Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: roo_ster on February 28, 2011, 11:13:45 AM
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http://www.chequerboard.org/2011/02/marxists-i-hate-these-guys/
Do read before going all kerflooey.
The occasion of the author's discomfiture is a fawning paean to Eric Hobsbawm, which he finds nauseating. The author then provides an anti-emetic in selections from folks critical of Hobsbawm's decades-long promotion of and excusing of the vilest mass-murderers and torturers this world ever saw.
". . . can we please have an end to fawning interviews with the unrepentant Moscow-liner Eric Hobsbawm? He is not, as the BBC argued this week, perhaps our greatest living historian. He’s an apologist for totalitarianism and when I think of the millions who were killed and tortured in Marxism’s name, from the Polish officers shot in Katyn forest to those brave dissidents who endured the gulag, I am convinced that only when Hobsbawm weeps hot tears for a life spent serving an ideology of wickedness will he ever be worth listening to."
----Michael Grove
"Hobsbawm’s prose is always at a distance from reality. He writes of “the hecatombs of the Stalin era,” not torture chambers and concentration camps. An old Hungarian Communist, Tibor Szamuely, “claimed to have had the usual spell in a camp during the dictator’s final lunacies.” Note “claimed,” as if it’s probably not true; note “lunacies,” which is another glideover."
----David Evanier
"He loves to describe himself as a professional historian, but someone who has steadily corrupted knowledge into propaganda, and scorns the concept of objective truth, is nothing of the kind, neither a historian nor professional. "
"The man who sets dogs on concentration camp victims or fires his revolver into the back of their necks is evidently a brute; the intellectual who devises justifications for the brutality is harder to deal with, and far more sinister in the long run."
----David Pryce-Jones
Here is the complete article by D P-J, "Lying to the Credulous":
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Eric+Hobsbawm:+lying+to+the+credulous.-a096501359
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So these people are now praising Hobsbawm.... for the least intellectually valid parts of his work? :O
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So these people are now praising Hobsbawm.... for the least intellectually valid parts of his work? :O
Yes, but it is accord with their ideology.
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So in essence, this is more of the "Communisim is great, the right people just haven't been in charge of it yet.."-crowd?
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So in essence, this is more of the "Communisim is great, the right people just haven't been in charge of it yet.."-crowd?
No. You are too generous by half.
More like:
"Communisim is great, the right people were in charge, the cost <mumble-mumble> was worth it, its a damn shame the USSR fell in 1989. Oh, and America was the bad guy during the Cold War."
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Hence, the nausea when reading accolades to the unrepentant apologist for totalitarianism. Read those quotes in the OP.
"...a life spent serving an ideology of wickedness..." is no bluster, but an accurate portrayal of Hobsbawm.
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So in essence, this is more of the "Communisim is great, the right people just haven't been in charge of it yet.."-crowd?
Socialism in the 20th century turned out to be most necessary where it was least possible: in socially devastated, politically benighted, economically backward regions of the globe where no Marxist thinker before Stalin had ever dreamed that it could take root. Or at least, take root without massive assistance from more well-heeled nations. In such dismal conditions, the socialist project is almost bound to turn into a monstrous parody of itself. All the same, the idea that Marxism leads inevitably to such monstrosities, as Hobsbawm observes, ‘has about as much justification as the thesis that all Christianity must logically and necessarily always lead to papal absolutism, or all Darwinism to the glorification of free capitalist competition’.
It's not that the wrong people were in charge - they just didn't do it in places trhat could afford socialism - until now.
I'm guessing that if the British Empire's home base had been able to supply sufficient food to the residents immediately after WWII then England would have been the place that could have "afforded" socialism. Perhaps if that had been the case we would not be where we are today.
Color me cynical.
stay safe.
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No. You are too generous by half.
More like:
"Communisim is great, the right people were in charge, the cost <mumble-mumble> was worth it, its a damn shame the USSR fell in 1989. Oh, and America was the bad guy during the Cold War."
TOS precludes me from saying what needs to be done then.
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Marxists...I Hate These Guys (No special distinction for Illinois Marxists)
So how do you feel about Illinois Nazi's?
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So how do you feel about Illinois Nazi's?
They need to be squared off against the Illinois Marxists in a half frozen muddy field and have both sides given live ammo.
Call it a hyper-realism exercise in a re-enactment of the Eastern Front in WWII, and a performance art commentary on the mortality of man. And we can get the NEA to pay for it.
The remaining survivors are given deer antler hats and fur coats, and marched north into WI during deer season.
If any survivors make all the way north across Wisconsin to the MI UP border, they are rewarded with a tenured professorship at the University of Illinois Chicago, and get an office next to Bill Ayers.
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If any survivors make all the way north across Wisconsin to the MI UP border, they are rewarded with a tenured professorship at the University of Illinois Chicago, and get an office next to Bill Ayers.
The hell you say. It's bad enough my taxes support his *expletive deleted*ss, much less any survivors of your re-enactment of Stalingrad and it's aftermath....
:P [popcorn] >:D :facepalm:
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So how do you feel about Illinois Nazi's?
"When the communists show up to protest the nazis, you're supposed to pray for an asteroid, not pick a favourite."
----Kate McMillan
In Illinois or anywhere else, an asteroid to the noggin about sums it up.
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The hell you say. It's bad enough my taxes support his *expletive deleted*ss, much less any survivors of your re-enactment of Stalingrad and it's aftermath....
:P [popcorn] >:D :facepalm:
Well you gotta motivate them with something to get them to march north through Wisconsin. :laugh:
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I love Marxists....Groucho was awsome...but Harpo was just plain wierd...was probably a facist.
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"When the communists show up to protest the nazis, you're supposed to pray for an asteroid, not pick a favourite."
----Kate McMillan
this could be a textbook example of the perfect target-rich environment. =D
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I love Marxists....Groucho was awsome...but Harpo was just plain wierd...was probably a facist.
Just because he was sensitive doesn't make him a faggocist! :mad:
DD
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"When the communists show up to protest the nazis, you're supposed to pray for an asteroid, not pick a favourite."
----Kate McMillan
In Illinois or anywhere else, an asteroid to the noggin about sums it up.
Me? I'm going to pray for an AC-47.
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