefties that this article was actually an attempt to discredit the antiwar left in preparation for direct intervention in Syria.
Not a lot of post-Stalin communists hold him up as a good example. Even Krushchev denounced him:
Milder socialists were denouncing him while he was still alive (Orwell etc).
Stalin’s prominence in historical memory is substantially due to anti-communist propaganda. Ditto for the widespread ignorance about the crimes of the capitalist empires.
I spend half my time at BB educating Americans about their own history.
So what you’re saying is that they had to work really hard to remove Stalin because He was so deeply entrenched in the concept of Communism
From the wiki page
There were dangers in denouncing Stalin as he was placed on a pedestal both at home and among communists abroad
Really?!? You don’t think it was due to the cult of personality he propagated, with images and statues everywhere and entire cities remained after him? Maybe?
In contrast, Churchill or Pinochet aren’t associated with Capitalism in the same way at least in part because neither were really capitalists. Churchill was an hereditary aristocrat and part of the ruling classes, and Pinochet was a fascist.
In fact, I’m struggling to think of any brutal dictator that’s particularly associated with Capitalism, unless you’re using it as a catch-all term for not-Communist.
No, he was deeply entrenched in (a) the Soviet state, and (b) Western anticommunist propaganda. Lenin never wanted Stalin to succeed him, and tried to prevent it. A substantial faction of non-Soviet communists had been denouncing Stalin from the beginning.
That was a part of it, yes.
Another part of it was the flood of anticommunist propaganda produced in capitalist societies, that long predated Stalin and was directed at any and all socialist/anticolonial/antiracist activism, no matter how mild.
Western leftists had reason to be skeptical of the early reports of Stalin’s abuses; the people most loudly promoting it were known liars.
Yes.
The socialists are all lumped together and blamed for Stalin.
Meanwhile, the capitalists are treated with great nuance and a blinding lack of historical context.
(most relevant bit starts at 49 seconds in)
Fascism is capitalist. Mussolini described it as a fusion of state and corporate power; it’s basically a takeover of the state by gangsterised corporations. Pinochet ran his economy under the direct supervision of Friedman’s bastards.
Why is it hard to accept the idea that capitalists deliberately manipulate culture to their benefit?
The communists did this sort of thing as well. But the capitalists were much better at it; Hollywood and other American media dominates the cultural world.
