PACE: Commies suck

[Silver14]

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[Odin]

Funny that Serb is acting like he has a moral high grown when Stalin killed tens of millions of people. The dispicable things US has done (and still is doing, unfortunately) pale in comparison to Stalin & Co.

[Elok]

I'm not being racist, I'm being culturally condescending. There's a difference. I believe that, if you took any German or French infant and raised him/her "American," he/she would be indistinguishable from other Americans. It's just that their countries suck.

I'm not sure who it was (perhaps Dave Barry) who first compared Europe to a bunch of unrelated people who've been living together in a boarding house for waaaaay too long. They've learned to give up open fighting, but they know each others' habits by heart and they not-so-secretly loathe them. The result is an endless farce of sniping, passive aggression, and Machiavellian power games.

See, the secret to democracy is to realize that politicians' nature is generally independent of their ideology. Some people are more decent and honest than others (a distinction which crosses party lines), but the difference between a sleazeball liberal and a sleazeball conservative is academic. Therefore, it makes sense to have as few powerful political parties as possible, so that you preserve the valuable advantages of competition while giving up very little efficiency. The various members of the fringe who are discontented with the two-party system can then be pigeonholed into one of the many pitiful third-parties and fed with inspiring lies about Teddy Roosevelt to make them think there's a snowball's chance in hell of them making a difference. These little guys never win anything significant, but they do alternately leech away small votes from the big guys (thereby encouraging them to appeal to broader bases) and give whichever of the two big parties is currently losing something to feel superior to.

With Europe, it's like they're all third parties or something. Swarms of lunatics in ever-shifting alliances, and they all seem to hate each other far more virulently than the big two in America. And that's just within one individual country. All those little countries take turns mistrusting each other as well; if they hadn't had us and the USSR to suspect and fear, they probably would have spent the past fifty years on the brink of constant war. As it is, I just read the occassional stories about how the EU could become an economic superpower "when it truly unifies," and I laugh hysterically.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Serb

PACE has never condemned neo-nazism in some of the new EU members.

Really?

http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc05/EDOC10766.htm

And this draft resolution recieved UNANIMOUS approval, compared to the one calling on European states condemning totalitarian communism, which couldn't get 2/3rd vote.

[DinoDoc]

Doesn't pwning Serb loose some value when it comes so easily?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Doesn't pwning Serb loose some value when it comes so easily?

Yes . It took less than 5 minutes on Google.

[Az]

Really?

http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?li...5/EDOC10766.htm

And this draft resolution recieved UNANIMOUS approval, compared to the one calling on European states condemning totalitarian communism, which couldn't get 2/3rd vote.

I am pretty sure that he was referring to the institutional sympathy of some countries to some people who collaborated with some nazis. I really don't want to get into this ****storm so I won't elaborate.

[Nostromo]

The US isn't a totalitarian regime. Granted, its imperialist, but not totalitarian.

According to wikipedia:

Totalitarianism is a typology employed by political scientists, especially those in the field of comparative politics, to describe modern regimes in which the state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior. Totalitarian regimes mobilize entire populations in support of the state and a political ideology, and do not tolerate activities by individuals or groups such as labor unions, churches and political parties that are not directed toward the state's goals. They maintain themselves in power by means of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, and widespread use of terror tactics.

Can someone name me a so-called communist regime that wasn't either totalitarian or authoritarian? Maybe Allende's government, but we'll never know, will we?

[Last Conformist]

People have been known to call Bill Clinton a commie ...

[GePap]

Originally posted by nostromo
The US isn't a totalitarian regime. Granted, its imperialist, but not totalitarian.

According to wikipedia:



Can someone name me a so-called communist regime that wasn't either totalitarian or authoritarian? Maybe Allende's government, but we'll never know, will we?

Allende's government was not communist anyways.

As for the question, all communist states that have arisen in the modern world have followed the Leninist or Maoist paths to power, so invariably they are authoritarian, and can become totalitarian.

There have been democratic communes, and we can wait for Ramo to hear about Anarcho-syndicalists during the Spanish Civil War, which are democratic forms of communism. As of yet no movement that has totally taken over a modern bureauocratic state.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by nostromo
The US isn't a totalitarian regime. Granted, its imperialist, but not totalitarian.

According to wikipedia:



Can someone name me a so-called communist regime that wasn't either totalitarian or authoritarian? Maybe Allende's government, but we'll never know, will we?

The Sandanistas, the pre-Stalin Bolsheviks, the Paris Commune, etc.

[GePap]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


The Sandanistas, the pre-Stalin Bolsheviks, the Paris Commune, etc.

The Bolshevisk were always authoritarian- Lenin began the terror wth Dzerzhinsky. They always advocated single party rule.

You should cite some of the other non-bolshevik leftists movements around Russia that sprung up.

[chequita guevara]

Anyone who denies that the Communist countries were humanitarian nightmares is just deluding themselves. While capitalism as total system has been far more bloody, at least for the most part, people living in the imperialist cores had a modicum of civil and human rights (excepting certain periods). Granted, 19th Century France wasn't a well-spring of liberty, and being a working slob in Britain or a slave in the U.S. was probably as harsh a life as you could find anywhere, there was class mobility and significant openings for political activity by the oppressed classes (except for the slaves). That's not something you can say about any of the Communist regimes over the long term, except in Sandanista Nicaragua.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by GePap
The Bolshevisk were always authoritarian- Lenin began the terror wth Dzerzhinsky. They always advocated single party rule.

Wrong! The terror began with the White slaughter of five hundred Red Guards in Moscow. The White terror was more vicious and bloody than the Red Terror, even if we take the worst estimates of the Red Terror.

As for always advocating single-party rule, that's incorrect as well. They always wanted a multiparty government. However, certain parties, such as the Cadets, opted for siding with the Whites. The Left SRs took the wrong lesson from the October revolution, thinking it simply a coup, and attempted their own, and the Mensheviks split, one faction siding with the Whites and the other eventually joining the Communists.

If the Democratic Party in the North had been recruiting for the Confederacy, I have no doubt that they would have been outlawed, and no one today would be saying that was a bad thing. If you take arms against the government, then you need to expect to be outlawed.

[GePap]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by GePap
The Bolshevisk were always authoritarian- Lenin began the terror wth Dzerzhinsky. They always advocated single party rule.

Wrong! The terror began with the White slaughter of five hundred Red Guards in Moscow. The White terror was more vicious and bloody than the Red Terror, even if we take the worst estimates of the Red Terror.

1. Irrelevant "who began it". Terror is terror, you don;t get an excuse. Also, I don;t buy the "estimates" bit either. You see, the White terror ended in 1922. The Red Terror didn't.

As for always advocating single-party rule, that's incorrect as well. They always wanted a multiparty government. However, certain parties, such as the Cadets, opted for siding with the Whites. The Left SRs took the wrong lesson from the October revolution, thinking it simply a coup, and attempted their own, and the Mensheviks split, one faction siding with the Whites and the other eventually joining the Communists.

The "Whites" were a catch all, anything from Cossack bandists, to MOnarchists, to Authoritarians, to the Kadets, so just saying "White" mean nothing.

And I don;t for a second buy the notion that Lenin ever saw a multiparty, system, not in the ruthless way he got rid of any leftists who were not bolsheviks.

If the Democratic Party in the North had been recruiting for the Confederacy, I have no doubt that they would have been outlawed, and no one today would be saying that was a bad thing. If you take arms against the government, then you need to expect to be outlawed.

BULL****.

The russian civil war was not a geographical, but an ideological split. There are more versions of Communism than Bolshevism. The Bolshevisk ruthlessly murdered any socialists, or simple liberals. That is NOT something to ever forgive, certainly not in any way the actions of any group with any interest in pluralistic democracy.

The comparison is inane and intellectually useless.