Tom Blumer has an interesting article on Herman Cain labeling Obama “not a patriot”. Cain’s interesting because he’s more able to “get away with” such comments without receiving the usual, trite “racist” attack.
The comments began running towards the “Obama is a socialist” theme.
“Larry J” said: “If there was any justice, those who advocate socialism and Marxism would be social pariahs just like Holocaust deniers and Nazi (national socialism) sympathizers. After all, communism, Marxism and socialism resulted in the deaths of even more people than Nazism, perhaps 10 times as many.”
Rudy Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Hawaii. Rummel has spent much time and effort documenting democide, which he defines as: “The murder of any person or people by a government…”
Overall, Larry is correct. However, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) only had about 12 years (1933-1945) to murder 21 million people; over 1.7 million annually.
The USSR had about 7 decades, only murdering about 884,000 annually between 1917 and 1987; about 62 million total.
The People’s Republic of China “wins”, murdering over 1.9M annually between 1949 and 1987; about 73 million total.
But over half of that occurred during Mao’s famine of 1958-62: 38M; about 8M annually.
Maybe, given enough time to get the hang of it like their fellow socialist dictatorships, the Nazis would have “won”?
In any case, socialists, in all their variations take the crown for being the biggest murderers in history.
Of more pressing concern for America: If we have a socialist in the White House, and socialists historically are the most genocidal regimes, what does our future hold?
One small addendum: In the first years of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Jewish-lead and Jewish-manned Bolsheviks butchered over 10 million White Russians, including the Czar and his family.
Oh, and I forgot: It’s ALWAYS the Jews’ fault in our Brave, New World.
Lenin was 1/4 Jewish (his maternal grandfather, Israel (Alexander) Blank, was a Ukrainian Jew who later converted to Russian Orthodoxy)and yet no one on the left seems to mind being his fan boy lately. Lenin was fond of saying, “An intelligent Russian is almost always a Jew or someone with Jewish blood in his veins.”
But I digress. Let us be specific about history here for a moment. Two weeks prior to the Bolshevik Revolution twelve key leaders of the Bolshevik party’s Central Committee decided to seize power in a violent takeover. There were four Russians (including Lenin), one Georgian (Stalin), one Pole (Dzerzhinsky), and six Jews.
The takeover itself was planned by a seven-man team. It consisted of two Russians (Lenin and Bubnov), one Georgian (Stalin), and four Jews (Trotsky, Sokolnikov, Zinoviev, and Kamenev). Meanwhile, the Petersburg (Petrograd) Soviet (chaired by Trotsky) created an 18-member “Military Revolutionary Committee” to carry out the seizure of the government. It included eight (or nine) Russians, one Ukrainian, one Pole, one Caucasian, and six Jews.
To supervise the organization of the uprising, the Bolshevik Central Committee created a five-man “Revolutionary Military Center” as the Party’s operations command. It consisted of one Russian (Bubnov), one Georgian (Stalin), one Pole (Dzerzhinsky), and two Jews (Sverdlov and Uritsky).
Seems like diversity proponents would have been proud of the Bolshevik Revolution – it represented every major ethnic group and religion of Russia. It sounds like you’ve been reading a bit too much Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I think perhaps the worse thing that could have happened from the Cold War was that it never actually turned hot. It has been scorched into our brains that Nazism is evil and I think this is partly because we actually engaged in a good vs. evil war with them. Everyone, whether they be Left, Right or Center, all recognize that Nazism is evil precisely because we fought a bloody war against it. Not so with other forms of socialism and communism. Communists were able to use this to its advantage, especially when we partnered with them to fight the Nazis. Never mind the fact that as you pointed out above, Howard, that communism was and is more evil than anything the Nazis could have hoped for. The Cold War has allowed the communists and socialists to engage in a bit of subterfuge and confuse the masses about what it really is.
What does the future hold for socialists? Well, you have a bit a preview now. Hatred and loathing for difference in thought runs through threm. Enemies are created out of anything and everything that is different from their point of view. Capitalists are not problem solvers, but “bloodsuckers” in the words of Malcolm X. Businesses are only about profit and all of it is ill-gotten, taking more than what they need; never do they ever provide what people want. People who disagree on social issues are “insert prefix here” phobes. Anyone who criticizes the policies of the White House are racists and if you think there are differences in the sexes you are a misogynist. If you believe in a strong foreign policy and that “peace through strength” is the good policy you are a “neocon” and “warmongerer”. Of course, all of this is semantic when it comes to them.
It’s sad that the 21st century is just a continuation of the “Enlightened” 20th.
Good points. I’ve been running into more people lately who express helplessness over what’s happening. They haven’t figured out how to rebut your points.
But they have figured out how to rebut the points: ridicule and similar ad hominem attacks, generally including the words “racist,” “uneducated” and/or “stupid.” These non-substantive rebuttals work because few want to be seen that way and therefore shut up or at least try to find more multicultural and weaker ways to express their views.
Solution? Be less sensitive and continue along the same paths; easier said than done, I’m afraid, particularly if running for elective office or desiring for other reasons to be popular.
Sorry. I wasn’t clear. These folks don’t know how to take on the socialist propaganda and handily rebut it. They’re feeling isolated and unable to see how to turn things around. As far as being told to shut up, yes, I agree.
For myself, I’m not as nice of a guy as I used to be when I hung out with the California new age community. But if they don’t like me now, I conclude I’ve done something right. (no pun intended)
I think that one way to oppose Socialists and Communists is with accurate historical precedent. Socialists have killed more people than any other ideology, simple, verifiable fact. I find that fact surprising myself (I would have thought the honor would go to the Communists), but it can be backed up with a mountain of evidence, unlike the claim, say, that Communist societies are societies of equals rather than pseudo-oligarchic ponzi schemes.
When people spout things to me that I know are inaccurate I say “You’re lying.” I wish more people said that rather than trying to save face. As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t even keep your history straight, good luck with the future.
The death total of communist governments easily exceeds 100 million people. It doesn’t matter to the dead whether they died due to famine, being worked to death, or were directly executed with a bullet. Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of 1-3 million Cambodians, many of them (according to The Killing Fields) killed with nothing more than a plastic bag.
I still stand by my main point – those who advocate socialism and communism are just as despicable as those who advocate Nazism (nationalist socialism).
Yes, the above 2 regimes alone counted for about 135 million. Guns were important only in the fact that the government had virtually all of them. As Mao said: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
My main point is that looking at annual rates, it becomes harder to differentiate the various flavors of socialism. They’re all just as bad.
If we continue down the socialist path, this is a glimpse of the future.
Mr. Nemerov – this country would have a civil war long before it got to that point — and the Socialists would lose. Badly.
The military would back conservative America, and their artillery guns would be pounding away at Manhattan, DC, LA and SF.
That’s nice optimism. I’ve been meeting more people lately expressing frustration over what to do to turn this around. If We the People don’t get in the game and show some initiative, the military may sit on the sidelines, don’t you think?
Boehner and company certainly haven’t done anything to give us hope. (Reinstating the PATRIOT Act in full, making a few cosmetic ‘cuts’ when they should have shut the fed down. Etc.)
The vision of the UN complex falling into rubble warms my heart, though.
This is article is why conservatism is dying. It is being lead by people who have no knowledge of history or context.
As bad as Obama is, he is not a murderer, he is not going to commit genocide, he is not going to enact some giant socialist scheme without anyone seeing it. There is no proof of it.
Mao, Stalin, Hitler came in their own historical time for their own contextual situations. In no way is Obama given these same kind of opportunities nor is he going to do it.
Well, progressivism must be dying as well because the liberals said pretty much the same stuff about Bush.
I do agree that no President, Obama or whoever, is capable of single-handedly overturning traditional American government in one ski. So far, the conditions for that kind of coup haven’t appeared in America. We’ve come close: the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the unrest caused by the Vietnam War might have been close.
But I do believe that “fundamental transformation,” as Obama and his pals call it, has always been the goal of the Progressives/leftists. They do want to set up a socialist system in America. And they’re doing it, policy by policy, law by law, not to mention the “march through the institutions.” Unlike bomb-throwing revolutionaries, they’re willing to wait, and work, as long as it takes.
Bugs: I tend to agree with your assessment with one caviat. The left has achieved so many of their goals under Obama,I can’t see them quietly accepting a reversal of the regulatory state under a republican administration,God willing it happens in 2012.We do indeed live in interesting times.
History would disagree with you. Clinton, like Obama, favored gun bans and threw his power around. Waco and Ruby Ridge come to mind. History shows that civilian disarmament often precedes genocide. So who’s to say what can cause the perfect storm?
Modern liberals love the concept of “context” because it allows them to reframe anything to make it acceptable.
Right and wrong represent God’s law. Once you justify a small wrong, you’re a lot closer to justifying a big one.
Oh, my dear, you are so very wrong.
If you want some recent historical context, you can look at that wonderful, liberal democracy in Germany, just before the Nazis took over. They told themselves “it couldn’t happen here” as well.
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t say Obama is as vicious as Hitler. Incompetence will do, just fine. I’m looking at a time warp, here. To me, his administration sounds like the teenagers I knew in the early ’70s, the ones who had no f’n clue why they went to demonstrations, except that they could parrot a few slogans. Our current administration acts as if the last 50 years never happened.
If you’ve read your Machiavelli, you know that a man whose only flaw is that his temperament does not fit the times, can easily destroy himself and his family. The same is true, I think, of a government.
We have an administration intent on resolving the problems of the ’60s without reference to any of the legislation or social experiments of the intervening 5 decades, including the Civil Rights Act, the fall of the USSR, and the effects of the Hamas advertising campaign, much less the outcome of some poor social engineering such as that which resulted in the Housing Bubble and a welfare state that nearly tanked us, and which was nearly righted in the Clinton Administration.
Old, bad unworkable ideas administered by waiver and historical ignorance can ruin the good work to two generations, if not wholly ruin our country.
My concerns are real, and I will not tolerate your ignorant dismissal of them.
my comment is referring to Johann at #5, not Howard
“As bad as Obama is, he is not a murderer.” Yet. He doesn’t have the power to… yet. These guys do not do such killing until they have the power to get away with it, but they will if they get the power. Every single time.
A junkie who needs his fix, will pick up a gun to get the money. He’ll hold you at gunpoint, with his hand trembling with DT’s, and he will shoot you if you just move too quickly, or if he thinks for a second you will resist or not give him what he wants.
Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Guevara, Hussein, Mohammed, etc… These guys are all power junkies. Once they have the guns, they WILL kill you to get their power fix. For them, there is only power. Nothing else matters. And like other junkies, they need greater and greater doses. The power to kill is the greatest of powers.
Howard (if you don’t mind me using your first name): I am so close to you on the issues that matter, that writing a critical comment feels like a disagreement between friends.
My first criticism is this: it’s not just the killing rate that matters, it’s also how many people you can kill. Mao had the whole of China at his mercy: it was easy to kill a lot of people!
By this criterion, I reckon that Leopold II and Pol Pot were the most evil rulers in the history of mankind.
(But of course, we don’t know how many people just as evil there were, who did not become rulers…)
The difference between a mass murderer and a ‘common’ killer is that one never successfully campaigned for office. (Campaigning can include using violence to take over.)
I am glad you consider my commentary ‘friendly’. Thanks for reading.
“Of more pressing concern for America: If we have a socialist in the White House, and socialists historically are the most genocidal regimes, what does our future hold?”
The worms crawl in,
the worms crawl out…
All you have to do is look at the various quotes by Obama associates such as Mark Lloyd, Anita Dunn and Van Jones to see what they want this country to become. They have a deep admiration for socialist/communist dictators like Hugo Chavez and Chairman Mao. They would love nothing more than to disarm the entire country and confiscate all assets for redistribution. This would guarantee nothing, but misery and death for millions of Americans.
Why call it “democide”? That word suggests a specific type of government.
Why not “Staticide” or “govicide?” or “tyrocide”?
or why not just use “genocide,” because only something or someone on the scale of a government can commit it?
Functional democracies do not commit genocide, because they are accountable to the families of those they kill.
For that, you’d have to ask Professor Rummel. His entire definition is larger than Tatler guidelines, and includes all your categories. I guess he wanted a general catch-all category to total it all up with.
“Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language).
Politicide: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes.
Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.
Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.”
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM
“If we have a socialist in the White House, and socialists historically are the most genocidal regimes, what does our future hold?”
What a scandalously irresponsible charge! It treats socialism and communism as synonyms in order to tar one with other’s perverted extremes. It accepts Nazi propaganda flying the false flag of a National “Socialist” German Workers’ Party as a predicate for conflating socialism with the genocidal, militaristic, hyper-nationalism at the heart of Hitler’s regime. It ignores the long history of Germanic expansionist ambitions which predate socialism entirely.
How many Presidents have ever seemed less inclined to use the military as a political instrument? Has any President ever displayed more antipathy to nationalistic/imperialist sympathies? I have no idea whom you are suggesting Obama would like to exterminate.
If you want to talk about cronyism and bureaucratic corruption, and a Euro-style Democratic Socialism that is antithetical to emblematic American strength and values, I’m all in. The leap from metaphorical strangulation to actual death on a massive scale, however, is itself a dangerously misguided conceit.
Red herring alert. “Let’s look at the EU instead for bad guys.”
“How many Presidents have ever seemed less inclined to use the military as a political instrument?”
Have you been reading the news about Libya? What about his promises to get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq? Close Guantanamo.
“It treats socialism and communism as synonyms in order to tar one with other’s perverted extremes. It accepts Nazi propaganda …”
Ya shur ye betcha. I love how people try to distract by claiming that communism is significantly different than socialism or Nazism.
What do they all have in common? Democide; slavery; an elite few living the high life while the oppressed masses struggle to survive; gun control; violent suppression of expression or even the ability to move; “the common good”; derogation of the individual.
They also have another thing in common: Delusional co-dependents and self-appointed intelligentsia to act as apologists, justifying why those who object are the bad guys.
By the way, while you’re posing over the “scandal,” notice I made no charges. You did. That’s called projection.
I asked a question. How dare I ask questions?! This proves that you are a socialist-statist apologist/enabler, and history indicates that people like you are likely accessories to mass murder before and after the fact. Scandalized now?
I forgot what the abbreviation of the communist USSR stood for.
Oh I remember now – The Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics.
An inconvenient truth.
My dear friends if you truly,truly believe Obama is capable of pulling off a coup, then what should your reaction be to this impending disaster?The Left has power in the academy ,the media and education.Obama is just today naming new people to important positions in the military.
We may be seeing the beginning of a great confrontation.
OK, since this debate is still going on, I’d like to add another mild criticism, not just of this post, but of American alarmism, both “liberal” and “conservative”, about fascism.
The “liberal” claim, that the Tea Party and conservatives in general are the way to fascism, is clearly ruling-class propaganda.
Like most conservatives, I accept the Road to Serfdom thesis, that central planning is incompatible *in the long term* with constitutional democracy; and btw this is independent of the good/bad intentions of political leaders like Obama, or the socialists of the Weimar Republic.
However, there are two ways to resolve the conflict: a country can give up on constitutional democracy, like Italy and Germany did; or else can give up on central planning, like Britain did in the late 1970s. (Some people would claim that Thatcherism was in fact fascism, but they are moral idiots.)
So why should we worry? the reason is that giving up on central planning, cutting back the size of the State, requires a constant effort. That is Parkinson’s Law: left to itself, the size of the State increases (faster than GDP). Eevn if this increase does not lead to some sort of fascism, it will lead to economic collapse anyway. (And the collapse can lead to fascism.) THAT is the real reason to vote for the party that intends to cut public spending (NOT just taxes). In the absence of such a party, at least vote for the party that wants the smaller increase!
A few words about European socialism. Let’s leave aside Greece and countries in a similar position. It is true that Germany and other countries have managed to keep socialism to a level compatible with democracy, but we don’t know how long they can resist Parkinson’s Law.
And those who point to Sweden would do well to keep in mind the program of forced sterilization of anti-social individuals, instituted soon after the Social Democrats took power in the 1930s. (OTOH Sweden might also show that it is possible to recover, by constitutional means, from an advanced stage of socialism.)
Howard Nemerov:
“By the way, while you’re posing over the “scandal,” notice I made no charges.”
Deniability doesn’t get more implausible, or gutless, than that.
>”Have you been reading the news about Libya…..”
Obama’s accidental foreign policy is totally driven by domestic political concerns. These are image wars, and have nothing to do with the systematic projection of U.S. power.
Libya: A desperate attempt to counter critics of his tepid response to the Arab Spring; “Days, not weeks,” U.S aircraft don’t grow on trees, regime change by miracle.
Afghanistan: Hoist on the petard of his own political rhetoric in a war on which he staked his C-i-C bona fides and cannot politically afford to “lose.”
Iraq: Completely oblivious to its strategic value vis a vis Iran.
Gitmo: Stymied by Congress and the refusal of other nations to accept detainees. What to do? What to do?
Obama could be voted out of office tomorrow, and the institutionalization of central planning and regulatory corruption would continue on, almost uninterrupted. Even repealing Obamacare, for example, will leave much of its bureaucratic architecture, now being cemented into place, intact. Running around with your democidal hair on fire, with “pressing concerns” about an anonymous socialist occupant in the White House contributes less than nothing to cause of rolling back decades of “progressive” depredations.
“This proves that you are a socialist-statist apologist/enabler”
Now that’s funny! What is it about “Euro-style Democratic Socialism that is antithetical to emblematic American strength and values” you fail to understand?
“Scandalized yet?”
But you only called me a “likely” accessory to mass murder, so we’re copacetic, right? The fact that you could be so wrong about a committed 10ther only demonstrates how little you require anything remotely resembling evidence to construct a putative “proof.” You have no way of knowing, of course, whether I’m actually the anti-statist I claim to be. Q.E.D.
“You have no way of knowing, of course, whether I’m actually the anti-statist I claim to be. Q.E.D.”
Your rhetoric provides all the proof anybody needs, and it’s here in public for all to see.
As for the rest, I see you like to engage in semantics and word battles. It’s fun sometimes, isn’t it?