Dear Sunny,
Re your first video. On my last trip to America I landed at JFK, looking forward to my grope. I mean, speaking as an out-of-condition, greying, middle-aged man, who would want to see a naked picture of me? What am I, a congressman or something?
They didn’t even ask me, just stood me in something like a big phone-box. The TSA didn’t even give me a polaroid for a keepsake. Are these not legitimate cause for complaint?
But you forgot reason No. 6! You also get to be forced into massive armies to “spread the word” about your “wonderful” political philosophy. Some people would call this imperialism, but, hey, what’s in a name. I’m sure the people in Eastern Europe wouldn’t call it imperialism, let alone the people that were living behind the Berlin Wall in East Germany. Yes, remember the Berlin Wall all you wacky kids out there? Good times, good times. Those incredibly “fun” days when you were shot for trying to escape to the west and when it was a crime to even read books or magazines that had anything to do with the west. I’m sure all the people in Eastern Europe are just yearning to return to those “good old days.” I just can’t wait to sign up and take over another third-world nation, like Cuba, to “spread the word.”
And before any of you lefties out there try to make the comparison between how the Soviet Union behaved and what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, save your breath. We went into both countries because they were a threat to us, espcially with al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. I was never a fan of this “nation-building” nonsense. We should have gone into both countries, killed as many of the enemy as possible, and then left. Believe me, the people in both countries would have gotten the message if we did that. But with the Soviet Union, they took over nations simply to spread their ideology and to bring them into the Soviet sphere of influence. And, with the exception of really “fun” countries like China (with that hilarious guy Mao in charge), North Korea(Kim Jong Il and his bad hair), Cuba (Castro and his cigars) and Vietnam (some nameless Communist in charge), I don’t think anybody wanted to stick with what the Soviets had to offer. And even today, those people still want to run away from those Communist-run countries, not go to them. And that’s the difference.
A far-left newspaper added to the controversy by printing a front page saying “thank you” to the wall for “28 years of keeping the peace in Europe” and “28 years of plentiful crèche and kindergarten places”.
But, but, but, but Baryshnikov beat his little balletic feet to the U.S. as soon as he could defect so don’t know if he should be included if you want to be a really GOOD Commie Pinko.
Actually, the number of people murdered by Communist regimes is possibly a good bit higher than even 110 million, even before you count Pol Pot, Castro and the other Third World countries. How about 131 million in China and the Soviet Union alone?
The numbers are, unfortunately, in considerable dispute among historians. There are in fact two “schools”, the “big numbers” school that thinks the numbers were very large indeed and the “moderate numbers” school that thinks the numbers were not so large. Also, it is important to note that the numbers of believed victims change over time as archives are opened and new information comes to light. Remember that some archives have not yet been opened. For example, the archives in the former Soviet Union and some eastern European countries have been opened but not those in China.
R. J. Rummel’s is considered a member of the “big numbers” school. His article on this web page – http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM – gives an overview of his work and contains direct links to his “Table 1″ which lists the number of victims of “democides” (his term: it means genocides and mass murders) in each Marxist or formerly Marxist country and he gives low, average and high estimates of the number of deaths. Please note that the numbers in Table 1 don’t look very bad at all but are very grim indeed because he has failed to indicate that he is expressing the numbers in millions! Therefore, when he says the Mid(dle) estimate for the number of people killed in the Soviet Union is 61,911 he doesn’t mean 61 thousand but 61 MILLION! This is very clear when he explicitly states on the cited page: … the Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people.
Please note that Rummel’s numbers are disputed by the “moderate numbers” school of historians who are well-respected but challenge Rummel’s numbers because they think he counts some victims twice (or more). I am in no position to dispute the numbers myself since I am not a historian, just a reader of history.
I should also point out that some historians think Rummel’s numbers aren’t big enough! For example, as I’ve cited, Rummel thinks the Soviet Union was the most grievous murderer of is citizens with 61 million victims but Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday insists that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 70 million Chinese during his reign, which is double Rummel’s “middle” number of 35 million. (Chang and Halliday only talk about deaths in China while Rummel has numbers for all Communist regimes.)
If we take Rummel’s number of 61 million for the Soviet Union (which is among the highest estimates from any historian) and combine it with Chang’s and Halliday’s number of 70 million for China (which is also among the highest estimates from any historian), we have 131 milion killed in those two countries alone.
Of course, if you dismiss Rummel, Chang and Halliday and go with “moderate numbers” historians, you’ll get considerably lower numbers.
And, just as with the Nazis, there are still some hardcore Marxists that dispute that there were any mass murders in these regimes at all. For instance, one Marxist I read a few years back insisted that Stalin hadn’t killed ANYONE, although he admitted that some overzealous subordinates out in the provinces had killed a few hundred thousand people after misinterpreting Stalin’s orders.
Those may be valid points, but I think that once you start counting victims in millions it all becomes sort of academic. Whether Stalin killed 22.9 million or 61.6 million or 88 billion doesn’t really matter in the end. The numbers are horrific no matter what the final count. The fact that they can never be accurately accounted for – by millions – is a testament to how monstrous and unforgivable the crimes were.
Look at it from the perspective of a single killer. If a person should happen to murder one person, there may be some sort of mitigating factor that we can comprehend; maybe it was a crime of passion or negligence or even sheer stupidity. There may be room for some understanding if not necessarily forgiveness.
But once a person hits a certain number of victims – let’s say five – then one cannot come to any other logical conclusion that the killer is a pure menace. There can be no room for compassion or understanding or even comprehension. Really, after the second victim, one has to reasonably conclude that the killer is simply a killer. And looking at it rationally, it really doesn’t make much difference if they murdered two people or twenty. At that point it’s just numbers.
And looking at it rationally, it really doesn’t make much difference if they murdered two people or twenty. At that point it’s just numbers.
Basically, I agree with your point (all of it, not just the quoted part). As Stalin himself observed, “A single human death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” The human mind simply can’t cope with the notion of 20 million, 66 million or 131 million deaths. It’s like trying to imagine the number of grains of sand on a beach or the numbers of stars in the universe.
I also agree that once you’ve killed more than a tiny handful of people, you are simply a killer and there’s nothing defensible about it, regardless of how you choose to rationalize it.
Yet there’s an almost irrestistible compulsion about the numbers.
For the vast majority of ordinary people who get their information from the media and our indoctrinational – er, educational – institutions, the absolute worst thing that has ever happened in human history is Hitler’s murder of the Jews. If you did man-in-the-street interviews of ordinary people wandering about the local mall, I feel sure that the vast majority of them, when asked “What was the worst mass murder ever and who perpetrated it?”, would answer that it was the killing of six million Jews by Hitler. Yet this supposed “fact” is simply not true.
Hitler actually killed somewhere between 11 and 20 million people, 6 million Jews PLUS several million non-Jewish Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, mentally retarded people, etc. etc. In numeric terms, Hitler is actually two or three times as vile as the average person thinks.
But if you consider the numbers, Hitler is not the worst mass murderer in human history even if you count both his Jewish and non-Jewish victims. Lenin and Stalin appear to have killed many times the people that Hitler murdered. And Mao looks to have been even worse. Despite that, a “right wing fascist” is almost universally believed to have been the worst murderer in history while left wing “heroes of the people” like Lenin, Stalin and Mao don’t even get considered for the title of Worst Mass Murderer by the vast majority of people. The victims of the Left have simply been omitted from whatever history books they’ve been using in the schools for the last few decades.
I don’t say any of this to whitewash Hitler. Hitler was one of the vilest creatures to have ever lived and the evil he perpetrated will, I hope, be a cautionary tale for as long as Mankind endures. But I want the Left to get its full share of the “credit” for all it has done too. The Left’s tens of millions of victims were every bit as human and innocent and undeserving of their fates as Hitler’s victims. If we ignore those deaths, we tend to think they didn’t happen and that the Left has no stains on its record. That is simply not acceptable in my opinion. It is not one bit less evil for Leftists to murder their subjects than for Hitler to murder his.
Were Stalin and Mao “worse” than Hitler? Probably not. In essence, the numbers are irrelevant and your point is correct: the motivations behind murders are far more important. By this standard, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler (as well as Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Ted Bundy and other serial killers) were all simply evil and evil is an absolute, not something you can compare.
hmm – the National Socialist Workers Party – or, NAZI – with Hitler as it’s leader –
was – not – in any way, a ” – Right – Wing Fascist” apparatus, was it? — you seem to imply this, please correct me if I read this wrong —
Lenin/Stalin/Mao/Hitler and all the rest may each have had some details of their communist – socialist – nationalist ideology that were different, but, I don’t see any fundamental difference between any of them — they all included the fundamental of top-down strict control, non-democratic, anti individual rights and responsibilities.
I’m not sure, but it would seem to me that any – ‘far right’ – would have to be some sort of extreme libertarianism, rather than the above mentioned nationalist / socialist / communist -’collectives’ that forcefully restrict individualism -
[This reply is to bits. Since there is no reply option for his/her remarks I'm posting it here.]
It’s become fashionable in the last year or two for people to lump Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other equally vile individuals together as being essentially one and the same. I understand where that is coming from, namely the recognition that both Hitler and the Communists were mass murdering dictators who often used similar methods. There is, perhaps, some justice in deeming them all “collectivists” and ending the discussion there.
While I don’t dismiss this reasoning completely, I can’t fully accept it either. There WERE differences in philosophy between Hitler and the others. The others all followed Marx, or at least their interpretations of Marx, but I don’t think anyone can reasonably say that Hitler did. The Nazis loathed the Communists (both the German Communists and the foreign ones) and there were frequent, bloody street battles between the two groups as both competed for power when Germany was still a democracy. Hitler effectively abolished the German Communist Party – and all the other parties as well – and imprisoned/persecuted the Communists after the Reichstag fire, which was set by a Dutch Communist. Most telling of all, he sent 299 German divisions into the Soviet Union to crush it in June of 1941. The Soviets, of course, opposed that invasion. They were eventually successful in driving the Germans out of their country and instrumental in crushing the Nazis and their allies. Something like 27 million Soviet citizens, 11 million soldiers and 16 million civilians, died in accomplishing that victory.
I just can’t see this as anything but a massive, brutal, conflict between the Nazis and the Communists. However similar their methods and results, Hitler clearly saw profound differences between himself and his Communist foes. I simply can’t see them as being more-or-less the same because THEY didn’t see themselves as the same. Furthermore, they STILL don’t see each other as the same. One of the vilest insults a modern Marxist can utter is to call an opponent a fascist.
Call me “old school” or just plain old-fashioned but I still see differences between the two ideologies.
Baryshnikov did indeed defect in Canada but he didn’t stay long. He moved on to the United States and became a citizen in 1986, according to Wikipedia.
In America, you have to become a Communist to experience the same joy of counter-culture rebellion where you can take all your victim issues out on everybody else but appear as if you just “care about people.”
sunny, thank you for the truth you’ve let me see.
sunny, thank you for the facts from a to z.
my life was torn like a windblown sand,
then a rock was formed when we held hands.
sunny one so true, i love you.
And I love all that wonderful state music too!
However, I prefer the small c communism, it’s all the rage at the Midwest Academy and at Cooper Union. Plotting to destroy capitalism is like a fun game of Risk! I always try to gain the Kamchatka Peninsula and hold it. That way I can see Alaska from my house.
Re-education camps are cool, sort of like Occupy the Gulag. And you have to love agrarian reformers. I know all sorts of Hollywood celebrities do.
And, if you can’t follow the wisdom and logic of Hollywood celebrities…how useful are you?
Good thing we have a free and fair press here to keep us informed as to all the best ways to think. Sunny, you are the best! Better red than read, I believe!
Sunny: You have rendered such a great service explaining to lazy, gun-clinging Americans just why their kids need to be groped at airports in order to stop bomb-toting terrorists from blowing up airplains, the need to accept a bit of Sharia Law, and perhaps set up some taxpayer financed genital mutilation centers for young girls in order to get the Islamists to like us; and just why spending more borrowed monty on stimulus projects will, this time, actually create jobs.
Now you need to explain to the unwashed masses of dolts out there why the President –bless his name — was correct when he ordered the federal government to cease and desist granting Catholic agencies funding for medical programs for the poor and destitute because the Church actually refuses to sanction abortions at these clinics.
You need to use plain, simple language to explain to the unambitious oafs out there in fly-over-country that just because Catholic agencies are the model of how such charities should be run, and that they save and improve thousands of lives each month at a fraction of the cost that would be incurred in government-staffed medical facilities, such incidentals pale in comparison to a “Woman’s Right To Choose.”
You need to explain in language that even the idiots in the Red States can understand that you need to kill unborn babies in order to save live ones.
Sunny, it was hilarious until I got to the Bamster’s picture and that sort spoiled the fun—I could feel the smile on my face melting. The O’s picture appearing in a synopsis of Communist criminality is a too stark reminder that Americans let their guard down three years ago and let some of it get into the WH.
Sunny, I think Obama should somehow be given the chance to see your “stimulus” video. No,no…if only Nancy Pelosi could see it…Ummm…How about Moore! If only Michael Moore could see it… Wait….how about Dr. Frankenfurter?! Yeah….if only….
Sunny, loved the “stimulus” video. In fact, the best I have ever seen at summing it all up. Ben Franklin would be a lucky man if you ever met. You would cut him up.
Just in time for Thanksgiving so that deserving drug runners could be home with their families for the holiday and pick up where they left off selling cocaine and pot, President Barack Hussein Obama pardoned four of them and threw in a convicted gambler just for the jollies. It’s just too bad Antoine Rezko missed the cut.
Antoine Who?
It’s easy to forget Antoine, Tony, if you ever heard of him in the first place. His case received precious little publicity from Obama’s MSM because of close his close ties to the president. Indeed, in a lengthy Chicago Tribune article on the sentencing of the convicted extortionist, Obama’s name isn’t even mentioned.
Tony is in a disreputable class with Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Floyd Mayweather, Michael Pfleger and a whole host of others, i.e., unmentionable by the mainstreamers who have been downplaying or ignoring the president’s unseemly and seamy relationships with reprobates for years in the hope that the electorate won’t notice.
And many still haven’t.
Speaking of years, the Syrian-born Rezko got 10 1/2 of them “for extorting millions of dollars from firms seeking state business or regulatory approval while he was a top fundraiser and adviser to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”
Prior to that gig, he had been a good Obama buddy during his pre-White House years. Rezko, real estate developer-extortionist, was the pre-eminent Chicago Obama patron who set up the future president in his posh pad and went on to become Obama fundraising bundler extraordinaire after that smelly deal . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=6798.)
Sunny, been watching your work for awhile. I loved the Cain video, he has violated me also!!!
Will I be needing to keep watching my other bookmarks or will all your be posted here now?
David…I do things not posted here, although PJM will have an article a week from me and they very graciously link to my latest videos. My Facebook page and blog House of Sunny will both have everything I do as it comes out. Thanks for watching!!!!
I suppose the title of this article should have been, “When Sunny Gets Blue”…
One reason you forgot to list: commies get great press.
And speaking of really cool propaganda art, be sure to listen to the many great orchestral works by the composers who were all receiving Soviet paychecks during the Communist Interregnum.
I’m not kidding. Some of it really is terrific music.
I’m particularly fond of the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich, but they’re probably an acquired taste. Give the Symphony No. 5 (1935, I think) a listen if you have the inclination. This one had an interesting history. Stalin had attended a performance of the young composer’s “Lady MacBeth of the Mtensk District” and was not impressed with the jarring cacophonies and shrill dissonances. So in Pravda there appeared an unsigned editorial entitled, “Muddle Instead of Music,” denouncing Shostakovich. It is assumed that Stalin himself wrote the editorial. Disapproval from Stalin was life-threatening, so Shostakovich immediately cancelled the premier of his Symphony No. 4, which was more of the same cacophony and dissonance, and composed instead his Symphony No. 5, subtitled, “An Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism.” It was more traditional than No. 4, more lyrical, less unmitigatedly dissonant, and was a big hit, earning Shostakovich his way back into official good graces once again. Sony still has in print, I think, a recording of this by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra from the mid-Sixties that I think stacks up well. (A later one by Ormandy & Philly, from the late Seventies or early Eighties, is also good, but maybe more hard-edged.)
The brave listener should try listening to Shostakovich’s cancelled Symphony No. 4, which wasn’t premiered until 1960 or 1961 (forget which). Ormandy & Philly also recorded this symphony for Columbia (now Sony) in the mid-Sixties, and also stacks up well. The trombone solo in the last movement by the great Henry C. Smith is wonderful. A more modern performance by Philly, conducted by Myung-Whun Chung, is a virtuosic showpiece with spectacular sonics.
Some of Shostakovich’s symphonies are outright propaganda pieces. E.g., the Symphony No. 11 (subtitled “The Year 1905″) and No. 12 (“1917″). No. 11 is played a lot and is a respected work, whereas No. 12 isn’t taken as seriously. Sorry, but I prefer No. 12. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s recordings of symphonies (conducted by Neemi Jarvi) sound wonderful.
Don’t overlook the music of Aram Khachaturian, also a great composer of grand Communist propaganda. Particularly his ballet “Gayaneh” and his Symphony No. 2, “The Bell.” In my opinion, this is one of the great 20th Century symphonies and deserves to be performed much more often.
And there are others. Dmitri Kabalevsky. Reinhold Gliere. Tikhon Khrennikov. Even the great Serge Prokofiev did his stint as a writer of Soviet music, having repatriated back to the U.S.S.R., motivated perhaps to some degree by gambling debts in the West. He was welcomed back like a prodigal son.
Now I know why the purveyors of “fine art” like Communism. They figure they’ll get a pass and a fine pampered life while the rest of us get black bread, cabbage and all the vodka we can swill. I guess that’s a fair exchange.
It sounds nice, doesn’t it? I don’t think the Soviet composers under Stalin thought that, though, at least not after gaining some experience with him. I suppose they were pampered when compared to the typical Soviet citizen, but Shostakovich feared for his life during much of Stalin’s reign of terror. I don’t suppose it’s much fun to watch your friends disappear into the night.
Like most forms of leftism, the Soviet promises were one thing, the realities another.
GREAT column Sunny, I’ve shared it with a few folks
Last month I watched the old movie Doctor Zhivago… this scene is a perfect example of the ‘glamour’ of communism when 13 families move into 1 man’s home… his freedom is slowly and deliberately stolen from him as Russia descends into communism…
Sunny: Congratulations on your “graduation” to a regular column!
Dear Sunny,
Re your first video. On my last trip to America I landed at JFK, looking forward to my grope. I mean, speaking as an out-of-condition, greying, middle-aged man, who would want to see a naked picture of me? What am I, a congressman or something?
They didn’t even ask me, just stood me in something like a big phone-box. The TSA didn’t even give me a polaroid for a keepsake. Are these not legitimate cause for complaint?
But you forgot reason No. 6! You also get to be forced into massive armies to “spread the word” about your “wonderful” political philosophy. Some people would call this imperialism, but, hey, what’s in a name. I’m sure the people in Eastern Europe wouldn’t call it imperialism, let alone the people that were living behind the Berlin Wall in East Germany. Yes, remember the Berlin Wall all you wacky kids out there? Good times, good times. Those incredibly “fun” days when you were shot for trying to escape to the west and when it was a crime to even read books or magazines that had anything to do with the west. I’m sure all the people in Eastern Europe are just yearning to return to those “good old days.” I just can’t wait to sign up and take over another third-world nation, like Cuba, to “spread the word.”
And before any of you lefties out there try to make the comparison between how the Soviet Union behaved and what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, save your breath. We went into both countries because they were a threat to us, espcially with al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. I was never a fan of this “nation-building” nonsense. We should have gone into both countries, killed as many of the enemy as possible, and then left. Believe me, the people in both countries would have gotten the message if we did that. But with the Soviet Union, they took over nations simply to spread their ideology and to bring them into the Soviet sphere of influence. And, with the exception of really “fun” countries like China (with that hilarious guy Mao in charge), North Korea(Kim Jong Il and his bad hair), Cuba (Castro and his cigars) and Vietnam (some nameless Communist in charge), I don’t think anybody wanted to stick with what the Soviets had to offer. And even today, those people still want to run away from those Communist-run countries, not go to them. And that’s the difference.
Gee, and here I thought the Berlin wall was there to keep to many people from trying to get into the people’s paradise of East Berlin.
There are people here who really believe that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/14/german-left-berlin-wall-anniversary
A far-left newspaper added to the controversy by printing a front page saying “thank you” to the wall for “28 years of keeping the peace in Europe” and “28 years of plentiful crèche and kindergarten places”.
Baryshnikov! Sign me up. There have to be some negatives to being a communist, but golly, I can’t think of any.
But, but, but, but Baryshnikov beat his little balletic feet to the U.S. as soon as he could defect so don’t know if he should be included if you want to be a really GOOD Commie Pinko.
You forgot about the cool parades. I love parades!
True. Their parades are so orderly and geometrical. It’s as mind-soothing as a French garden.
80 million murders, give or take 10 million?
Try 110 million, and give, don’t take.
You forgot to throw in Pol Pot, Ortega, Fidel, on and on and on.
Actually, the number of people murdered by Communist regimes is possibly a good bit higher than even 110 million, even before you count Pol Pot, Castro and the other Third World countries. How about 131 million in China and the Soviet Union alone?
The numbers are, unfortunately, in considerable dispute among historians. There are in fact two “schools”, the “big numbers” school that thinks the numbers were very large indeed and the “moderate numbers” school that thinks the numbers were not so large. Also, it is important to note that the numbers of believed victims change over time as archives are opened and new information comes to light. Remember that some archives have not yet been opened. For example, the archives in the former Soviet Union and some eastern European countries have been opened but not those in China.
R. J. Rummel’s is considered a member of the “big numbers” school. His article on this web page – http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM – gives an overview of his work and contains direct links to his “Table 1″ which lists the number of victims of “democides” (his term: it means genocides and mass murders) in each Marxist or formerly Marxist country and he gives low, average and high estimates of the number of deaths. Please note that the numbers in Table 1 don’t look very bad at all but are very grim indeed because he has failed to indicate that he is expressing the numbers in millions! Therefore, when he says the Mid(dle) estimate for the number of people killed in the Soviet Union is 61,911 he doesn’t mean 61 thousand but 61 MILLION! This is very clear when he explicitly states on the cited page: … the Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people.
Please note that Rummel’s numbers are disputed by the “moderate numbers” school of historians who are well-respected but challenge Rummel’s numbers because they think he counts some victims twice (or more). I am in no position to dispute the numbers myself since I am not a historian, just a reader of history.
I should also point out that some historians think Rummel’s numbers aren’t big enough! For example, as I’ve cited, Rummel thinks the Soviet Union was the most grievous murderer of is citizens with 61 million victims but Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday insists that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 70 million Chinese during his reign, which is double Rummel’s “middle” number of 35 million. (Chang and Halliday only talk about deaths in China while Rummel has numbers for all Communist regimes.)
If we take Rummel’s number of 61 million for the Soviet Union (which is among the highest estimates from any historian) and combine it with Chang’s and Halliday’s number of 70 million for China (which is also among the highest estimates from any historian), we have 131 milion killed in those two countries alone.
Of course, if you dismiss Rummel, Chang and Halliday and go with “moderate numbers” historians, you’ll get considerably lower numbers.
And, just as with the Nazis, there are still some hardcore Marxists that dispute that there were any mass murders in these regimes at all. For instance, one Marxist I read a few years back insisted that Stalin hadn’t killed ANYONE, although he admitted that some overzealous subordinates out in the provinces had killed a few hundred thousand people after misinterpreting Stalin’s orders.
Those may be valid points, but I think that once you start counting victims in millions it all becomes sort of academic. Whether Stalin killed 22.9 million or 61.6 million or 88 billion doesn’t really matter in the end. The numbers are horrific no matter what the final count. The fact that they can never be accurately accounted for – by millions – is a testament to how monstrous and unforgivable the crimes were.
Look at it from the perspective of a single killer. If a person should happen to murder one person, there may be some sort of mitigating factor that we can comprehend; maybe it was a crime of passion or negligence or even sheer stupidity. There may be room for some understanding if not necessarily forgiveness.
But once a person hits a certain number of victims – let’s say five – then one cannot come to any other logical conclusion that the killer is a pure menace. There can be no room for compassion or understanding or even comprehension. Really, after the second victim, one has to reasonably conclude that the killer is simply a killer. And looking at it rationally, it really doesn’t make much difference if they murdered two people or twenty. At that point it’s just numbers.
And looking at it rationally, it really doesn’t make much difference if they murdered two people or twenty. At that point it’s just numbers.
Basically, I agree with your point (all of it, not just the quoted part). As Stalin himself observed, “A single human death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” The human mind simply can’t cope with the notion of 20 million, 66 million or 131 million deaths. It’s like trying to imagine the number of grains of sand on a beach or the numbers of stars in the universe.
I also agree that once you’ve killed more than a tiny handful of people, you are simply a killer and there’s nothing defensible about it, regardless of how you choose to rationalize it.
Yet there’s an almost irrestistible compulsion about the numbers.
For the vast majority of ordinary people who get their information from the media and our indoctrinational – er, educational – institutions, the absolute worst thing that has ever happened in human history is Hitler’s murder of the Jews. If you did man-in-the-street interviews of ordinary people wandering about the local mall, I feel sure that the vast majority of them, when asked “What was the worst mass murder ever and who perpetrated it?”, would answer that it was the killing of six million Jews by Hitler. Yet this supposed “fact” is simply not true.
Hitler actually killed somewhere between 11 and 20 million people, 6 million Jews PLUS several million non-Jewish Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, mentally retarded people, etc. etc. In numeric terms, Hitler is actually two or three times as vile as the average person thinks.
But if you consider the numbers, Hitler is not the worst mass murderer in human history even if you count both his Jewish and non-Jewish victims. Lenin and Stalin appear to have killed many times the people that Hitler murdered. And Mao looks to have been even worse. Despite that, a “right wing fascist” is almost universally believed to have been the worst murderer in history while left wing “heroes of the people” like Lenin, Stalin and Mao don’t even get considered for the title of Worst Mass Murderer by the vast majority of people. The victims of the Left have simply been omitted from whatever history books they’ve been using in the schools for the last few decades.
I don’t say any of this to whitewash Hitler. Hitler was one of the vilest creatures to have ever lived and the evil he perpetrated will, I hope, be a cautionary tale for as long as Mankind endures. But I want the Left to get its full share of the “credit” for all it has done too. The Left’s tens of millions of victims were every bit as human and innocent and undeserving of their fates as Hitler’s victims. If we ignore those deaths, we tend to think they didn’t happen and that the Left has no stains on its record. That is simply not acceptable in my opinion. It is not one bit less evil for Leftists to murder their subjects than for Hitler to murder his.
Were Stalin and Mao “worse” than Hitler? Probably not. In essence, the numbers are irrelevant and your point is correct: the motivations behind murders are far more important. By this standard, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler (as well as Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Ted Bundy and other serial killers) were all simply evil and evil is an absolute, not something you can compare.
hmm – the National Socialist Workers Party – or, NAZI – with Hitler as it’s leader –
was – not – in any way, a ” – Right – Wing Fascist” apparatus, was it? — you seem to imply this, please correct me if I read this wrong —
Lenin/Stalin/Mao/Hitler and all the rest may each have had some details of their communist – socialist – nationalist ideology that were different, but, I don’t see any fundamental difference between any of them — they all included the fundamental of top-down strict control, non-democratic, anti individual rights and responsibilities.
I’m not sure, but it would seem to me that any – ‘far right’ – would have to be some sort of extreme libertarianism, rather than the above mentioned nationalist / socialist / communist -’collectives’ that forcefully restrict individualism -
[This reply is to bits. Since there is no reply option for his/her remarks I'm posting it here.]
It’s become fashionable in the last year or two for people to lump Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other equally vile individuals together as being essentially one and the same. I understand where that is coming from, namely the recognition that both Hitler and the Communists were mass murdering dictators who often used similar methods. There is, perhaps, some justice in deeming them all “collectivists” and ending the discussion there.
While I don’t dismiss this reasoning completely, I can’t fully accept it either. There WERE differences in philosophy between Hitler and the others. The others all followed Marx, or at least their interpretations of Marx, but I don’t think anyone can reasonably say that Hitler did. The Nazis loathed the Communists (both the German Communists and the foreign ones) and there were frequent, bloody street battles between the two groups as both competed for power when Germany was still a democracy. Hitler effectively abolished the German Communist Party – and all the other parties as well – and imprisoned/persecuted the Communists after the Reichstag fire, which was set by a Dutch Communist. Most telling of all, he sent 299 German divisions into the Soviet Union to crush it in June of 1941. The Soviets, of course, opposed that invasion. They were eventually successful in driving the Germans out of their country and instrumental in crushing the Nazis and their allies. Something like 27 million Soviet citizens, 11 million soldiers and 16 million civilians, died in accomplishing that victory.
I just can’t see this as anything but a massive, brutal, conflict between the Nazis and the Communists. However similar their methods and results, Hitler clearly saw profound differences between himself and his Communist foes. I simply can’t see them as being more-or-less the same because THEY didn’t see themselves as the same. Furthermore, they STILL don’t see each other as the same. One of the vilest insults a modern Marxist can utter is to call an opponent a fascist.
Call me “old school” or just plain old-fashioned but I still see differences between the two ideologies.
Baryshnikov … defected to Canada in 1974.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Baryshnikov
OK, maybe it was not because he was so opposed to communism, but at least he loved dance more than communism.
Baryshnikov did indeed defect in Canada but he didn’t stay long. He moved on to the United States and became a citizen in 1986, according to Wikipedia.
tooooooo funnnny.I’m glad you’re here!!!!
LOL! Hilarious column!
In America, you have to become a Communist to experience the same joy of counter-culture rebellion where you can take all your victim issues out on everybody else but appear as if you just “care about people.”
Barack answers Sunny
sunny, thank you for the truth you’ve let me see.
sunny, thank you for the facts from a to z.
my life was torn like a windblown sand,
then a rock was formed when we held hands.
sunny one so true, i love you.
And I love all that wonderful state music too!
However, I prefer the small c communism, it’s all the rage at the Midwest Academy and at Cooper Union. Plotting to destroy capitalism is like a fun game of Risk! I always try to gain the Kamchatka Peninsula and hold it. That way I can see Alaska from my house.
Re-education camps are cool, sort of like Occupy the Gulag. And you have to love agrarian reformers. I know all sorts of Hollywood celebrities do.
And, if you can’t follow the wisdom and logic of Hollywood celebrities…how useful are you?
Good thing we have a free and fair press here to keep us informed as to all the best ways to think. Sunny, you are the best! Better red than read, I believe!
Most ironic to be covering one’s body and dorm room with images of Che Guevara. The guy was a CIA agent.
….uh, oh…..he’s back.
Brava!
Sunny: You have rendered such a great service explaining to lazy, gun-clinging Americans just why their kids need to be groped at airports in order to stop bomb-toting terrorists from blowing up airplains, the need to accept a bit of Sharia Law, and perhaps set up some taxpayer financed genital mutilation centers for young girls in order to get the Islamists to like us; and just why spending more borrowed monty on stimulus projects will, this time, actually create jobs.
Now you need to explain to the unwashed masses of dolts out there why the President –bless his name — was correct when he ordered the federal government to cease and desist granting Catholic agencies funding for medical programs for the poor and destitute because the Church actually refuses to sanction abortions at these clinics.
You need to use plain, simple language to explain to the unambitious oafs out there in fly-over-country that just because Catholic agencies are the model of how such charities should be run, and that they save and improve thousands of lives each month at a fraction of the cost that would be incurred in government-staffed medical facilities, such incidentals pale in comparison to a “Woman’s Right To Choose.”
You need to explain in language that even the idiots in the Red States can understand that you need to kill unborn babies in order to save live ones.
So, go for it, Girl!
If being a commies is really as satisfying as taking a big dump who could resist?
Mao got rid of 70 million all by himself! So yeah, higher.
Sunny, it was hilarious until I got to the Bamster’s picture and that sort spoiled the fun—I could feel the smile on my face melting. The O’s picture appearing in a synopsis of Communist criminality is a too stark reminder that Americans let their guard down three years ago and let some of it get into the WH.
Sunny, I think Obama should somehow be given the chance to see your “stimulus” video. No,no…if only Nancy Pelosi could see it…Ummm…How about Moore! If only Michael Moore could see it… Wait….how about Dr. Frankenfurter?! Yeah….if only….
Sunny, loved the “stimulus” video. In fact, the best I have ever seen at summing it all up. Ben Franklin would be a lucky man if you ever met. You would cut him up.
I would totally date Ben Franklin. I mean, he’s on the HUNDRED!
Six: Tony Rezko
When Does Tony Rezko Get Pardoned?
Just in time for Thanksgiving so that deserving drug runners could be home with their families for the holiday and pick up where they left off selling cocaine and pot, President Barack Hussein Obama pardoned four of them and threw in a convicted gambler just for the jollies. It’s just too bad Antoine Rezko missed the cut.
Antoine Who?
It’s easy to forget Antoine, Tony, if you ever heard of him in the first place. His case received precious little publicity from Obama’s MSM because of close his close ties to the president. Indeed, in a lengthy Chicago Tribune article on the sentencing of the convicted extortionist, Obama’s name isn’t even mentioned.
Tony is in a disreputable class with Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Floyd Mayweather, Michael Pfleger and a whole host of others, i.e., unmentionable by the mainstreamers who have been downplaying or ignoring the president’s unseemly and seamy relationships with reprobates for years in the hope that the electorate won’t notice.
And many still haven’t.
Speaking of years, the Syrian-born Rezko got 10 1/2 of them “for extorting millions of dollars from firms seeking state business or regulatory approval while he was a top fundraiser and adviser to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”
Prior to that gig, he had been a good Obama buddy during his pre-White House years. Rezko, real estate developer-extortionist, was the pre-eminent Chicago Obama patron who set up the future president in his posh pad and went on to become Obama fundraising bundler extraordinaire after that smelly deal . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=6798.)
Sunny, been watching your work for awhile. I loved the Cain video, he has violated me also!!!
Will I be needing to keep watching my other bookmarks or will all your be posted here now?
David…I do things not posted here, although PJM will have an article a week from me and they very graciously link to my latest videos. My Facebook page and blog House of Sunny will both have everything I do as it comes out. Thanks for watching!!!!
I suppose the title of this article should have been, “When Sunny Gets Blue”…
One reason you forgot to list: commies get great press.
And speaking of really cool propaganda art, be sure to listen to the many great orchestral works by the composers who were all receiving Soviet paychecks during the Communist Interregnum.
I’m not kidding. Some of it really is terrific music.
I’m particularly fond of the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich, but they’re probably an acquired taste. Give the Symphony No. 5 (1935, I think) a listen if you have the inclination. This one had an interesting history. Stalin had attended a performance of the young composer’s “Lady MacBeth of the Mtensk District” and was not impressed with the jarring cacophonies and shrill dissonances. So in Pravda there appeared an unsigned editorial entitled, “Muddle Instead of Music,” denouncing Shostakovich. It is assumed that Stalin himself wrote the editorial. Disapproval from Stalin was life-threatening, so Shostakovich immediately cancelled the premier of his Symphony No. 4, which was more of the same cacophony and dissonance, and composed instead his Symphony No. 5, subtitled, “An Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism.” It was more traditional than No. 4, more lyrical, less unmitigatedly dissonant, and was a big hit, earning Shostakovich his way back into official good graces once again. Sony still has in print, I think, a recording of this by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra from the mid-Sixties that I think stacks up well. (A later one by Ormandy & Philly, from the late Seventies or early Eighties, is also good, but maybe more hard-edged.)
The brave listener should try listening to Shostakovich’s cancelled Symphony No. 4, which wasn’t premiered until 1960 or 1961 (forget which). Ormandy & Philly also recorded this symphony for Columbia (now Sony) in the mid-Sixties, and also stacks up well. The trombone solo in the last movement by the great Henry C. Smith is wonderful. A more modern performance by Philly, conducted by Myung-Whun Chung, is a virtuosic showpiece with spectacular sonics.
Some of Shostakovich’s symphonies are outright propaganda pieces. E.g., the Symphony No. 11 (subtitled “The Year 1905″) and No. 12 (“1917″). No. 11 is played a lot and is a respected work, whereas No. 12 isn’t taken as seriously. Sorry, but I prefer No. 12. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s recordings of symphonies (conducted by Neemi Jarvi) sound wonderful.
Don’t overlook the music of Aram Khachaturian, also a great composer of grand Communist propaganda. Particularly his ballet “Gayaneh” and his Symphony No. 2, “The Bell.” In my opinion, this is one of the great 20th Century symphonies and deserves to be performed much more often.
And there are others. Dmitri Kabalevsky. Reinhold Gliere. Tikhon Khrennikov. Even the great Serge Prokofiev did his stint as a writer of Soviet music, having repatriated back to the U.S.S.R., motivated perhaps to some degree by gambling debts in the West. He was welcomed back like a prodigal son.
Now I know why the purveyors of “fine art” like Communism. They figure they’ll get a pass and a fine pampered life while the rest of us get black bread, cabbage and all the vodka we can swill. I guess that’s a fair exchange.
It sounds nice, doesn’t it? I don’t think the Soviet composers under Stalin thought that, though, at least not after gaining some experience with him. I suppose they were pampered when compared to the typical Soviet citizen, but Shostakovich feared for his life during much of Stalin’s reign of terror. I don’t suppose it’s much fun to watch your friends disappear into the night.
Like most forms of leftism, the Soviet promises were one thing, the realities another.
GREAT column Sunny, I’ve shared it with a few folks
Last month I watched the old movie Doctor Zhivago… this scene is a perfect example of the ‘glamour’ of communism when 13 families move into 1 man’s home… his freedom is slowly and deliberately stolen from him as Russia descends into communism…
yes, how glamourous, isn’t it…… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwoUFEI7VBs&feature=share