I already quoted Joseph Epstein’s excellent profile of Susan Sontag in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, but the whole thing is well worth of your time. This passage in particular sticks out:
Some might think Sontag’s renunciation of communism an exception to this record of nearly perfect political foolishness. In a 1982 speech at New York’s Town Hall, she announced that communism was no more than “fascism with a human face.” The remark drove bien-pensants up the (still standing Berlin) wall. Others who had fallen for the dream of communism had got off the train as long as 50 years earlier. And whatever can Sontag have meant by “a human face” to describe a monstrous system of government that in Russia, Eastern Europe, China and Cambodia slaughtered scores of millions of people?
I think can answer that — there’s the human face put on communism by Jane Fonda, sitting on an anti-aircraft cannon in North Vietnam in 1972. There’s the human face put on communism by producers Peter Davis and Bert Schneider at the 1975 Academy Awards, when they read aloud — to a standing ovation — a congratulatory telegram from North Vietnam on their anti-Vietnam War documentary, Hearts and Minds. There’s the gnomish Stalinist Pete Seeger. And then there’s Sontag’s own visage, which was remarkably photogenic in her earliest days — “intellectual cheesecake,” as Epstein describes her.
Sure communism was “fascism with a human face” — Hollywood and the left worked very hard to put it there.
When I was in art school a teacher had my class all buy ‘On Photography’ which we had to read and write a paper on. Luckily the episode of ‘The Flintstones’ where Fred and Barney tried their hand at photography was on that week and so provided grist for my paper.
I thought ‘On Photography’ pretentious garbage that showed a talent for belaboring the obvious.
If idiocy was a rare mineral, mining the intelligentsia would make us all rich.
Those in Hollywood who promote the “human face” think on the surface that they’re promoting a system in which all will be equal, but down deep believe that they’ll be like the swine in “Animal Farm” in being more equal to others due to their superior morality. It’s only the evil businessmen and capitalists in general who’ll be brought to heel, while the artistic class will still be granted the privileged lifestyles that are the requirement of their needs.
Fascism with a human face… yeah, Charles Manson’s.
Hey hey – be FAIR! Pete Seegar may be gnomish but he is NOT a Stalinist! He repudiated Stalin oh, must be four or five years ago, now. He even wrote a song about Ol’ Joe:
In 2007, in response to criticism from a former banjo student — historian Ron Radosh, who was once a Trotskyite and now writes for the conservative National Review — Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, “Big Joe Blues”[65]: “I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Do this job, no questions asked. / I got the Big Joe Blues.”[66] The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, “I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965].”[61]
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger#Repudiation_of_Stalin
Admittedly, he was only fifty years behind the rest of the world in this recognition.