Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

A Day To Celebrate

38 Comments

Josef Stalin died sixty years ago.

But too many (any is too many) still mourn his passing.

As Andrew asks, what would be the reaction if people were so publicly lamenting the death of Hitler? The odious double standard, particularly on campus, remains.

[Late afternoon update]

How fitting, even poetic, that Hugo Chavez has assumed room temperature on this date. March 5th is now a double date to celebrate.

38 thoughts on “A Day To Celebrate”

  1. Well, at least nobody (outside of the record books) still honors history’s biggest killer, Mao.

  2. It’s Hitler’s fault; if he hadn’t invaded the USSR we wouldn’t have allied with Stalin, which in turn made it hard for Western public opinion to see their former ally as a Hitler-level monster.

    1. Hey? you are almost right Jim. Congrats.

      You have to understand how Russians see WW2 which is completely different from our view. They don’t call it WW2. They call it the great patriotic war. Unlike American’s that like to fight smarter, they won battles by losing large number of lives. Stalin happened to be leader at the time, so he benefits from this outpouring of patriotism (best epitomised in my mind when little old ladies gave our ship the finger in the port of Sevastopol during the Georgia war.)

      1. And again, if the Nazis hadn’t been Nazis they might have been able to to get the population to revolt and help them out against the Soviets.

        1. Not likely. You really don’t get the degree of patriotism I am talking about. Let me give it the geek perspective. Remember Lt. Chekov talking about all the things invented in Russia. Russians really are like that.

          During the Georgia war I tried to point out to my Russian wife that the Russian had ships mobilized long before the ‘Georgian’s started it.’ No impact. She focused on the fact that many Ossetians fled the war zone into Russian (freeing into Georgia would not have been safe.)

          1. I had heard that the German army was greeted as liberators in the first few cities they invaded. That would have obviously been on the Western edge, and maybe the people closer to Moscow wouldn’t have been so welcoming even if the Germans had been trying to win hearts and minds.

          2. But, yeah, I got the same viewpoint from a Russian coworker. It’s like he got his news from Russia Today.

          3. I’ve seen film of many people in parts of the old Soviet Union initially welcoming the invading Germans. This mostly happened in those areas where Stalin’s forced starvation policy killed millions of people. The point about “had the Nazis not acted as Nazis” is valid. However, they did start killing a lot of the locals. When the killing was limited to Jews, there weren’t too many complaints but the killing didn’t stop there. That was one of the many stupid things the Nazis did in their invasion of the Soviet Union that doomed them to failure.

          4. Yes, they could have had the Ukrainians fighting alongside them on the way to Moscow. All they had to do was not be as bad as Stalin. They couldn’t manage it.

    2. Jim should do a double-mourning, cuz the pig Hugo Chavez is dead.
      Ding Dong the pig is dead! The same day too!

    3. It’s Hitler’s fault; if he hadn’t invaded the USSR we wouldn’t have allied with Stalin, which in turn made it hard for Western public opinion to see their former ally as a Hitler-level monster.

      IMHO Nazi Germany would have invaded the USSR or vice versa. All Hitler did was decide the timing of that particular fight.

      1. I think pretty much everyone knew that Hitler was eventually going to invade (unless the SU invaded first) when the non-aggression pact was signed. The pact just gave each of them time to build up their forces.

        The US academics and newspapers were pretty cozy with the SU even before they became our ally; I’m not all that convinced that them actually being our ally was all that big of a factor in the US ignoring Soviet attrocities.

        1. The US academics and newspapers were pretty cozy with the SU even before they became our ally

          See Times, New York, and Duranty, Walter.

          I’m not all that convinced that them actually being our ally was all that big of a factor in the US ignoring Soviet attrocities.

          It wasn’t.

          1. Yep, Duranty’s a pretty prime example, and the one I was thinking of. John Dewey should also get some credit; his tour was a few years earlier.

  3. “Well, at least nobody (outside of the record books) still honors history’s biggest killer, Mao.”

    When I was in college during the Sixties and early Seventies, there were lots of campus Lefties–teachers and students–who admired Mao. Some of that bloody-dictator-hero-worship seemed to become less chic after counter-cultural hero (and future Republican, if the reports are true)
    John Lennon warned against “carrying pictures of Chairman Mao.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these middle-class Maoists still didn’t harbor warm and fuzzy feelings for the hefty mass-murderer. You can’t underestimate the stupidity and sado-masochistic tendencies of the Left.

  4. My daughter has a friend of Chinese ancestry; she won’t believe that Mao ever did anything bad. So far as I know (which isn’t very) the Chinese government has never condemned Mao’s various genocides.

  5. FWIW, when I connected with the pacifist left in California in the late 1960s, their opinions of Stalin, etc., were as negative — if not more so — than anybody who has commented here. Remember the Prague spring when Czechoslovakia tried to liberate themselves from Soviet rule? That was crushed by a Russian reinvasion. I met — through pacifist circles — one of the few people who flew to Moscow to stage a demonstration against the Soviet Union’s reinvasion of Czechoslovakia.

  6. Chuck, I’m curiouswere they true pacifists (whom I can admire) or phony Left pacifists, who dislike the use of force for personal or national defense, but still are hooked on the use of force by the State to bring about an ideal (that is, their ideal) society?

  7. I can see Russians having some positive reaction to Stalin, as many remember his regime as relatively peaceful & ordered, except for the war.

    Anyone outside of Russia, not so much.

    1. Plus they buy into their own propaganda. I asked my wife about the Ukrainian famine and she could have been quoting Pravda… “it had to happen.” It’s what they’re taught to believe. That it was, what it was, is unthinkable.

  8. Odd coincidence, Hugo Chavez just passed away. I wonder how many will mourn his passing?

  11. I still believe a case can be made for Rachel Carson as the world’s biggest killer. Her demonization of DDT (and the empowerment of malaria) has resulted in the deaths of 50 to 70 million people, many of them children.

    1. That’s nearly exactly the range of estimates given for the number of people killed by Mao. Given that Rachel Carson’s type of politics seem to have carried over to the green movement in general and possibly to the anti-vax movement, you might be able to up her numbers a bit.

  12. I still believe a case can be made for Rachel Carson as the world’s biggest killer. Her demonization of DDT (and the empowerment of malaria) has led to the deaths of 50 to 70 million people (many of them children).

  15. Another one bites the dust…This just in Ferdinand Franco still Dead!!!
    I’d bet he has been dead for days possibly weeks. The socialist were just taking the time to get their act together. There is an election coming and only one way to ensure a win.

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