I Thought Howard Zinn was Bad Enough. Now We Have to Learn Our History from Oliver Stone
Polls show that most high school students are completely unaware of American history. They confuse the Civil War with World War II; FDR with the Founding Fathers, etc. They don’t have to worry about our nation being condemned to relive the past, since they don’t understand we have one.
It’s bad enough that they get their politically correct history from Howard Zinn, about whom I recently blogged. But now, we have learned that Americans will be getting their history from a new series directed by none other than Oliver Stone, the conspiracy monger film director. Stone is already most well-known for his film JFK, in which those who saw it learned that discredited New Orleans DA Jim Garrison had uncovered the conspiracy to kill Kennedy orchestrated by the CIA and the mob, and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was part of the plot.
If JFK was, as one critic put it, “an insult to the intelligence,” Stone’s new Secret History of America, to be aired in a 10-part series on cable-TV’s Showtime channel, promises to be a virtual assault. Stone says he will concentrate on supposedly “under-reported” events, such as President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop the A-bomb on Hiroshima. Underreported? I guess that means Stone never saw the late Peter Jennings’ major ABC TV report that was based on Gar Alperovitz’s deeply flawed old book, in which Alperovitz argued that the reason the bomb was dropped was not to defeat Japan, but to threaten the Soviets. Nor has he evidently read many of the scores of books that have appeared about this decision over the years, or the debates on the controversy, including one in which I took part.
Stone, however, says he is doing this because it is “the deepest contribution I could ever make in film to my children and the next generation.” I can’t stop Stone from trying to teach made-up history to his own offspring, but I can try to warn viewers in advance from giving him any credibility.
Stone, of course, is the filmmaker who in the past few years has given his documentary eye to making hosannas to Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and now, evidently, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Those who wonder if his high regard for totalitarian dictators will have any effect on his new series should have no fears. As was recently announced, Stone hopes to “to put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler ‘in context.’” Or as Stone himself puts it: “Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history.” Always the skeptical contrarian, Stone evidently believes that if the majority of historians see them in any but a favorable light, it is time to reevaluate them.
Bizarre. I’ve always thought Hitler and Stalin were of a piece, pretty much equally evil. If there was a difference (and a reason to side with Stalin, against Hitler) it was that Adolf tried to violently conquer large portions of the globe, while Stalin just tried to subvert them into satellites. The latter strategy was less objectionable, cost less life to combat, and took longer, so that in the end it led to the defeat of the Soviets without the cataclysm that led to Hitler’s downfall.
One thing I love is the conflating of four of the left’s boogey-men, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and *McCarthy*!!!!! The first three killed millions or tens of millions, while Tailgunner Joe, as far as I know, never killed anyone. Three mass murderers and a loudmouth from the heartland. Anyone else find this a bit silly.
The key here is that Oliver isn’t going to do the writing himself, he has people for that. My guess is that if you tied him to a chair and made him take a history test, he wouldn’t be much better than those high school kids you were talking about. The writer will be the key, and my guess is he’ll be a follower of Zinn, Chomsky, and all the rest of their ilk. Problem is most of our society is primed to hear that what they’ve been told about history “is a lie” and that the “real story” is different. I can remember a neighbor once lamenting that she’d read that Errol Flynn wasn’t gay, wasn’t an enemy spy, and wasn’t all of the other bad things that had been written about him. There had recently been a bio that tried to assert all of these things, and it had been quickly refuted. Anyway, point was, my neighbor was disgusted. Flynn being all of those things was juicy. If he was just Errol Flynn he was boring. People like her will love the new Oliver Stone series, and he’ll love them, because they won’t be very skeptical of any of his assertions.
Oliver Stone is minimally on a subconscious level indulging in a form of anti-Semitism. The very name of Adolph Hitler is immediately identified with the murder of millions of Jews in the Nazi concentration camps. Any attempt to ““walk in…Hitler’s shoes to understand (his) point of view,” is inevitably to hint that Jews were somehow responsible for the Fuhrer’s intense hatred.
Stone is seeking redemptive qualities in Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler because both monsters advocated a utopian remake of their respective societies. They held individualism in utter contempt and believed that the citizenry should first, last, and foremost sacrifice themselves for the collective whole. Stalin and Hitler were socialists! Stone thinks this stuff is cool.
I just had a further thought. We all know that Ollie’s going to be preaching mostly to the lefty choir. So he’s going to put Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and McCarthy in context, and try to explain their actions. If he’s on a university campus, who do you think he’ll have the hardest time “putting in context” or whatever. My guess is most of the University professors have already rehabbed Stalin and Mao. Hitler will be a tougher sell, because of the anti-Semitism, but my guess is McCarthy will be the toughest sell. He persecuted *LIBERALS*, and that’s a crime beyond redemption.
It has to be asked and revealed — who is funding — the History Channel’s and now Showtime’s — Stone and Zinn abominations to be brought into American homes via TV? Who promotes these disgraceful absurdities to be primary in our high schools?
Where are the objecting voices — don’t they have any power? What have those that could — been doing?
Where is the hit documentary or drama that investigates and exposes the Hollywood-Academia history of lies that have nothing less than the destruction of modern civilized Western democracy as their goal? Where’s the successful, entertaining and informative documentary that takes as it’s main subject the hypocrisy and ignorance of the likes of each one of the Hollywood loud mouth actors, and especially the directors — including Stone, and academics Zinn, Chomsky — and “deconstructs” them?
It isn’t enough to just tell the real story, these corrupted “versions” and their story-tellers — need to be “fisked,” one by one.
Where are the blockbuster documentaries — or the dramas — that reveal the extent to which Hollywood movies and TV have insidiously twisted and warped the outlook of our youth — on a daily basis?
Aren’t there any smart and talented people with as much determination as idiots like Stone?
It is sickening unto death to know this decomposing mass of slime is, and is going to be further spoon fed into the minds of our countrymen without any meaningful arguments on a comparative “popular” scale, to give them some way of seeing through the muck.
I’ve always thought Hitler and Stalin were of a piece, pretty much equally evil.
Two out of three German soldiers captured by the Soviets survived their captivity. Two out of three captured Soviet soldiers died in captivity. At this point I could say “enough said”.
However in “Gruppenbild mit dame” Heinrich Böll tells of Soviet soldiers being forced to march for days without food or water. Any civilian trying to give them some was shot. A five years old girl. No attempt to restrain, scare her off or even a warning shot. Just tak, tak, tak. I have reasons to think it is a true story.
And there is something specially evil when even new born babies are targeted for the crime of being born in the wrong family. Not collateral damage, purposefully targeted. Stalin didn’t reach this degree of evil. Hitler and Pol Pot are on a different class.
One thing I love is the conflating of four of the left’s boogey-men, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and *McCarthy*!!!!! The first three killed millions or tens of millions, while Tailgunner Joe, as far as I know, never killed anyone.
McCarthysm killed exactly two persons. The Rosenbergs for handling nuclear secrets to Soviet Union. About a dozen people were sent to jail. Under two hundred government employees lost their jobs (It is not impossible that some more people working in defense companies shared the same fate).
Then there was the attempted takeover of Hollywood in order to make it churn pro-communist movies through the unionizing of actors, directors and scenarist in a communist-controlled trade union. After several physical fights between communists and anticommunists, threats of throwing acid on Ronald Reagan and others, plus a number of flops at box-office it ended on communist actors, scenarist and directors being purged of Hollywood. However because they weren’t as easily recognizable as actors, most of scenarists and directors would find new jobs a few years later.
Such are the “horrible crimes” of Joe McCarthy.
Stone is the Borat of American cinema. Outrageous behaviour and lunatic musings characterize the pair. In the end, they are both recognized for the fools they are.
Stone is setting himself up for a fall with his combination of arrogance, ignorance and hatred for America. Kinda like the fool in the Oval Office.
Who is funding this drek? I wouldnt be surprised to find lil georgie soros’ dirty fingers in the mix. . . .
“JFK” came out and everyone loved it. Everyone. You too, Ron?
Professors have been serving this crap for 40 years. Forty Years!
I don’t recall anyone opposing all this until now, and I must add, weakly now.
Welcome to the real world, Ron. Horowitz came in a long time ago.
But because you all were silent for 40 years, it’s TOO LATE now.
I don’t blame Stone as much as I do you for your silence then and your tepid response now. Stone’s just pandering to the Saudis.
Ah yes, the evil Military Industrial Complex which can kill presidents, start wars, subjugate millions…..but which surprisingly doesn’t seem able to prevent Hollywood twits like Stone from continually “exposing” their evil ways in film and documentary.
Either Stone is some sort of powerful, unkillable God whose defences are impenetrable against the evil machinations of the MIC….or he, like all his conspiracy loving ilk, is just an angry saddo who is full of shit.
I wonder which option it could be?
I can’t wait till the Germans learn about Stone’s desire to rehabilitate Hitler. I don’t think he will be warmly greeted at the Berlinale.
Stone is a disassembler of the first order and a propogandist. Were he two generations older he would have worked for Goebles. He obviously finds national socialism attractive. His admited friends include Chavez and Fidel.
Stone has First Amendment right to be a complete facist jackass and the rest of us have a right to condemn his revisionism, relativism, and amoral character. I would never pay to see one of his films. His ignorance is appalling, and quite predictable.
#1 “Three mass murderers and a loudmouth from the heartland. Anyone else find this a bit silly.”
DavidN, count me in. I’m surprised Stone didn’t add Nixon and GW Bush. While I miss a few movies I would like to see by not buying their services, not subsidizing left-wing wackhead documentaries on HBO and Showtime has been personally very satisfying for quite a few years now.
Oliver Stone’s attempt to make Adolph Hitler & the Holocaust with his tripe moral relativism is going to backfire; it will be as successful as Fidel Castro movie which went straight into oblivion. I’m sure the Leftists elitists will love the film, but they are few & far between in most of the United States.
The History Channel runs Hitler documentary at all times to make us never forget how evil Hitler was. furthermore, there’s copious amount of books on Hitler, the Nazi’s, & the Holocaust as well…
Stone is and has been a wealthy Hollywood Communist who has an inordinate influence on the popular culture. The best thing to do is to ignore him and his comrades in Hollywood and cede California to the Taliban so that an Islamic Republic could be founded there where Stone and his followers will feel more comfortable because he obviously hates everything about the United States.
I think Oliver Stoned and Michael EatMoore are checking out each other’s Sora$$.
I believe all the drugs Stone has done over the years have affected his brain to the point he does not live in the real world; he’s comfortable with his delusions & illusions that the media world is at all times.
It might be tempting to believe Oliver Stone will not somehow blame Jews for Adolph Hitler’s lethal rage. His father, after all, was Jewish. Why would Stone find excuses to rationalize away some of the horrors of the Nazi era? How can that make any sense? Stop looking for logical consistency. Stone has, alas, bought into the self-hating anti-capitalist, anti-West doctrines. His views will inevitably evolve in a most disturbing and irrational direction. The radical leftist mindset is ultimately suicidal. We have gays and feminists who are pro-Palestinian—and we will have Jews defending the Nazis. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. How can the Nazis really be that bad if they were so hostile towards the West?
#6 JFM “Two out of three German soldiers captured by the Soviets survived their captivity. Two out of three captured Soviet soldiers died in captivity. At this point I could say “enough said”.”
This doesn’t sound quite right to me. I had the impression German prisoners suffered a worse fate from the Russians than the reverse. Could you point me to a source, JFM? Meanwhile I found these two tidbits. The first point is just about the battle of Stalingrad, but the second is general.
From worldwarIIdatabase.com: “The result was a horrific rate of death among German POWs. Out of the 90,000 Germans who marched into Soviet captivity at Stalingrad, only 5,000 returned from Russia. Most German POWs were held for ten years after the war.”
In addition, you should recall that the Russians treated their own Russian prisoners released after the by the Allies as traitors and sent many of them off to gulags. One of them was Soljenitsin.
#7 JFM say: “McCarthysm killed exactly two persons. The Rosenbergs for handling nuclear secrets to Soviet Union.”
This is simple librul Bulls–t. The Rosenbergs were executed because they were traitors who sold secrets to Russia, as you said, but McCarthyism had nothing to do with it. I could just as well say the Taliban is resurgent because of Feingoldism. Sorry, no sale.
God help and preserve us! I wonder, though, if putting Senator McCarthy “in perspective” and offering a “balanced interpretation” will include the reality on the ground. Will he explain that unlike the so-called “witch hunts” in Salem, where there were no actual witches, there were plenty of commies (and still are, apparently)? Will he explain how these people took direct orders from KGB HQ in Moscow? Will he explain that what he is doing is part of the original plot … er … plan? The long march through the institutions, that is?
“furthermore, there’s copious amount of books on Hitler, the Nazi’s, & the Holocaust as well…”
These books are of little value if they are not read. The odds are that even students graduating from our “best” universities are unaware of these works. One should probably take for granted that most Americans, especially under the age of forty-five, are historical illiterates. Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin are names from the ancient past. They usually know—and I am not exaggerating—more about Paris Hilton’s sex life!
History? Like why is there a North and South Korea? Like who’s responsible for 9/11? Like who are we fighting in Iraq? None of which Palin could answer.
You have no standing.
#20 Fred Beloit
You also have to take into account the brutality the Russians unleashed on the defeated German population, including the orgy of rape many Russian soldiers indulged in.
And there are always the Gulags themselves, which killed millions.
In short, Stalin was a truly evil, nickel-plated bastard, who royally screwed over his own people.
As for degrees of evil. . . let’s face it; Stalin reached a pretty high one. Let’s not whitewash him, by claiming Hitler, Pol Pot, whoever, were worse.
(And, yes, Hitler and Pol Pot were extremely evil, not to mention good ol’ Chairman Mao, responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese. Best idea might be to simply condemn mass murdering rulers, and not try excusing them.)
Fred Beloit said:
This is simple librul Bulls–t. The Rosenbergs were executed because they were traitors who sold secrets to Russia, as you said, but McCarthyism had nothing to do with it.
In case you haven’t noticed I put scare quotes around McCarthy’s “horrendous crimes” or more exactly MCCarthysm’s or more exactly with hunt’s who according to liberals made America worse than Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. IMHO the Rosenbergs vastly deserved what they got and, before death penalty was abolished in many places, about evrey country would have executed anyone guilty of far milder acts of treason.
So let’s summarize two (IMHO deserved a million times) death penalties, a dozen jailed and a coupld hundred losing their jobs. In the meantime, the system those nice guys were fighting for, the country they were helping against America (not Brejenev’s Soviet Union, Stalin’s) was killing 500 people a day.
The American system of ‘higher education’, reenforced by the witless products of popular cinema and television has resulted in two generations incapable of critical analysis or serious thought. They possess neither the ability nor the desire to discriminate between the delusions of an Oliver Stone and the truth. Five minutes of quiet discussion with the majority of newly minted college graduates leads unswervingly to this conclusion.
I’d trust Bozo the Clown over you, that’s for sure.
Back in the ’60s when I was an undergrad History student, the profs were very sniffy about pop history. If it wasn’t dull as death, with footnotes covering half every page, it was invalid.
I always figured History should be readable as fiction with the added value of being true. Yes, pop History admits of several points of view, and the more views offered, the greater the enlightenment, I assumed.
We now see the effect of pop history spliced together with the mass/ visual media. Concentration & critical thought melts away and millions are faux-educated, but they are only entertained.
Fred Beloit said:
This doesn’t sound quite right to me. I had the impression German prisoners suffered a worse fate from the Russians than the reverse. Could you point me to a source, JFM?
I don’t have one at hand. It was in a book I recently read about Stalingrad but I will look for the primary source.
Also, when Auschwitz was built, his commander visited the (primitive) gas chambers at Treblinka and its commander staged a demo for his visitor. It was made not with Jews but with Russian soldiers
Meanwhile I found these two tidbits. The first point is just about the battle of Stalingrad, but the second is general.
From worldwarIIdatabase.com: “The result was a horrific rate of death among German POWs. Out of the 90,000 Germans who marched into Soviet captivity at Stalingrad, only 5,000 returned from Russia. Most German POWs were held for ten years after the war.”
Stalingrad was an exception. Partly because at this point in the war with Soviet Union having lost most of its arable land and with Lend Lease still picking speed, soviet citizens were starving. Really starving. Partly because after what they had seen in reconquered land, what they had learned about the fate of their comrades, Russian soldiers weren’t overflowing in compassion for their captives. Partly, because Russian soldiers had been overfed with propaganda, some of it being _real_ excerpts of German press about how after Germany’s victory, Russian males would work as slaves in farms and Russian girls in the brothels of Hamburg.
German prisoners taken later in the war got a milder treatment.
In addition, you should recall that the Russians treated their own Russian prisoners released after the by the Allies as traitors and sent many of them off to gulags.
True
One of them was Soljenitsin.
No. Solzhenitzin was never a POW. Just before his arrest he had managed to extract his battery from a German or more exactly vlasovian ambush. That is why his commander stretched his hand in front of the NKVD people who had come to arrest him for some letters critical to Stalin. It is in teh first chapter of “The Gulag Archipelago”.
Hilarious! Stone and Zinn are two of the most inaccurate and biased people around. Zinn will put you to sleep well before he ever gets to his “point” and Stone just mythologizes everything. they both forever see only the tree’s and not a forest, heck, they see only the small patch of fungus on a few scattered trees and decide that is evidence plenty to condemn the whole forest.
Betty Blue said:
You also have to take into account the brutality the Russians unleashed on the defeated German population, including the orgy of rape many Russian soldiers indulged in.
Some American officer, who wasn’t suspect of communist sympathies, wrote during the eighties: “Russians are a nice, compassionate, forgiving people. Given what we did to the Japanese for attacking a _military_ base, if the Germans had done to us half what they did to the Russians we would have wiped them to a man”.
As for degrees of evil. . . let’s face it; Stalin reached a pretty high one. Let’s not whitewash him, by claiming Hitler, Pol Pot, whoever, were worse.
I didn’t whitewash him. But by putting him in the same degree of Hitler (Stalin didn’t target new born babies) you are both blackening him and at least in part whitewashing Hitler by putting his Antichrist-like evil in the same league than a “normal” evil brought from ambition, paranoia, and ruthlessness.
“JFK was, as one critic put it, “an insult to the intelligence,””
Only a gullible moron could believe the fiction that Kennedy was killed by a “lone assassin”.
Of cause the conspiracy theorists are wrong most of the time. It’s virtually impossible to reconstruct a crime that happened 46 years ago. But at least they are right about NOT believing the “lone assassin” BS.
Yeah, JL hit the nail on the head. It is beyond refute that the mastermind behind JFKs assassination was a little known operative by the name of Arnold Klebus, working in concert with the assistance Mildred Klumph, a cipher clerk at the NSA, who, at the time, was in the midst of a furiously passionate affair with Jacquelyn’s hairdresser who was secretly in love with the guy who drove the getaway car. And LBJ knew all about this.
Given Oliver Stone has no problem with Fidel Castro, I would think in his distorted looking-glass world he would have no problem with Joseph Stalin & Adolph Hitler; I believe Stone is in love with the absolute power dictators possess. Stone somehow wants the same thing for himself.
Why not first examine the fundamental harm the “public” school monopoly is doing to propagandize our kids! We at http://www.libertysoup.org support corporate Tax Scholarships and Universal School Choice Vouchers (USCV) to remedy the education malaise. 10 states already have some form of USCV. Join Letparentschoose.org. Or, download the User’s Guide to Freedom at libertysoup.org.
CARLA that is a complete fabrication. I have no idea who Arnold Klebus is. And Margot was just a dear friend. I don’t know where you get your information from, but this has been very distressing to me. Why do they keep ringing those bells?
From JFK to Vietnam and much in between, an Oliver Stone film is the only version of “history” many Americans have gotten. Or absorbed, anyway.
Stone recently declared Oogoe Chavez to be “…an energetic, principled champion of change in Latin America.”
As Chavez shuts down/takes over productive companies, is forced into rationing electricity and water etc. in his communist utopia, a lesser known aspect of his agenda is to make Venezuela user friendly for American movie makers and brothers in spirit like Sean Penn and Oliver Stone.
After Hitler et. al get cinematically re-invented, I guess Stone might create a paean to Oogoe.
JL, strong claims demand strong evidence. What evidence have you that Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy and Connally by himself? If you can present any, I would like to compare that evidence to Vincent Bugliosi’s encyclopedic analysis of JFK conspiracy theories in his book “Reclaiming History.”
“(Stalin didn’t target new born babies)”
Ever? Tell that to the millions of peasants(and their children) that died in the 1932-33 famine(Holodomor).
He could start by walking a mile in Meyer Kahane’s shoes.
Now there would be empathy!
#33 About Soljenitsin’s arrest, you are correct, JFM. From Wiki: “In February 1945, while serving in East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn was arrested for writing derogatory comments in letters to a friend, Nikolai Vitkevich,[14] about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin… Solzhenitsyn was taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was beaten and interrogated. On July 7, 1945, he was sentenced in his absence by Special Council of the NKVD to an eight-year term in a labor camp. This was the normal sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time.[18]”
About this, you are mistaken: “German prisoners taken later in the war got a milder treatment.” Having 10 years added isn’t really very mild treatment in my book. Now you may say, JFM, that it is better than being killed. Of that I’m not so sure, but in any case there still are not facts shown about who killed the most prisoners, or rather who had the highest percentage of surviving prisoners.
About this statement, this American officer, whoever he may be, was quite wrong in saying this: “Some American officer, who wasn’t suspect of communist sympathies, wrote during the eighties: “Russians are a nice, compassionate, forgiving people. Given what we did to the Japanese for attacking a _military_ base, if the Germans had done to us half what they did to the Russians we would have wiped them[out] to a man”.
Curious, knowing Russians, he must have been in the ETO near the end of the war. But being familiar with “what we did to the Japanese” puts him in the Pacific Theater. Anyway, what we did to the Japanese was defeat them in the way Roosevelt wanted, that is to say unconditional surrender. It is the Japanese government and military who attacked us and put surrendering down as the worst possible war crime a Japanese soldier could commit. And Truman wasn’t thinking about Pearl harbor when he ordered the bomb dropped. He was thinking about the cost in U.S. lives and limbs of an invasion of Japan.
Finally, your case, JFM, that Stalin wasn’t as bad as Hitler is an old one. The case that Stalin wasn’t so bad at all is also an old one, going back to the NYT in the thirties up until today with Olie Stone. (A fine mess he’s gotten us into this time.) It is an oldie but not a goodie. I certainly don’t buy it, most especially without robust[excuse the Pelosiism] evidence.
About this a source would be appreciated. However, since it is an example that certainly does not prove your case for the above, you can skip it.
JFM said:
“And there is something specially evil when even new born babies are targeted for the crime of being born in the wrong family. Not collateral damage, purposefully targeted. Stalin didn’t reach this degree of evil. Hitler and Pol Pot are on a different class.”
Kindly tell the decendents of the approximately 10 million Ukranian who died in a famine engineered by Stalin before Hitler came to power that new born babies born to the wrong family weren’t targeted for death.
Okay, JFM—I get it! There’s “Normal” evil, and, then, there’s “Antichrist” evil. “Normal” evil is evil, but not really evil, because it’s not antichrist level evil, which is really evil-evil, not just normal evil, which is evil, but not really evil, because there are much worse levels of evil which are REALLY evil, so “normal” evil doesn’t really count, unless it’s done by Hitler, because Stalin was evil, but not really. . .
Makes sense. Not.
(I didn’t realize evil could be “normal”! Who’da thunk?)
And, Gosharooties! I guess if some nameless American officer, who had NO communist sympathies (You don’t know his name, but you can read his mind, and you KNOW this about him?) said the Russians were really swell people! Compassionate, kindly, fun and great dancers! And, jeekers, we Americans were mean to the Japanese , so that justifies Russian atrocities against the Germans! I guess, in your moral scheme, that makes said atrocities good-evil, or, maybe, mediocre-evil, not really evil-evil!
(Is there such a thing as “so-so” evil? Howzabout “mildly evil” or “boringly evil” or “amusingly” evil? And, what about the Russian gulags, and the Ukrainian famine, and all that stuff? Is that just “slightly evil” or is it “really evil”, and was it justified by Hiroshima?)
I whitewash neither Hitler, nor Stalin, Bubbe. Both are evil, and unforgivable. You are, however, definitely trying to Whitewash good ol’ Uncle Joe, and Marxist Russia. Swell people, the Commies! Filled the 20th Century with lots of fun!
(Is there such a thing as “fun evil?”)
#42 tdiivna
I’m sure comrade JFM would assure us that Ukrainian babies dying in the famine was only “kinda-sorta evil”, not real,truly Evil/Evil, and, anyway, the Russian people are truly swell, and America did bomb Hiroshima, so that makes it all really only “slightly Evil”, not “Omigawd, that’s EVIL!”, because it all depends on who’se doing the evil stuff, ya see.
But it’s not like he’s trying to whitewash Stalin, or anything like that.
Sorry to be so windy. Perhaps a couple of fallacious syllogisms would prevent unnecessary future word wrangling between us:
The Germans did things to the Russians that should have caused the Russians to wipe out the Germans to a man.
The Russians are a nice, compassionate, forgiving people.
Ergo, the Russians tried to wipe the Germans out to a man and raped and pillaged through their subjugated portion of Germany.
The Japanese surprise-bombed our military base.
We declared war on and attacked the Japanese all over the pacific.
Ergo, unlike the Russians, we are not nice, compassionate, forgiving people.
How are we doing?
Oliver Stone is to history and historical drama what Eric Von Daniken was to anthropology – a complete fraud. At least Von Daniken admitted he made up his “theory” about ancient astronauts. Stone’s ego and/or mental instability would never permit such a thing.
Betty Blue, normal evil is Captain Cold while Anti-Christ evil is the Hellfire Club, Apocalypse & his 4 Horsemen, Mister Sinister’s Marauders, & The Reavers. “Fun evil” is Arcade & his death trap amusement park.
High school students have a far better understanding of history than Oliver Stone, someone to whom with
every full length feature he makes, history becomes more and more a rendition of his story.
Let’s face it, gang, having Oliver Stone make an historically
correct movie is like having a child molester run a day care center. It perverts the entire process.
#43
“(Is there such a thing as “fun evil?”)” Apparently, there is. Just ask Whoopi Goldberg and all the other idiots who don’t think Roman Polanski is such a bad guy.
I still can’t understand why it’s so difficult to accept that a former marine marksman, even of average ability, couldn’t squeeze off three or four shots and hit a couple of people who are sitting like ducks in an open car below him, travelling under fifteen miles an hour. Why is this so difficult to believe? Oliver Stone could probably do it himself with a decent rifle and scope.
Of course, that should have read COULD squeeze off …
The fact that Mitrokhin’s book revealed the Soviet disinformation to the Russian New Times, Corriera da Serra, Le Temps, (at least one of these was featured in JFK) to put forward the CIA plot, Permindex, all that garbage, that managed to permeate the media landscape. Now Stone basically absolving Hitler and Stalin of their atrocities is just the next logical step.
And there is something specially evil when even new born babies are targeted for the crime of being born in the wrong family. Not collateral damage, purposefully targeted. Stalin didn’t reach this degree of evil. Hitler and Pol Pot are on a different class.
JFM: Stalin had his own “final solution” for Soviet Jews planned, but he died before he could carry it out. Also, at least as many people died in the Gulag as died in the Nazi camps (which were modeled after the Gulag, by the way). That the Gulag inmates weren’t “gassed” makes no difference, since they came to the same end. For that matter, even with gas chambers at their disposal in the specialized ‘death camps,’ the 900-camp Nazi network’s primary means of death were disease and starvation, just like the Gulag. Oh, and don’t forget how the Soviet troops acted upon invading Germany, with wanton rape, burning German militiamen alive, etc. And these fine Soviet ‘liberators’ behaved abominably throughout Eastern Europe.
Your attempt to quantify Stalin’s ‘badness’ compared to Hitler’s is ridiculous.
Only a gullible moron could believe the fiction that Kennedy was killed by a “lone assassin”.
No, JL, not just gullible morons, but also intelligent repsecters of history and the documentation that backs it up. Lee Harvey Oswald, a loser in all other respects, a failed Communist and vocal supporter of Fidel Castro, had one thing going for him: he was an excellent marksman. The paper trail of his life — including the purchase of a Manlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle, newsreel film of him demonstrating for Castro, his aborted attempt to kill Birch Society luminary ret. Ge. Edwin Walker (saved by a metal window frame that deflected Oswald’s shot), interviews with Oswald’s widow and other family, etc., and so on. Oswald did it, period.
Incidentally, which conspiracy did totally pathetic loser John Hinkley belong to?
Having 10 years added isn’t really very mild treatment in my book.
Do you difference between mild and milder?
Prisoners taken at Stalingrad were given no food or water and force marched for sevarl days (no shelter at night by minus 20 Celsius. Whenever one fell he was shot (BTW that was what the Germans did to Russians in 1941). One week later only one third was still alive and it was only the beginning. So even with ten years of captivity those taken later in the war got a far milder treatment.
BTW I have found data over POWs from three million Germans captured y the Red Army, two million survived captivy. From five million Soviet soldiers captured by the Wehrmacht only one.
For the American officer he never served in WWII. Je was a US Army captain serving in the Fulda ga during the Reagan administraton who happenned to be well versed in WWII history and he was talking about the bombings over Tokyo and of course the nukes not to mention the burning hate tpwards Japanese for the minor (compared to what the Gemans did in Russia) of attacking a military base.
Also when I said that Stalin was not as bad as Hitler it still meant in my mind that a million deaths would not be enough punishment for him. Also if you look for my contributions in Pajamas media you will see that I positively hate Communists, that several times I have refreshed minds about Communist sabotage of Allied Armies in 1940, about how without Stalin backstabbing Poland there is a definite possibility Germany would have been unable to conquer Europe and told that this voids any claim to our gratitude. How several times I have rebated claims that Soviet Union won WWII neraly single handedly and highlighted the many ways in which without the US and UK, Soviet Union would have been crushed like a bug (even in late 1944 Germany would have been able to stop the Red Army and get a draw if the Allies had agreed to a separate peace). So, no I am not saying that Stalin and Communists were good guys, just that I hate Hitler and the Nazis still more.
Lee Harvey Oswald was minimally a decent marksman. He easily had the ability to assassinate President Kennedy. Oswald was an employee in the building—and the local newspaper provided him with Kennedy’s exact schedule! In other words, the murder of JFK was no big deal. It did not take a highly trained James Bond type who was a member of a well-planned conspiracy. A lone gunman with only a modest formal education had more than enough skill to pull this off. The dude was also already a well-established Communist activist. He was seeking a way to put his name in the history books as some sort of Marxist hero. In Oswald’s way of looking at the world, he was getting a lot of return. Putting Kennedy to death was a highly rewarding experience. Sadly, my explanation does little to fatten my wallet. Oliver Stone’s theory is deemed more exciting.
#45 Fred Beloit, and you must remember that the nice, compassionate, forgiving Russians were Hitler’s allies at first. They only broke with him—well, they only broke with him when he turned on them and attacked them, and which point they really couldn’t be allies anymore. (Nice to see you finally remember that, JFM.)
You’re basing your mild/milder—”nice evil”/”evil-evil”/”really nasty evil”/ solely on the way the Germans treated Russian prisoners of war, conveniently leaving out the Ukrain famine, the gulags, Russian support for terrorism during the 60′s-70′s; the Nazis treated their Russian prisoners abominably. That’s bad. The Russians (those nice, compassionate forgiving people) raped and abused German civilians, post war; also bad. The Russian communist government also treated the Poles abominably, and killed millions of their own citizens, as well as spreading discord around the planet.
I mean really—it’s h*****t to argue that Dictator X was worse than Dictator Y, because he killed more people than Dictator Z, who was only “normal evil”, not “antichrist evil”, because some evil is more evil than other evil. . . blah, blah, blah.
Look, if you really don’t want to whitewash communism, then stop the idiotic comparisons between Hitler and Stalin designed to make Stalin the lesser evil! “Mild and Milder” aren’t concepts that even apply here.
And, again—a single American officer, who didn’t even serve in WWII, is really not an authority to be listened to with unquestioning acceptance. (And again: Japan, Hiroshima, the bomb, etc., really don’t excuse Russian atrocities. As I said earlier—should we trot out the bomb to excuse the gulags?)
#46 Sebastian Shaw, I like your evil groupings—but where would Doc Oc fall on this scale? I’d put him under “funny evil” myself.
One of the reasons Oliver Stone’s version of the Kennedy assassination is deemed more exciting by the Left is that it lets communist Oswald off the hook for murdering a popular American president, replacing him as the villain with nebulous evil coporations and wicked rightwingers, villains far more acceptable to the Left.
JFM:
I assume you mean 1 million Russian POWs survived captivity. That number does not square with the number of Russian former POWs shipped directly to the GULAG. I think 1 million out of 5 million Russian POWs survived both German captivity and the GULAG. One must remember that the Stalin pawned off every possible murder that the Soviet Union committed in the 1930s through the end of the war on the Germans. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 The Ukrainian government identified a mass grave site outside of Kiev that contained between one half and a million victims of the purges. Like Katyn Forest, the Soviet Union claimed that these were victims of the Nazis when in reality they were victims of Communism.
Betty Blue: Bingo! All of your comments in this thread have been great, but you really nailed it with #55. The idea that a Commie killed JFK just didn’t sit right with the left. No,no, they said, the culprits had to be people we are already comfortable hating: the CIA, Dallas right-wingers, etc. As usual, when the libs didn’t like the facts they were given, they traded them for “facts” they liked better.
Who is your favorite founding father?
Palin: All of them.
Priceless. Reminds me of some other answer of hers, what was it . . . something to do with “all of them” . . let me see . . . It’ll come to me.
Skeeziks: And Obama campaigned in 57 states and can’t talk to the locals in Vienna because he doesn’t speak Austrian. Neither of those statements was made in an interview with a reporter trying to “save the country” either, so they were essentially unforced errors. I know, I know, Palin’s not a member of the ruling class: no Ivy League law degree she’s never used, no robber baron ancestor who left her an enormous trust fund, so she could sacrifice by agreeing to manage our lives for us, no daddy in politics, or in-laws with political connections, no seats on the board of various corporations where she collects a paycheck for putting her name on a letterhead. She’s an average, *common* woman, a housewife who had *gasp* five children (that by itself should disqualify her), and lastly, and worst, her husband has a blue collar job! People like this are supposed to do what they’re told, pay their taxes, and express no political opinions whatsoever, other than joining their union and contributing to the Democratic party. Yeah, she’s really stupid…if she were smart, she’d agree with you.
Sorry, I second JFM in his “trenched” opinion, that is not his political view on evil ideologies, but as an army professional’s
I read Malaparte’s books as war correspondant on the eastern front, and his descriptions of the crualty of the Nazis fit Böll’s ones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curzio_Malaparte
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/1590171470/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
In the Leftist Hive-Mind even Charlie Manson is a hero of sorts.
skeeziks, use your weak hand next time and it will almost feel like someone cares.
Tdinva said:
Kindly tell the decendents of the approximately 10 million Ukranian who died in a famine engineered by Stalin before Hitler came to power that new born babies born to the wrong family weren’t targeted for death.
Let’s clarify During WWII many new born babies died in Tokyo, Hamburg or Hirossima. Does this put us in the same level than the people who built Auschiwtz? Hell no! We didn’t want them dead! We didn’t single out maternities (BTW, Palestinians did in at least one occasion). If we could have brought down Nazi Germany without killing a single one of them we would have done it. But at this time it was quite simply not possible.
Stalin knew that Ukranian babies would die. It is my belief he didn’t care, that he wouldn’t have spent a kopeck, given a single sip of vodka for saving them. But did he rub his hands thinking “Today, N ukranian babies have died?”. Honestly I don’t thing so. In fact second volume of “The Gulag Archipelago” describes orphanages (for children whose parents had been sent to the Gulag) and special camps for young criminals where hellish conditions were due not to orders from above (in theory inmates were supposed t be relatively well treated and fed) but to the stealing of allocated resources by local personnel ie senior management way up to Stalin didn’t care.
And Hitler? Well, he explicitly said in 1938, ie well before defeats had increased his hate and paranoia to epic proportions (the Wansee conference took place in 1942 ie after the setback in front of Moscow) that Jewish new born babies would have to be killed. Just for the crime of being born. Not collateral damage, purposefully. And IMHO that sets him in a higher, still higher place in the hierarchy of monsters.
I wonder if ti will appear on board without the links
I wrote in a previous post :
“Sorry, I second JFM in his “trenched” opinion, that is not his political view on evil ideologies, but as an army professional’s
I read Malaparte’s books as war correspondant on the eastern front, and his descriptions of the crualty of the Nazis fit Böll’s ones”
the book is “Kaputt” (seee Amazon)
Malaparte’sbio iw on the net
Tdinva
I assume you mean 1 million Russian POWs survived captivity.
No I assume that by German figures, the Germans made five million POWs in 1941 and that by
1943 Germany was requiring man power from occupied countries in order to work in Germany. This, was what made the Resistance a force to be accounted for (when people required to go to Germany escaped to the maquis). Before that, even after Communists going overnight from staunch Collabos to Über-Resistants (TM) occupation authorities in Western Europe lost little sleep over Resistance activities. Now why get into this trouble instead of employing those five million Russian soldiers? And if the Germans just let them sit on thir ass..s and drink vodka during the whole war where were the huge camps needed to house them? Auschwitz didn’t need to be very big because at any given time it housed only a few hundreds or thousands persons however its existence was known. But here we are talking of housing for five million men ie bigger than Berlin. How it is that these camps escaped Allied air reconnaissance? That they weren’t noticed by those French, Belgians or Dutch who had been forced to work in Germany?
I have’nt really heard about the Stone production but I see the bias this article has. To discredit the historian, activist, and WWII veteran Zinn, is showing of ones ignorance. A large number of people don’t support the government they have now yet unwaverly supported the previous one, also indicates a huge level of ignorance when there are so many paralells between the two. Zinns history of the US is not convinient for those with an opposed idealogy. It’s just more comforting to continue believing in Santa Clause than to face real creative thinking. Shame on all the people who continue to mock an historian whose motives are peace, and whose work is authenticated and documented. If you don’t want to face facts stop making them up and pandering to those who do. If you are all for war thats your choice albeit a bad one. But just remember that their is a brain(possibly) in your head that should be capable of new ideas and alternatives that may and even almost certainly have better outcomes to the alternative given. As for Stone, he’s making movies for the purpose of entertainment. If people choose to take his work such as JFK historically thats there pitfall. Wether it’s true or not being conspiracy, that is something to look into thoroughly after the fact. Just remember that magic bullets, are “yes” possible. Good luck with that.
Confront skeeziks with the evils of Stalin and Hitler and the confused troll begins squawking about- Palin! What does Palin have to do with the subject of this thread? Do try to pay attention, you poor addled thing you.
I mean really—it’s h*****t to argue that Dictator X was worse than Dictator Y, because he killed more people than Dictator Z, who was only “normal evil”, not “antichrist evil”, because some evil is more evil than other evil. . . blah, blah, blah.
I mean it is really stupid to lump all bad guys together, just as I don’t put in the same bag the guy who steals 10 dollars with those who killed 3,000 persons because they wanted an eternity of f..g.
Lets take two examples: Franco and Pinochet (notice that these are right wing dictators that liberals tell were eeeeeeeeeevil and hate far morethan Stalin or Pol Pot).
Situation in Spain was: the left had reached power by threatening the members of the former government to declare the left had won the elections. In fact, there was never a reliable vote count as in many places leaning for the right the left stole the urns and in those leaning for the left right wing supervisors were barred from the counting. The head of the Socialist Party had explicitly told they would never peacefully relinquish power (ie step down after eventually losing elections). Arsoning was commonplace, arsoning and political murders, people “being taken for a little trip” by the Guardia de Asalto daily occurrences. In other words Spain was no longer a democracy. And there was an attempt to kill all the leaders of the opposition (by pure luck, only one them was killed). At this point the military attempted a coup who became a civil war. Now the “good guys” (according to the left) went in an orgy of rapes, murders and destruction of monuments on the very same day of the coup (ie before the Nacionales had gone executing people). And uring the war Replublican Spain became a Soviet protectorate meaning that a Republican victory would have brought Stalinism, Gulag and a couple million dead. Now if we except the war and the immediate after war (where the victors went after those who had killed their relatives) Franco killed few people and most of these had blood on their hands, the number of political prisoners was in the low hundreds, former officers of the Republican Army including a few generals walked freely in the streets (no franquist Katyn) and at least in the sixties, while distributing leaflets would land in jail, people talked about the regime without fear of being reported and jailed for it. And you could freely leave the country and return. So, yes there were no elections and it was a dictatorship. Was Franco in the same league than Stalin? Definitely no. Not to mention that in 1936, death from hunger was not unheard of and that by 1975 Spaniards were richer than people who in 1936 had been far richer than them but were on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
Now let’s see Pinochet (boo, hiss). Well according to a historian from the Chilean Socialist Party (eg not en eeeeeeevil right winger trying to whitewash Pinochet) three thousand persons were killed by the dictatorship (that is 10% of killed by liberal’s icon Fidel Castro). Most of them in the immediate aftermath of the coup. And from them most either in combat or after having been captured weapon in hand.
And the situation in Chile at the time of the coup was: Allende, with 36% of the vote (that is same percentage than Hitler) had become President through a pact with the Christian Democrats without the people being asked about. Despite his mere 36% of the vote he was trying to change Chile’s society. He had violated the Constitution a daily basis (cf “I swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies”), ignored laws and judgments who didn’t please him, nationalized firms without authority and through his controls over prices and salaries forced others into bankruptcy and thus nationalizable. That thh coffers were empty and there were only four days left of wheat. That Cuban “counselors” were flowing into Chile and cuban weapons introduced in Chile. Allende’s partisans telling about soon being ready to defeat the Chilean Army and establish a castrist dictatorship. Parliament (were Socialists were in minority) calling the Chilean Army to step on. Was Chile still a democracy? Certainly not and it was heading to be a second Cuba: a dictatorship killing many more people than Pinochet ever did not to mention deaths due to poverty. So Pinochet killed few people (by Communist standards), allowed Chileans citizens to go out and into the country, made Chile a regional dragon and last but not least, ended restoring democracy. Are you going to tell me that he is in the same league than Stalin?
JFM:
I see you are resorting to the “If only the Fuhrer/Comrade Stalin knew” defense of Stalin’s murder by starvation of 6-10 million innocent people in the Ukraine. Stalin knew exactly what he was doing. These deaths were not collateral damage but the intent of his actions. The Soviet Union was still using these tactics 50 years later when they assisted in planning the Communist Ethiopian regime’s engineered famine.
There are other measures of effectiveness to compare Hitler and Stalin in the hierarchy of evil. The fact that the Soviet Union never matched the standard of living reached in Germany in 1939 shows that at least the German people got something in trade for the evil of the Hitler regime. (Please don’t site phony communist era per capita income levels.) Measured by population health, availability of food, housing, medical care and the availability of consumer goods, the population of the USSR in 1989 was worse off than Germans fifty years earlier. Nazi Germany was far more egalitarian then any Communist regime. (For you lefty trolls out there the Nazis provided universal healthcare and also supported the Palestinians.)
Ultimately the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact enabled Hitler’s ambitions. Without this treaty of alliance, where Hitler and Stalin divided Eastern Europe, Germany would have been dead in the water after the Polish campaign. With the requirement to keep forces on the Soviet border and without the material resources provided by the Soviet Union from 1939-41 Germany could not have successfully invaded Western Europe before Britain and France were fully mobilized. Who knows, without communist agitation and with the uncertainties facing Germany with a potentially hostile Soviet Union, France might have honored their security agreements with Poland by attacking in the West in September 1939 thereby ending Hitler’s ambitions right then and there. For this alone, Stalin outranks Hitler on the evil scale.
I remain skeptical about your data on Soviet POWs held by Germany. More than 1 million Russian soldiers held by the Germans at some point during the war were sent to the GULAG upon their return. I would like to see the sourcing of your statistics (Wikipedia doesn’t count.) Even if true the Russians captured most of their German POWS at the end of the war while the Germans captured most of their Russians before 1943. The reason that Germany didn’t afford Soviet POWs Geneva convention rights was that the Soviet Union did not follow the Convention. For the most part Germany honored her Geneva Convention obligations for captured French, British, Commonwealth and American POWs.
Nicolas Werth a french historian attests of the millions russians soldiers parked nude in camps, without food, or executed, not enough food available for the enemy !
in his book “la société russe en guerre”
besides the Einsatzgruppen (gestapo para militaries) made sure that the wehrmacht obbeyed to the orders
also among these prisonners, lots were desertors, hopping to get a pass with the wehrmacht to fight communism, but unfortunately for them, as slavics, they were considered as untermenschen, plus communists, that was the insuranced end for them.
umm JFM, was Garcia Lorca a socialist murderer ?
You have your opinion on Franco and Pinochet, I won’t digg into witnesses that can tell the contrary, I already tried, but you’re a stubborn francist
60. Delia:
64. Donna V.:
I’m sure it hurts to see your heroine’s self parody appear so much in line with the liberal’s stated opinion of her. You can’t like what you see . . . the stuttering, stammering windstorm of confused rhetoric and vapid dodges of simple and direct questions. And to add to your wriggling discomfort, Glenn Beck is obviously a leftist plant trying to skewer Palin with gotcha questions. This Palin on Fox things is godsend.
Did you know that water circles the drain counterclockwise in Australia?
Now Donna (if that’s your real name), you ask, “What does Palin have to do with the subject of this thread? Do try to pay attention, you poor addled thing you.
I believe the topic is the nature of credibility in matters of history. Sarah “All of Them” Palin, given that she is the defacto leader of the conservative movement, becomes relevant when she opines on matters of history. So, if you don’t keep up, I’m not going to stop the rest of the class to wait for you to catch up. You’ll be left behind just like all the rest of the tea baggers.
tdinlva said:
I see you are resorting to the “If only the Fuhrer/Comrade Stalin knew” defense of Stalin’s murder by starvation of 6-10 million innocent people in the Ukraine. Stalin knew exactly what he was doing. These deaths were not collateral damage but the intent of his actions. The Soviet Union was still using these tactics 50 years later when they assisted in planning the Communist Ethiopian regime’s engineered famine
Did I say anything else? I only mentionned new born Ukrainians.
The fact that the Soviet Union never matched the standard of living reached in Germany in 1939 shows that at least the German people got something in trade for the evil of the Hitler regime
Right.
Please don’t cite phony communist era per capita income levels.
I could point you to you a number of refutations I made about Communist “achievements” or Marxist economics I made in Spanish blogs but they are in… Spanish. While we are at it visit wwww.therealcuba.com, specially the part about Cuba’s health system.
About Stalin and the honeymoon with Hitler. A couple months there was discussion in Pajamasmedia about some brain damaged American liberals who wanted to put a statue of Stalin alongside with Roosevelt and Churchill. I was perhaps the strongest opponent saying that if the world came close to the abyss it was Stalin’s fault in the first place so any honor was undeserved. I was also the one who made the biggest effort to debunk the myth that Soviet won teh war nearly single-handedly or that it could have been able to defeat Germany by itself.
Even if true the Russians captured most of their German POWS at the end of the war while the Germans captured most of their Russians before 1943.
Right. However captivity of German POWs was longer.
The reason that Germany didn’t afford Soviet POWs Geneva convention rights was that the Soviet Union did not follow the Convention.
That was the official explanation. But allow me to tell you that was a pretext and refer you to the “Nacht und Nebel” document where the Germans detailed their post-war plans for the Russians. Slavery. Not slavery as in the South but slavery as in Rome where the slave was a thing whose master was allowed to kill just because it was his mood. I am not sure about sexual use like Romans did but not out of Nazi benevolence towards Russians. Teaching Russians how to read and write would be forbidden: they had to be reverted to animal condition and their population regulated according to the needs of the HerrensVolk. And I could follow about the orders to cut down with arms the slightest hint of passive resistance?
Why do you think that those same Russians who had surrendered so easily during Barbarossa were fighting like devils at Stalingrad despite a life expectancy of two days. That the woods were teeming with partisans in places where a year earlier people had welcomed the Germans? Out of a sudden burst of love for Stalin? Or because of atrocities and learning first hand what was the place of Slavs in the New Order?
For the most part Germany honored her Geneva Convention obligations for captured French, British, Commonwealth and American POWs.
Are you familiar with the fate of the Senegalese soldiers in French Army captured in 1940 by that parangon of chivalrousness named Rommel? Russians were considered as untermenschlich as Blacks.
And now in which tone must I say you that killing him a million times would not be enough for Stalin?
Almost my entire website is devoted to ruling definitions of Hitler, Nazism, and fascism, before, during, and after the second world war, emphasizing both images and literary renditions, all in the context of psychological warfare designed to fend off both laissez-faire capitalism and revolutionary socialism. In a three part series I use Hitler’s own words to explode the notion that he bragged about “the big lie”–an expression that permeates the commentary of protofascist “moderate men” in the West. See for instance, part two here: http://clarespark.com/2009/08/27/hitler-and-the-jewish-mind-part-two/.
JFM, was Garcia Lorca a socialist murderer?
About as much as Brasillach. Never told that every victim was guilty. Also in August 1936, there was no supreme commander in the Nacional side and it was Queipo de Llano not Franco who was commander in this zone. Did he order it? Not sure. Lorca had ruffled many feathers with his “Romance de la Guardia Civil espańola”:
Los caballos negros son
Las herraduras son negras
Tienen, por eso no lloran
De plomo las calaveras
but in case you think Lorca was Republican, you are dead wrong. He was quite of a neutral and was a close friend of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera.
Now from my, scarce, knowledge about Queipo, he was quite an “in your face” man and had no qualms in executing dozens of people in front of the population. Just have someone vanish and his body never to be found again doesn’t sound like him. Elements of the Guardia Civil acting without orders that is a definite possibility.
As usual we’ve drifted far away from the topic, I suspect intentionally. Hitler was an outsider, but facilitated by the same ruling clique that led to the first World war the Prussian Junkers.
The Thule Society. Interestingly it was the Austrians who started the war and the Germans just tagged along, under Wilhelm 11, Stalin was a thug and a thief, who arose out of the chaos of the disintegration of Russia, due to the stress of the war. Ironically the Bolsheviks reaped the benefits of what the Social Revolutionaries had done taking out Stolypin, and other more reformist leadership in Russia. They also benefited from the German General Staff shipping Lenin, back from Zurich back to Russia, much like Khomeini returning from Paris in 1979.
Stalin was a thief and a Thug, as Montefiore has shown, although he was just following the Lenin plan, with an extra flourish. His first thought was to eliminate the founder of the Red Army, Trotsky, who he thoughtt posed the biggest threat. The REvolution fed on it’s founders
and abetters (like John Reed in Azerbaijan)
“but in case you think Lorca was Republican, you are dead wrong”
we have already discussed of him, of course not he wasn’t, by his family’s background in the first place
officialy, he was killed by Franco’s sbires
Also in August 1936, there was an elected republican government, and the army didn’t accept it, and made their “pronunciamiento”, sort of pacific putch first, followed by a popular revolt…we know the next events
Officially, he was killed by Franco sbires
Officially, lby thaike told by the National Komunist der Franzozen Arbeiter Party”.
Instead of “walking in Hitler’s shoes,” why doesn’t Mr. Stone try walking in two of the thousands of shoes that remain on exhibit in Auschwitz to this very day?
officialy, he was killed by Franco’s sbires
Like told by the Party who sabotaged your tanks to help Stalin’s ally.
Also in August 1936, there was an elected republican government
There was an unelected government who through physical intimidation and ballot stuffing had reached power, not to mention the little detail that it is not being elected who makes a government legitimate and democratic but the act of stepping down like nice guys once it loses next election. Not to mention that however it was elected, legitimacy is lost when you step on Constitution and law. Not to mention that elections don’t give you the right to kill opponents. Otherwise we would be legitimizing Hitler.
The fact is that French had ever loved to hate Franco. Collabos hate him because he told No” to Hitler just a few days before Laval put hilmself at Hitler’s feet. Communists hate him because he derailed their plan. And Gaullists, because of De Gaulle stretching ahd,ns with the mabn 5stalin) who had made possible the invasion of France and with the people who had betrayed Frane as soon as August 24, 1939.
aber nein, du bist starrköpfig
Who killed Lorca? Film reveals family feud may have led to execution of Spanish poet
By Graham Keeley in Barcelona (for the Independant UK)
Saturday, 19 August 2006
As a literary whodunit, it would make good reading on its own. But this real-life murder mystery has excited the imagination and curiosity of Spaniards and the wider world for 70 years.
Shrouded in secrecy for decades, the answer to the riddle of who killed the country’s most celebrated poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca, has remained elusive. But on the eve of the 70th anniversary yesterday of the poet’s execution by firing squad, a new film has been shown which reveals for the first time who were his murderers.
The documentary makers claim jealous members of his own middle-class family in Granada, southern Spain, helped to organise the death squads which ended the life of Garcia Lorca, a republican sympathiser.
They claim Horacio and Miguel Roldan, cousins of Garcia Lorca, were behind the killing.
Part of the documentary, Lorca, el mar deja de moverse (Lorca, the calmed sea) was shown at a remembrance service near Granada last night.
Within weeks of the start of the Spanish Civil War, death squads sympathetic to General Francisco Franco’s uprising carried out indiscriminate shootings of hundreds of republicans across southern Spain.
Garcia Lorca was denounced as a republican, a Communist and a homosexual. Two days after being arrested, he was shot and his body dumped in a mass grave, whose location remained unknown for years.
According to the film, which will be shown in full next month, the murder was partly the result of a family feud. Emilio Ruiz Barrachina, the documentary maker, says new evidence suggests Garcia Lorca’s death was the result of simmering family rivalries.
Parts of the family were outraged by the huge success of his play The House of Bernarda Alba, about an oppressive Andalusian matriarch, and believed it was a personal slight. The political sympathies of Garcia Lorca’s family for the republican government were also at odds with those of the Roldans, who backed Franco.
The poet’s open homosexuality helped to seal his fate. The man who is alleged by the programme makers to have shot Garcia Lorca, is named as Juan Luis Trescastro Medina. He was said to have boasted he murdered Garcia Lorca because he was gay. On the night of the murder, Trescastro was said to have shouted in a bar: “I put two bullets in his arse for being a homo!”
Miguel Francisco Caballero, the author of the research for the film, said Trescastro was a distant relative who is buried in the family tomb.
Despite the rapid advance of troops led by Franco, after his uprising in July 1936, Garcia Lorca travelled from Madrid to be with his family in the south.
Even as Franco’s troops overran Granada, Garcia Lorca refused to try to cross back towards republican lines. The poet was attacked and humiliated by pro-Franco troops but escaped with his life and sought the help of influential friends to escape. Hiding at a friend’s house in Granada, he learnt of the execution of his brother-in-law, Jose Fernandez Montesinos, who was a former Socialist mayor. The same day he was arrested and taken to a prison in the town.
Angelina Cordobilla, who worked for the Garcia Lorca family, took food to the jail a couple of days later only to be told the poet was not there any more: he had been taken the night before to be shot by firing squad nearby.
The death of Garcia Lorca, whose other celebrated works include the play Blood Wedding and his book of poems Poet in New York, has been a controversial subject in Spain for decades.
His political sympathies immediately made him a martyr for the the republicans who were defeated during the Civil War.
Afterwards, during the Franco dictatorship, his works were banned. Since the death of El Caudillo in 1975, there have been a number of attempts to discover who really did kill Spain’s greatest playwright and where he was buried. These have been hampered to a great deal by the stubborn refusal of Garcia Lorca’s family to co-operate in efforts to discover finally what became of their famous relative.
Ian Gibson, the Irish-Spanish historian and biographer of Garcia Lorca, tracked down his remains to a mass grave under an olive grove near Granada. But the family have refused to allow the grave to be opened.
His niece Laura Garcia Lorca has said: “We are not going to discover new facts whose importance justifies the violence of disinterring the dead.”
But the relatives of two anarchist bullfighters and a teacher whose bodies lie in the same mass grave with Garcia Lorca, want to identify their remains. And many believe discovering what really happened to a literary figure of the stature of Garcia Lorca would focus attention on the 30,000 other victims of Franco’s death squads who are thought to lie in up 800 mass graves across Spain.
Mr Gibson said yesterday: “They often say that a country which doesn’t remember its past will be forced to repeat it. I would stress the young and the old should learn what really happened [to Garcia Lorca] so it never happens again.” Perhaps as a sign that they might be relenting, the poet’s family did help the film-makers, providing new material from local archives.
The Spanish government last month introduced a new law which will honour all of Franco’s victims. Part of the legislation involves producing a map of the country which details the final resting places of those whose bodies were dumped in mass graves during the Civil War and in the repression afterwards.
This morbid map will allow relatives to finally pay their respects to fathers, grandfathers and mothers, whose graves have been unknown for years.
The Popular Party, Spain’s conservative opposition, has claimed that the new law will only ignite the old quarrels which split Spain until it underwent its transition to democracy after Franco’s death.
Lorca’s life
* Born in 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, to a farming family.
* Studies law and philosophy at the universities of Granada and Madrid.
* Emerges from university a published writer. He is friends with Dali, Neruda, Jimenez and Bunuel, and is a leading member of the “Generation of ’27″.
* Best known for the poemLament for the Death of a Bullfighter and three Andalusian plays, Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba.
* His work sympathises with the provincial poor and the ideals of the new Spanish democracy. His theatre group, La Barraca, takes his work to rural audiences.
* Supports republican Popular Front in the Civil War.
* Arrested by nationalists in July 1936 with his brother-in-law, the socialist Mayor of Granada. Shot on 19 August.
The fact is that French had ever loved to hate Franco. Collabos hate him because he told No” to Hitler just a few days before Laval put hilmself at Hitler’s feet. Communists hate him because he derailed their plan. And Gaullists, because of De Gaulle stretching ahd,ns with the mabn 5stalin) who had made possible the invasion of France and with the people who had betrayed Frane as soon as August 24, 1939.
uh I feel some PTSD coming, be carreful of your deliriums, time to hang out, and take your pills
uh, I feel some PTSD coming soon, deliriums are on, time to hang out, don’t forget your pills
I hear that Idi Amin was a jolly fellow, too, once you got to know him. Of course, many did not get the opportunity to become his pal because they first became his victims. And what about good ol’ Pol Pot? What a party this guy could throw!!! Let the good times—and the heads—roll. Herod the Great? We should not judge him until we walk a mile in his toga. Then there is the most misunderstood villian of them all, Satan. This guy rocks! If not for those overwrought Christians, the King of Darkness would be Time’s Man of the Year every year.
Yeah, Oliver’s right. All we need is a bit more understanding.
Ian Gibson? That is your source? I advise you to read the Pravda instead. It is a better, more honest source.
True Story: When Sara Palin was asked by John McCain’s handlers about the Korean War she didn’t even know that one had ever happened !
On a factual note, the Russians lost more people in WW2 (20 million dead) than any other country or ethnic group. Not to detract from the very real fact of the Holocaust, the war’s result was as much an anti-slavik genocide as an anti-semitic one.
easy from you, that don’t give sources, but whatever source, except your mytho’s, all others conclude to the same thing, that Franco’s regime was oppressive and assassine, otherwise not so many Spanish people would have emigrated to different countries of Europe, and such, until Franco’s death
are you apparented with Franco ? then avow it !!!!!!!!!!!!
Preston (first)
Radosh (second)
More sources but in Spanish.
Benassar
….
Der Propagandastaffel der Sovietvereinigung (say fifteen millionth)
…
Gibson (rank cannot be represented on 32 bits).
I were you I wouldn’t stir the subject of ancestors.
Preston (first)
Radosh (second)
More sources but in Spanish.
Benassar
….
Der Propagandastaffel der Sovietvereinigung (say fifteen millionth)
…
Gibson (rank cannot be represented on 32 bits).
I were you I wouldn’t stir the subject of ancestors.
yeah, so clear !
I were you I wouldn’t stir the subject of ancestors.
I have no problem with my ancestry
Franco’s regime was oporessive and assassin
Never bothered the French about communist regimes who killed and oppressed ten times more. Also when your President facilitates a genocide (yes I know what you are going to say: it was just Niggers) without his poll rates dropping by a hundredth of percent and other politicians involved losing a single vote for it you better not give morality lessons.
WTF are you babling ?
It was so unimportant matter that you have forgotten, just as you have forgotten about the crowd in Ivory Coast mowed won with heavy machine guns.
yeah but it saved westerny a*sses, as so Americans’, in news too, that you easily forget for good purpose of bashing us
had your army been in place of ours, I imagine the casualties
But we were not there only because Ivory coast was a former colony, but at the request of Bush too, hey, imagine that the cacao plantations are americans’ owned, not only cacao’s !
#36 JL
Psst. Reagan was shot (not killed, but could have been) by a “lone” assassin.
Call me paranoid or conspiracy-minded (or worse), but sometimes I get the feeling that all these apologists for mass-murdering dictators are setting us up for something! Prepping the battlefield, in a manner of speaking.
#58 JFM say : “BTW I have found data over POWs from three million Germans captured y the Red Army, two million survived captivy. From five million Soviet soldiers captured by the Wehrmacht only one.”
Great, JFM. Won’t you share this data with us?
It seems the wars between Euros aren’t quite over. That’s not all bad. I’m glad that they are only using words now, however. I still haven’t heard anyone say clearly that Stalin was a pretty good guy after all. Guess we’ll have to wait for Crazy Olie to hear that one.
For all the Nazi-sympathizers on this site:
The Nazi crimes against Soviet Prisoners of War relates to the deliberately homicidal policies taken towards the captured soldiers of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. These efforts resulted in some 3.3 to 3.5 million deaths, about 60% of all Soviet POWs.
During Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union (USSR), and the subsequent German–Soviet War, millions of Red Army prisoners of war were taken. Some of them were arbitrarily executed in the field by the German forces, died under inhuman conditions in German prisoner of war camps and during ruthless death marches from the front lines, or were shipped to Nazi concentration camps for extermination.
According to the estimate by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), some 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody out of 5.7 million. This figure represents a total of 57% (nearing the European Jewish death rate of over 60%[6]) and may be contrasted with only 8,300 out of 231,000 British and American prisoners, or 3.6%.[7] Some estimates range as high as 5 million dead, including these killed immediately after surrendering (an indeterminate, although certainly very large number)…
By comparison, between 374,000 and 1 million German prisoners of war died in Soviet labor camps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_Soviet_POWs
History, as parsed through the childish, self-centered, mangled psyche of Oliver Stone, is not history. It’s gibberish.
Once again, I am amazed at the justifications people (such as Oliver Stone) give for versions of history that have almost no relationship with history. Not quite as deluded as the perspectives of Mao, Staling and Hitler, perhaps, but still incredibly distant from history.
Ok, so this article does great to express your opinion that oliver stone is a moron, and the miniseries will be horrid. Totally lacking in reasons or facts about WHY though. Have you READ the book your criticizing? or does that somehow not matter?
Why oh why do the ignorant always have to speak (and I’m not calling you stupid, just ignorant as in ignorant of… (this book))
I don’t agree with Stone, and I don’t agree with Alperovitz, but I wouldn’t exactly call Alperovitz’s book ‘deeply flawed.’ And concerning Zinn, while you might disagree with some of the rhetoric, and even his broad interpretation of history (he doesn’t always balance out the arguments, just as Horowitz fails to do, and Coulter, and O’Reilly and…), can we talk specifics? Mostly his book is a compendium of factual episodes. I’m not sure that many of the basic facts have been refuted.
DON’T be taken in by the latest headline
grabbing Hitler ‘controversy’ —it’s a set-up.
FACT IS son of Wall Street Stone is reading from
exactly the same denial strategy playbook as our
soldout media and BOGUS ‘America Firsters’ a la
Pat ‘RED China biz-nihilist frontman and apologist’
Buchanan.
TRUTH IS it isn’t REALLY about the LONG gone Hitler
at all so much as about anaesthetizing what’s left
of our moral sense as another -MORE AWESOME- icon
of genocide is being quietly ‘tamed’ for global
acceptance and legitimacy. —Can you guess who?
And BTW, why are we the ONLY ones noticing that
GENUINE veteran, ‘maverick rebel’ Stone is, AGAIN,
obediently towing the franchise slum PC line by
‘mysteriously overlooking’ the staggeringly significant,
urgently, eerily relevant 60th Anniversary of the
STILL unfolding KOREAN WAR —this year?
-WISE UP AMERICA!
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