No one doubts today that there had been no unity in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion, activist Western media and radical intellectuals eagerly parroted Hussein’s claim of a 100 percent Iraqi vote in his support. Not that anyone believed such an improbable number; the argument rather was that the Iraqis would surely forget their quarrels and unite behind their leader to defend their national dignity from “illegal occupation.” Yet the Iraqis didn’t put up a serious fight. Apparently, they had little to defend since their dignity and much of everything else had already been stripped away from them by Saddam. But at the time the myth of Iraqi unity left a sizeable dent in public support of U.S. policies.
Today, a new, democratic Iraq has become a force for good in the Middle East, having changed the region’s ideological balance in favor of democracy and freedom. And yet not a single vocal opponent of the Bush doctrine, including Barack Obama himself, has retracted his prior statements intended to prevent such an outcome.
I happened to be in Denver during the 2008 Democratic Convention. And even though I didn’t attend Obama’s famous speech at the stadium with Greek columns, I spent some time at the local Civic Center Park observing extravagant political rallies and protest marches, most of them with a marked anti-war bent. The most conspicuous production there was a mosque-like pavilion made of translucent silk sheets with photographs of happy Iranian people going about their daily lives. In the words of its author, young American photographer Tom Loughlin, the exhibit was intended to “transcend the issue of Iranian-American relations” by reminding viewers of the “significant effect that American misperceptions might have on Iranians and on Persian culture,” and to give them “the sense that something beautiful is in jeopardy.”
The author stood nearby with a camcorder and recorded the viewers’ reactions. I offered mine, saying on camera that, objectively, his artistic talent and the money paid to finance it were being used to prop up the Iranian regime with a propagandistic bait-and-switch trick straight from the Soviet playbook. The handsome, eye-catching Persian faces that supposedly represented Iran were the bait. But the faces of those who would gain most from the positive PR message were not on the pictures. That’s because the true beneficiaries of this show were the ugly, America-hating mullahs who oppressed their own people, sponsored terrorism, destabilized the world, advocated the destruction of Israel, and were building a nuclear bomb. And therein was the switch.
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.