Commemorating, though not celebrating, the 75th anniversary of the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact:
On this 75th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, we recognize the morally reprehensible nature of the totalitarian ideas of Nazism and Stalinism, of fascism and communism. We also recall the historical fact that regimes dedicated to these deadly ideologies worked together to start World War II, and aided each other in murdering millions of innocent men, women, and children. We remember those victims on this Black Ribbon Day.
A few years back, the Left squealed like stuck pigs when Jonah reminded them that the Nazis were of them, not of “the Right.” They desperately grasped at thin straws to point out the niggling differences between the Nazis and the Stalinists. But the point was, and remains, that the similarities were much greater than the differences. Both are totalitarian, collectivist, anti-individualist ideologies, and the distinction was pretty much transparent to the unwilling user.
[Afternoon update]
More thoughts from Ilya Somin.
[Late evening update]
This isn’t exactly the same thing, but it is related. The American historians who are new friends of Hamas:
The demands they make upon Israel, Herf argues, without corresponding demands made on Hamas, is in essence repeating Hamas’ demands as their own. The petition writers do not even mention that the fighting in Gaza began with Hamas’ aggression. This is, Herf continues, a major change in the Left’s position taken over many years. Once a movement that always claimed to be “anti-fascist” above all, it is now supporting and praising the equivalent of the Islamic fascists.
Herf makes a sound analogy between their position and that taken by the old Communists in the years of the Nazi-Soviet Pact from Aug. 1939 to June 1941. Just as the Communists ignored fascism — the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov famously said that “fascism is a matter of taste,” the historians now justify many of the Islamists’ actions as a cultural difference that Westerners should respect. Recall that historian Joan Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton a few years ago refused to condemn Tariq Ramadan’s failure to oppose the stoning of women to death in Muslim nations. Stoning, she said at a forum, was an aspect of their culture that we had to understand.
What explains these historians’ actions? Do they really want to be known as supporters of Hamas? Have they bothered to read the Hamas Charter? If not, how can they purport to be scholars and historians? Either they have read it and ignore it; or are so negligent as to not have bothered to learn what Hamas’s beliefs and aims are. It is especially shameful that these senior scholars, many of whom are historians of Germany no less and are proud of their anti-fascism, totally ignore the nature of Israel’s enemy.
There is an answer to why these historians are all anti-Israel, and it is the same answer I gave in my column last week at PJ Media. The American Left, following the long standing stance of its British comrades, favors an alliance with the West’s greatest enemies.
Again, the similarities (opposed to liberty and individualism) are much more important than the (literally, in this case) academic differences.
And then there’s this:
Shame on these supposed intellectuals, historians all, who have abandoned the most basic tenants of the historical method to propagandize for the Islamists, whom the late Christopher Hitchens aptly referred to as “Islamofascists.”
That’s a much better word than “Nazis,” which O’Reilly foolishly proposed as an improvement on “terrorists.”
Emphasis mine.
Highly appropos:
http://libertyfirst.tumblr.com/post/35423652504/collectivism-always-one-execution-away-from
… Both are totalitarian, collectivist, anti-individualist ideologies…
If only ‘individualist’ vs ‘anti-individualist’ were what differentiated right from left. That’s a very limited definition of those terms, and one that ignores both their origin and the history.
The origin is that the founder of the Nazis sought to combine nationalism with socialism. When Hitler took over, the party became the de facto State — just like the CPSU did when it took over the Russian Empire.
I have seen political parties categorized as “right” that call for the decent citizen to be left alone — but I have never seen a party calling itself “Left” that didn’t demand ever more power at ever-higher levels of government.
“If only ‘individualist’ vs ‘anti-individualist’ were what differentiated right from left.”
And what, in your mind, does differentiate them, Dave?
As I’ve previously remarked, if the term “right” can I include (as apparently does, to the “liberal” mind–that weird wild world where the laws of economics and logic do not apply) everyone anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard and pacifist-individualist Robert LeFevre AND Hitler, the term has lost all meaning, if it ever had one.
(I am aware of the historical derivation from wings of the French parliament, with the “right wing” supporting the King–which, if you insisted on carrying this terminology forward into the 21st century, would make today’s “liberals”–and by “liberals” I mean of course “tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State-fellators”–the “right wing.” Or as I often call ’em, “the New Tories.”)
It’s always fun to ask lefties what “Nazi” was the abbreviation for – National * Socialism * . Hours of fun for the whole family. Bloomin’ idiots, the lot of them.
I strongly recommend Diana West’s “American Betrayal“, which chronicles just how deeply the Roosevelt administration was penetrated by Soviet agents and Communist sympathizers.
To hear her tell it, we lost the Cold War before it even started. Pretty sobering.
Both are totalitarian, collectivist, anti-individualist ideologies, and the distinction was pretty much transparent to the unwilling user.
That’s not really true, a Nazi victory would have been even worse for Eastern Europe and Russia than a victory by Stalin, horrible as that was already. If only it had been possible to defeat both Hitler and Stalin. The best possibility during the war might have been the early 1943 attempts on Hitler’s life, although historians are no longer certain they actually took place as had long been believed based on reports by the very few surviving plotters. An even better possibility would have been the 1938 coup that was hours away from being initiated when it was thwarted because the Allies gave in at Munich, though for unerstandable reasons. Europeans history is such a terrible mess. You have to bear that in mind to understand why Europeans want an EU.
That’s an excellent point. In the 1980s, the USSR started allowing many Jews to leave the country (but not before putting them through years of hell for saying they wanted to leave). My beliefs about horrors of communism (at least, as practiced in Russia) were solidified when my family became friends with a group of these Russians, and heard their stories about what life was like. If the Nazis had won in Russia, my friends wouldn’t have been around to tell their stories.
Before anyone jumps on my back for saying “at least as practiced in Russia”, I’m now friends with ex-Yugoslavians who disagree that life was “hellish” under Communism, although they’re quick to agree that it was bad for almost everyone, and literally tortuous or deadly for too many.
So the Gulags were A-OK, because your friends survived them? How about Mao? Was it OK that he didn’t kill Jews, just tens of millions of Chinese?
It’s stupid to draw the kinds of distinctions you’re attempting to, when they’re all brutal and evil, and all in the same collectivist, statist, anti-liberty, anti-individualist way.
I wonder if you would have given such a harsh reply Martijn.
Talking about ” horrors of communism ” is not equivalent to “the Gulags were A-Ok”.
Martijn was really talking about history, not ideology. I understand you want to talk about ideology, but understanding history can inform your ideology. Alternative history scenarios are one way to try to understand history.
I think you should at least take a moment to consider Martijn’s alternative history scenario: Russia collapses, the Allies stop at the German border, and the Nazis take over all the land that ended up the Warsaw Pact countries in our timeline + Western Germany. Are the differences from our timeline really transparent to the so-called users?
I think bob should at least take a moment to reread Martjin’s post, and understand that most of us can read it and compare it to bob’s characterization of it.
Particularly the alternative history that goes: “If only it had been possible to defeat both Hitler and Stalin.”
I have no idea how one goes from that to: “Russia collapses, the Allies stop at the German border, and the Nazis take over all the land that ended up the Warsaw Pact countries”
If it had been possible to defeat Hitler and Stalin, how does that happen with the Allies stopping at the German border or the Nazis taking over the Warsaw Pact countries?
The real history is that the Allies did stop at the German border, and the Soviets took over the Warsaw Pact. Martjin provided two alternative histories, neither got to the point when the Allies reached the German border. And neither involved allowing the Soviets to advance to the German border and take over the nations that became the Warsaw Pact.
I was referring to this: “That’s not really true, a Nazi victory would have been even worse for Eastern Europe and Russia than a victory by Stalin, horrible as that was already. ”
I imagine Martijn was thinking of things like Generalplan Ost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Oh, I see, I finally understand your comment. Leland, if you want to imagine a scenario where the Nazis take over all of Europe or the even the whole world, it hardly makes any difference to the subject. Any sort of Nazi victory, regardless of the final borders, would have been a disaster, and the point of the exercise whether the disaster would have been even worse than what actually happened after the war in the USSR and Eastern Europe.
should have read ” the point of the exercise *is to see* whether the disaster would have been even worse than what actually happened after the war in the USSR and Eastern Europe.”
Leland, if you want to imagine a scenario where the Nazis take over all of Europe or the even the whole world, it hardly makes any difference to the subject.
I never imagined such a scenario nor described one. I’m imagining Eisenhower listening to Patton, or one of Martjin’s other two scenarios. I certainly don’t imagine living other flavors of communism as anything but hellish. Even Dante realized there were multiple levels, but it was all hell to him.
That’s irrelevant, because the discussion was about ideology.
Ah ha, for example, Martijn’s scenario prompted me to learn about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Excerpt;
“The Generalplan Ost (GPO) (English: Master Plan East) was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Central and Eastern Europe Implementation would have necessitated genocide[2] and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale to be undertaken in these European territories, occupied by Germany during World War II. It would have included the enslavement, expulsion, or extermination of most Slavic peoples in Europe.”
That was the even more horrible scenario of a Nazi victory I had in mind. Nazism had many of the evil qualities of communism and combined them with the genocidal intent to exterminate the Jews and Slavs to establish a new German empire capable of taking on and defeating the US.
I say this not to minimise the evils of Stalin and communism. It is deeply tragic that although the war was eventually won, at great cost, eastern Europe was simply occupied by another murderous tyrant. Britain and France went to war over Germany’s invasion of Poland, and ended it with Poland in Russian hands.
The “optimistic” scenario would have been Tresckow & company in Army Group Center blowing up Hitler’s plane early in 1943. They would have dismantled the concentration camps, prosecuted (and presumably executed) at least some of those most responsible for the atrocities committed and set up a civilian government. They probably would also have tried to raise a Ukrainian army to fight against Russia for an independent Ukraine. Under those circumstances, and with competent military management of the war, it’s not inconceivable a new government could have made peace with the western allies. This would have been more likely to be accepted if they were willing to accept occupation by the western allies and offered them the possibility of keeping eastern Europe including Ukraine outside the Soviet sphere of influence.
And the Soviets didn’t enslave most Slavic peoples under their control?
Rand, the following, taken from the wikipedia article listed above, is what did not happen to the Poles:
In 1941 it was decided to destroy the Polish nation completely and the German leadership decided that in 10 to 20 years the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists.
and
According to the plan this would result in their assimilation by the local populations, which would cause the Poles to vanish as a nation.[13] By 1952, only about 3-4 million non-Germanized Poles (all of them peasants) were to be left residing in the former Poland. Those of them who would still not Germanize were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles would cease to exist.
What the Communists did to Poland was very bad, but the above scenario is far worse.
And both would be awful, and neither would be “right wing.” Both would be totalitarian actions of the Left. The only difference is that one is race based, and the other class based. Stalin certainly wouldn’t have cried if he’d wiped every Ukrainian off the map.
I’m not refuting your point by asking this question, I’m just curious:
Do you find Apollo-Soyuz to be as horrible as the equivalent space cooperation would have been with a surviving Nazi regime? The question is genuinely being asked to see what you think of Apollo-Soyuz, rather than to score points.
I don’t think much of Apollo-Soyuz.
In the 1940’s, Time referred to the Molotov-Ribbentorp Pact as the Communazi Pact. It is the Pact that allowed the Nazis to do what they did in Poland and to the Slavic people without interference from the Soviet Union, and that Pact remained in place until Hitler decided to invade Russia. In shore, when Rand writes: “Stalin certainly wouldn’t have cried if he’d wiped every Ukrainian off the map.” It’s fairly well backed up by what was actually happening from 1938-41 in other places.