The Communist Manifesto

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

That, and well, its a far cry from salting the city of Carthage or massacring the entire population of Jerusalem and stuff.

Yeah, it's a lot worse.

And one of the reasons the Vietnamese aren't that unhappy now is that they kicked your ass. Overwhelming ownage of oppressors tends to make people happy.

[rmsharpe]

Originally posted by Agathon
Western propaganda tended to portray Communism as some monolithic conspiracy. Putting all the communist countries in the same bloc regarding the Cold War makes about as much sense as putting India on our side.

Who here is putting all the communist countries in the same bloc? I'm pretty sure everyone here knows about the Sino-Soviet split, Yugoslavia in 1948, Albania in the 60s, etc., etc.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by rmsharpe

Then who would satisfy you? How about Robert Conquest? Conquests' oft-cited figure is 20 million.

Nope. I didn't include wars or famines in those statistics; if I did, the number would have ballooned to about 50 million as opposed to the meager number I posted earlier.

So you want to gerrymander the numbers in your own favour.

Stop wasting my time.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by rmsharpe

Who here is putting all the communist countries in the same bloc? I'm pretty sure everyone here knows about the Sino-Soviet split, Yugoslavia in 1948, Albania in the 60s, etc., etc.

read the thread.

[rmsharpe]

Originally posted by Agathon
And one of the reasons the Vietnamese aren't that unhappy now is that they kicked your ass. Overwhelming ownage of oppressors tends to make people happy.

So, you think the concentration camps set up after 1975 made people happier? How about the boat people; how happy were they if they risked their lives on a flimsy raft across the Pacific ocean?

[rmsharpe]

Originally posted by Agathon
read the thread.

Cop-out.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by BeBro

The fun is that we usually don't come up with something like "it wasn't really the fault of the colonial regimes"

You must be kidding. Apologists abound.

or "they had to do this because they were under attack from outside" or "it wasn't really what colonialism is" nonsense in case of colonialism today. As for the famines, it would be quite interesting to look whether for example the famines resulting from Stalin's attempt to collectivization are just another result of mismanagment, or if they were also used as a form of economical warfare against the own people to break resistance against his policies. We know from the Ukraine that the latter certainly played a role.

So the west knowingly killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids with idiotic sanctions that they knew full well were doing so just in order to break the Iraqi government was just fine and dandy, was it?

That was just over ten years ago.

I don't want to excuse Stalin in any way. Our own countries have proved no different when given the chance.

And if it was communism or "communism", it remains that the guys claimed to be communists and shaped the practical attempt to create a society based on communist ideology (or, admittedly, their understanding of it), so it doesn't seem to far out to ask if other ideas of communism will be different or similar to it.

1. Of course every time someone claims to be X, they must be X.

2. Marx doesn't supply a blueprint for a future communist regime, so it would be more accurate to take these regimes on their own merits.

Eh? We don't have to believe, we know it for various instances in history. Germany had to face that it has been exactly "despicable, human rights violating, militaristic", and it wasn't the end of the world. And big generalities like "History is written by the winners" aren't really helpful when looking at something concrete. If people prefer to lie to themselves about their pet country/ideology/whatever it's their business, but they shouldn't wonder if it is subject to critical debate from time to time. That's pretty much the same for all kinds of political directions, and communism or "communism" is no special case here.

It is a special case when the people doing it are using it to argue that the West is somehow noble.

If people want to have a go at Stalin, they can be my guest (I am not a Stalinist and I have no particular liking for him), but if you don't want to recognize that our own countries have been just as bad, what's the point?

There will be absolutely zero progress until people wake up to the fact that pretty much all sides are "evil" sacks of ****. The day that CNN opens up with a flashing red headline saying "Today our President became a War Criminal" or "Our country tortures people", give me a call (and no, "Is our President a war criminal" or "Is waterboarding torture" are not substitutes for honest reporting).

[Agathon]

Originally posted by rmsharpe

So, you think the concentration camps set up after 1975 made people happier? How about the boat people; how happy were they if they risked their lives on a flimsy raft across the Pacific ocean?

Oh noes... people want to leave poor countries that are devastated by war and economic sanctions, and people who propped up fascists don't like it when they are held accountable.

Wake me up when the tide of Mexicans gets anywhere near as low as the number of Vietnamese who left.

Dumb Americans...

[Agathon]

This is boring. If I want to argue with retards, at least it is funnier on the WoW forums.

[Lorizael]

Then by all means, go.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Because such a comparison would be superficial. The world's largest democracy wasn't even on the "West's" side during the Cold War. If democracy were such a motivating factor, you would assume this could never have happened.

You mean like a comparison that (and I quote): "the only reason democracies don't tend to go after each other is because they are by accident part of the same power bloc".

Thanks for being so superficial.

[rmsharpe]

Originally posted by Agathon
This is boring. If I want to argue with retards, at least it is funnier on the WoW forums.

Cop-out 2: Electric Boogaloo.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Agathon
You must be kidding. Apologists abound.

Meh. Doesn't change the fact that colonialism isn't usually portrayed as something great anymore. Or that former colonial powers have come under lotsa fire for it.

So the west knowingly killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids with idiotic sanctions that they knew full well were doing so just in order to break the Iraqi government was just fine and dandy, was it?

Of course one could also look if Saddam's policy had anything to do with that (IIRC he declined certain offers to ease the sanctions since holding his own people hostage had some domestic advantages, but I guess it's easier to blame all on the west). But even then, I never said anything about it, certainly not that it was "just fine and dandy".

1. Of course every time someone claims to be X, they must be X.

2. Marx doesn't supply a blueprint for a future communist regime, so it would be more accurate to take these regimes on their own merits.

If they were "real" communists or not is a long debate, it was the first practical attempt to create something based on communist ideology. So just claiming that it hasn't anything to do with it is a bit too easy. It would make an interesting debate to look if certain problems lie at the core of Marxism/communism, or if they were just created by those who weren't the "real" guys. But that would need a critical and open examination of the thing.

It is a special case when the people doing it are using it to argue that the West is somehow noble.

If people want to have a go at Stalin, they can be my guest (I am not a Stalinist and I have no particular liking for him), but if you don't want to recognize that our own countries have been just as bad, what's the point?

It's one thing to say that lotsa countries have done **** throughout history, another to say that everything is the same. That's just an easy way out. We can't understand history or even hope to learn from it when we just shrug and say it's all the same.

[Arrian]

The day that CNN opens up with a flashing red headline saying "Today our President became a War Criminal" or "Our country tortures people", give me a call (and no, "Is our President a war criminal" or "Is waterboarding torture" are not substitutes for honest reporting).

Translation: the day CNN agrees with Agathon (no, considering Agathon's position isn't good enough), he'll be happy. Or something.

It's one thing to say that lotsa countries have done **** throughout history, another to say that everything is the same. That's just an easy way out. We can't understand history or even hope to learn from it when we just shrug and say it's all the same.

Indeed. But Aggie doesn't actually think it's all the same. He things the US is worse. That's pretty clear.

-Arrian

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Arrian
Indeed. But Aggie doesn't actually think it's all the same. He things the US is worse. That's pretty clear.

To be fair, he probably only thinks the US is worse because he's a stupid human who can't see beyond the limited scope of his surroundings. Had he lived during the times of the worst butcherers in history, he might think differently.