Merriment at the NYT: Visit the Marxist Center for Real Fun!
You have to hand it to the New York Times. Its editors know their audience. Hence the little would-be humor column about informing its readers “Where Marxists make Merry” detailing where the unrepentant NYC communists of all sects evidently go to get their fill of propaganda combined with evening poker games. Harmless and funny, right?
But not so fast. Just pause a moment and re-write the same column substituting “fascist” for Marxist, as in “Where Fascists make Merry.” Readers would respond in fury. How dare their beloved daily paper trivialize the crimes of the fascists, who supported Hitler’s death camps, the attempt to make war on the world and take over Western and Eastern Europe, the Russian empire, and even Great Britain — upon which it regularly bombarded London with Werner Von Braun’s new rocket bombs.
Let us take and re-write, for example, the following paragraph:
But there is also the monthly Game Night, when regulars put down their copies of Das Kapital and immerse themselves in table tennis, football and a complicated Marxist version of Monopoly called, appropriately, Class Struggle. In a city known for cynicism, the Brecht, which survives on donations, is a surprisingly open and idealistic place.
Below is the new version you might have seen had they extolled the happiness of local fascists:
But there is also the monthly Game Night, when regulars put down their copies of Mein Kampf and immerse themselves in table tennis, football and a Fascist version of Parchesi called, appropriately, Juden Raus. It was a children’s game published in Germany by Günther & Co. in 1936, just one year after the Nuremberg Laws were put into effect. The game was advertised as “entertaining, instructive and solidly constructed. The game’s equipment includes a pair of dice, a game board, and several game piece figurines with large pointed hats meant to represent Jews. Players take turns rolling the dice and moving their “Jews” across the map toward “collection points” outside the city walls for deportation to Palestine. Written on the game board, it says “If you manage to see off 6 Jews, you’ve won a clear victory.”
When British comrades join the merriment, they shift instead to playing Bomber über England (“Bombers over England”) a bagatelle (or pinball) style game that featured a map of England and part of Northern Europe. The map contained holes in the location of key cities such as London, Liverpool, and Newcastle, as well as various points representing targets in the North Sea. Players shot spring-driven balls representing “bombs” at these targets and were awarded various points for hitting the enemy targets. “Players were awarded a maximum 100 points for landing on London, while Liverpool was worth 40. If players bombed locations under the control of Nazi Germany such as Brussels and Amsterdam, players would be deducted points.
The first sentence of the NYT* article reads, “If communists have a reputation for anything, it is seriousness.”
I always thought they had a reputation for mass murder, but maybe that only applies to communists in power.
*(aka Margaret Dumont)
I always thought they had a reputation for mass murder, but maybe that only applies to communists in power.
Actually, the reputation for mass murder is the one that is perceived by people who’ve read a bit of history, which is a very small number. But the Communists themselves see it very differently. While visiting London, England in 1983, I remember seeing an ad in Time Out magazine that advertised some kind of large gathering of leftists. One of the highlights of this gathering was supposed to be a performance by a comedian. He was billed as Jim [something-or-other], the Marxist Master of Mirth.
To this day, I can’t begin to picture a Marxist comedian or even a single Marxist joke that would actually make a sensible person laugh. (As opposed to “How many capitalists does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “Capitalists can’t change light bulbs because we’ve killed them all!”)
“To this day, I can’t begin to picture a Marxist comedian…”
No? Just think of all the comedians who are Democrats. Democrats, Marxists — they’re virtually the same thing. Haven’t you been paying attention to what Ron is saying?
They favor Che, Mao and Stalin but not Hitler? Why ever not?
Hitler admitted himself that the only difference between the NAZI party and Karl Marx’s philosophy was the addition of the “Master Race”.
Wouldn’t “Merrymakers” Josef Stalin and Mao Tse Dung be proud that their American children have forgotten the millions they tortured and murdered. So yes, all you Dimocrat Marxists, stop by and make Ho-ho-ho with Ho Chi Minh.
Reading this little red tidbit makes me ever so homesick for my NYC hometown, wondering how I could have left it all behind. NOT.
But I do miss the opportunity to show up in a Tea Party outfit, adorned with enough free principles which would make their Marxist heads spin around.I would love for fellow Israeli Tea Partiers to join the revelry.Can’t a girl dream?
I think putting all the cmomies in one spot (like a commie rec center) is a great idea.
That way when the anti-communist purges finally start we won’t have to go around kicking over rocks trying to find them.
Dave Surls, Precisely!Enough said.
That’s the same thoughts Hezbollah’s Nasrallah has about the Jews and Israel.
Cynic, the difference being,is that Hizbullah LIVES to kill, we kill to LIVE!!
Only the deluded left can’t tell the difference between evil and good-(im)moral equivalence gone amok.
Jews are good, communists are the scum of the earth.
That’s the difference.
If Jews went around enslaving and murdering millions of innocent people, I’d whack them out too.
Only, they don’t.
Balagan!
Dag, Balagan in Hebrew means total chaos. Coincidence?
I think someone made a cosmic joke in naming Balagun such. I wonder if he knows enough Israeli slang to get it.
And “Hello” to you.
Dag, I can think of few IDF slang words to go with our ‘Balagun’ diaper baby…..but don’t want to get censored. And another thing, I bet he would crap his pants BIG time on the front lines with Sayeret, Golani, Givati, Shayetet……you get the picture.What I wouldn’t give for a picture of him sitting in his soiled pants!
The only difference between the Marxists and Fascists is the train schedule; the Fascists had more trains and were on schedule. Although in San Francisco the Happy Meal with toy is forbidden for children: but if you served a Big Mac and fries with a condom covered banana with a happy face and call it a diversity meal, it’s probably OK.
With no G-d to worry about, I bet they have sex orgies.
When I was younger,
and in my prime,
I used to gang bang
all the tiiiimmee!
But, now I older,
and turning gray.
I only gang bang
once a daaayy!
“…some would say in these days it’s a rather short ride from being a mainline Democrat to a fringe Marxist.”
In his younger Marxist years, RR used to fight for racial equality and other progressive causes. Now he sounds like a john Birch crank.
No, he doesn’t. In his younger days he believed an ideology of death, debasement and destruction. He saw that Marxism is evil through and through and became a believer in a truly revolutionary ideology: Americanism.
Yay! The trolls are back!
Yep, the trolls are back, but the a-holes never left.
I guess they’re still here because you can’t apply the typical leftist solution of mass murder.
Sucks to be a wannabe totalitarian living in a representative democracy.
Wow, Joe, I feel so, um, emancipated now. I’ve always quietly shared your sentiment on that exact issue.
(As the guy posting above me apparently does, too.)
Steve & Di, thanks for proving my point!
Actually, Joe, you didn’t get the proper thrust of my comments, because this thread’s monitoring moderator apparently took it upon himself to delete the comments of my boyfriend, Brian, which were originally directly above mine. But then, sometimes it takes the moderators here as long as 24 hours to approve posted comments, a definite shortcoming of this particular website. (My comments were a follow up to Brian’s comments, NOT to Steve’s comments, as you’ll better understand if this site’s noderator ever posts Brian’s comments where they belong, right above mine.) So chill out. You misunderstood my comment.
Marxism is respectable in the west and Naziism is not because much of the intellectual “elite” in the west is Marxist or Marxist-lite. Marxists have murdered more people by far than Nazis. Marxists to this day are spreading death, misery and poverty.
The other key factor is that the atrocities committed by Marxism are virtually unmentioned in any school system from kindergarten through graduate schools in our universities. While Hitler is well-known as a vicious murdering SOB, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et. al. are hardly ever mentioned and even when they are, they are presented more as heroes than villains.
It was that whole WWII thing, where of necessity the Allies made common cause with Stalin to defeat the Nazis. People today still get misty eyed at the “heroic Soviet sacrifice” in fighting Hitler, either forgetting or never having known that Stalin started the war allied with him.
I guess this group of Marxists is inspired by our “king of the world” president, who is presumably in Bombay (not Mumbai, please, “Bombay” is too romantic) this very minute wowing the Indian wowsers. Wonder if our Diet Queen is going to make recommendations to Indians about their curry-spiced Happy Meals. In the meantime, NYC’s fascist mayor Bloomberg is in Hong Kong lecturing the die-hard “climate changers” (“We hope the theory is true, so we can impose more hardships on Americans, it’s their duty to suffer a decline in their living standards, and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I weren’t banning salt, sugar, smoking, trans fats, and whatever else might ignite my ire”) on the Gore Syndrome and how it got a raw deal from the “skeptics.” But, who said Marxists and Fascists couldn’t “get along”? The Brecht Forum is proof enough that Hitler was talking through his hat.
Would really love to visit this place…. I could dress up in my Tea Party apparel and liven things up. I’m just wondering If I might run into our current POTUS while I’m there. I mean,all of the leaders mentioned above are on his Christmas card list.
A “complicated Marxist version of Monopoly called, appropriately, Class Struggle,” eh? I have no idea on how that would work. If someone appears to be “winning,” do the other players denounce and purge him?
“In his younger Marxist years, RR used to fight for racial equality…”
Well, that’s one thing you can say for commies, I guess.
They’ve always been willing to oppress, murder and enslave everyone, regardless of the race, color or creed of their victims.
Dave nailed you good, Ron. You weren’t fighting for equality; you were really trying to “oppress, murder and enslave” African-Americans.
Sure, commies fight for equality.
They fight so that everyone is equally enslaved by the state, and anyone who resists the communists winds up equally dead.
The Reds are big on equality.
Unless you’re a party member, then you get special privileges and stuff.
You opened my eyes, Dave. I used to think that when RR was a Marxist he was just young and foolish. Now I see he was evil. And I never realized how evil until RR himself conflated all shades of “Marxism,” (i.e., the entire left, in his calculations) into the worst excesses of Stalin, Mao & co.
There’s graveyards all over the world filled with the remains of those slaughtered by young and foolish communists.
Very well stated, Dave. I never cease to be sickened by apologists for the most evil mass murderers in history…apologists like Joseph. For instance, they would have you believe that in each case of the 100 million Soviets or Chinese who were murdered, Stalin or Mao actually pulled the trigger himself.
It’s precisely that kind of moral vacuity and intellectual dishonesty that should serve as a blaring red siren about the dangers posed by “useful idiots” like Joseph. For instance, one of the American Left’s favorite “defenses” against being tied to their fellow murderous Leftists comrades is “It’s unfair for you lump us in with them…we never supported those actions, nor committed them.”
My response? RE supporting their actions, there were plenty of prominent American Leftists who supported the Soviets…the fact that the average American citizen knows nothing about them is just evidence of how good a job the Left has done at sanitizing its history. And RE committing those types of actions here, there were plenty on the American Left who would have loved to have tried it…they just faced the undeniable reality that they would have been woefully outnumbered by an armed, patriotic citizenry that would have cut them down in the streets. It’s reminiscent of Lenin’s admonition that as long they were outgunned, communists should seek revolution through the ballot…but as soon as they outgunned their opponents, they should seek revolution through the bullet.
No more niceties with these dangerous fools. Call them out forcibly and constantly. Shove the factual history of their ideology’s failures in their faces over and over again. They have no valid responses…only deflection, misdirection, and lies.
Yeah, Mitt said the same thing. He saw his father march with MLK.one problem, It didn’t happen. Or Ronald Reagan told stories of his derring-do as a tail gunner in the Second World War — records showed that he had been refused active service because of poor eyesight. He did, however, play the part of a tail gunner in the 1942 film Desperate Journey. Sounds like Alze set in earlier than we realized.
Ah, conservatism in the hands of the greats.
My short version of Communism is “cannibalism and the Gestapo”. Both are, I think, sufficiently evocative, and quite historically accurate.
There is another club in New York called KGB, which is apparently filled with Soviet paraphernalia: http://www.kgbbar.com/
It has long been a mystery to me why creative people are attracted to a demonically uncreative and repressive doctrine. I think it’s an expression of what I have termed moral suicide. They need a line to bump up against, since they are unable to create one of their own.
In the movie “The Wild One”, a young woman asks Brando’s character, “What are you rebelling against?” To which Brando replies: “What do you got?”
There’s your answer.
These aren’t creative people. They’re destructive people, filled with self-loathing and resentment. Just look at the “art” they supposedly create: very little of it has anything to do with uplifting the human spirit or celebrating and encouraging human achievement and effort. The vast majority serves the opposite function: to debase and degrade societal norms or conventions…though, in their vernacular, they are “challenging” or “confronting” convention. They aren’t “pro” anything, except as it may serve to be “anti” something that holds meaning for others. They are spoiled, stunted adolescents, perpetually angry at the fact that they aren’t allowed to indulge every immediate whim or desire.
As such, their adherence – however tenuous – to Marx’ ideological offshoots is of no great surprise. He was filled with the same sort of anger and hatred towards human society as they are, and anyone who reads his works will see that clearly, as he explicitly advocates for murdering huge swaths of the human population in a necessary trade-off for bringing about the worker’s paradise. Outside of his written ramblings, one only need look at the type of actual human being he was – a life-long mooch who drove two of his daughters to suicide whilst failing to acknowledge or support another – to get the gist of how much credence should be afforded his ideas regarding the ordering of human society.
Marx was truly a loathsome creature. The useful idiots who blindly follow along in his wake are no better.
‘…one of the American Left’s favorite “defenses” against being tied to their fellow murderous Leftists comrades is “It’s unfair for you lump us in with them…we never supported those actions, nor committed them.”’
Right on, rvastar! If you’re on the left, you’re guilty of murder. And confessed commies like RR? Don’t get me started.
‘Just look at the “art” they supposedly create: very little of it has anything to do with uplifting the human spirit or celebrating and encouraging human achievement and effort. The vast majority serves the opposite function: to debase and degrade societal norms or conventions…’
Reads like a transcript of Khrushchev’s remarks at the opening of a modern art exhibit in Moscow in the early ’60s.
Unfortunately Ron, myself and many are not surprised at all. Ever watched more than 15 minutes of MSNBC in the evening? The NAACP gives out Image awards to Communists and no one blinks? Spending didn’t work. I know, since spending doesn’t work, printing money will?
The Federal Reserve Board Open Markets Committee is meeting on November 2-3, and is widely expected to announce a second round of “quantitative easing,” dubbed “QE2.” Another term for what the Fed is expected to do is “monetize the debt.” The Fed will buy government debt—primarily Treasury bonds, but possibly also mortgage-backed securities owned by the government—with new money it simply “prints.” There are two major effects of printing more money:
Banks now have cash on their books instead of debt instruments, which allows them to loan more money out.
By printing more money, the Fed lowers the value of the U.S. dollar, causing prices to rise, i.e. inflation.
My suggestion: It’s too late too buy gold. Buy ammo.
God help us
“Open AND idealistic?” Please! Could you construct a better Oxy-moron? I don’t think so.
Who do these morons think they are fooling? We all know that the NYT is VERY much a Marxist supporter AND very closed minded. The two don’t even reside in the same universe.
Reminds me of Orwell’s remark about people who wanted to be anti-fascist without being anti-totalitarian. Oh, those cute Marxists…they mean well, use nice words…so they kill a few million people.
As the communists said during World War II, no one’s perfect. Churchill drinks too much and Stalin murders millions. Nobody’s perfect.
I suppose people like Mr. Balagun and plenty of his friends name their children after famous Marxists; with first names like Ninel (Lenin backwards), or even Che, or Leon, or Fidel. Yes, the truth is I know plenty of people who have done just that. Recall “Chesa Boudin,” the birth name of the child born to Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert who was raised by Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers while the birth parents were in jail. That kid did fine. He wrote a book about his wonderful time with Hugo Chavez, after getting a coveted Rhodes fellowship.
Compare how he was treated with the poor young kid in New Jersey whose parents named him after Adolf Hitler, and ordered a cake with his name on it for his birthday.
So precisely whom was Chesa Boudin named after? I can see “Che,” but what would “sa” stand for? Just added for a nice sound? South America? S.A., as in Sociedad Anonima, the Spanish equivalent of Inc.?
Marxists (not to mention lefties in general) should be “re-educated” by being forced to confront Solzhenitsyn. Once you understand that the Gulag was an inevitable result of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, you really can’t be a Red anymore. Or at least not a jolly one.
‘Recall “Chesa Boudin”‘
Given the Boudin family’s long history of love for communism (and criminal activity), you have to wonder: is scumbaggery a product of nature or nurture?
Ronnie et al: I understand and am sympathetic with the characterization
of the communist–even the yentas on Allerton Avenue. However,however
mistakenly–the movement called Eurocomunism, which flourished mainly in
in Italy (in contrast to France–which remained unrepentantly Stalinist),
there was an attempt to soften and estheticize Communism. It was
a mistake, of course, but the attempt was there. Manifestations may
not ( or may) have included humor, but one need only go to the
conventions of Unita, held in Venice in the latter decades of the 20th
century, to see the attempt to bring joy to a morbid, and moribund
movement.
Marxists make the mistake of supporting a dictatorship, yes, traditionally.
However, modern “Marxists” aren’t very good at reading Marx. Instead, they often promote democratic socialism.
You can’t rewrite “Mein Kampf” to not include mass murder. The “Communist Manifesto” never calls for violent revolution; that was a line from Lenin’s book.
How many of you are Christians? How many people have Christians unjustly killed?
How many of you are Americans? How many people have Americans unjustly killed?
You really know they are Marxists because their website exchanges the word, “education” with “(re)programming”
I kid you not – it is on the group’s webpage
I would ask the staff of the slimes(also known as PRAVDA on the Hudson)to attend a really funny and authentic Marxist fun center: I mean the concentration camp cum leftard tourist paradise called CUBA.