If the American society is constantly torn apart by ideological confrontations, why is it so hard for some Americans to imagine that people in other countries can be just as divided?
Any society, even the freest democracy, has likely autocrats willing to take advantage of others, latent victims willing to give up freedom in exchange for entitlements, and budding free people willing to resist tyranny and defend their liberties. The ratio of these groups in each country may be different, but no nation is ever unanimous — despite all assurances to the contrary by dictators who claim to speak for all people.
Statist regimes need unanimity to justify their existence. If a government’s survival depends on unanimity, it will inevitably end up repressing free speech. That alone makes statism an unacceptable form of government. Any government’s claim to speak for all people automatically makes it a suspect, just as unanimous voting is a symptom of tyranny.
The unanimity of the Soviet people was a myth. Measuring internal opposition in the absence of freedom may be impossible, but the trickle of dissidents and defectors should have been a good clue. Yet the Western media unquestionably repeated the regime’s official lie that all Soviet people were united behind the Communist Party and its policies.
As false data leads to false conclusions, benevolent Western intellectuals often shrugged off the Soviet tyranny as “the choice of the people,” explaining it away with outlandish nonsense like “the mysterious Russian character” or “the collectivist nature of the Slavic soul,” which was a patent absurdity, especially considering that not all people in the Eastern Bloc were Russians or even Slavs. The same thinking prompted less benign people to demonize all Russians, imagining them as lazy and bloodthirsty brutes. Ironically, the latter opinion I mostly heard from elitist champions of the collectivist utopia, who despised the USSR for giving communism a bad name by having turned such a beautiful idea into a monstrosity due to some alleged ethnic deficiency.
Apparently they believe it could have worked with a “better” ethnic group!
As a rule, these intellectuals religiously challenged every bit of their own capitalist system, but the one thing they didn’t challenge was the myth that the Soviet government spoke for its people, acted in their interests, and had their unanimous support. “I hope the Russians love their children too,” crooned Sting, as if there was any connection between what the Russians loved and what the Soviet government did. Further showing a lack of any sense, Sting claimed in the same song that he didn’t believe Reagan, that “there is no monopoly in common sense,” that “we share the same biology regardless of ideology,” and “there’s no such thing as a winnable war.” In other words, all things being relative and all people being mindless biological units anyway, the free world might as well give in to the tyrants ruling over a gigantic gulag, whose voiceless inmates, Sting hoped, loved their children.
This wouldn’t be so pathetic if many Western politicians didn’t follow similar logic and form similar opinions — exactly what the myth of the Soviet “unanimity” was meant to accomplish.
The fundamental reason for this deformed perception of the collective mind of the people living under totalitarian regimes is IGNORANCE. Or rather an overwhelming ignorance. For example: a few years ago I read an article (I cannot provide the link though) that almost 90% of Scandinavians have NEVER heard about Soviet gulags. Can you imagine that the people who have been living with the most barbaric regime in history of humanity across the border for 70 years have no idea about the true nature of their neighbour?
Things look exactly the same in my own Aussie. Out of, perhaps, hundred people asked whether they have read The Black Book Of Communism, or at last Solzenitzin’s Gulag Arhipelago (which is more known) none of them was able to give me a positive answer.
Can anyone wonder that such a breathtaking level of ignorance makes so easy for The Fifth Collumn of Communo-Fascism to spread the lies about the alleged unity of the people living under the totalitarian regimes?
I remember when living in Poland still, the Commies have always been claiming that during the “elections” they were getting 99,9% support from the Poles. Averyone in Poland knew that it was a LIE, but there was no doubt that many in the so called “West” accepted that nonsense.
The ignorance is the rich soil on which the EVIL breeds…
Oleg Atbashian is a Ukranian who never left Soviet Ukrania . . .
EXCELLENT ARTICAL …how even today the progressives still voice the same worn out and dishonest propaganda.
there are none so blind as those who will not see.
DON’T FEED the TROLL(s)
here is a short video clip …it highlights how marxism has been using education to spread their ideology in north america
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTmbcyeZ9ic&feature=related
it is all in this short clip ..why trolls, or most democrats keep using the same arguments regardless of what they are shown.
PS love your web page http://thepeoplescube.com/
Oleg, God bless you, but you shout your truths into the wind.
They won against the Birchers, McCarthy, Dulles in the 50′s — and against holdouts like Goldwater in the 60′s .
Informed and articulate opposition to statism died nearly 3 generations ago. Media and academia define truth. We stand at 1933 again.
The mouth-breathing hordes of Bolshis and unionists possess the commons. A fascist gang runs the palace. Go Galt!
Pelaut – You have good points but you may be too pessimistic. Our side has not yet lost this war of attrition. Per Wretchard in his Healthy Debate piece “[the “health care” issue] has become the locus of a meeting engagement by two opposed forces whose differences have been building.” Events over the past 8 months have made it clearer to non-politically active people what’s at stake as evidenced in the Tea Party/Town Hall protest movement.
Our side now better understands the tactics and propaganda of the Left and is beginning to use it against them (thanks in part to Oleg & many others). Vanderleun at American Digest coined the term “Conservative Revolutionary Front (CRF)”:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/art_within_america/half_the_jokers_on_you.php
The confrontation is here now and will continue. I optimistically believe we won’t loose this war of attrition (too many of us) and that we’re better prepared now than we have been before. I think (hope) we’ve learned our lessons and that “we won’t get fooled again”.
The ignorance of which you speak is one of design. In a country where Bill Ayers, his wife, and Mark Rudd can go into education, one couldn’t expect anything else. Did we think they were going to teach our children about the gulags? Do we think when most of our nation’s history textbooks are written by a man who says “objectivity is undesirable” that we would have any other result? The history of Vietnam is always taught as one of an unjust cause that we had no right to enter. Never do we hear about what happened to the South Vietnamese after we left.
Thank you for a great article.
“The history of Vietnam is always taught as one of an unjust cause that we had no right to enter. Never do we hear about what happened to the South Vietnamese after we left.”
The same thing that happened to China: they became prime suppliers of Walmart.
it is all laid out here ….it is the path we are on.
welcome to MARXISM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B30kycrcRGY
the old is new and you is screwed.
The article conveys an important message: hierarchies lie.
Excellent series of articles Mr. Atbashian.
bibio44:
“The same thing that happened to China: they became prime suppliers of Walmart.”
Cute, but not totally accurate.
What also happened is that thousands took to the sea and made it down the Thai and Malaysian coasts to become a colony of floating refugees, mainly in Singapore, where they pimped their daughters out to the seamen of the world, and were known as “Bum-boat Girls”.
I guess that was considered a more desirable future for their children than a spell in a Viet Namese Communist Re-Education camp.
And frankly, those were the lucky ones.
I started sailing in the mid-1980′s, and it was still a common enough occurrence to rescue the Viet-Namese “Boat People” far out in the shipping lanes of the South China Sea.
The unlucky ones may have once been occupants of the derelict boats that also littered the sea lanes thereabouts at that time.
God only knows what happened to those wretched folks.
That’s all you need to know about the practice, as opposed to the theory, of Marxism/Maoism.
# 1 Bogdan:
Same here, in the U.S. Sometimes it’s real ignorance, that is lack of a solid education and information. It’s mostly among the young.
The rest is willful ignorance, which is no ignorance at all. It’s a well thought-out, well-reasoned (most of the folks in this category have lots of schooling) perversion of history, of its meanings and concepts, together with a perversion of language. They always go together.
Take the example of my Democratic representative in the State Assembly. He claims to understand the fate of the peoples in Eastern Europe because he was born and raised on a U.S. army base abroad, during the Cold War–as if that says much in and by itself!–but claims that gay and lesbians are “systematically oppressed” in this country, just as another minority group, petty ex-offenders, are for being denied the right to vote.
And yes, you’ve guessed it, he’s got some degree from Harvard–but not in hard sciences; it’s in “Russian Studies”!
Need I say more? To have a degree in “Russian studies” and not understand what real “oppression” is, as manifested throughout Russia’s/Soviet Empire’s history?
Oleg:
Thanks. Great piece.
I’m waiting for the next installments to see if you are going to bring up the people who benefitted from totalitarian systems. They were not a few. Commies lifted up whole sections of society, from the hoplessly poverty-stricken to the criminal, and co-opted them in the huge bureaucratic government network/apparat, with the promise of perks and privileges. With all the terror, the commies wouldn’t have lasted as long as they did without the support of this newly-empowered class. Gorby and Yeltsin came from that class. I was born into it. Along the way, the fellow-travelers were co-opted, the intelligentsia–you know perfectly well how nicely the conforming ones were rewarded.
2. Troll:
“Oleg Atbashian is a Ukranian who never left Soviet Ukrania . . .”
And what, may I ask is wrong with being a Ukranian? Who better understands the value of freedom than someone who has been oppressed. By the way, Mr. Atbashian lives in NYC and has an excellent website I highly recommend.
…14 sodacrackers ..that is just a tactic of the leftists/marxist. attack the messenger while ignoring the message.
DON’T FEED the TROLL(s)
here is a short video clip …it highlights how marxism has been using education to spread their ideology in north america
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTmbcyeZ9ic&feature=related
it is all in this short clip ..why trolls, or most democrats keep using the same arguments regardless of what they are shown.
PS love your web page http://thepeoplescube.com/
Yeah, let’s get out there and kill all those evildoers andw wipe out those evil regimes so we can show all those lib poosies what real men we war.
Excellent piece – unfortunately the media and the education system in the US are infested by Walter Duranty-type of people.
RE #16/Horace Wells: [...] let’s get out there and kill all those evildoers andw wipe out those evil regimes so we can show all those lib poosies what real men we war. [...]
Horace, it’s not about going out there and show ‘them. Apparently you haven’t learnt yet that conservatives have never been very enthusiastic interventionists, so – it’s about making aware people around here about how well they do, and about how easy their well-being here can become an awful life like in a communist country, courtesy to a left wing dictatorship nurtured by apathy and ignorance.
And since now we’re caught in this public health debate – buddy, next time when you need medical assistance go to Cuba and try to survive their socialist public care (but this as a Cuban not as an American used for propaganda).
RE #2/ Troll [...] Oleg Atbashian is a Ukranian who never left Soviet Ukrania [...]
and…
… Troll is dolt who never left his Che Guevara poster-pestered basement in Brox…
…why is it so hard for some Americans to imagine that people in other countries can be just as divided?
“some” Americans have a vested interest in painting America as the she devil relative to other countries. For this vision to hold water, other countries (i.e., all countries except the US, all those countries whose favor we’re constantly trying to win, see Barack Obama) must be presented as happy, homogeneous and idyllic, relative to the disharmony of the greedy She Devil.
Yet the Western media unquestionably repeated the regime’s official lie that all Soviet people were united behind the Communist Party and its policies.
I didn’t get that in my formative years, we were constantly hearing stories of shortages (long lines for a loaf of bread, a roll of toilet paper) & oppression in the Soviet Union.
Plus I read a lot of Solzhenitsyn. I never made it through the Gulag Archipelago, but read a lot of his fiction which was based on his own experiences in the Gulag.
Later in life during his “exile” in the NE United States, Solzhenitsyn didn’t have a lot of positive things to say about America. He seemed to view us as self-indulgent, spoiled brats (some truth there) but I was a little surprised at the depth of his criticism for this country.
Love for Mother Russia, I guess, at least he got to return home before he died.
I admire people like you who take the time to do all this research and then to share the results with others. Due to time constraints I will have to come back and read all the articles you have linked to.
Thanks for the share.
I just hope that somehow, someday we come up with a system that helps the poor get decent, affordable health care. Like many Americans, I too have to rely on deceit and emergency rooms in order to get to see a doctor. Which of course I do, like most of my friends now do as I taught them how to do it. Its three times more expensive for others to pay for but its necessary. Maybe, OBama will succeed and bring some change, but fighting the right wing and the rich medical companies has never been successful in the past. I doubt democrats will win this battle either. Our thought are with them.
#15 George S. thank you! I did promise myself not to feed the trolls as I know they do not ever listen.
Oleg, once again you have spoken the truth eloquently.
Thanks very much.
Stephen
Unfortunately, what only matters to the left wing is the collective. The society at large is not made up of individuals, but of groups of victims with a “gender”, “race” or “class” consciousness. In other words, the left is the real world equivalent of the borg from star trek
You will be assimilated into the collective. Resistance is futile.
Thanks for the series. Great insights.