>From: "Macdonald Stainsby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Status: > >[from the latest Green Left Weekly at www.greenleft.org.au ] > >Ten easy steps to be an anti-communist >By Phil Shannon > >The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression >By Stephane Courteis, et al >Harvard University Press, 1999 858pp, US$37.50 > >The openings for career anticommunists may have dried up a little since the >"collapse of communism". But, for the serious Red-hater, the release of The >Black Book of Communism offers a useful refresher course. > >This 800-page catalogue of the crimes of "communism" and its "100 million >victims" caused a noisy stir on its release in France two years ago, when >right wingers in the French parliament kicked up a hullabaloo over the >presence of communists in the coalition government of socialist Prime >Minister Lionel Jospin. > >The English language edition of the book offers the conservative connoisseur >the traditional menu of horror stories about "communist" atrocities, which >veteran Cold War historians have been dining off ever since 1917, and adds >extra helpings from new archival sources. The Black Book of Communism excels >as an example of the genre and, despite its bulk, offers a simple ten point >plan on how to be an anticommunist. > >1. Have a "communist" past, and renounce it > >Anyone can be a common or garden variety anticommunist but if you want fame >and notoriety, and a publishing contract with a prestigious university, then >it pays to be a former communist. The establishment likes nothing better >than a radical who has "seen the light". > >All the contributors to the Black Book are "former communists or close >fellow-travellers", the latest batch of recruits to the ranks of those who >once wanted to change the status quo but have since made their peace with >it. > >2. Win sympathy by portraying yourself as engaged in an heroic struggle >against leftist hegemony > >Portray yourself as part of a minority of "scholars" fighting a noble >struggle for truth against the leftists who control the universities and the >press. Assert how "scholars have never been interested" in the scale of the >victims of "Leninist regimes from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989". > >Complain of the "deafening silence of the academic world" towards the crimes >of Lenin, Mao, Ho, Stalin. Say all this with a straight face, as if there >had never been an anti-Marxist witch-hunt or blacklist, never an editorial >or book written about "communist" terror and the "evils of revolution". > >3. Take the scholarly high ground > >You are "scholars" interested only in the pursuit of objective truth, unlike >those sly Marxists who have a political agenda. Claim that Western >apologists for "Marxist terror regimes" from Bolshevik Russia to Mozambique >and Ethiopia are "never burdened with the need to be impartial" and that >only you, the disinterested scholar, can honestly portray "large-scale >atrocities" for what they are -- communist crimes. > >For you have no political axe to grind. Anticommunism is, of course, not >about preserving the capitalist status quo by stomping on the left, whether >deepest red or reformist pink. What sane person, after all, could fail to be >shocked that "openly revolutionary groups enjoy every legal right to state >their views" in Western democracies, and that "breast-beating over the idea >of revolution is far from over"? > >4. Keep it simple > >Steer clear of theoretical depth and complexity. Your case stands or falls >on a grand simplicity -- the Bolsheviks committed Original Marxist Sin. Run >a ramrod-straight line from Marx via Lenin and Stalin through to Pol Pot. > >Do not subject the actions of Lenin's Bolsheviks to contextual analysis, for >this might show that, in an isolated, backward, starved, blockaded and >invaded country, where the choice was between survival of the socialist >revolution and a counter-revolution of fascist ferocity, the Bolsheviks had >no choice but to use the firmest, often merciless, tactics of civil war. > >That the Bolsheviks increasingly ruled in the name of the workers and over >the peasants (through forced grain requisitioning) was not because the fate >of the revolution often hung by a thread. That the Bolsheviks resorted to >temporary restrictions on political pluralism and inner-party democracy was >not because the revolutionary proletariat had been swallowed up by the Red >Army and the administrative apparatus. The Bolsheviks were evil because they >were Marxists. > >Shun context. It is sufficient to simply cite some bloodcurdling quotes from >Lenin about shooting hostages, and to list the body count of the Cheka (the >Bolsheviks' political police). This will have readers shaking their heads in >grim reflection on the inhumanity of the Bolsheviks and Lenin's "cold, >calculating and cynical cruelty". > >Avoid perspective, as this can distort the picture of evil Red >revolutionaries versus saintly counter-revolutionary democrats. Remember to >relegate to a mere parenthesis the anti-Jewish pogroms of the >counter-revolutionary armies, which killed more people in the Ukraine alone >than the Cheka managed in its entire existence. > >Do try and confuse cause and response. Assert that the Bolsheviks started >the civil war. Do not mention that immediately after the revolution, the >Bolsheviks, with magnanimous good nature, released all manner of Tsarist >officers who had attempted counter-coups on the promise that they would not >again take up arms against the revolution, and that only when they promptly >formed armies and began massacring and disembowelling Red prisoners and >workers, were the Bolsheviks forced to set up the Cheka. > >Context only muddies the waters of analysis. You have a grander vision -- to >show that Lenin's Russia was the "cradle of all modern communism" and, >because the Bolsheviks were a "bloody dictatorship and a criminal regime >from the start", all subsequent attempts at revolution must be so too. > >The "good Lenin/bad Stalin myth" and attempts by "the extreme Marxist left, >especially the Trotskyites" to deny the "communist" label to Stalin, Mao, >Pol Pot, et al. are wicked deceptions to lead you astray from the righteous >crusade against socialism. > >With this theoretical foundation in place, the political arithmetic of the >body count falls easily into place. Stalinism = 100 million victims, >Stalinism = communism, therefore communism = barbaric evil. Keep it simple. > >5. Use friendly sources > >In setting the Bolshevik atrocity meter running, use only friendly sources. >Leonard Schapiro is good as are the counter-revolutionary enemies of the >Bolsheviks, like General Denikin and his "Commission to Investigate >Bolshevik Crimes" whose terrifying atrocity tales are uncorroborated and >devoid of the most elemental caution about the veracity of war propaganda. > >6. Don't forget the kitchen sink > >Don't stop at Marxists to show the perils of revolution. Drag in the French >Revolution. Do not fail to remind the reader of the "Revolutionary Terror" >of Robespierre. > >Do fail to remind the reader that the French Revolution was a bourgeois >revolution and how we may well not have had capitalism, a parliament or a >stock exchange if Robespierre hadn't resorted to terror. > >7. Take claims at face value > >If a regime calls itself communist, or claims allegiance to Marxism, then it >must be so. Never mind that a socialist revolution can, in unfavourable >circumstances, degenerate to something other than what it started out to be, >or that once Stalinism had established its political dominance it set a >false role model for other revolutionaries from Mao to Pol Pot to follow, or >that Stalinism pressured revolutionary countries into various un-socialist >deformities, once Western hostility had forced these countries into the >Soviet sphere. > >By the same logic, capitalism must be free and democratic because that is >what we are told. So your Black Book can claim, without a trace of irony, >that "communism" is found wanting by the yardstick of the "humanist ideals >implicit in our Judeo-Christian civilisation and democratic traditions" >which include "respect for human life". > >Some people will want to point to Hiroshima, slavery, the trenches of WWI, >"imperialism", the CIA, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, Sacco and Vanzetti >and on and on and on. Ignore them. They are communist troublemakers. > >8. Lie > >It is obligatory to include the Vietnam, Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions as >part of the totalitarian Marxist family. > >Remember your lessons from the US State Department school of public >relations, and you will be able to denounce the South Vietnam "liberation" >struggle as a cover for communist aggression by the North, pillory Castro >and Che Guevara as "totalitarian from the very beginning", and tarnish the >Sandinistas as embryonic Pol Pots who were only foiled by "genuine freedom >fighters" (the Contras). > >9. Develop selective amnesia > >Whilst reminding the reader that some "leftist intellectuals" uncritically >supported the Khmer Rouge for a time, you should conveniently forget that >Western capitalist governments supported, and materially aided, the >murderous Khmer Rouge as part of the "punishment" of Vietnam for ridding >Indochina of US imperialism. > >10. Offer an olive branch to out-of-favour anti-communists > >Numbers do not lie. When you stack up "communism's 100 million victims" >against the 25 million of the Nazis, this will help to portray your >anticommunist cousins, the fascists, in a better light and start people >towards thinking whether we fought on the wrong side in the last world war. > >With these 10 simple points to guide you, you too can be part of humanity's >noblest struggle -- the fight against radical social change, especially >socialist revolution, by the world's working class and poor. And you will be >right up there with the "scholars" who have shown the way with The Black >Book of Communism._______ >Macdonald Stainsby >----- >Check out the Tao ten point program: http://new.tao.ca > >"The only truly humanitarian war would be one against >underdevelopment, hunger and disease." >- Fidel Castro > > __________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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