Academic Malpractice: The Case of Grover Furr
Look first at what some of his students say about him, in their public evaluations. They know what he is about, and they have his number. Here are a few:
Unbelievable, so in order to absolve socialism from responsibility for millions of murders committed by Stalin in the name of Socialism, Prof. Furr disappears the murders. Evil just plain evil.
Yikes, this guy is as boring as they come and seems to have a poor grasp of the facts …
I have NEVER taken a worse professor in my life. His attitude is horrible and he purposely makes the students feel bad.. .DO NOT take his class!!!!!!!
RUN THE OTHER WAY NOW! I received a good grade in this class but he is unbearable! Forced me to write about the U.S. toturing the Abu Gahrib prisoners. All I have to say is HOOORAH! Very political views and once you take him you are forever held hostage on his mailing list which means you will receive FURR emails for life!
Furr long ago caught the attention of conservatives and those concerned with keeping alive a genuine respect for the humanities and academic freedom in our colleges. At Frontpagemag.com, Rocco DiPippo wrote an article titled “A Scholar for Stalin” that captures the fraudulent nature of Furr’s work. DiPippo notes that for many years, Furr regularly wrote diatribes to the H-list academic discussion group of the Historians of American Communism, flooding the site with entry after entry attacking the work and contributions of H-HOAC members. Because of this, the site has closed down all discussion and limits its posts to announcements of work and informational queries relating to scholarship, and no longer engages in the fruitless discussions with Furr that had become a preoccupation of the list’s members, who were spending far too much valuable time trying to answer his spurious charges.
So let me note why the employment in an American university of Grover Furr should be of concern, not just to residents of Montclair, N.J., and to the poor students who are forced to listen to the drivel and the lies he puts forth as the truth, but to anyone concerned with higher education in our nation. Furr is the equivalent of a Holocaust denier, a person who misuses the doctrine of academic freedom to use the classroom as a forum for indoctrination, and to use the imprimatur of being a faculty member as a mechanism to make it appear that he has something to say and that people should listen to him.
I fully remember the late ’60s, when Gene Genovese was subject to a campaign of the Right, who wanted him fired from Rutgers University for saying at a teach-in on the war in Vietnam that, unlike his liberal colleagues, he welcomed “the impending victory of the Vietcong.” Genovese did not say that in his class, but in a forum on the war at which various points of view were presented. Genovese, a real historian, did not use his class to proselytize or indoctrinate. He presented his opinion outside of the classroom, and did not make Vietnam the central piece of his scholarship or his teaching. Yet Richard M. Nixon endorsed the campaign to “rid Rutgers of Reds,” which fortunately failed to attain its end. The Rutgers administration stood firm. Genovese kept his job, and soon moved on to a lifetime of distinguished scholarship at other institutions of higher learning.
Unlike Genovese, Grover Furr is not a distinguished scholar. He is a pedantic hack; a man who pretends to disprove with scores of footnotes all of his ideological opponents — as if endless citations prove that he is right — indeed anyone who casts aspersion on his beloved hero Joseph Stalin. If Furr uses his classroom to make these same arguments, as readily appears to be the case, it is a different matter. In the 1950s, in a seminal essay, the late philosopher Sidney Hook argued that while a Communist had a right to his opinions and to enter them in the marketplace of ideas, he did not have the right to be hired by a university to teach these ideas as the truth, and to use the classroom as an arena to indoctrinate students with lies meant to affirm the viability of the movement to which he has sworn loyalty.
Grover Furr apparently does not know about Hitler and the reasoning behind the Big Lie as it is called by nearly everyone. I wrote a mini-essay in four parts here: http://clarespark.com/2011/06/19/index-to-links-on-hitler-and-the-big-lie/. Hitler and Goebbels wanted to simplify the truth, but not falsify it. They were of course irrationalists and held the masses in contempt. Apparently the same as Furr does with his students.
Clare, I have often stated, the mass murderers were not circumspect in their designs. Quite the contrary. It’s revisionist historians who tell tall tales, all ‘credit’ due to their perches in leftist academia.
And this is one reason why yours truly expends so much time on exposing them, as they are a cancer in our midst – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/21/the-paradox-pitfalls-of-liberal-democracies-in-a-time-of-immoral-relativism-the-havoc-wrought-by-leftist-academia-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
A megaphone, and a spotlight, must be placed in their paths, all in order to expose their historical lies! There is no other way. Pretending they don’t exist is no longer an option.
To ignore evil and fail to denounce it is to endorse it.
Furr is a moron and displays a devotion to Stalin that’d put Molotov to shame, but at the same time he’s such an non-entity that I’m surprised to see such ink devoted to him.
It’s up to the younger generation to outlast the crazies on the left … and the right. The Cold War is over.
Yeah, the Cold War is over, but it sure was fun for a while in Montclair
Three Words folks.
Montclair. STATE. COLLEGE.
I grew up 3 miles from it, and I attended it with friends before entering the Marine Corps in 1982. Like most “locals” we fully understood it was a Second Rate State School you only went to because:
A) It was nearby
B) It was a cake-walk
My hardest class was “Cultural History of the 1960′s” with Professor Terry Ripmaster… little more than a Woodstockesque smoke-fest-love-in where we would purposely lead the “professor” astray with disingenuous “anti-Reaganisms” falsely bemoaning “yeah, that’s f*cked-up, man”, and side tracked him into spending the whole semester explaining how the CIA Killed Kennedy, and LSD was a frigging Sacrament. We even hung out with him OUTSIDE class just to see where this loser would take things in his paranoid rants.
I never turned in a single assignment, but I got an “A”, before crushing this twerp with the news I considered him not only a Fraud and a Tool that I happily played like a fiddle for my own amusement, but that I was also JOINING RONALD REAGAN ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE as an Infantryman in the very same criminally brainwashed U.S. MARINE CORPS we spend hours trashing all year.
My best friend was an “Art Major”. His shtick was Warhol style nonsense, reproducing iconic photo imagery juxtaposed with/against absurdities…Ronald McDonald at Auschwitz, Reagan as Bozo, Hiroshima cloud advertising Budweiser and such …wearing a freaking BERET and smoking a cigarette with a HOLDER ala Hunter Thompson, all while he’d “refuse to comment” on any of his assignments because “if you cannot see what I’m saying you’re BLIND!” or else he’d project “failure” and threaten Van Gogh like self destruction, painting Snowflakes with (he alleged) his own blood.
So they gave him a frigging SCHOLORSHIP…
which he used to get his 4 year degree….
which he needed in order to become a Marine Corps OFFICER.
He cruised through the OCS program, and we both visited our “alma matter” in Dress Blues following his Commissioning Ceremony, much to the chagrin of many faculty who thought we had a ‘future”
Old Obi Won lost both of his “inspirational” students to The Dark Side, and never realized we were mocking him and everything he stood for, until the delicious end.
The only better laugh we ever got from Montclair State College, was when we heard they (successfully!) lobbied to have the standards lowered so far that even THEY could call themselves a ‘University”…
This Turd must be a Department head, probably in line to be Dean.
MSU is quite well known in certain circles by how radical its college of education is. http://www.montclair.edu/cehs/academics/centers-and-institutes/cop/about/centers-pedagogy/
When you believe in using the schools to alter the culture and prevailing noetic system, it’s so difficult to be reminded of how poorly that worked in the past.
I agree with everything you say about the man and his ideas, but….why the snarky stuff about Montclair State? His arguments would be no less ridiculous at any other school. You have turned a legitimate criticism into something that sounds more like snobbery than a defense of academic values. I didn’t go to Montclair State, but I can guarantee you without going there that they teach the same laws of physics that they teach at MIT. That they have every chance in the world of having a teacher of Shakespeare that would do Harvard proud. That the top 10 percent of their students would be highly successful at any school in the country. Try typing this; Columbia University cannot be regarded as anyone’s idea of a pre-eminent academic institution if they can graduate someone who thinks the national language of Austria is Austrian. How could someone like that slip past the guardians of academic preeminence and graduate? Or better yet, what kind of second rate law school would have as its chief editor a person who has never written an article for the law review. Or what kind of third rate law school could hire as a senior lecturer (and bet your bottom dollar he would have been a tenured prof had he not decided to pursue a position in government for which he is equally unqualified), such a person? What resonates from your snobbishness is your clear perception that this is one crappy school, but letting this guy loose on the students there is just going too far, even for those poor ignorants who are attending that (ahem) school. You should apologize.
Lewis,
I don’t think you appreciate what happens at a University where the other schools become dominated by the anti-academic/Vygotskyian socio-cultural theories/science and math are mere social constructions theories prevailing in Colleges of Education. Especially ones dominated by John Goodlad’s vision of using education to foster a cultural revolution comparable to what Stalin had in mind. Literally. He used to head UNESCO’s Education efforts in the 70s when education first became an offensive weapon in the Cold War. There’s a reason Bill Ayers is called a NeoStalinist and it is not a matter of namecalling. He believes in taking over cultural institutions to impose a collective political, social, and economic vision on what had previously been free societies. Sound familiar? Goodlad had Ayers as his lead speaker for his National Network for Education Renewal Conference. The one Montclair is a lead and early participant in.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/oh-good-grief-now-i-need-to-know-what-a-noetic-system-is-because-it-is-under-attack/ is a good intro into this theory espoused by Ayers, Goodlad, and UNESCO that if you can change how people think and make the emotions dominant instead of rational thought, you can change every aspect of a society over time. Pretty much out of sight.
It seems to be working, I’d say. Believing that this time gulags will not be necessary because you will simply change hearts and minds through education was always a risky theory to be imposing. I am not terribly surprised Montclair has a prof wanting to believe that what he desires for the US was actually not that bad in the USSR. Lysenko believed ideology trumped facts too. See how that turned out?
Science czar, John Holdren’s textbook “Ecoscience” is nothing but a prescription for changing our cultural, educational, and religious institutions from within wrapped up in a faux scientific cover. It disgusts me that this man has a position of such significance in the scientific community.
…and then I read your article and realize that you already had that base covered.
I agree with Lewis Reiss’s main point. Snobbishness is a blemish in an article that otherwise makes some good points. The “preeminent academic institutions” in our country have plenty of shameful things going on, inside and out of the classroom. As a start, just consider the quality of many of the “Studies” departments.
I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1980′s. While that university might not rank as high as Harvard or Yale in some persons’ eyes, many Pitt professors were excellent scholars and teachers. The faculty included several members who were recognized worldwide in their fields. Yet, I took a class there from a tenured, Marxist, Soviet-sympathizing professor, who insisted in class that the Soviet Union had solved all serious ethnic tensions within its borders. He also insisted, in class, that the Soviets had created a democratic form of government which was superior to the West in expressing the people’s will. And, when I submitted a research paper that was seriously reasoned and well-documented, he gave it a low grade because it was not ideologically correct.
There are many excellent students who don’t go to Ivy League schools, yet who apply themselves very well at more modest institutions. In fact, with the corruption of our current “Ruling Class,” as Angelo Codevilla described it, I have begun to look suspiciously on many graduates from our “preeminent academic institutions.” Political Correctness has long been a problem not only in institutions with lower reputations.
I think the comments about Montclair State were exactly to make the point that many people will feel “oh, it’s just some undistinguished college. Who cares what they do there because Harvard and Yale won’t do that.” It may not be in the first tier of colleges but the damage that it does will still resonate throughout the country. Letting the cream of the crop of schools alone is an effective camouflage strategy while the much larger number of students who go to more affordable places get thoroughly indoctrinated. And if you can indoctrinate the group of students who will go on to be the primary and secondary school teachers in another few years, so much the better. Not many people go to Harvard or UC Berkeley with a desire to become a high school history teacher, though some in fact end up becoming one. Most “education” majors come from much smaller schools and end up with the opportunity to indoctrinate the next generation. That is why this problem should not be dismissed as “it’s only some podunk institution.”
“…this problem should not be dismissed as ‘it’s only some podunk institution.’”
You’re exactly right, Sue DeNym. I’m glad that since the election, at least a few more people seem to be recognizing what a huge disaster it was for the Left to gain control of academia, public education and other elements of our culture. Unfortunately I think some powerful voices on our side have belittled or neglected that disaster. Its going to require a long, long, dedicated effort to improve education and the rest of the culture, but unless we succeed at that, we’ll have plenty more elections in which Obama-type figures succeed with the voters.
People who believe in America need to recognize the need not just for schooling in “STEM” subjects, but also the value of the humanities and social sciences, for all ages. Otherwise, how are children going to learn the value of our Founding principles, for instance, unless they are very lucky to have a parent who teaches that? A lot of the public schools certainly aren’t doing that job today!
all these ideas were a response to the Industrial revolution . My ancestors were stars for the American revolution but fallen dead or disabled from the civil war and who would take care for their wives and children and the weapons created for rivers of blood in the hands of mad men in the 20th century if you are not a son of a mad man who are you?
How did you escape the industrial revolution ? Seek the True God in repentance for your sins and your ancestor sins
JR
Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The years have passed like swift draughts
of the sweet mead in lofty halls beyond the West,
beneath the blue vaults of Varda
wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice, holy and queenly.
Who now shall refill the cup for me?
For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars,
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds,
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us,
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar.
Maybe even thou shalt find it. Farewell!
Ronnie: Interesting take on Academic Freedom. You make a persuasive and nuanced case.
Apropos of revisionist history: I listened as long as I could stand the dumb acquiesance to Oliver Stone’s screed on Morning JOe ( where was Joe and Mika). When Stone and his collaborator spoke about our teaching the Afganis ( and their Saudi cohorts) jihad, I quickly turned to Mike and Mike to hear something far less obnoxious.
Please contact Dr Emily Isaacs at IsaacsE@mail.montclair.edu . She is the chairman of the dept where Prof Glover Furr works and ask for him to be removed from his position as a denier of communist atrocities. His position is the same as saying that Hitler did no crime and he never killed anyone, and that would not be acceptable
Furr is just insane and needs help his arguments are pathetic and his knowledge miniscule. He had a son, named Joe, perhaps after Stalin, who died young. Bottom line- furr has snakes in his head.
I never take people like this at face value. Whether it is Oliver Stone’s beloved dictators, the “Free Mumia” crowd or Leonard Bernstein hosting the Black Panthers, it is all of a piece. I do not believe that any of these people truly believe that the objects of their admiration are innocent. Rather, I think they get some sick thrill out of knowing that they are guilty and pretending otherwise. They are like the sad, deluded women who marry Death Row inmates–they get a thrill from their proximity to monsters without the real threat of having to live with them.
“Academic Freedom” is a silly notion at a publicly funded institution. A teacher/professor’s speech at a public institution is the government’s speech and 1st Am. ideas simply do not apply. Freedom of speech protects the individual speaker from interference from the government; the teacher/professor is the government speaking.
It may be that society wants to protect the speech of a teacher/professor but there is no organic or Constitutional right to such protection. If the Board of Regents or the State Legislature tells them to teach that the World is flat, the World is flat during school hours.
The very real problem about the Stalin era in question and the places they happened in that accurate records are difficult to come by and so statistics and stories may often contradict one the other.
For those with an agenda, they can have a field day with Stalin. The history of the Mandate of Palestine/Israel is much more straightforward and look at the field for historical propaganda which has emerged.
The problem for those of us on the outside who are not historians can be solved by reading a lot of material on the subject. Things become clearer when many writers are consulted.
The problem for most people is that they don’t, or can’t, take the time to be knowledgable about such matters. That’s normal, we are not all interested in all things, but we want to hear about more stories than we have the time to ferret out.
Professionalism is so important in history, but even that can be attacked from both sides successful when the audience is the casual reader or when agendas become at cross-purposes.
The currents and counter-currents of the cultures which once comprised the Soviet Union are complicated beyond belief when it comes to the history of their interactions and competitions and hostility towards one another.
Context, and as much as possible, is so important here. But who can give the full context in a single book? This era and place of history is massive when it comes to information and I don’t envy the task of even the most neutral historian when it comes to presenting a complete and nuanced picture of it.
Perhaps the most useful and simplest thing is to know the authors involved. They rarely can hide or really seek to hide their agendas in their private lives. How many times have you read a reasonable article by a person you never heard of, looked them up and found they had written other fairly crazy stuff or belonged to the Communist Party or what have you.
Reader beware, I guess. Keep your wits about you.
“The very real problem about the Stalin era in question and the places they happened in that accurate records are difficult to come by and so statistics and stories may often contradict one the other.”
I’m not sure if you’ve ever read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago but each of the three volumes has page upon page upon page of references in the back substantiating what he has said in the text. I certainly don’t have access to the large majority of those books – I expect many are available only in Russia and have never been translated from the Russian – but there is ample evidence on those pages of what Solzhenitsyn says. Robert Conquest’s books also contain extensive footnotes as do the books of W. Bruce Lincoln and many of the others who write about the Soviet Union.
I have several shelves full of books on this subject, all in English and purchased at ordinary bookstores here in Canada. It’s just not right to say that information is hard to come by. I have not seen any significant amount of contradiction either despite reading a variety of authors in many books. Just about the only real debate is about the numbers of those killed under Stalin’s malevolent rule. R. J. Rummel has stated that Stalin may have killed 66 million people or more. Others, like Timothy Snider and Robert Conquest cite rather smaller numbers: still in the millions but not many tens of millions.
How much student loan debt do young people take on to be taught B.S. by morons such as this man? How much does the moron get paid?
Outside of STEM courses, maybe it is time to stop all government funding of higher education.
Hey, killing Kulaks wasn’t a crime!
Maybe to him, those really weren’t people so their deaths weren’t crimes.
In a just world, apologists for the mass murders by communists would be held in the same contempt as those who deny Nazi atrocities. Sadly, we don’t live in a just world.
Apparently Prof. Furr regrets that he was born too late to participate in Stalin’s mass murders. Furr would have fit that regime to a tee.
Prof. Furr is an extreme case of the kind of thing that goes on in academe all the time.
Ron,
I’m so glad you wrote this article. I’ve been following this clown’s “work” for a while and am glad a credentialed historian has taken him on.
I always get good book recommendations from you, Ron. What a shame that man teaches when I know so many good teachers and scholars scraping by as adjuncts.
It used to be that Medievalists were the only reliably conservative or traditional members in an English department. Now we have a denier of Stalin’s crimes. You’re right: taxpayers need to learn what their money is paying for.
There are thousands of people still alive in Russia who clearly remember the Stalin years. If you’re going to push some radical new take on a historical point at least you could pick something in the dim past. It’s like proposing that hurricane Sandy brought down the twin towers. There are just too many people around who know the truth.
Mr. Radosh,
Your work is outstanding. Thanks.
An eccentric Medieval lit professor! Now that’s a politically significant discovery, and it’s plus that he’s named Grover Furr.
In my experience the nutcases are more often Classics profs like your own Victor Davis Hanson. I recall one guy from Ohio back in the Kennedy era who self published a book claiming that the Irish were literally Neanderthals. Of course in that period you really could find prominent leftist intellectuals who still tried to defend Stalin. They are, however, long gone. Trying to make out that this Furr guy is somehow representative of the outlook of college professors in general is just the usual MO of the communal delusional system we call the far right. It’s a bit like treating George Soros as if he were a sort of European Fu Manchu or tracing everything you don’t like back to Woodrow Wilson. See Furr is pretty out there, but he’s a lone wolf crazy. There are lots of you guys.
Snark and insults. Anything else there Jimbo besides pimping your blog?
Ah. Didn’t think so.
“Trying to make out that this Furr guy is somehow representative of the outlook of college professors in general…”
Where does this concept appear in this piece?
Once again, in my opinion and in my experience, Prof. Furr is an extreme example of the kind of professors and adminstrators one quite often finds in academe. The vast majority of professors are Leftists to one degree or another.
Hey Jim. Ever stop to think that you and your guys represent the type of “communal delusional system” that we call the far left? Since you guys have won, we are going to see who is delusional and who understands what has made America successful. Stop lurking here trying to sound like a tough guy and get to work making the world a better place through big government. We’ll be waiting.
I note that you assume I’m some sort of far leftist. Why? Do you really think the universe is divided between you Sons of Liberty and the Forces of Darkness, who I presume are all Marxist/Fascist/Muslim/Homosexual/Lesbians? It’s worse than that. In terms of substantive policy positions I’m not very far away from Eisenhower. Of course the John Birch society used to denounce him as a communist so maybe nothing has changed.
Look I’m sure I come across as a troll. I really did start posting here to get in genuine arguments, not shouting matches. It’s tough, though. Your world is so fantastically closed off from the rest of the cosmos.
Ok.
“Trying to make out that this Furr guy is somehow representative of the outlook of college professors in general…”
Where does this concept appear in this piece?
Furr is a stone cold psycho and a complete loon, all of which makes no nevermind to me, as long as I’m not forced to pay his salary.
“as long as I’m not forced to pay his salary”
Oh but we are, we are….\
and so are our Children Yet Unborn required tomorrow to pay his salary of today
Remember that all schools (elementary through universities) get federal funding…
Remember that Fedeal Funding is 30% debt.
Every public “educator” is fueling the debt, sending some of your money to Washington as tribute today, in exchage for you CHILDRENS money tomorrow.
Please don’t miss the forest for the trees. Furr is not an outlier. He is typical. Believe me, I’m in academia, I know. At my school, there is a professor with a nationwide reputation for his hostility to Israel, expressed in official campus events. There are signs for an upcoming conference on how to create a Marxist revolution in America (0bama is too far right for them). The administration shoves anti-white, anti-male, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist heterophobia down our throats every minute.
It is time to end all state and federal funding for universities and colleges, to pass the Academic Bill of Rights, to end the Dept. of Ed.’s monopoly on accreditation of institutions of higher education, and to get businesses to invest in alternative venues and credentials for training.
I recently posted about this quack on fousesquawk. Now he even white
washes Lavrenti Beria??!!
The guy is a crackpot.
Recall in God’s word the Bible how Jerimiah the Prophet was consudered a crack pot and was thrown in the cistern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistern
Of course as I see with this 3000 year old Queen of Sheba soul now gaining great power at the thrones in hell then deliver this power to the feet of Wise King Solomon this cistern is a state of mind , just as Saint Theresa of avilla vision of hell with torment UNBEARABLE yet for a 3000 year old pure soul it is a place to gather great power from the great suffering torment and erudite big boy and big girl see only what they want to see and after you big big BIg Loser in election this is good you look carefuly before you leap and listen carefully to the winner of election before you get the tools to proceed the future walk instead of arrogance
so this is what i do today as i begin with visiting this queen at the great thrones in hell , God willing, then read latter today what has been thrown in this cistern here
Also remember , God Almighty oppose you winning the election as we see with his hurricane Sandy and why is still the question for most of you now thrown in hell figure of speech
more latter
Ronald Radosh’s harsh comments about Grover Furr appear to be payback for Furr’s 2003 critical review of Radosh’s book. The review is entitled “Anatomy of a Fraudulent Scholarly Work: Ronald Radosh’s Spain Betrayed,” and can be read here: http://clogic.eserver.org/2003/furr.html
Radosh should have mentioned this conflict of interest in his attack on Furr. He also should have mentioned that Dr. Furr has written a book on the Soviet Union, which I found on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Khrushchev-Lied-Revelation-Khrushchevs-Communist/dp/061544105X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353775543&sr=8-1&keywords=grover+furr
People might want to read the review and the book before deciding who’s right.
This is ridiculous. Furr knows nothing about the Spanish Civil War or the Soviet Union. I opposed Furr before he ever wrote that review. Anyone who thinks Furr has something to say is delusional.
Ron Radosh – I remember Grover Furr exposing your academic malpractice here:
http://clogic.eserver.org/2003/furr.html
I guarantee that virtual none of the bloodhounds who are after Gover Furr have read any of his studies or his book Khruschev Lied – because they never were or never will be interested in the reality of 20th century history.
The fact innocent children can be massacred in Norway in the name of combating cultural marxism by an individual deranged by media and public anti marxism is something that cold war reside like also share responsibility for.
The fact that you can impute responsibility for a madman’s murders on those who have opposed marxism tells us everything we need to know about how seriously to take your accusations of “academic malpractice.”
Apparently I missed Grover Furr’s mouth-foaming and blatant lies. The ad hominem vitriol –from virulent anti-communists like Radosh and his numerous gang of right-wing hacks and pimps–neglects to answer Furr’s often stated and published analyses. The above amounts to nyah, nyah, n-nyah nyah logic. (There are other dispassionate voices in agreement with Furr’s.) I expect that the huge support Stalin had in this country during WWII was a nation-wide delusion–but any student of history knows that Hitler would have won that war if there had been no Soviet Union–with all its faults, led by Stalin. And I suspect a lot of the people who proudly sign on would be quite happy with that result. Radosh et al would have you believe that, if only the U.S. and Britain had persevered, alone, the Nazis (and eventually the Soviets) would have been wiped out utterly. Incidentally, we all know what happened to free education, medical care, school, and pretty much free food: all vanished once the Russian mafia leadership was voted in–Oh, that’s right, those “democratic moderates” were never voted in. And when Stalin’s name is mentioned in the ex-Soviet Union, it’s greeted with applause by those who remember, regardless of what some people above claim.
In the middle of an argument once, during the Great War against South East Asia, I asked some guy where he’d gotten his data, and he sheepishly replied, “The State Department,” and everyone in the room laughed. Almost all the people quoted above cite each other as proof of Stalin being the devil himself, but Furr dares challenge their lies. The “You’re saying the ends justify the means” argument vanishes with a reading of any first section of the NYTimes. The U.S. does what it wants (A-bombs, napalm, drone missiles, torture, rape, and plunder) because it CAN. But only after a protracted campaign as liberally and diligently “reasoned” above. The several people who call Montclair a puerile provincial sewer are absurd. The intent is to fire Furr and stifle all but politically approved rubber-stamping. What’s so depressing is in many cases these closet-Fox news impersonators may not really know the depth of their B.S. Advice: Take a deep whiff. Deeper.
Thank you for bringing attention to the insane views of this lunatic! There are comments from his students online thatconfirm he is teaching this nonsense to his english literature students. My friend has contacted the administration at MSU and they refuse to do anything, claiming free speech rights of Furr. Would they take the same position if he taught that everything printed about the KKK is false and that they never committed any crimes? What about if Furr taught that Hitler was a really good guy and everything written about him was a lie?
Keep up the fight!
Somebody needs to go through Furr’s various articles, most of which incidentally appear in non-specialist journals, and book as Richard J. Evans did in the case of holocaust denier David Irving.
I think the results would be very interesting indeed.
I am surprised that some people continue to speak of 20 to 40 millions of victime of Stalin. After the release of the documents after the fall of SU, historians from various countries and opinions seems to agree that the cumulated number of prisonners in these camps was of the order of 5 millions between 1923 and 1953. One good reason to leave revisionnist historians to do there work and to use there democratic right to present it. On the other hand, if one of these opponents to free speech could also speak about the huge number of victims of the 1920-1921 starvation (5 to 7 millions) not organised by Stalin but by western countries in their attempt to fight against the soviet government, I would be better prepared to accept their assertions about Stalin and to condamn the position of M. Furr.