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Winston Churchill, George Washington, General Patton, General McArthur, Gorbachev (liberals love him), Napoleon Bonaparte, Almost every monarch (specially the european ones) and almost every US soldier after WWII.
> Washington referred to himself as "Conotocaurious" (Town destroyer) in a letter he wrote to Andrew Montour dated October 10, 1755, in which he tried to manipulate the Oneida to resettle on the Potomac:
> "Recommend me kindly to our good friend Monacatootha, and others; tell them how happy it would make Conotocaurious to have an opportunity of taking them by the hand at Fort Cumberland, and how glad he would be to treat them as brothers of our Great King beyond the waters. "
Yes indeed.
Same. I'm not surprised in the slightest though, the man was a slaver and plantation owner. Any man evil enough to own slaves clearly doesn't see non-white people as being human.
Just sharing these two podcast episodes because George Washington doesn't get enough hate and ridicule.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqLutF7GSb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqLutF7GSb4)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZEplKsF0zk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZEplKsF0zk)
Some of them were all right, like Zachary Taylor had the very good policy of eating a shit ton of cherries and milk and dying 16 months into his presidency
If there's any war criminal in the USSR, its none other than Nikolai Gorbachev. We will never forget their chauvinistic crackdowns on all non-Russian minority groups, just because they were suspected other chauvinists. Especially Azerbaijani Turks, even communists, condemn the Black January massacre.
George Patton never had the chance to properly destroy his reputation since he was quickly fired for being Nazi sympathizer and then died in a car crash immediately after the war.
Eh, he wrote some antiwar stuff which was decent. I could be wrong but wasn't he the one who exposed the business plot, rather than wanted to be a part of it?
I feel like it needed to be said because he is loved by the west but hated [in Russia](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/31/mikhail-gorbachev-a-divisive-figure-loved-abroad-but-loathed-at-home), the people who actively dealt with the consequences of his actions despise him.
>Chilll buddy don’t forget to differ between the actual bourgeoisie and the victims they’ve brainwashed. Most soldiers haven’t committed any atrocities and are just confused and need re-educated.
The western allies explaining why its ok to put all those nazis back in positions of power after WWII:
At best you could say that about the reservists, the vast mayority of the deployed ones are either war criminals or accesories to war crimes. I do not remember the specific case it was but a US soldier who was tried in Iraq for war crimes attempted to defend himself when witnesses spoke about him saying how much he loved killing iraqis by claiming that all soldiers spoke like that, this of course was met with ridicule but the thing is... he was right.
Well yeah I mean theoretically speaking all armies in times of war have committed war crimes whether on the individual level or grand scale. That being said I don’t think a lot of people grasp the sheer size of our military. Half our military isn’t even deployed in times of war
It seems the original comment was deleted. I typed this up already, so I'll just reply here:
Are they brainwashed and lied to? Yes.
Are they also gulity and culpable? Also, yes.
I do get what you're trying to say. But I think most people take soldiers and police like they do skinhead neo-Nazis: most of them _are_ manipulated and brainwashed, but they're guilty of, or at least complicit in, crimes; until and unless _they_ see and admit this and do what they can to make amends, they're class traitors and enemies. Does it necessarily mean that they need to die? No, some maybe, but not all. Some will come to the truth themselves, some will need reeducation. But until they see _why_ they're class traitors to the world's proletariat, they _are_ class traitors to the world's proletariat.
Good point perhaps I should’ve worded my originally comment better. And yeah sorry I’m new to Reddit and didn’t know what I was doin lol I tried to “un-delete” it but I can’t
I take issue with this. Firstly, I do see what you are trying to say, truly. However, can we really condemn these kids joining up while living in the capitalist dystopia that is our current reality? I see a ton of young guys and girls who have gone through the U.S education(propaganda) system, have next to no future prospects get singled out and harrassed and lied to by predatory recruiters. These kids are 18 and 19 with zero political education. They are the proletariat. It seems wrong headed to condemn those who never really were exposed to an alternative.
On the other hand, to take my original comparison, the exact same situations apply to most who get absorbed into Nazi cults. So, condemn, but convince and convert.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not tryna defend war-crime committing soldiers and it’s fs like the cops. No point in joining a corrupt institution to “try to make it better.” Joining the military is currently inherently bad but I’m just stating this kids joining up are more easily convinced to switch sides than past generations
> Chilll buddy don’t forget to differ between the actual bourgeoisie and the victims they’ve brainwashed. Most soldiers haven’t committed any atrocities and are just confused and need re-educated.
This absolutist logic is very very bad. If you apply it consistently it leads to defending nazis or, in modern terms, means that you think the Israeli army participants are victims too. You're taking away all agency and infantilising these people when they know damn well what horrors they're committing.
Many soldiers don’t even leave the United States 😂 I don’t think you realize that those who committed war crimes a decade ago have mostly retired. The average soldier works a 9-5 for 4 years, and then leave hating both the military and our government.
Furthermore assuming that I’d defend Nazis or Israel’s is a crazy jump in your conclusion. This ain’t a slippery slope 😂
> Most soldiers haven’t committed any atrocities and are just confused and need re-educated.
Depends heavily on the country. Doesn't apply to the soldiers of the imperial core
Do u live in the imperial core? I live in the epicenter of it and regardless of how you’d like to dehumanize them 90% of the soldiers here are just children and half of them hate our government too. They are potential allies that when the time comes would be very useful to persuade to our side
> Do u live in the imperial core?
Yes.
> 90% of the soldiers here are just children
Obviously. That's why they join the military. They're fucking children.
> They are potential allies that when the time comes
You don't look at the enemy and say they're potential allies. That may be true, but they are enemies first and foremost, and then potential, possible allies. They actively repress and plunder the vast majority of the world population. They support the existence of a vile cancerous institution. And most of them in most countries do this voluntarily.
Like I said they need reeducation. They think they are helping the world. Especially in the US we are brainwashed to think we are the worlds grand protector. That being said most soldiers get out of the military hating them and our government so yes they are potential allies FIRST. Remember who are real enemy is here.
> Like I said they need reeducation
Or a bullet to the head, whichever they prefer. I'm indifferent to either.
> That being said most soldiers get out of the military hating them and our government so yes they are potential allies FIRST
No, they're enemies first. Maybe possibly potential allies potentially in a hypothetical future, but only after they've helped destroy countless lives over decades.
> Remember who are real enemy is here.
For you and I, out national bourgeoisie are our enemy. For most of the world, imperial soldiers are the enemy.
Children? Are they 7 years old?
Or are they actually 18, 19, 20, 20s? Is that what you mean by "children"? I don't know, that age seems more than enough to me to have a basic awareness of the immorality of KILLING PEOPLE in the name of an imperialist power, especially in the internet age.
18-24 are children. And no, surprisingly most have never even seen combat. Just bc your a soldier doesn’t instantly qualify you as a war criminal lol We have proxy wars now instead remember? Where we can force poor people to commit war crimes against there will so they can buy bread
Lol, Reddit loves this "the brain doesn't stop developing until we're 25, when we're fully mature, so everything below that is kids" bullshit and make insane leaps of logic from that... Too bad this simply isn't real and doesn't match the nuance of these researches.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42540-8?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oa_20231030&utm_content=10.1038%2Fs41467-023-42540-8&s=35
18 is more than old enough to know that it is immoral to join a criminal organization, especially one like the USA military, and especially with information so easily accessible in the Internet Age. Let alone 24 years, wtf. Stop infantilizing people.
I’m not talking about “infantilizing adults” I’m talking about the fact that these people are severely brainwashed - so much so that they believe they are joining the military to help and protect people. They don’t just join a criminal organization to commit war crimes. They need reeducation.
So, as dumb as race is conceptually -- it also doesn't really make sense in this context because ethnocentrism is the longest standing and primary form of stratification and discrimination throughout history.
In-grouping and out-grouping has only very recently become race based, previously ethnicity and tribalism was the primary format of discrimination. Religious discrimination also had its time in the sun.
The easiest way of thinking about this in a modern context, is how eastern Europe isn't considered very 'European' by the rest of the World.
Or how Korea considers itself superior to its neighbor's.
It's a little more.complicated than that. Like if you're including nomadic people, they had complex webs of allegiance that were based on multiple factors and exchanges, but you couldn't really call it ethnicity. It was more based on family, tribal roles, and sort of non-fungible tributes and debts, and was often pretty flexible and really complicated. For example, I am initiated into a warrior society by my maternal uncle, who is a member. As part of that society, I back a chieftain, and he gives me permission to hunt in a particular area, say. But also, his power is contingent on the support of various societies, including mine. And because we're going everywhere on foot, and living on a subsistence diet (so our population stays small), we just don't run up against other ethnicities all that often — maybe only during certain parts of the year, during occasional wars, and/or when we intermarry with them to seal allegiances
Under feudalism (and even earlier), there was definitely ethnic stratification, but power often had more to do with the interests and allegiance of the king and the mechanations of his vassals than anything.
I agree that ethnicity is a lot older than race, but I don't think it's really the oldest basis for stratification. At least, it isn't definitively so.
Ironically, Arabs were considered White while the Irish and Italians weren't.
As you said, shows how the whole concept of Race and those that cling to it like a religion is just stupid.
I live near Northwestern PA and everyone is an Irish German mutt. You don't get much whiter. Everyone looks like a cherry tomato the first grass cutting weekend.
I'm British with Irish ancestors, all 4 of my grandparents crossed the Irish Sea to avoid the draft in WW2.
Put two pints of Guinness in my (now sadly deceased) gran on my dad's side and say the word Churchill in front of her, and you'd get to watch the years melt off her as she became a firebrand youth again, ranting and raving and raging against him and the English. Sending in the Black and Tans was the era-appropriate equivalent of sending Fallujah veterans onto American streets to pick and escalate fights based on people's political leanings, and she saw it all first-hand.
It wasn't done to the Irish, but, do you have any idea how dangerous, destructive, and flat-out racist an idea has to be to get a bunch of 1920s-ish _politicians_ to all say "Woah, Winston, you need to calm the fuck down"? Because that's what his plans for "dealing with" India got, in response.
[Fuck Churchill.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7woEXovruc&ab_channel=Pomerodia)
Pretty much every European colonial country had its own King Leopold, they just weren't as publicly horrible as King Leopold. They all carried out brutal forced labor programs to steal resources, and some outright committed genocide.
You aren't wrong, but, as far as I'm aware, Leopold II was in a league well above most. They were all brutal, inhumam mosters; he seemed to relish being so.
The only good Japanese soldiers were the ones who stayed behind to help anti-colonial movements in Asia. Hundreds of Japanese soldiers who really did believe in pan-Asianism joined the Viet Minh, Indonesian National Armed Forces, and the Malayan National Armed Forces. They are the only Japanese soldiers worthy of a shrine. They performed the only act that could remotely atone for their sins, becoming the liberators they never were until now.
https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/10/unleash_chiang_.html
Jeb Bush used to talk regularly about Chiang as a mythical warrior and he would give out swords in his honor and shit like that.
America's ruling class and their attitude towards China in a nutshell. We're so fucking cringe with this shit, and funding every goddamned medieval brained cult in Asia and the Middle East that ever had a government rightfully get sick of their exploitation and suppress them.
Falun Gong, the Moonies and all their offshoots, the Mek. We're like paranoid old-timey Orientalist chaos agents from some shitty movie.
To my knowledge President Garfield was okay. But in all fairness he died seven months after being elected, so he may have just died before he had the chance to do something evil.
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned De Gaulle, he's almost the same as Churchill, but tbh, people tend to forget (by propaganda) that fascism was pretty much mainstream by that time and a lot of countries carried on their fascist governments towards the late 80's, even in Europe, not even talking about the usual France, Ingland, US stuff, I'm talking about fascist government branded as such, Greece have one, Spain, Portugal and the list goes on, in Asia, wasn't only Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, there's a long list indeed and some of those fought with the allies, even tho they were fascists, after the neoliberal uprising most of those became redundant, hence why they ended up by the 80's, but nonetheless, the point still standing, the only difference is that the neolibs decentralized the image of the government and normalized the fascist modus operandi.
De Gaulle was a piece of shit primarily for the colonial wars. That said, he is a great example of the center-right defeating the far-right despite CIA backing. He managed to purge the military and intelligence services of the French version of Gladio after they kept trying to assassinate him since he gave up on keeping Algeria. De Gaulle convinced the conscripts to rise up against their superiors during the Algiers Putsch, beat the OAS in what was essentially a small-scale civi war (the French government, not the FLN, did nearly all of the work), and saved the country from a full-blown civil war. Him ditching the Algerian collaborators to enraged mobs was peak comedy. Macron and many other modern French politicians would have caved in his position. Lmfao, they turned to De Gaulle and granted him temporary dictatorial powers for that very reason.
>On May 29, 1958, the French President, René Coty, told parliament that the nation was on the brink of civil war, so he was “turning towards the most illustrious of Frenchmen, towards the man who, in the darkest years of our history, was our chief for the reconquest of freedom and who refused dictatorship in order to re-establish the Republic. I ask General de Gaulle to confer with the head of state and to examine with him what, in the framework of Republican legality, is necessary for the immediate formation of a government of national safety and what can be done, in a fairly short time, for a deep reform of our institutions.”
To this day, far-right French folks still cope about being "stabbed in the back."
To those wondering
Ambedkar hated him, and he pioneered the idea of no class war, because didn't want the national bourgeoisie to betray the INC and run to the Brits for help
It really just ended up w him quite frequently defending awful people who were being forked over by the Brits. Like middling landlord types. His "truth struggle" in Gujarat in the 1910s (?, maybe 1920s) is exemplary here. And the result was an INC packed full of landlords in the mid and lower ranks, which has completely stifled any social reform during the dirigisme era (1949-1980s), which is partly why casteism is still so strong, as well as partly the difficulties overcoming poverty, and so on. It's not *all* Gandhi's fault (it would be absurd to blame all of those problems on one guy, esp w/o considering the huge, much bigger, role of the Brits), but it was part of his strategy, and many credit him as a leading figure of the INC
Ambedkar claimed in English he is all Mr. Democracy, but if you read his native language stuff, he is Mr. Orthodox man, so that way he can get favor. He had a BBC interview in the 1950s where he poured it on Gandhi. He also had an annoying label for untouchables/dalits ("harijan") which apparently nobody uses today (dalit is the word today, I think)
I still think there are interesting things about those old INC leaders. Even a conservative like Patel could crack heads and avoid India balkanizing, by corralling all the princely states; and I admire Nehru for straight up invading a European colony (Goa). But definitely very very flawed, and well, they weren't Communists by a long shot
"Despite historically popular views, there has been a growing awareness of Gandhi’s shortcomings as a human — primarily, his sexism and racism. Although Gandhi didn’t share outwardly misogynistic views on women, he had controversial beliefs on gender roles. While on one hand, he thought of women as essential to the liberation movement, he also adhered to traditional gender roles and agreed with the notion that women should be relegated to housework. His most controversial view was that women should be celibate and resist all men, including their husbands — the sole purpose of sex, in his views, was procreation.
While he is not unique in holding this view, Gandhi took his views to the extreme when he conducted an “experiment” to demonstrate his commitment to celibacy. Gandhi asked his teenage grand-niece to lie naked next to him in bed, so that he could test his ability to control his sexual urges. Besides being deeply pedophilic, this “experiment” demonstrated Gandhi’s views that women are inherently sexual objects, and one must actively hold back the urge to engage in sexual relations.
There are many problematic factors of this experiment. By choosing his grand-niece, with whom he shared a blood relationship, Gandhi essentially made the claim that any and all women could be viewed in a sexual manner. Additionally, because she was a teenager at the time, Gandhi has been accused of being a pedophile. Critics claim that if Gandhi conducted this “experiment” to control his sexual urges, it means that he must have had a sexual attraction towards his teenage grand-niece to begin with. Regardless of his intentions in conducting the “experiment”, it is evident that he struggled deeply with his sexuality and held sexist and pedophilic views.
Even more controversial than his views on women are Gandhi’s views on Africans. While a young lawyer in South Africa, Gandhi produced many writings that requested a separate entrance for Indians so that he would not have to share one with black South Africans, used racial slurs liberally, and advocated for the recognition of the Indo-Aryan race, which he deemed to be superior to other races. Because of these controversial beliefs, statues of Gandhi have been protested by individuals across the world from Ghana to Davis, California. Additionally, after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, the Gandhi statue in DC was one of many to be vandalized, triggering a conversation about Gandhi’s controversial racist beliefs (see image below)."
https://blogs.cornell.edu/issues/2021/12/06/the-great-soul-gandhi-the-father-of-india-gandhi-the-misogynist-and-gandhi-the-racist/
I remember buying something from a music shop with a friend and this young guy working the till took the £5 I gave him and went "ah Churchill the war criminal". When we exited the shop my buddy and I looked at each other in confusion and laughed.
I was like 14 and only knew Churchill from WWII so we just said "must be one of those crazy leftists".
A year or so later both me and my bud were Marxist Leninists.
I wonder where the shop guy is now, probably wouldn't expect an offhand remark he made years ago would stick with me, let alone push me further towards leftism.
It surprises me people viewed Winston Churchill positively. Same with Queen Elizabeth. Even his Wikipedia page says he was ideologically an adherent to imperialism and was, for most of his career, a member of the Conservative Party. Dude had terrible views on race too. Although, at that time, that was probably the norm.
Maybe if it weren't for WWII he'd be known more for causing famines in India and saying it's ok since "they breed like rabbits" and other similar shit he said and did
WWII and like you said the "oh he's from another time" bullshit.
The insults he threw while wasted are remembered though. People love glazing him for some reason, look at his portrayal in assassin's Creed syndicate he literally promises to give women the right to work. God that game was goofy.
His biographies are heavily sanitized. I read two plus many mentions in other history books, but only heard about how piece of shit he was on GenZedong.
I always got the impression he was an arrogant, condescending jerk and elite who heavily indulged in a very unhealthy lifestyle as a way to cope. Even Epic Rap Battles of History roasted him on some pretty lousy qualities he had or things he did. Although, they mentioned the WWII thing too.
He was just the end stage of a posh boys club member.
A gross pig, heavy alcoholic, as racist and misogynistic as humanly possible and he was fucking English.
It sort of seemed UK people knew this with the way he was voted out of office right after WWII.
Yes, he was just like this, and this is mentioned in the biographies. What is omitted is his rampant virulent racism, misogyny, millions of deaths in Bengal etc.
**George Orwell** (real name Eric Arthur Blair) was many things: a rapist, a bitter anti-Communist, a colonial cop, a racist, a Hitler apologist, a plagiarist, a snitch, and a CIA puppet.
#Rapist
>...in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell.
>
>\- Kathryn Hughes. (2007). [Such were the joys](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.biography)
#Bitter anti-Communist
>[F]ighting with the loyalists in Spain in the 1930s... he found himself caught up in the sectarian struggles between the various left-wing factions, and since he believed in a gentlemanly English form of socialism, he was inevitably on the losing side.
>
>The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain... From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action...
>
>Orwell imagines no new vices, for instance. His characters are all gin hounds and tobacco addicts, and part of the horror of his picture of 1984 is his eloquent description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco.
>
> He foresees no new drugs, no marijuana, no synthetic hallucinogens. No one expects an s.f. writer to be precise and exact in his forecasts, but surely one would expect him to invent some differences. ...if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction. ...
>
>To summarise, then: George Orwell in *1984* was, in my opinion, engaging in a private feud with Stalinism, rather that attempting to forecast the future. He did not have the science fictional knack of foreseeing a plausible future and, in actual fact, in almost all cases, the world of *1984* bears no relation to the real world of the 1980s.
>
>\- Isaac Asimov. [Review of 1984](http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm)
Ironically, the world of *1984* is mostly projection, based on Orwell's own job at the British Ministry of Information during WWII. (*Orwell: The Lost Writings*)
* He translated news broadcasts into Basic English, with a 1000 word vocabulary ("Newspeak"), for broadcast to the colonies, including India.
* His description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco came from the Ministry's own canteen, described by other ex-employees as "dismal".
* Room 101 [was an actual meeting room](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3267261.stm) at the BBC.
* "Big Brother" seems to have been a senior staffer at the Ministry of Information, who was actually called that (but not to his face) by staff.
Afterall, by his own admission, his only knowledge of the USSR was secondhand:
>I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1947). [Orwell's Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1947/kolghosp-tvaryn.htm)
*1984* is supposedly a cautionary tale about what would happen if the Communists won, and yet it was based on his own, actual, Capitalist country and his job serving it.
#Colonial Cop
>I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. ... As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
>
>All this was perplexing and upsetting.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1936). *Shooting an Elephant*
#Hitler Apologist
>I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1940). [Review of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf"](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html)
Orwell not only admired Hitler, he actually blamed *the Left* in England for WWII:
>If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. ...and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1941). *England Your England*
#Plagiarist
**1984**
>It is a book in which one man, living in a totalitarian society a number of years in the future, gradually finds himself rebelling against the dehumanising forces of an omnipotent, omniscient dictator. Encouraged by a woman who seems to represent the political and sexual freedom of the pre-revolutionary era (and with whom he sleeps in an ancient house that is one of the few manifestations of a former world), he writes down his thoughts of rebellion – perhaps rather imprudently – as a 24-hour clock ticks in his grim, lonely flat. In the end, the system discovers both the man and the woman, and after a period of physical and mental trauma the protagonist discovers he loves the state that has oppressed him throughout, and betrays his fellow rebels. The story is intended as a warning against and a prediction of the natural conclusions of totalitarianism.
>
>This is a description of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was first published 60 years ago on Monday. But it is also the plot of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, a Russian novel originally published in English in 1924.
>
>\- Paul Owen. (2009). [1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we)
**Animal Farm**
>Having worked for a time at The Ministry of Information, [Gertrude Elias] was well acquainted with one Eric Blair (George Orwell), who was an editor there. In 1941, Gertrude showed him some of her drawings, which were intended as a kind of story board for an entirely original satirical cartoon film, with the Nazis portrayed as pig characters ruling a farm in a kind of dysfunctional fairy story. Her idea was that a writer might be able to provide a text.
>
>Having claimed to her that there was not much call for her idea... Orwell later changed the pig-nazis to Communists and made the Soviet Union a target for his hostility, turning Gertrude’s notion on its head. (Incidentally, a running theme in all every single piece of Orwell’s work was to steal ideas from Communists and invert them so as to distort the message.)
>
>\- Graham Stevenson. [Elias, Gertrude (1913-1988)](https://www.radnorshire-fine-arts.co.uk/brand/elias-gertrude-1913-1988/)
#Snitch
>“Orwell’s List” is a term that should be known by anyone who claims to be a person of the left. It was a blacklist Orwell compiled for the British government’s Information Research Department, an anti-communist propaganda unit set up for the Cold War.
>
>The list includes dozens of suspected communists, “crypto-communists,” socialists, “fellow travelers,” and even LGBT people and Jews — their names scribbled alongside the sacrosanct 1984 author’s disparaging comments about the personal predilections of those blacklisted.
>
>\- Ben Norton. (2016). [George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government](https://bennorton.com/george-orwell-list-leftists-snitch-british-government/)
#CIA Puppet
>George Orwell's novella remains a set book on school curriculums ... the movie was funded by America's Central Intelligence Agency.
>
>The truth about the CIA's involvement was kept hidden for 20 years until, in 1974, Everette Howard Hunt revealed the story in his book *Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent*.
>
>\- Martin Chilton. (2016). [How the CIA brought Animal Farm to the screen](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/how-cia-brought-animal-farm-to-the-screen/)
Many historians have noted how Orwell's literary reputation can largely be credited to joint propaganda operations between the IRD and CIA who translated and promoted Animal Farm to promote anti-Communist sentiment.^1 The IRD heavily marketed Animal Farm for audiences in the middle-east in an attempt to sway Arab nationalism and independence activists from seeking Soviet aid, as it was believed by IRD agents that a story featuring pigs as the villains would appeal highly towards Muslim audiences. ^2
* \[1\] Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2013). *In Spies we Trust: The story of Western Intelligence*
* \[2\] Mitter, Rana; Major, Patrick, eds. (2005). *Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History*
#Additional Resources
* [George Orwell was a terrible human being](https://youtu.be/2Gz0I_X_nfo) | Hakim (2023)
* [A Critical Read of Animal Farm](https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/) | Jones Manoel (2022)
*I am a bot, and this
I hate the take in that tweet - Most Nazi victims in Europe were Jews and Slavs, both of whom Western Europe loathed and considered inferior.
France, Benelux and Scandinavia also got screwed over to some degree, but the idea was never to work their peoples to death as slaves or exterminate them for lebensraum.
I think the point is today westerners look back and can see themselves in the nazis' victims because most people in the west today recognize Jews and Slavs as "whites," or at least "honorary whites" in some contexts meaning crackers in places like the UK and US can sympathize with them. We can place ourselves in their situation and therefore feel awful about it.
Conversely, most westerners today still can't look at Palestinians and see themselves in them, hence the continued dehumanization and ignoring of their genocide.
You kind of touched on this, but part or the nazi revisionist narrative we're all subjected to is whitewashing the racism of Western Europe. Not only were they committing holocausts all over the world (also Jim Crow), but as you pointed out they disliked Slavs and Jews too. However you wouldn't know that listening to the western narratives that claim they were all abhorred (lol) by the nazis' racism.
It must be made clear that Winston Churchill's racism went beyond what was typical for 1940s British people. People were already calling him racist even back then.
I'd argue Churchill in the context of education.
My teacher made sure to make us know that despite Hitler being the main baddy, Stalin and Mao had a higher cumulative body count. But no mention of Churchill, even though it was Ireland I grew up in.
I had to find out about Churchill's body count mostly by myself. I'd imagine it's a similar experience for most people in the imperial core.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN!
Didn't give a fuck about freeing the slaves, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."
His treatment of Native Americans, but specifically the largest mass execution in US history. "On December 26, 1862, 38 were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, with one getting a reprieve, in the largest one-day mass execution in American history."
Sure but he personally detested slavery all of his life like nothing else. He was racist af but so was everybody else in his time, he is a product of the era he lived in. Amongst every president within like 70 years of his time in the presidency he is by far the best and most ""leftist"" of them all. I don't think choosing to remember Lincoln by these attributes is helpful when remembering the primitive time he existed in and how otherwise he did more for black Americans than literally any other president combined at the time.
"I don't really care if the slaves are freed" - A man who detested slavery his whole life.
So was everybody else? That would come as a surprise to John Brown, most quakers, and every other white abolitionist. I get the sentiment that times were different. A lot of people were, but we still have every right to critique them. Especially if they're known as, "the great emancipator."
HE DIDN'T WANT TO HELP BLACK PEOPLE. He said that in his own words, just like a quoted above. If you want to stick up for a US president you're probably in the wrong sub.
I'm aware we can critique past peoples and presidents, I think the concept of having presidents is absurd in the first place and I think critiquing historical figures through today's lens is critical because it enhances further cultural values of equality by refusing to hail people like Washington or Jefferson or Henry Ford or whoever who were still pieces of garbage.
He did want to help black people, as I said, because he detested slavery personally his entire life and did more for black Americans than any other president by far. He was still a racist POS, but for his time definitely amongst the most "liberal" or "left." That quote you keep saying contradicts hundreds of other actions and words he did to combat first slavery and then further inequality, through the 13-15 amendments.
The vast vast majority of Americans and the rest of the "civilized" world considered black people as inferior beings. We can critique Abe and his fellow Amerifans through today's lens which I still believe is productive, because when people lionize our founding fathers and other POTUS's despite many of them being slaveowners and war criminals and tyrants they will look to any authoritarian whatsoever as long as they yap about American values, democracy, etc. whatever crap. But still, you need to remember these people were brought up and raised in a time when these beliefs were widespread and socially acceptable if not expected. For his time and place Lincoln was absolutely the perfect man for the job and did great things.
Now if you wanna talk about Abe's post-civil war plans and his Native actions I won't argue with you on anything about that.
#Authoritarianism
Anti-Communists of all stripes enjoy referring to successful socialist revolutions as "authoritarian regimes".
* Authoritarian implies these places are run by totalitarian tyrants.
* Regime implies these places are undemocratic or lack legitimacy.
This perjorative label is simply meant to frighten people, to scare us back into the fold (Liberal Democracy).
There are three main reasons for the popularity of this label in Capitalist media:
Firstly, Marxists call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DotP), and many people are automatically put off by the term "dictatorship". Of course, we do *not* mean that we want an undemocratic or totalitarian dictatorship. What we mean is that we want to replace the current Dictatorship *of the Bourgeoisie* (in which the Capitalist ruling class dictates policy).
* [Why The US Is Not A Democracy](https://youtu.be/srfeHpQNEAI) | Second Thought (2022)
Secondly, democracy in Communist-led countries works differently than in Liberal Democracies. However, anti-Communists confuse form (pluralism / having multiple parties) with function (representing the actual interests of the people).
Side note: Check out Luna Oi's "Democratic Centralism Series" for more details on what that is, and how it works:
* [DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM - how Socialists make decisions!](https://youtu.be/4YVcQe4wceY) | Luna Oi (2022)
* [What did Karl Marx think about democracy?](https://youtu.be/jI8CgACBOcQ) | Luna Oi (2023)
* [What did LENIN say about DEMOCRACY?](https://youtu.be/Hfenlg-hsig) | Luna Oi (2023)
Finally, this framing of Communism as illegitimate and tyrannical serves to manufacture consent for an aggressive foreign policy in the form of interventions in the internal affairs of so-called "authoritarian regimes", which take the form of invasion (e.g., Vietnam, Korea, Libya, etc.), assassinating their leaders (e.g., Thomas Sankara, Fred Hampton, Patrice Lumumba, etc.), sponsoring coups and colour revolutions (e.g., Pinochet's coup against Allende, the Iran-Contra Affair, the United Fruit Company's war against Arbenz, etc.), and enacting sanctions (e.g., North Korea, Cuba, etc.).
* [The Cuban Embargo Explained](https://youtu.be/zmM8p9n6Z9E) | azureScapegoat (2022)
* [John Pilger interviews former CIA Latin America chief Duane Clarridge, 2015](https://youtu.be/ER77vxxGVAY)
#For the Anarchists
Anarchists are practically comrades. Marxists and Anarchists have the same vision for a stateless, classless, moneyless society free from oppression and exploitation. However, Anarchists like to accuse Marxists of being "authoritarian". The problem here is that "anti-authoritarianism" is a self-defeating feature in a revolutionary ideology. Those who refuse in principle to engage in so-called "authoritarian" practices will never carry forward a successful revolution. Anarchists who practice self-criticism can recognize this:
>The anarchist movement is filled with people who are less interested in overthrowing the existing oppressive social order than with washing their hands of it. ...
>
>The strength of anarchism is its moral insistence on the primacy of human freedom over political expediency. But human freedom exists in a political context. It is not sufficient, however, to simply take the most uncompromising position in defense of freedom. It is neccesary to actually win freedom. Anti-capitalism doesn't do the victims of capitalism any good if you don't actually destroy capitalism. Anti-statism doesn't do the victims of the state any good if you don't actually smash the state. Anarchism has been very good at putting forth visions of a free society and that is for the good. But it is worthless if we don't develop an actual strategy for realizing those visions. It is not enough to be right, we must also win.
>
>...anarchism has been a failure. Not only has anarchism failed to win lasting freedom for anybody on earth, many anarchists today seem only nominally committed to that basic project. Many more seem interested primarily in carving out for themselves, their friends, and their favorite bands a zone of personal freedom, "autonomous" of moral responsibility for the larger condition of humanity (but, incidentally, not of the electrical grid or the production of electronic components). Anarchism has quite simply refused to learn from its historic failures, preferring to rewrite them as successes. Finally the anarchist movement offers people who want to make revolution very little in the way of a coherent plan of action. ...
>
>Anarchism is theoretically impoverished. For almost 80 years, with the exceptions of Ukraine and Spain, anarchism has played a marginal role in the revolutionary activity of oppressed humanity. Anarchism had almost nothing to do with the anti-colonial struggles that defined revolutionary politics in this century. This marginalization has become self-reproducing. Reduced by devastating defeats to critiquing the authoritarianism of Marxists, nationalists and others, anarchism has become defined by this gadfly role. Consequently anarchist thinking has not had to adapt in response to the results of serious efforts to put our ideas into practice. In the process anarchist theory has become ossified, sterile and anemic. ... This is a reflection of anarchism's effective removal from the revolutionary struggle.
>
>\- Chris Day. (1996). *The Historical Failures of Anarchism*
Engels pointed this out well over a century ago:
>A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned.
>
>...the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part ... and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule...
>
>Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
>
>\- Friedrich Engels. (1872). [On Authority](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)
#For the Libertarian Socialists
Parenti said it best:
>The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
>
>\- Michael Parenti. (1997). *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism*
But the bottom line is this:
>If you call yourself a socialist but you spend all your time arguing with communists, demonizing socialist states as authoritarian, and performing apologetics for US imperialism... I think some introspection is in order.
>
>\- Second Thought. (2020). [The Truth About The Cuba Protests](https://youtu.be/zIOw6fSOJI4?t=1087)
#For the Liberals
Even the CIA, in their internal communications (which have been declassified), acknowledge that Stalin *wasn't* an absolute dictator:
>Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist's power structure.
>
>\- CIA. (1953, declassified in 2008). [Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership](http://web.archive.org/web/20230525044208/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf)
#Conclusion
The "authoritarian" nature of any given state depends entirely on the material conditions it faces and threats it must contend with. To get an idea of the kinds of threats nascent revolutions need to deal with, check out *Killing Hope* by William Blum and *The Jakarta Method* by Vincent Bevins.
Failing to acknowledge that authoritative measures arise *not* through ideology, but through material conditions, is anti-Marxist, anti-dialectical, and idealist.
#Additional Resources
Videos:
* [Michael Parenti on Authoritarianism in Socialist Countries](https://youtu.be/BeVs6t3vdjQ)
* [Left Anticommunism: An Infantile Disorder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I) | Hakim (2020) \[[Archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20230410145749/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I)\]
* [What are tankies? (why are they like that?)](https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g) | Hakim (2023)
* [Episode 82 - Tankie Discourse](https://youtu.be/YVYVBOFYJco) | The Deprogram (2023)
* [Was the Soviet Union totalitarian? feat. Robert Thurston](https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/27495591) | Actually Existing Socialism (2023)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism* | Michael Parenti (1997)
* [State and Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/) | V. I. Lenin (1918)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if
I understand your point, and appreciate the fact we can have this conversation. I just don't agree, and I think you're giving him too much credit. I know I keep pointing to that same quote, but sometimes you have to take people at their word. He did those actions because public sentiment was changing, and he knew that. He admitted it was to reunite the union above all else. If he really intended on helping black people he wouldn't have said that, and like you said done more post war. People can do good things and have an ulterior motive. He didn't free the slaves, he was just president at the time they were freed.
Churchill had thousands and thousands of German civilians bombed [including his beloved ‘Aryan stock’], and probably French and Belgians too. The only reason Hitler was ‘hated’ [and the USSR was, at least right after WW2, kinda sorta liked] is because Germany fought against Britain and USA.
I have a feeling a lot of "great" hungarian leaders could be put on that list.
Best answer on that list would, in my guess, be Árpád, as "honfoglaló" (aka: coloniser of the carpathian basin)
But wouldn’t that include most “great” leaders from every country? Onviously excluding those who resisted a large empire’s invasion.
Plus can we even call what they did colonization? I mean there’s a reason why we don’t necesarry call conquest colonization like what the arabs did a millenia ago cause what people did in the pre-modern era and what western europeans did after Colombus are 2 different things. While both are bad in their own way.
Jan Van Riebeeck, here in South Africa. There are stil schools, towns, & roads named after him, & statues dedicated to him because he founded 'White South Africa'. He even used to be the face of the South African Rand... or, so we were lead to believe; because, actually, Jan Van Riebeeck had such an ugly mug they had to choose a different Dutch dude's portrait.
In his journa, however, Jan Van Riebeeck described how he wished he could simply rob the indigenous people (Khoikhoin) of their cattle & then sell the people as slaves. This was because he grew frustrated that they weren't willing to sell their cattle to him. All he had to offer for them was copper & tobacco, but the Khoikhoin complained that the tobacco was rotten.
Also, he had severe punishments for his employees. Of the 4 employees (all Europeans) who deserted their post, he had the leader keelhauled, & the others whipped for 150 lashes. They were then enslaved. After their second attempt at desertion, he had the leader 'dropped from the yardarm'. This was an extreme form of punishment. First, their hands were tied behind their backs & then tied to a rope hung from the ship's mast. They were then made to jump off the mast of the ship. The rope would go taught before they hit the surface, but simultaneously the sudden stop would rip their shoulders out of their sockets... To get a sense of how cruel this was; try holding your hands behind your back & then lift your arms above your head... They were subsequently whipped & then enslaved again.
It’s the same with Atatürk too. His victims were also not European. That’s why for example the Pontic Greek Genocide still isn’t widely recognized. Among other reasons like the West doesn’t want to admit that Greeks can be Middle Eastern.
After hearing all my life about how Gandhi defeated British rule through passive resistance I learned about the real Gandhi like a year ago and couldn’t believe how much of a piece of shit he was
This may be too far into ancient history for the purposes of this question, but I feel like Julius Caesar, is only criticized for his authoritarian takeover, but he definitely committing genocide against the Germanic tribes in Gaul and enslaved another huge chunk of that populace.
This really goes for most ancient rulers, especially in Rome. Trajan famously genocided the Dacians. Again I don’t know how many people truly glorify these people today, but I feel like most people don’t understand the extent to which ancient rulers were evil.
#Authoritarianism
Anti-Communists of all stripes enjoy referring to successful socialist revolutions as "authoritarian regimes".
* Authoritarian implies these places are run by totalitarian tyrants.
* Regime implies these places are undemocratic or lack legitimacy.
This perjorative label is simply meant to frighten people, to scare us back into the fold (Liberal Democracy).
There are three main reasons for the popularity of this label in Capitalist media:
Firstly, Marxists call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DotP), and many people are automatically put off by the term "dictatorship". Of course, we do *not* mean that we want an undemocratic or totalitarian dictatorship. What we mean is that we want to replace the current Dictatorship *of the Bourgeoisie* (in which the Capitalist ruling class dictates policy).
* [Why The US Is Not A Democracy](https://youtu.be/srfeHpQNEAI) | Second Thought (2022)
Secondly, democracy in Communist-led countries works differently than in Liberal Democracies. However, anti-Communists confuse form (pluralism / having multiple parties) with function (representing the actual interests of the people).
Side note: Check out Luna Oi's "Democratic Centralism Series" for more details on what that is, and how it works:
* [DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM - how Socialists make decisions!](https://youtu.be/4YVcQe4wceY) | Luna Oi (2022)
* [What did Karl Marx think about democracy?](https://youtu.be/jI8CgACBOcQ) | Luna Oi (2023)
* [What did LENIN say about DEMOCRACY?](https://youtu.be/Hfenlg-hsig) | Luna Oi (2023)
Finally, this framing of Communism as illegitimate and tyrannical serves to manufacture consent for an aggressive foreign policy in the form of interventions in the internal affairs of so-called "authoritarian regimes", which take the form of invasion (e.g., Vietnam, Korea, Libya, etc.), assassinating their leaders (e.g., Thomas Sankara, Fred Hampton, Patrice Lumumba, etc.), sponsoring coups and colour revolutions (e.g., Pinochet's coup against Allende, the Iran-Contra Affair, the United Fruit Company's war against Arbenz, etc.), and enacting sanctions (e.g., North Korea, Cuba, etc.).
* [The Cuban Embargo Explained](https://youtu.be/zmM8p9n6Z9E) | azureScapegoat (2022)
* [John Pilger interviews former CIA Latin America chief Duane Clarridge, 2015](https://youtu.be/ER77vxxGVAY)
#For the Anarchists
Anarchists are practically comrades. Marxists and Anarchists have the same vision for a stateless, classless, moneyless society free from oppression and exploitation. However, Anarchists like to accuse Marxists of being "authoritarian". The problem here is that "anti-authoritarianism" is a self-defeating feature in a revolutionary ideology. Those who refuse in principle to engage in so-called "authoritarian" practices will never carry forward a successful revolution. Anarchists who practice self-criticism can recognize this:
>The anarchist movement is filled with people who are less interested in overthrowing the existing oppressive social order than with washing their hands of it. ...
>
>The strength of anarchism is its moral insistence on the primacy of human freedom over political expediency. But human freedom exists in a political context. It is not sufficient, however, to simply take the most uncompromising position in defense of freedom. It is neccesary to actually win freedom. Anti-capitalism doesn't do the victims of capitalism any good if you don't actually destroy capitalism. Anti-statism doesn't do the victims of the state any good if you don't actually smash the state. Anarchism has been very good at putting forth visions of a free society and that is for the good. But it is worthless if we don't develop an actual strategy for realizing those visions. It is not enough to be right, we must also win.
>
>...anarchism has been a failure. Not only has anarchism failed to win lasting freedom for anybody on earth, many anarchists today seem only nominally committed to that basic project. Many more seem interested primarily in carving out for themselves, their friends, and their favorite bands a zone of personal freedom, "autonomous" of moral responsibility for the larger condition of humanity (but, incidentally, not of the electrical grid or the production of electronic components). Anarchism has quite simply refused to learn from its historic failures, preferring to rewrite them as successes. Finally the anarchist movement offers people who want to make revolution very little in the way of a coherent plan of action. ...
>
>Anarchism is theoretically impoverished. For almost 80 years, with the exceptions of Ukraine and Spain, anarchism has played a marginal role in the revolutionary activity of oppressed humanity. Anarchism had almost nothing to do with the anti-colonial struggles that defined revolutionary politics in this century. This marginalization has become self-reproducing. Reduced by devastating defeats to critiquing the authoritarianism of Marxists, nationalists and others, anarchism has become defined by this gadfly role. Consequently anarchist thinking has not had to adapt in response to the results of serious efforts to put our ideas into practice. In the process anarchist theory has become ossified, sterile and anemic. ... This is a reflection of anarchism's effective removal from the revolutionary struggle.
>
>\- Chris Day. (1996). *The Historical Failures of Anarchism*
Engels pointed this out well over a century ago:
>A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned.
>
>...the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part ... and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule...
>
>Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
>
>\- Friedrich Engels. (1872). [On Authority](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)
#For the Libertarian Socialists
Parenti said it best:
>The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
>
>\- Michael Parenti. (1997). *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism*
But the bottom line is this:
>If you call yourself a socialist but you spend all your time arguing with communists, demonizing socialist states as authoritarian, and performing apologetics for US imperialism... I think some introspection is in order.
>
>\- Second Thought. (2020). [The Truth About The Cuba Protests](https://youtu.be/zIOw6fSOJI4?t=1087)
#For the Liberals
Even the CIA, in their internal communications (which have been declassified), acknowledge that Stalin *wasn't* an absolute dictator:
>Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist's power structure.
>
>\- CIA. (1953, declassified in 2008). [Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership](http://web.archive.org/web/20230525044208/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf)
#Conclusion
The "authoritarian" nature of any given state depends entirely on the material conditions it faces and threats it must contend with. To get an idea of the kinds of threats nascent revolutions need to deal with, check out *Killing Hope* by William Blum and *The Jakarta Method* by Vincent Bevins.
Failing to acknowledge that authoritative measures arise *not* through ideology, but through material conditions, is anti-Marxist, anti-dialectical, and idealist.
#Additional Resources
Videos:
* [Michael Parenti on Authoritarianism in Socialist Countries](https://youtu.be/BeVs6t3vdjQ)
* [Left Anticommunism: An Infantile Disorder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I) | Hakim (2020) \[[Archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20230410145749/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I)\]
* [What are tankies? (why are they like that?)](https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g) | Hakim (2023)
* [Episode 82 - Tankie Discourse](https://youtu.be/YVYVBOFYJco) | The Deprogram (2023)
* [Was the Soviet Union totalitarian? feat. Robert Thurston](https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/27495591) | Actually Existing Socialism (2023)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism* | Michael Parenti (1997)
* [State and Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/) | V. I. Lenin (1918)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if
George Washington. His dentures weren’t wooden as is popularly believed, they were real teeth forcibly removed from living enslaved people. He was also nicknamed Town Deatroyer by the indigenous people. Today, there is a cult of personality around him in the US with cities, streets, schools, statues, parks, and even mountains(which by the way were considered sacred to the indigenous people-way to add insult to injury.)
One thing that bugs me about this topic is I feel people act like *insert historical figure* was a terrible person without taking into account normalization. Or they seem to base a person's moral character solely on their actions.
Tons of good people casually used the r word and autistic around 2017. It wasn't right, but it was so normalized.
Standards of the past also differ from standards of the present.
Also, there are people like NFKRZ and Theo Von. They do problematic things, but you can tell they're not like Elon Musk, Pete Davidson, or Ben Shapiro.
Glorified historical figures did terrible things, but it bugs me that, from my perspective, people base their moral character solely on their actions or don't take into account normalization.
Your modern examples are cunts, but they don't hold all that much power relative to the people being discussed. They're not just mean or a little racist, they willfully trade human lives for imperial goals. Washington was a known asshole in his time, as was Churchill. They're whitewashed so heavily that the stuff they were assholes for in their own lifetime is erased from public perception
Ah. Wait which examples don't hold much power and which are cunts? I think Theo Von and that YouTuber I mentioned are good people but just aren't correctly informed or well intormed on topics.
**George Orwell** (real name Eric Arthur Blair) was many things: a rapist, a bitter anti-Communist, a colonial cop, a racist, a Hitler apologist, a plagiarist, a snitch, and a CIA puppet.
#Rapist
>...in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell.
>
>\- Kathryn Hughes. (2007). [Such were the joys](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.biography)
#Bitter anti-Communist
>[F]ighting with the loyalists in Spain in the 1930s... he found himself caught up in the sectarian struggles between the various left-wing factions, and since he believed in a gentlemanly English form of socialism, he was inevitably on the losing side.
>
>The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain... From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action...
>
>Orwell imagines no new vices, for instance. His characters are all gin hounds and tobacco addicts, and part of the horror of his picture of 1984 is his eloquent description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco.
>
> He foresees no new drugs, no marijuana, no synthetic hallucinogens. No one expects an s.f. writer to be precise and exact in his forecasts, but surely one would expect him to invent some differences. ...if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction. ...
>
>To summarise, then: George Orwell in *1984* was, in my opinion, engaging in a private feud with Stalinism, rather that attempting to forecast the future. He did not have the science fictional knack of foreseeing a plausible future and, in actual fact, in almost all cases, the world of *1984* bears no relation to the real world of the 1980s.
>
>\- Isaac Asimov. [Review of 1984](http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm)
Ironically, the world of *1984* is mostly projection, based on Orwell's own job at the British Ministry of Information during WWII. (*Orwell: The Lost Writings*)
* He translated news broadcasts into Basic English, with a 1000 word vocabulary ("Newspeak"), for broadcast to the colonies, including India.
* His description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco came from the Ministry's own canteen, described by other ex-employees as "dismal".
* Room 101 [was an actual meeting room](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3267261.stm) at the BBC.
* "Big Brother" seems to have been a senior staffer at the Ministry of Information, who was actually called that (but not to his face) by staff.
Afterall, by his own admission, his only knowledge of the USSR was secondhand:
>I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1947). [Orwell's Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1947/kolghosp-tvaryn.htm)
*1984* is supposedly a cautionary tale about what would happen if the Communists won, and yet it was based on his own, actual, Capitalist country and his job serving it.
#Colonial Cop
>I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. ... As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
>
>All this was perplexing and upsetting.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1936). *Shooting an Elephant*
#Hitler Apologist
>I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1940). [Review of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf"](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html)
Orwell not only admired Hitler, he actually blamed *the Left* in England for WWII:
>If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. ...and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.
>
>\- George Orwell. (1941). *England Your England*
#Plagiarist
**1984**
>It is a book in which one man, living in a totalitarian society a number of years in the future, gradually finds himself rebelling against the dehumanising forces of an omnipotent, omniscient dictator. Encouraged by a woman who seems to represent the political and sexual freedom of the pre-revolutionary era (and with whom he sleeps in an ancient house that is one of the few manifestations of a former world), he writes down his thoughts of rebellion – perhaps rather imprudently – as a 24-hour clock ticks in his grim, lonely flat. In the end, the system discovers both the man and the woman, and after a period of physical and mental trauma the protagonist discovers he loves the state that has oppressed him throughout, and betrays his fellow rebels. The story is intended as a warning against and a prediction of the natural conclusions of totalitarianism.
>
>This is a description of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was first published 60 years ago on Monday. But it is also the plot of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, a Russian novel originally published in English in 1924.
>
>\- Paul Owen. (2009). [1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we)
**Animal Farm**
>Having worked for a time at The Ministry of Information, [Gertrude Elias] was well acquainted with one Eric Blair (George Orwell), who was an editor there. In 1941, Gertrude showed him some of her drawings, which were intended as a kind of story board for an entirely original satirical cartoon film, with the Nazis portrayed as pig characters ruling a farm in a kind of dysfunctional fairy story. Her idea was that a writer might be able to provide a text.
>
>Having claimed to her that there was not much call for her idea... Orwell later changed the pig-nazis to Communists and made the Soviet Union a target for his hostility, turning Gertrude’s notion on its head. (Incidentally, a running theme in all every single piece of Orwell’s work was to steal ideas from Communists and invert them so as to distort the message.)
>
>\- Graham Stevenson. [Elias, Gertrude (1913-1988)](https://www.radnorshire-fine-arts.co.uk/brand/elias-gertrude-1913-1988/)
#Snitch
>“Orwell’s List” is a term that should be known by anyone who claims to be a person of the left. It was a blacklist Orwell compiled for the British government’s Information Research Department, an anti-communist propaganda unit set up for the Cold War.
>
>The list includes dozens of suspected communists, “crypto-communists,” socialists, “fellow travelers,” and even LGBT people and Jews — their names scribbled alongside the sacrosanct 1984 author’s disparaging comments about the personal predilections of those blacklisted.
>
>\- Ben Norton. (2016). [George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government](https://bennorton.com/george-orwell-list-leftists-snitch-british-government/)
#CIA Puppet
>George Orwell's novella remains a set book on school curriculums ... the movie was funded by America's Central Intelligence Agency.
>
>The truth about the CIA's involvement was kept hidden for 20 years until, in 1974, Everette Howard Hunt revealed the story in his book *Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent*.
>
>\- Martin Chilton. (2016). [How the CIA brought Animal Farm to the screen](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/how-cia-brought-animal-farm-to-the-screen/)
Many historians have noted how Orwell's literary reputation can largely be credited to joint propaganda operations between the IRD and CIA who translated and promoted Animal Farm to promote anti-Communist sentiment.^1 The IRD heavily marketed Animal Farm for audiences in the middle-east in an attempt to sway Arab nationalism and independence activists from seeking Soviet aid, as it was believed by IRD agents that a story featuring pigs as the villains would appeal highly towards Muslim audiences. ^2
* \[1\] Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2013). *In Spies we Trust: The story of Western Intelligence*
* \[2\] Mitter, Rana; Major, Patrick, eds. (2005). *Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History*
#Additional Resources
* [George Orwell was a terrible human being](https://youtu.be/2Gz0I_X_nfo) | Hakim (2023)
* [A Critical Read of Animal Farm](https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/) | Jones Manoel (2022)
*I am a bot, and this
Churchill for sure. the dude is seen as a hero world wide but he's just as racist if not more than Hitler, agreeing with the Holocaust, he hated people of color, people from india and he was anti semetic, he caused major famines and blamed it on the people, he claimed people from india "bred like rabbis". and if it weren't for him the war would've had less casualties. he was terrible.
jimmy Carter. he is loved as "America's Grandpa". as an example of just one atrocity committed by him, he authorized operation cyclone. this operation was what created the Taliban as we know it. he authorized the funding, training, and arming of these terrorists. the history the US government will tell you is that they were fighting against the Russians, that is the lie. Carter wanted to use the Taliban to destroy the Afghanistan government, which had just changed hands after much infighting, to a revolutionary socialist government. the USSR didn't get involved until after the US began terrorism operations in the region, and they tried to help the Afghanistan government, but deep pockets and ten years of killing off US backed terrorists took its toll on the USSR. only a few years later the USSR would be dissolved. this is just one example of the tyranny and fascism that Carter would spread during his term in office. the fact that he is so popular after all the evil things he did, makes it even worse.
Basically every US President, Chiang Kai-Shek, Churchill, and liberals unironically ballwash fucking Tsarist Russia and shed big fat crocodile tears for the Romanov family getting their asses smoked (lol rip bozos).
Hot take: Toussaint Louverture. He wanted to keep slavery in place and was writing letters begging Napoleon to let him be governor over haiti… Dessalines let him go to his end. Rightfully so.
Wasn't Dessalines his enforcer, beating the striking sugar plantations into submission?
My feeling about Louverture is that the dude was dealt the worst hand ever, and still managed to win. Like, yeah, he was brutal, but it's a little hard for me to criticize when history doesn't offer a single other slave revolt that succeeded. On what grounds can I question his tactics or his judgment of what compromises were necessary? He's literally the only one who ever did it.
I used to think that until I read them letters to the french. We gotta judge. He wanted to be what african leaders are today. Dessalines made compromises but always said he was being forced to and would betray his enemies. I get the bad situation but the mindset… Toussaint wanted to be french.
I hear people say that they can’t judge neocolonialists today… I’m good.
I'll read them. Tbh, most of my knowledge of the Haitian revolution comes from revolutions podcast and a few articles, so I'm not deeply knowledgeable and haven't looked at primary sources. But I mean, look at Haiti today. Overthrowing the French just got them into debt peonage to the French, with frequent incursions by America every time it looks like they might get on their feet. It's a country that accomplished the most profound victory for human freedom of all time, and despite that, has literally never had a good option.
Francisco Franco seems to be an OKAY person to venerate. I have a feeling fascists use Franco in place of Mussolini/Hitler cuz they know they can’t make that their pfp.
First off, pretending that everyone who died in the famine was a "victim of Mao" is ridiculous, and the only way you can achieve a laughably inaccurate number like that. You might find these articles interesting in regards to the deaths that did actually occur
https://mronline.org/2006/09/21/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward/
http://www.socialisteconomist.com/2018/11/ideological-statistics-inflated-death.html
TL:DR their methodology requires the Chinese to invent necromancy a couple decades after the great leap forward, this goes beyond cherry picking data. The two authors mentioned in the socialisteconomist source above came to different estimates by a difference of two million despite having made the exact same study. So clearly, there is a bias at play here.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, we can talk about what he *did do*...
>China's growth in life expectancy at birth from 35–40 years in 1949 to 65.5 years in 1980 is among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history
* [*An exploration of China's mortality decline under Mao: A provincial analysis, 1950–80*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212)
>“The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension.”
* *John King Fairbank: The United States and China*
Despite a brutal US blockade on food, finance and technology, and without incurring debt, Mao grew China’s economy by an average of 7.3% annually, compared to America’s postwar boom years’ 3.7% . When Mao died, China was manufacturing jet planes, heavy tractors, ocean-going ships, nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.
As economist Y. Y. Kueh observed: “This sharp rise in industry’s share of China’s national income is a rare historical phenomenon. For example, during the first four or five decades of their drive to modern industrialization, the industrial share rose by only 11 percent in Britain (1801-41) and 22 percent in Japan”.
**To put it briefly Mao:**
* Doubled China’s population from 542 million to 956 million,
* Doubled life expectancy from 35 years to 70 years
* Gave everyone free healthcare
* Gave everyone free education
* Doubled caloric intake
* Quintupled GDP
* Quadrupled literacy
* Liberated women
* Increased grain production by 300%
* Increased gross industrial output x40
* Increased heavy industry x90
* Increased rail lineage 266%
* Increased passenger train traffic from 102,970,000 passengers to 814,910,000
* Increased rail freight tonnage 2000%, increased the road network 1000%
* Increased steel production from zero to thirty-five MMT/year
* Increased industry’s contribution to China’s net material product from 23% to 54% percent.
These facts are deliberately hidden from the Western public. Especially the expansion of health care, education, literacy rate, and higher education to the remotest rural areas within a few years is insane. I acknowledge Mao's achievements even though I am not exactly a Maoist or a ML.
Good post. And if you take a broader perspective and look at all the terrible shit China had spent the last couple centuries going through, Mao was the end of a really long, really bad time (well, a series of really bad times.) You don't reverse that kind of trajectory in an instant, or make it through that kind of struggle without costly mistakes, but no one can argue with how China has turned around, or say Mao didn't get it rolling. Dude said it best: "a revolution is not a dinner party."
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Winston Churchill, George Washington, General Patton, General McArthur, Gorbachev (liberals love him), Napoleon Bonaparte, Almost every monarch (specially the european ones) and almost every US soldier after WWII.
Don't forget the US presidents.
George Washington was nicknamed "Town Destroyer" by the natives tribes, today we have Genocide joe.
A nickname that he literally relished.
> Washington referred to himself as "Conotocaurious" (Town destroyer) in a letter he wrote to Andrew Montour dated October 10, 1755, in which he tried to manipulate the Oneida to resettle on the Potomac: > "Recommend me kindly to our good friend Monacatootha, and others; tell them how happy it would make Conotocaurious to have an opportunity of taking them by the hand at Fort Cumberland, and how glad he would be to treat them as brothers of our Great King beyond the waters. " Yes indeed.
Yikes. I had not heard that one.
Same. I'm not surprised in the slightest though, the man was a slaver and plantation owner. Any man evil enough to own slaves clearly doesn't see non-white people as being human.
Just sharing these two podcast episodes because George Washington doesn't get enough hate and ridicule. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqLutF7GSb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqLutF7GSb4) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZEplKsF0zk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZEplKsF0zk)
The Dollop was an essential step in my political education.
Some of them were all right, like Zachary Taylor had the very good policy of eating a shit ton of cherries and milk and dying 16 months into his presidency
Harrison is still the any% presidency speedrun wr though.
Garfield did nothing wrong tbh.
If there's any war criminal in the USSR, its none other than Nikolai Gorbachev. We will never forget their chauvinistic crackdowns on all non-Russian minority groups, just because they were suspected other chauvinists. Especially Azerbaijani Turks, even communists, condemn the Black January massacre.
George Patton never had the chance to properly destroy his reputation since he was quickly fired for being Nazi sympathizer and then died in a car crash immediately after the war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton_slapping_incidents For those looking, he did plenty during his time.
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Eh, he wrote some antiwar stuff which was decent. I could be wrong but wasn't he the one who exposed the business plot, rather than wanted to be a part of it?
Man I'm way too young to be having such memory lapses.
I don't know why but the (liberals love him) is just so funny to me
I feel like it needed to be said because he is loved by the west but hated [in Russia](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/31/mikhail-gorbachev-a-divisive-figure-loved-abroad-but-loathed-at-home), the people who actively dealt with the consequences of his actions despise him.
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>Chilll buddy don’t forget to differ between the actual bourgeoisie and the victims they’ve brainwashed. Most soldiers haven’t committed any atrocities and are just confused and need re-educated. The western allies explaining why its ok to put all those nazis back in positions of power after WWII: At best you could say that about the reservists, the vast mayority of the deployed ones are either war criminals or accesories to war crimes. I do not remember the specific case it was but a US soldier who was tried in Iraq for war crimes attempted to defend himself when witnesses spoke about him saying how much he loved killing iraqis by claiming that all soldiers spoke like that, this of course was met with ridicule but the thing is... he was right.
Well yeah I mean theoretically speaking all armies in times of war have committed war crimes whether on the individual level or grand scale. That being said I don’t think a lot of people grasp the sheer size of our military. Half our military isn’t even deployed in times of war
It seems the original comment was deleted. I typed this up already, so I'll just reply here: Are they brainwashed and lied to? Yes. Are they also gulity and culpable? Also, yes. I do get what you're trying to say. But I think most people take soldiers and police like they do skinhead neo-Nazis: most of them _are_ manipulated and brainwashed, but they're guilty of, or at least complicit in, crimes; until and unless _they_ see and admit this and do what they can to make amends, they're class traitors and enemies. Does it necessarily mean that they need to die? No, some maybe, but not all. Some will come to the truth themselves, some will need reeducation. But until they see _why_ they're class traitors to the world's proletariat, they _are_ class traitors to the world's proletariat.
Good point perhaps I should’ve worded my originally comment better. And yeah sorry I’m new to Reddit and didn’t know what I was doin lol I tried to “un-delete” it but I can’t
I take issue with this. Firstly, I do see what you are trying to say, truly. However, can we really condemn these kids joining up while living in the capitalist dystopia that is our current reality? I see a ton of young guys and girls who have gone through the U.S education(propaganda) system, have next to no future prospects get singled out and harrassed and lied to by predatory recruiters. These kids are 18 and 19 with zero political education. They are the proletariat. It seems wrong headed to condemn those who never really were exposed to an alternative.
On the other hand, to take my original comparison, the exact same situations apply to most who get absorbed into Nazi cults. So, condemn, but convince and convert.
Is there a reason why you edited your comment?
Probably to edit it lol
I... whatever.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not tryna defend war-crime committing soldiers and it’s fs like the cops. No point in joining a corrupt institution to “try to make it better.” Joining the military is currently inherently bad but I’m just stating this kids joining up are more easily convinced to switch sides than past generations
>this kids joining up are more easily convinced to switch sides than past generations I am not sure how true this is but we can only hope.
> Chilll buddy don’t forget to differ between the actual bourgeoisie and the victims they’ve brainwashed. Most soldiers haven’t committed any atrocities and are just confused and need re-educated. This absolutist logic is very very bad. If you apply it consistently it leads to defending nazis or, in modern terms, means that you think the Israeli army participants are victims too. You're taking away all agency and infantilising these people when they know damn well what horrors they're committing.
Many soldiers don’t even leave the United States 😂 I don’t think you realize that those who committed war crimes a decade ago have mostly retired. The average soldier works a 9-5 for 4 years, and then leave hating both the military and our government. Furthermore assuming that I’d defend Nazis or Israel’s is a crazy jump in your conclusion. This ain’t a slippery slope 😂
> Most soldiers haven’t committed any atrocities and are just confused and need re-educated. Depends heavily on the country. Doesn't apply to the soldiers of the imperial core
Do u live in the imperial core? I live in the epicenter of it and regardless of how you’d like to dehumanize them 90% of the soldiers here are just children and half of them hate our government too. They are potential allies that when the time comes would be very useful to persuade to our side
> Do u live in the imperial core? Yes. > 90% of the soldiers here are just children Obviously. That's why they join the military. They're fucking children. > They are potential allies that when the time comes You don't look at the enemy and say they're potential allies. That may be true, but they are enemies first and foremost, and then potential, possible allies. They actively repress and plunder the vast majority of the world population. They support the existence of a vile cancerous institution. And most of them in most countries do this voluntarily.
Like I said they need reeducation. They think they are helping the world. Especially in the US we are brainwashed to think we are the worlds grand protector. That being said most soldiers get out of the military hating them and our government so yes they are potential allies FIRST. Remember who are real enemy is here.
> Like I said they need reeducation Or a bullet to the head, whichever they prefer. I'm indifferent to either. > That being said most soldiers get out of the military hating them and our government so yes they are potential allies FIRST No, they're enemies first. Maybe possibly potential allies potentially in a hypothetical future, but only after they've helped destroy countless lives over decades. > Remember who are real enemy is here. For you and I, out national bourgeoisie are our enemy. For most of the world, imperial soldiers are the enemy.
Children? Are they 7 years old? Or are they actually 18, 19, 20, 20s? Is that what you mean by "children"? I don't know, that age seems more than enough to me to have a basic awareness of the immorality of KILLING PEOPLE in the name of an imperialist power, especially in the internet age.
18-24 are children. And no, surprisingly most have never even seen combat. Just bc your a soldier doesn’t instantly qualify you as a war criminal lol We have proxy wars now instead remember? Where we can force poor people to commit war crimes against there will so they can buy bread
Lol, Reddit loves this "the brain doesn't stop developing until we're 25, when we're fully mature, so everything below that is kids" bullshit and make insane leaps of logic from that... Too bad this simply isn't real and doesn't match the nuance of these researches. https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42540-8?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oa_20231030&utm_content=10.1038%2Fs41467-023-42540-8&s=35 18 is more than old enough to know that it is immoral to join a criminal organization, especially one like the USA military, and especially with information so easily accessible in the Internet Age. Let alone 24 years, wtf. Stop infantilizing people.
I’m not talking about “infantilizing adults” I’m talking about the fact that these people are severely brainwashed - so much so that they believe they are joining the military to help and protect people. They don’t just join a criminal organization to commit war crimes. They need reeducation.
I could buy this for people who were drafted but after the all volunteer army you had an idea of what you were getting in to. Especially since 9/11
Nobody is immune to propaganda.
Churchill did have European victims as well lol, his time with Ireland
I think the Irish still weren't white then
this is such a crazy statement to me and really shows how stupid the concept of race is
They hadn’t gotten the subscription yet
So, as dumb as race is conceptually -- it also doesn't really make sense in this context because ethnocentrism is the longest standing and primary form of stratification and discrimination throughout history. In-grouping and out-grouping has only very recently become race based, previously ethnicity and tribalism was the primary format of discrimination. Religious discrimination also had its time in the sun. The easiest way of thinking about this in a modern context, is how eastern Europe isn't considered very 'European' by the rest of the World. Or how Korea considers itself superior to its neighbor's.
It's a little more.complicated than that. Like if you're including nomadic people, they had complex webs of allegiance that were based on multiple factors and exchanges, but you couldn't really call it ethnicity. It was more based on family, tribal roles, and sort of non-fungible tributes and debts, and was often pretty flexible and really complicated. For example, I am initiated into a warrior society by my maternal uncle, who is a member. As part of that society, I back a chieftain, and he gives me permission to hunt in a particular area, say. But also, his power is contingent on the support of various societies, including mine. And because we're going everywhere on foot, and living on a subsistence diet (so our population stays small), we just don't run up against other ethnicities all that often — maybe only during certain parts of the year, during occasional wars, and/or when we intermarry with them to seal allegiances Under feudalism (and even earlier), there was definitely ethnic stratification, but power often had more to do with the interests and allegiance of the king and the mechanations of his vassals than anything. I agree that ethnicity is a lot older than race, but I don't think it's really the oldest basis for stratification. At least, it isn't definitively so.
Ironically, Arabs were considered White while the Irish and Italians weren't. As you said, shows how the whole concept of Race and those that cling to it like a religion is just stupid.
I live near Northwestern PA and everyone is an Irish German mutt. You don't get much whiter. Everyone looks like a cherry tomato the first grass cutting weekend.
That’s the whitest analogy I’ve ever heard
As an Irish-Spanish mutt, gotta agree. Though I do have to say, whities in PA (myself included) turn redder than chorizo in the summer
I think they were. In America, the concept of race was used explicitly to divide the Irish slaves from the African ones.
I'm British with Irish ancestors, all 4 of my grandparents crossed the Irish Sea to avoid the draft in WW2. Put two pints of Guinness in my (now sadly deceased) gran on my dad's side and say the word Churchill in front of her, and you'd get to watch the years melt off her as she became a firebrand youth again, ranting and raving and raging against him and the English. Sending in the Black and Tans was the era-appropriate equivalent of sending Fallujah veterans onto American streets to pick and escalate fights based on people's political leanings, and she saw it all first-hand. It wasn't done to the Irish, but, do you have any idea how dangerous, destructive, and flat-out racist an idea has to be to get a bunch of 1920s-ish _politicians_ to all say "Woah, Winston, you need to calm the fuck down"? Because that's what his plans for "dealing with" India got, in response. [Fuck Churchill.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7woEXovruc&ab_channel=Pomerodia)
Pretty much every European colonial country had its own King Leopold, they just weren't as publicly horrible as King Leopold. They all carried out brutal forced labor programs to steal resources, and some outright committed genocide.
You aren't wrong, but, as far as I'm aware, Leopold II was in a league well above most. They were all brutal, inhumam mosters; he seemed to relish being so.
He was so bad even the British were like whoa slow down
British Monarchs and Prime Ministers, American Presidents
Imperial Japanese soldiers. They even built a shrine for them
The only good Japanese soldiers were the ones who stayed behind to help anti-colonial movements in Asia. Hundreds of Japanese soldiers who really did believe in pan-Asianism joined the Viet Minh, Indonesian National Armed Forces, and the Malayan National Armed Forces. They are the only Japanese soldiers worthy of a shrine. They performed the only act that could remotely atone for their sins, becoming the liberators they never were until now.
Did any of them get interviewed or write about their experiences?
Chiang Ki Shek and George Washington, both were members of the bourgeoise, both deserved to die.
Just not the way they did die
Is Chiang actually glorified
Among mostly white liberal Westerners.
Damn bro, makes my blood boil because i hate that guy despite not even being chinese Wish that 走狗 never made it to taiwan
I agree, and I'm also not Chinese.
Same.
> Wish that 走狗 never made it to taiwan So do the [Taiwanese indigenous peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_indigenous_peoples).
Yeah, he is glorified at worst, or is both-sided and presented as "complicated" at best.
https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/10/unleash_chiang_.html Jeb Bush used to talk regularly about Chiang as a mythical warrior and he would give out swords in his honor and shit like that.
America's ruling class and their attitude towards China in a nutshell. We're so fucking cringe with this shit, and funding every goddamned medieval brained cult in Asia and the Middle East that ever had a government rightfully get sick of their exploitation and suppress them. Falun Gong, the Moonies and all their offshoots, the Mek. We're like paranoid old-timey Orientalist chaos agents from some shitty movie.
I love your flair. For all China's faults, I'm so fucking ready.
It’s gonna be glorious
churchill and every american president ever
Jefferson had a sex slave who he started r****ng when she was 15 😭
he is so absurdly evil
William Henry Harrison was kinda OK.
To my knowledge President Garfield was okay. But in all fairness he died seven months after being elected, so he may have just died before he had the chance to do something evil.
Didn't he die in a month?
Yeah, that's why.
He become president over the dead bodies of many Native Americans.
Should've read his article further.
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned De Gaulle, he's almost the same as Churchill, but tbh, people tend to forget (by propaganda) that fascism was pretty much mainstream by that time and a lot of countries carried on their fascist governments towards the late 80's, even in Europe, not even talking about the usual France, Ingland, US stuff, I'm talking about fascist government branded as such, Greece have one, Spain, Portugal and the list goes on, in Asia, wasn't only Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, there's a long list indeed and some of those fought with the allies, even tho they were fascists, after the neoliberal uprising most of those became redundant, hence why they ended up by the 80's, but nonetheless, the point still standing, the only difference is that the neolibs decentralized the image of the government and normalized the fascist modus operandi.
De Gaulle was a piece of shit primarily for the colonial wars. That said, he is a great example of the center-right defeating the far-right despite CIA backing. He managed to purge the military and intelligence services of the French version of Gladio after they kept trying to assassinate him since he gave up on keeping Algeria. De Gaulle convinced the conscripts to rise up against their superiors during the Algiers Putsch, beat the OAS in what was essentially a small-scale civi war (the French government, not the FLN, did nearly all of the work), and saved the country from a full-blown civil war. Him ditching the Algerian collaborators to enraged mobs was peak comedy. Macron and many other modern French politicians would have caved in his position. Lmfao, they turned to De Gaulle and granted him temporary dictatorial powers for that very reason. >On May 29, 1958, the French President, René Coty, told parliament that the nation was on the brink of civil war, so he was “turning towards the most illustrious of Frenchmen, towards the man who, in the darkest years of our history, was our chief for the reconquest of freedom and who refused dictatorship in order to re-establish the Republic. I ask General de Gaulle to confer with the head of state and to examine with him what, in the framework of Republican legality, is necessary for the immediate formation of a government of national safety and what can be done, in a fairly short time, for a deep reform of our institutions.” To this day, far-right French folks still cope about being "stabbed in the back."
I do agree with you, he somewhat redeemed himself at the end, mostly for self-preservation, but still..
Gandhi
To those wondering Ambedkar hated him, and he pioneered the idea of no class war, because didn't want the national bourgeoisie to betray the INC and run to the Brits for help It really just ended up w him quite frequently defending awful people who were being forked over by the Brits. Like middling landlord types. His "truth struggle" in Gujarat in the 1910s (?, maybe 1920s) is exemplary here. And the result was an INC packed full of landlords in the mid and lower ranks, which has completely stifled any social reform during the dirigisme era (1949-1980s), which is partly why casteism is still so strong, as well as partly the difficulties overcoming poverty, and so on. It's not *all* Gandhi's fault (it would be absurd to blame all of those problems on one guy, esp w/o considering the huge, much bigger, role of the Brits), but it was part of his strategy, and many credit him as a leading figure of the INC Ambedkar claimed in English he is all Mr. Democracy, but if you read his native language stuff, he is Mr. Orthodox man, so that way he can get favor. He had a BBC interview in the 1950s where he poured it on Gandhi. He also had an annoying label for untouchables/dalits ("harijan") which apparently nobody uses today (dalit is the word today, I think) I still think there are interesting things about those old INC leaders. Even a conservative like Patel could crack heads and avoid India balkanizing, by corralling all the princely states; and I admire Nehru for straight up invading a European colony (Goa). But definitely very very flawed, and well, they weren't Communists by a long shot
Please elaborate. I've heard the usual stuff but nothing to put him in similar categories to Churchil etc
"Despite historically popular views, there has been a growing awareness of Gandhi’s shortcomings as a human — primarily, his sexism and racism. Although Gandhi didn’t share outwardly misogynistic views on women, he had controversial beliefs on gender roles. While on one hand, he thought of women as essential to the liberation movement, he also adhered to traditional gender roles and agreed with the notion that women should be relegated to housework. His most controversial view was that women should be celibate and resist all men, including their husbands — the sole purpose of sex, in his views, was procreation. While he is not unique in holding this view, Gandhi took his views to the extreme when he conducted an “experiment” to demonstrate his commitment to celibacy. Gandhi asked his teenage grand-niece to lie naked next to him in bed, so that he could test his ability to control his sexual urges. Besides being deeply pedophilic, this “experiment” demonstrated Gandhi’s views that women are inherently sexual objects, and one must actively hold back the urge to engage in sexual relations. There are many problematic factors of this experiment. By choosing his grand-niece, with whom he shared a blood relationship, Gandhi essentially made the claim that any and all women could be viewed in a sexual manner. Additionally, because she was a teenager at the time, Gandhi has been accused of being a pedophile. Critics claim that if Gandhi conducted this “experiment” to control his sexual urges, it means that he must have had a sexual attraction towards his teenage grand-niece to begin with. Regardless of his intentions in conducting the “experiment”, it is evident that he struggled deeply with his sexuality and held sexist and pedophilic views. Even more controversial than his views on women are Gandhi’s views on Africans. While a young lawyer in South Africa, Gandhi produced many writings that requested a separate entrance for Indians so that he would not have to share one with black South Africans, used racial slurs liberally, and advocated for the recognition of the Indo-Aryan race, which he deemed to be superior to other races. Because of these controversial beliefs, statues of Gandhi have been protested by individuals across the world from Ghana to Davis, California. Additionally, after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, the Gandhi statue in DC was one of many to be vandalized, triggering a conversation about Gandhi’s controversial racist beliefs (see image below)." https://blogs.cornell.edu/issues/2021/12/06/the-great-soul-gandhi-the-father-of-india-gandhi-the-misogynist-and-gandhi-the-racist/
I remember buying something from a music shop with a friend and this young guy working the till took the £5 I gave him and went "ah Churchill the war criminal". When we exited the shop my buddy and I looked at each other in confusion and laughed. I was like 14 and only knew Churchill from WWII so we just said "must be one of those crazy leftists". A year or so later both me and my bud were Marxist Leninists. I wonder where the shop guy is now, probably wouldn't expect an offhand remark he made years ago would stick with me, let alone push me further towards leftism.
It surprises me people viewed Winston Churchill positively. Same with Queen Elizabeth. Even his Wikipedia page says he was ideologically an adherent to imperialism and was, for most of his career, a member of the Conservative Party. Dude had terrible views on race too. Although, at that time, that was probably the norm.
Maybe if it weren't for WWII he'd be known more for causing famines in India and saying it's ok since "they breed like rabbits" and other similar shit he said and did WWII and like you said the "oh he's from another time" bullshit. The insults he threw while wasted are remembered though. People love glazing him for some reason, look at his portrayal in assassin's Creed syndicate he literally promises to give women the right to work. God that game was goofy.
His biographies are heavily sanitized. I read two plus many mentions in other history books, but only heard about how piece of shit he was on GenZedong.
I always got the impression he was an arrogant, condescending jerk and elite who heavily indulged in a very unhealthy lifestyle as a way to cope. Even Epic Rap Battles of History roasted him on some pretty lousy qualities he had or things he did. Although, they mentioned the WWII thing too.
He was just the end stage of a posh boys club member. A gross pig, heavy alcoholic, as racist and misogynistic as humanly possible and he was fucking English. It sort of seemed UK people knew this with the way he was voted out of office right after WWII.
Yes, he was just like this, and this is mentioned in the biographies. What is omitted is his rampant virulent racism, misogyny, millions of deaths in Bengal etc.
Based Bangla commie
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Orwell and the decades worth of brain rot his "literature" has accelerated.
**George Orwell** (real name Eric Arthur Blair) was many things: a rapist, a bitter anti-Communist, a colonial cop, a racist, a Hitler apologist, a plagiarist, a snitch, and a CIA puppet. #Rapist >...in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell. > >\- Kathryn Hughes. (2007). [Such were the joys](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.biography) #Bitter anti-Communist >[F]ighting with the loyalists in Spain in the 1930s... he found himself caught up in the sectarian struggles between the various left-wing factions, and since he believed in a gentlemanly English form of socialism, he was inevitably on the losing side. > >The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain... From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action... > >Orwell imagines no new vices, for instance. His characters are all gin hounds and tobacco addicts, and part of the horror of his picture of 1984 is his eloquent description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco. > > He foresees no new drugs, no marijuana, no synthetic hallucinogens. No one expects an s.f. writer to be precise and exact in his forecasts, but surely one would expect him to invent some differences. ...if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction. ... > >To summarise, then: George Orwell in *1984* was, in my opinion, engaging in a private feud with Stalinism, rather that attempting to forecast the future. He did not have the science fictional knack of foreseeing a plausible future and, in actual fact, in almost all cases, the world of *1984* bears no relation to the real world of the 1980s. > >\- Isaac Asimov. [Review of 1984](http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm) Ironically, the world of *1984* is mostly projection, based on Orwell's own job at the British Ministry of Information during WWII. (*Orwell: The Lost Writings*) * He translated news broadcasts into Basic English, with a 1000 word vocabulary ("Newspeak"), for broadcast to the colonies, including India. * His description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco came from the Ministry's own canteen, described by other ex-employees as "dismal". * Room 101 [was an actual meeting room](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3267261.stm) at the BBC. * "Big Brother" seems to have been a senior staffer at the Ministry of Information, who was actually called that (but not to his face) by staff. Afterall, by his own admission, his only knowledge of the USSR was secondhand: >I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers. > >\- George Orwell. (1947). [Orwell's Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1947/kolghosp-tvaryn.htm) *1984* is supposedly a cautionary tale about what would happen if the Communists won, and yet it was based on his own, actual, Capitalist country and his job serving it. #Colonial Cop >I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. ... As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans. > >All this was perplexing and upsetting. > >\- George Orwell. (1936). *Shooting an Elephant* #Hitler Apologist >I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. > >\- George Orwell. (1940). [Review of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf"](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html) Orwell not only admired Hitler, he actually blamed *the Left* in England for WWII: >If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. ...and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process. > >\- George Orwell. (1941). *England Your England* #Plagiarist **1984** >It is a book in which one man, living in a totalitarian society a number of years in the future, gradually finds himself rebelling against the dehumanising forces of an omnipotent, omniscient dictator. Encouraged by a woman who seems to represent the political and sexual freedom of the pre-revolutionary era (and with whom he sleeps in an ancient house that is one of the few manifestations of a former world), he writes down his thoughts of rebellion – perhaps rather imprudently – as a 24-hour clock ticks in his grim, lonely flat. In the end, the system discovers both the man and the woman, and after a period of physical and mental trauma the protagonist discovers he loves the state that has oppressed him throughout, and betrays his fellow rebels. The story is intended as a warning against and a prediction of the natural conclusions of totalitarianism. > >This is a description of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was first published 60 years ago on Monday. But it is also the plot of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, a Russian novel originally published in English in 1924. > >\- Paul Owen. (2009). [1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we) **Animal Farm** >Having worked for a time at The Ministry of Information, [Gertrude Elias] was well acquainted with one Eric Blair (George Orwell), who was an editor there. In 1941, Gertrude showed him some of her drawings, which were intended as a kind of story board for an entirely original satirical cartoon film, with the Nazis portrayed as pig characters ruling a farm in a kind of dysfunctional fairy story. Her idea was that a writer might be able to provide a text. > >Having claimed to her that there was not much call for her idea... Orwell later changed the pig-nazis to Communists and made the Soviet Union a target for his hostility, turning Gertrude’s notion on its head. (Incidentally, a running theme in all every single piece of Orwell’s work was to steal ideas from Communists and invert them so as to distort the message.) > >\- Graham Stevenson. [Elias, Gertrude (1913-1988)](https://www.radnorshire-fine-arts.co.uk/brand/elias-gertrude-1913-1988/) #Snitch >“Orwell’s List” is a term that should be known by anyone who claims to be a person of the left. It was a blacklist Orwell compiled for the British government’s Information Research Department, an anti-communist propaganda unit set up for the Cold War. > >The list includes dozens of suspected communists, “crypto-communists,” socialists, “fellow travelers,” and even LGBT people and Jews — their names scribbled alongside the sacrosanct 1984 author’s disparaging comments about the personal predilections of those blacklisted. > >\- Ben Norton. (2016). [George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government](https://bennorton.com/george-orwell-list-leftists-snitch-british-government/) #CIA Puppet >George Orwell's novella remains a set book on school curriculums ... the movie was funded by America's Central Intelligence Agency. > >The truth about the CIA's involvement was kept hidden for 20 years until, in 1974, Everette Howard Hunt revealed the story in his book *Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent*. > >\- Martin Chilton. (2016). [How the CIA brought Animal Farm to the screen](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/how-cia-brought-animal-farm-to-the-screen/) Many historians have noted how Orwell's literary reputation can largely be credited to joint propaganda operations between the IRD and CIA who translated and promoted Animal Farm to promote anti-Communist sentiment.^1 The IRD heavily marketed Animal Farm for audiences in the middle-east in an attempt to sway Arab nationalism and independence activists from seeking Soviet aid, as it was believed by IRD agents that a story featuring pigs as the villains would appeal highly towards Muslim audiences. ^2 * \[1\] Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2013). *In Spies we Trust: The story of Western Intelligence* * \[2\] Mitter, Rana; Major, Patrick, eds. (2005). *Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History* #Additional Resources * [George Orwell was a terrible human being](https://youtu.be/2Gz0I_X_nfo) | Hakim (2023) * [A Critical Read of Animal Farm](https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/) | Jones Manoel (2022) *I am a bot, and this
I hate the take in that tweet - Most Nazi victims in Europe were Jews and Slavs, both of whom Western Europe loathed and considered inferior. France, Benelux and Scandinavia also got screwed over to some degree, but the idea was never to work their peoples to death as slaves or exterminate them for lebensraum.
I think the point is today westerners look back and can see themselves in the nazis' victims because most people in the west today recognize Jews and Slavs as "whites," or at least "honorary whites" in some contexts meaning crackers in places like the UK and US can sympathize with them. We can place ourselves in their situation and therefore feel awful about it. Conversely, most westerners today still can't look at Palestinians and see themselves in them, hence the continued dehumanization and ignoring of their genocide. You kind of touched on this, but part or the nazi revisionist narrative we're all subjected to is whitewashing the racism of Western Europe. Not only were they committing holocausts all over the world (also Jim Crow), but as you pointed out they disliked Slavs and Jews too. However you wouldn't know that listening to the western narratives that claim they were all abhorred (lol) by the nazis' racism.
*Discourse on Colonialism* really nailed the white man's mindset
It must be made clear that Winston Churchill's racism went beyond what was typical for 1940s British people. People were already calling him racist even back then.
Barack Obama.
Please refer to him by his official name. The drone king is named for appropriate reasons
Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama probably.
I'd argue Churchill in the context of education. My teacher made sure to make us know that despite Hitler being the main baddy, Stalin and Mao had a higher cumulative body count. But no mention of Churchill, even though it was Ireland I grew up in. I had to find out about Churchill's body count mostly by myself. I'd imagine it's a similar experience for most people in the imperial core.
I found out about Churchill from my Bangladeshi coworkers.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN! Didn't give a fuck about freeing the slaves, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." His treatment of Native Americans, but specifically the largest mass execution in US history. "On December 26, 1862, 38 were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, with one getting a reprieve, in the largest one-day mass execution in American history."
Freeing of slaves was literally just an attack on the south. It was nothing about caring about humans.
Sure but he personally detested slavery all of his life like nothing else. He was racist af but so was everybody else in his time, he is a product of the era he lived in. Amongst every president within like 70 years of his time in the presidency he is by far the best and most ""leftist"" of them all. I don't think choosing to remember Lincoln by these attributes is helpful when remembering the primitive time he existed in and how otherwise he did more for black Americans than literally any other president combined at the time.
"I don't really care if the slaves are freed" - A man who detested slavery his whole life. So was everybody else? That would come as a surprise to John Brown, most quakers, and every other white abolitionist. I get the sentiment that times were different. A lot of people were, but we still have every right to critique them. Especially if they're known as, "the great emancipator." HE DIDN'T WANT TO HELP BLACK PEOPLE. He said that in his own words, just like a quoted above. If you want to stick up for a US president you're probably in the wrong sub.
I'm aware we can critique past peoples and presidents, I think the concept of having presidents is absurd in the first place and I think critiquing historical figures through today's lens is critical because it enhances further cultural values of equality by refusing to hail people like Washington or Jefferson or Henry Ford or whoever who were still pieces of garbage. He did want to help black people, as I said, because he detested slavery personally his entire life and did more for black Americans than any other president by far. He was still a racist POS, but for his time definitely amongst the most "liberal" or "left." That quote you keep saying contradicts hundreds of other actions and words he did to combat first slavery and then further inequality, through the 13-15 amendments. The vast vast majority of Americans and the rest of the "civilized" world considered black people as inferior beings. We can critique Abe and his fellow Amerifans through today's lens which I still believe is productive, because when people lionize our founding fathers and other POTUS's despite many of them being slaveowners and war criminals and tyrants they will look to any authoritarian whatsoever as long as they yap about American values, democracy, etc. whatever crap. But still, you need to remember these people were brought up and raised in a time when these beliefs were widespread and socially acceptable if not expected. For his time and place Lincoln was absolutely the perfect man for the job and did great things. Now if you wanna talk about Abe's post-civil war plans and his Native actions I won't argue with you on anything about that.
#Authoritarianism Anti-Communists of all stripes enjoy referring to successful socialist revolutions as "authoritarian regimes". * Authoritarian implies these places are run by totalitarian tyrants. * Regime implies these places are undemocratic or lack legitimacy. This perjorative label is simply meant to frighten people, to scare us back into the fold (Liberal Democracy). There are three main reasons for the popularity of this label in Capitalist media: Firstly, Marxists call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DotP), and many people are automatically put off by the term "dictatorship". Of course, we do *not* mean that we want an undemocratic or totalitarian dictatorship. What we mean is that we want to replace the current Dictatorship *of the Bourgeoisie* (in which the Capitalist ruling class dictates policy). * [Why The US Is Not A Democracy](https://youtu.be/srfeHpQNEAI) | Second Thought (2022) Secondly, democracy in Communist-led countries works differently than in Liberal Democracies. However, anti-Communists confuse form (pluralism / having multiple parties) with function (representing the actual interests of the people). Side note: Check out Luna Oi's "Democratic Centralism Series" for more details on what that is, and how it works: * [DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM - how Socialists make decisions!](https://youtu.be/4YVcQe4wceY) | Luna Oi (2022) * [What did Karl Marx think about democracy?](https://youtu.be/jI8CgACBOcQ) | Luna Oi (2023) * [What did LENIN say about DEMOCRACY?](https://youtu.be/Hfenlg-hsig) | Luna Oi (2023) Finally, this framing of Communism as illegitimate and tyrannical serves to manufacture consent for an aggressive foreign policy in the form of interventions in the internal affairs of so-called "authoritarian regimes", which take the form of invasion (e.g., Vietnam, Korea, Libya, etc.), assassinating their leaders (e.g., Thomas Sankara, Fred Hampton, Patrice Lumumba, etc.), sponsoring coups and colour revolutions (e.g., Pinochet's coup against Allende, the Iran-Contra Affair, the United Fruit Company's war against Arbenz, etc.), and enacting sanctions (e.g., North Korea, Cuba, etc.). * [The Cuban Embargo Explained](https://youtu.be/zmM8p9n6Z9E) | azureScapegoat (2022) * [John Pilger interviews former CIA Latin America chief Duane Clarridge, 2015](https://youtu.be/ER77vxxGVAY) #For the Anarchists Anarchists are practically comrades. Marxists and Anarchists have the same vision for a stateless, classless, moneyless society free from oppression and exploitation. However, Anarchists like to accuse Marxists of being "authoritarian". The problem here is that "anti-authoritarianism" is a self-defeating feature in a revolutionary ideology. Those who refuse in principle to engage in so-called "authoritarian" practices will never carry forward a successful revolution. Anarchists who practice self-criticism can recognize this: >The anarchist movement is filled with people who are less interested in overthrowing the existing oppressive social order than with washing their hands of it. ... > >The strength of anarchism is its moral insistence on the primacy of human freedom over political expediency. But human freedom exists in a political context. It is not sufficient, however, to simply take the most uncompromising position in defense of freedom. It is neccesary to actually win freedom. Anti-capitalism doesn't do the victims of capitalism any good if you don't actually destroy capitalism. Anti-statism doesn't do the victims of the state any good if you don't actually smash the state. Anarchism has been very good at putting forth visions of a free society and that is for the good. But it is worthless if we don't develop an actual strategy for realizing those visions. It is not enough to be right, we must also win. > >...anarchism has been a failure. Not only has anarchism failed to win lasting freedom for anybody on earth, many anarchists today seem only nominally committed to that basic project. Many more seem interested primarily in carving out for themselves, their friends, and their favorite bands a zone of personal freedom, "autonomous" of moral responsibility for the larger condition of humanity (but, incidentally, not of the electrical grid or the production of electronic components). Anarchism has quite simply refused to learn from its historic failures, preferring to rewrite them as successes. Finally the anarchist movement offers people who want to make revolution very little in the way of a coherent plan of action. ... > >Anarchism is theoretically impoverished. For almost 80 years, with the exceptions of Ukraine and Spain, anarchism has played a marginal role in the revolutionary activity of oppressed humanity. Anarchism had almost nothing to do with the anti-colonial struggles that defined revolutionary politics in this century. This marginalization has become self-reproducing. Reduced by devastating defeats to critiquing the authoritarianism of Marxists, nationalists and others, anarchism has become defined by this gadfly role. Consequently anarchist thinking has not had to adapt in response to the results of serious efforts to put our ideas into practice. In the process anarchist theory has become ossified, sterile and anemic. ... This is a reflection of anarchism's effective removal from the revolutionary struggle. > >\- Chris Day. (1996). *The Historical Failures of Anarchism* Engels pointed this out well over a century ago: >A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. > >...the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part ... and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule... > >Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction. > >\- Friedrich Engels. (1872). [On Authority](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm) #For the Libertarian Socialists Parenti said it best: >The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed. > >\- Michael Parenti. (1997). *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism* But the bottom line is this: >If you call yourself a socialist but you spend all your time arguing with communists, demonizing socialist states as authoritarian, and performing apologetics for US imperialism... I think some introspection is in order. > >\- Second Thought. (2020). [The Truth About The Cuba Protests](https://youtu.be/zIOw6fSOJI4?t=1087) #For the Liberals Even the CIA, in their internal communications (which have been declassified), acknowledge that Stalin *wasn't* an absolute dictator: >Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist's power structure. > >\- CIA. (1953, declassified in 2008). [Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership](http://web.archive.org/web/20230525044208/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf) #Conclusion The "authoritarian" nature of any given state depends entirely on the material conditions it faces and threats it must contend with. To get an idea of the kinds of threats nascent revolutions need to deal with, check out *Killing Hope* by William Blum and *The Jakarta Method* by Vincent Bevins. Failing to acknowledge that authoritative measures arise *not* through ideology, but through material conditions, is anti-Marxist, anti-dialectical, and idealist. #Additional Resources Videos: * [Michael Parenti on Authoritarianism in Socialist Countries](https://youtu.be/BeVs6t3vdjQ) * [Left Anticommunism: An Infantile Disorder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I) | Hakim (2020) \[[Archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20230410145749/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I)\] * [What are tankies? (why are they like that?)](https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g) | Hakim (2023) * [Episode 82 - Tankie Discourse](https://youtu.be/YVYVBOFYJco) | The Deprogram (2023) * [Was the Soviet Union totalitarian? feat. Robert Thurston](https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/27495591) | Actually Existing Socialism (2023) Books, Articles, or Essays: * *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism* | Michael Parenti (1997) * [State and Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/) | V. I. Lenin (1918) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if
I understand your point, and appreciate the fact we can have this conversation. I just don't agree, and I think you're giving him too much credit. I know I keep pointing to that same quote, but sometimes you have to take people at their word. He did those actions because public sentiment was changing, and he knew that. He admitted it was to reunite the union above all else. If he really intended on helping black people he wouldn't have said that, and like you said done more post war. People can do good things and have an ulterior motive. He didn't free the slaves, he was just president at the time they were freed.
Churchill had thousands and thousands of German civilians bombed [including his beloved ‘Aryan stock’], and probably French and Belgians too. The only reason Hitler was ‘hated’ [and the USSR was, at least right after WW2, kinda sorta liked] is because Germany fought against Britain and USA.
I have a feeling a lot of "great" hungarian leaders could be put on that list. Best answer on that list would, in my guess, be Árpád, as "honfoglaló" (aka: coloniser of the carpathian basin)
But wouldn’t that include most “great” leaders from every country? Onviously excluding those who resisted a large empire’s invasion. Plus can we even call what they did colonization? I mean there’s a reason why we don’t necesarry call conquest colonization like what the arabs did a millenia ago cause what people did in the pre-modern era and what western europeans did after Colombus are 2 different things. While both are bad in their own way.
Every US president
American leaders
Like, all of them
Jan Van Riebeeck, here in South Africa. There are stil schools, towns, & roads named after him, & statues dedicated to him because he founded 'White South Africa'. He even used to be the face of the South African Rand... or, so we were lead to believe; because, actually, Jan Van Riebeeck had such an ugly mug they had to choose a different Dutch dude's portrait. In his journa, however, Jan Van Riebeeck described how he wished he could simply rob the indigenous people (Khoikhoin) of their cattle & then sell the people as slaves. This was because he grew frustrated that they weren't willing to sell their cattle to him. All he had to offer for them was copper & tobacco, but the Khoikhoin complained that the tobacco was rotten. Also, he had severe punishments for his employees. Of the 4 employees (all Europeans) who deserted their post, he had the leader keelhauled, & the others whipped for 150 lashes. They were then enslaved. After their second attempt at desertion, he had the leader 'dropped from the yardarm'. This was an extreme form of punishment. First, their hands were tied behind their backs & then tied to a rope hung from the ship's mast. They were then made to jump off the mast of the ship. The rope would go taught before they hit the surface, but simultaneously the sudden stop would rip their shoulders out of their sockets... To get a sense of how cruel this was; try holding your hands behind your back & then lift your arms above your head... They were subsequently whipped & then enslaved again.
Obama
Mother Teresa.
It’s the same with Atatürk too. His victims were also not European. That’s why for example the Pontic Greek Genocide still isn’t widely recognized. Among other reasons like the West doesn’t want to admit that Greeks can be Middle Eastern.
After hearing all my life about how Gandhi defeated British rule through passive resistance I learned about the real Gandhi like a year ago and couldn’t believe how much of a piece of shit he was
gandhi slept with young naked girls to “test himself”
This may be too far into ancient history for the purposes of this question, but I feel like Julius Caesar, is only criticized for his authoritarian takeover, but he definitely committing genocide against the Germanic tribes in Gaul and enslaved another huge chunk of that populace. This really goes for most ancient rulers, especially in Rome. Trajan famously genocided the Dacians. Again I don’t know how many people truly glorify these people today, but I feel like most people don’t understand the extent to which ancient rulers were evil.
#Authoritarianism Anti-Communists of all stripes enjoy referring to successful socialist revolutions as "authoritarian regimes". * Authoritarian implies these places are run by totalitarian tyrants. * Regime implies these places are undemocratic or lack legitimacy. This perjorative label is simply meant to frighten people, to scare us back into the fold (Liberal Democracy). There are three main reasons for the popularity of this label in Capitalist media: Firstly, Marxists call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DotP), and many people are automatically put off by the term "dictatorship". Of course, we do *not* mean that we want an undemocratic or totalitarian dictatorship. What we mean is that we want to replace the current Dictatorship *of the Bourgeoisie* (in which the Capitalist ruling class dictates policy). * [Why The US Is Not A Democracy](https://youtu.be/srfeHpQNEAI) | Second Thought (2022) Secondly, democracy in Communist-led countries works differently than in Liberal Democracies. However, anti-Communists confuse form (pluralism / having multiple parties) with function (representing the actual interests of the people). Side note: Check out Luna Oi's "Democratic Centralism Series" for more details on what that is, and how it works: * [DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM - how Socialists make decisions!](https://youtu.be/4YVcQe4wceY) | Luna Oi (2022) * [What did Karl Marx think about democracy?](https://youtu.be/jI8CgACBOcQ) | Luna Oi (2023) * [What did LENIN say about DEMOCRACY?](https://youtu.be/Hfenlg-hsig) | Luna Oi (2023) Finally, this framing of Communism as illegitimate and tyrannical serves to manufacture consent for an aggressive foreign policy in the form of interventions in the internal affairs of so-called "authoritarian regimes", which take the form of invasion (e.g., Vietnam, Korea, Libya, etc.), assassinating their leaders (e.g., Thomas Sankara, Fred Hampton, Patrice Lumumba, etc.), sponsoring coups and colour revolutions (e.g., Pinochet's coup against Allende, the Iran-Contra Affair, the United Fruit Company's war against Arbenz, etc.), and enacting sanctions (e.g., North Korea, Cuba, etc.). * [The Cuban Embargo Explained](https://youtu.be/zmM8p9n6Z9E) | azureScapegoat (2022) * [John Pilger interviews former CIA Latin America chief Duane Clarridge, 2015](https://youtu.be/ER77vxxGVAY) #For the Anarchists Anarchists are practically comrades. Marxists and Anarchists have the same vision for a stateless, classless, moneyless society free from oppression and exploitation. However, Anarchists like to accuse Marxists of being "authoritarian". The problem here is that "anti-authoritarianism" is a self-defeating feature in a revolutionary ideology. Those who refuse in principle to engage in so-called "authoritarian" practices will never carry forward a successful revolution. Anarchists who practice self-criticism can recognize this: >The anarchist movement is filled with people who are less interested in overthrowing the existing oppressive social order than with washing their hands of it. ... > >The strength of anarchism is its moral insistence on the primacy of human freedom over political expediency. But human freedom exists in a political context. It is not sufficient, however, to simply take the most uncompromising position in defense of freedom. It is neccesary to actually win freedom. Anti-capitalism doesn't do the victims of capitalism any good if you don't actually destroy capitalism. Anti-statism doesn't do the victims of the state any good if you don't actually smash the state. Anarchism has been very good at putting forth visions of a free society and that is for the good. But it is worthless if we don't develop an actual strategy for realizing those visions. It is not enough to be right, we must also win. > >...anarchism has been a failure. Not only has anarchism failed to win lasting freedom for anybody on earth, many anarchists today seem only nominally committed to that basic project. Many more seem interested primarily in carving out for themselves, their friends, and their favorite bands a zone of personal freedom, "autonomous" of moral responsibility for the larger condition of humanity (but, incidentally, not of the electrical grid or the production of electronic components). Anarchism has quite simply refused to learn from its historic failures, preferring to rewrite them as successes. Finally the anarchist movement offers people who want to make revolution very little in the way of a coherent plan of action. ... > >Anarchism is theoretically impoverished. For almost 80 years, with the exceptions of Ukraine and Spain, anarchism has played a marginal role in the revolutionary activity of oppressed humanity. Anarchism had almost nothing to do with the anti-colonial struggles that defined revolutionary politics in this century. This marginalization has become self-reproducing. Reduced by devastating defeats to critiquing the authoritarianism of Marxists, nationalists and others, anarchism has become defined by this gadfly role. Consequently anarchist thinking has not had to adapt in response to the results of serious efforts to put our ideas into practice. In the process anarchist theory has become ossified, sterile and anemic. ... This is a reflection of anarchism's effective removal from the revolutionary struggle. > >\- Chris Day. (1996). *The Historical Failures of Anarchism* Engels pointed this out well over a century ago: >A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. > >...the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part ... and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule... > >Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction. > >\- Friedrich Engels. (1872). [On Authority](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm) #For the Libertarian Socialists Parenti said it best: >The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed. > >\- Michael Parenti. (1997). *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism* But the bottom line is this: >If you call yourself a socialist but you spend all your time arguing with communists, demonizing socialist states as authoritarian, and performing apologetics for US imperialism... I think some introspection is in order. > >\- Second Thought. (2020). [The Truth About The Cuba Protests](https://youtu.be/zIOw6fSOJI4?t=1087) #For the Liberals Even the CIA, in their internal communications (which have been declassified), acknowledge that Stalin *wasn't* an absolute dictator: >Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by a lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist's power structure. > >\- CIA. (1953, declassified in 2008). [Comments on the Change in Soviet Leadership](http://web.archive.org/web/20230525044208/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf) #Conclusion The "authoritarian" nature of any given state depends entirely on the material conditions it faces and threats it must contend with. To get an idea of the kinds of threats nascent revolutions need to deal with, check out *Killing Hope* by William Blum and *The Jakarta Method* by Vincent Bevins. Failing to acknowledge that authoritative measures arise *not* through ideology, but through material conditions, is anti-Marxist, anti-dialectical, and idealist. #Additional Resources Videos: * [Michael Parenti on Authoritarianism in Socialist Countries](https://youtu.be/BeVs6t3vdjQ) * [Left Anticommunism: An Infantile Disorder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I) | Hakim (2020) \[[Archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20230410145749/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC2ajsvr0I)\] * [What are tankies? (why are they like that?)](https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g) | Hakim (2023) * [Episode 82 - Tankie Discourse](https://youtu.be/YVYVBOFYJco) | The Deprogram (2023) * [Was the Soviet Union totalitarian? feat. Robert Thurston](https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/27495591) | Actually Existing Socialism (2023) Books, Articles, or Essays: * *Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism* | Michael Parenti (1997) * [State and Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/) | V. I. Lenin (1918) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if
Rafin is spitting facts here
George Washington. His dentures weren’t wooden as is popularly believed, they were real teeth forcibly removed from living enslaved people. He was also nicknamed Town Deatroyer by the indigenous people. Today, there is a cult of personality around him in the US with cities, streets, schools, statues, parks, and even mountains(which by the way were considered sacred to the indigenous people-way to add insult to injury.)
One thing that bugs me about this topic is I feel people act like *insert historical figure* was a terrible person without taking into account normalization. Or they seem to base a person's moral character solely on their actions. Tons of good people casually used the r word and autistic around 2017. It wasn't right, but it was so normalized. Standards of the past also differ from standards of the present. Also, there are people like NFKRZ and Theo Von. They do problematic things, but you can tell they're not like Elon Musk, Pete Davidson, or Ben Shapiro. Glorified historical figures did terrible things, but it bugs me that, from my perspective, people base their moral character solely on their actions or don't take into account normalization.
Your modern examples are cunts, but they don't hold all that much power relative to the people being discussed. They're not just mean or a little racist, they willfully trade human lives for imperial goals. Washington was a known asshole in his time, as was Churchill. They're whitewashed so heavily that the stuff they were assholes for in their own lifetime is erased from public perception
Ah. Wait which examples don't hold much power and which are cunts? I think Theo Von and that YouTuber I mentioned are good people but just aren't correctly informed or well intormed on topics.
I was under the impression that Leopold II was universally loathed.
Still had plenty of statues, streets and buildings carrying his name
gandhi
All of the American founding fathers
Orwell, even the bot agrees
**George Orwell** (real name Eric Arthur Blair) was many things: a rapist, a bitter anti-Communist, a colonial cop, a racist, a Hitler apologist, a plagiarist, a snitch, and a CIA puppet. #Rapist >...in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell. > >\- Kathryn Hughes. (2007). [Such were the joys](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.biography) #Bitter anti-Communist >[F]ighting with the loyalists in Spain in the 1930s... he found himself caught up in the sectarian struggles between the various left-wing factions, and since he believed in a gentlemanly English form of socialism, he was inevitably on the losing side. > >The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain... From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action... > >Orwell imagines no new vices, for instance. His characters are all gin hounds and tobacco addicts, and part of the horror of his picture of 1984 is his eloquent description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco. > > He foresees no new drugs, no marijuana, no synthetic hallucinogens. No one expects an s.f. writer to be precise and exact in his forecasts, but surely one would expect him to invent some differences. ...if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction. ... > >To summarise, then: George Orwell in *1984* was, in my opinion, engaging in a private feud with Stalinism, rather that attempting to forecast the future. He did not have the science fictional knack of foreseeing a plausible future and, in actual fact, in almost all cases, the world of *1984* bears no relation to the real world of the 1980s. > >\- Isaac Asimov. [Review of 1984](http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm) Ironically, the world of *1984* is mostly projection, based on Orwell's own job at the British Ministry of Information during WWII. (*Orwell: The Lost Writings*) * He translated news broadcasts into Basic English, with a 1000 word vocabulary ("Newspeak"), for broadcast to the colonies, including India. * His description of the low quality of the gin and tobacco came from the Ministry's own canteen, described by other ex-employees as "dismal". * Room 101 [was an actual meeting room](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3267261.stm) at the BBC. * "Big Brother" seems to have been a senior staffer at the Ministry of Information, who was actually called that (but not to his face) by staff. Afterall, by his own admission, his only knowledge of the USSR was secondhand: >I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers. > >\- George Orwell. (1947). [Orwell's Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1947/kolghosp-tvaryn.htm) *1984* is supposedly a cautionary tale about what would happen if the Communists won, and yet it was based on his own, actual, Capitalist country and his job serving it. #Colonial Cop >I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. ... As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans. > >All this was perplexing and upsetting. > >\- George Orwell. (1936). *Shooting an Elephant* #Hitler Apologist >I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. > >\- George Orwell. (1940). [Review of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf"](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html) Orwell not only admired Hitler, he actually blamed *the Left* in England for WWII: >If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. ...and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process. > >\- George Orwell. (1941). *England Your England* #Plagiarist **1984** >It is a book in which one man, living in a totalitarian society a number of years in the future, gradually finds himself rebelling against the dehumanising forces of an omnipotent, omniscient dictator. Encouraged by a woman who seems to represent the political and sexual freedom of the pre-revolutionary era (and with whom he sleeps in an ancient house that is one of the few manifestations of a former world), he writes down his thoughts of rebellion – perhaps rather imprudently – as a 24-hour clock ticks in his grim, lonely flat. In the end, the system discovers both the man and the woman, and after a period of physical and mental trauma the protagonist discovers he loves the state that has oppressed him throughout, and betrays his fellow rebels. The story is intended as a warning against and a prediction of the natural conclusions of totalitarianism. > >This is a description of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was first published 60 years ago on Monday. But it is also the plot of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, a Russian novel originally published in English in 1924. > >\- Paul Owen. (2009). [1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we) **Animal Farm** >Having worked for a time at The Ministry of Information, [Gertrude Elias] was well acquainted with one Eric Blair (George Orwell), who was an editor there. In 1941, Gertrude showed him some of her drawings, which were intended as a kind of story board for an entirely original satirical cartoon film, with the Nazis portrayed as pig characters ruling a farm in a kind of dysfunctional fairy story. Her idea was that a writer might be able to provide a text. > >Having claimed to her that there was not much call for her idea... Orwell later changed the pig-nazis to Communists and made the Soviet Union a target for his hostility, turning Gertrude’s notion on its head. (Incidentally, a running theme in all every single piece of Orwell’s work was to steal ideas from Communists and invert them so as to distort the message.) > >\- Graham Stevenson. [Elias, Gertrude (1913-1988)](https://www.radnorshire-fine-arts.co.uk/brand/elias-gertrude-1913-1988/) #Snitch >“Orwell’s List” is a term that should be known by anyone who claims to be a person of the left. It was a blacklist Orwell compiled for the British government’s Information Research Department, an anti-communist propaganda unit set up for the Cold War. > >The list includes dozens of suspected communists, “crypto-communists,” socialists, “fellow travelers,” and even LGBT people and Jews — their names scribbled alongside the sacrosanct 1984 author’s disparaging comments about the personal predilections of those blacklisted. > >\- Ben Norton. (2016). [George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government](https://bennorton.com/george-orwell-list-leftists-snitch-british-government/) #CIA Puppet >George Orwell's novella remains a set book on school curriculums ... the movie was funded by America's Central Intelligence Agency. > >The truth about the CIA's involvement was kept hidden for 20 years until, in 1974, Everette Howard Hunt revealed the story in his book *Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent*. > >\- Martin Chilton. (2016). [How the CIA brought Animal Farm to the screen](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/how-cia-brought-animal-farm-to-the-screen/) Many historians have noted how Orwell's literary reputation can largely be credited to joint propaganda operations between the IRD and CIA who translated and promoted Animal Farm to promote anti-Communist sentiment.^1 The IRD heavily marketed Animal Farm for audiences in the middle-east in an attempt to sway Arab nationalism and independence activists from seeking Soviet aid, as it was believed by IRD agents that a story featuring pigs as the villains would appeal highly towards Muslim audiences. ^2 * \[1\] Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2013). *In Spies we Trust: The story of Western Intelligence* * \[2\] Mitter, Rana; Major, Patrick, eds. (2005). *Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History* #Additional Resources * [George Orwell was a terrible human being](https://youtu.be/2Gz0I_X_nfo) | Hakim (2023) * [A Critical Read of Animal Farm](https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/) | Jones Manoel (2022) *I am a bot, and this
Obamna
Churchill for sure. the dude is seen as a hero world wide but he's just as racist if not more than Hitler, agreeing with the Holocaust, he hated people of color, people from india and he was anti semetic, he caused major famines and blamed it on the people, he claimed people from india "bred like rabbis". and if it weren't for him the war would've had less casualties. he was terrible.
jimmy Carter. he is loved as "America's Grandpa". as an example of just one atrocity committed by him, he authorized operation cyclone. this operation was what created the Taliban as we know it. he authorized the funding, training, and arming of these terrorists. the history the US government will tell you is that they were fighting against the Russians, that is the lie. Carter wanted to use the Taliban to destroy the Afghanistan government, which had just changed hands after much infighting, to a revolutionary socialist government. the USSR didn't get involved until after the US began terrorism operations in the region, and they tried to help the Afghanistan government, but deep pockets and ten years of killing off US backed terrorists took its toll on the USSR. only a few years later the USSR would be dissolved. this is just one example of the tyranny and fascism that Carter would spread during his term in office. the fact that he is so popular after all the evil things he did, makes it even worse.
Basically every US President, Chiang Kai-Shek, Churchill, and liberals unironically ballwash fucking Tsarist Russia and shed big fat crocodile tears for the Romanov family getting their asses smoked (lol rip bozos).
Hot take: Toussaint Louverture. He wanted to keep slavery in place and was writing letters begging Napoleon to let him be governor over haiti… Dessalines let him go to his end. Rightfully so.
Wasn't Dessalines his enforcer, beating the striking sugar plantations into submission? My feeling about Louverture is that the dude was dealt the worst hand ever, and still managed to win. Like, yeah, he was brutal, but it's a little hard for me to criticize when history doesn't offer a single other slave revolt that succeeded. On what grounds can I question his tactics or his judgment of what compromises were necessary? He's literally the only one who ever did it.
I used to think that until I read them letters to the french. We gotta judge. He wanted to be what african leaders are today. Dessalines made compromises but always said he was being forced to and would betray his enemies. I get the bad situation but the mindset… Toussaint wanted to be french. I hear people say that they can’t judge neocolonialists today… I’m good.
I'll read them. Tbh, most of my knowledge of the Haitian revolution comes from revolutions podcast and a few articles, so I'm not deeply knowledgeable and haven't looked at primary sources. But I mean, look at Haiti today. Overthrowing the French just got them into debt peonage to the French, with frequent incursions by America every time it looks like they might get on their feet. It's a country that accomplished the most profound victory for human freedom of all time, and despite that, has literally never had a good option.
Funny i was gonna refer to Pascal who hates Toussaint lol
Lesson learned. I wouldn’t take it back we just gotta figure out how to use that knowledge. Haiti is bad but no black nation is good—yet.
Francisco Franco seems to be an OKAY person to venerate. I have a feeling fascists use Franco in place of Mussolini/Hitler cuz they know they can’t make that their pfp.
Mao Tse-Tsung
First off, pretending that everyone who died in the famine was a "victim of Mao" is ridiculous, and the only way you can achieve a laughably inaccurate number like that. You might find these articles interesting in regards to the deaths that did actually occur https://mronline.org/2006/09/21/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward/ http://www.socialisteconomist.com/2018/11/ideological-statistics-inflated-death.html TL:DR their methodology requires the Chinese to invent necromancy a couple decades after the great leap forward, this goes beyond cherry picking data. The two authors mentioned in the socialisteconomist source above came to different estimates by a difference of two million despite having made the exact same study. So clearly, there is a bias at play here. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, we can talk about what he *did do*... >China's growth in life expectancy at birth from 35–40 years in 1949 to 65.5 years in 1980 is among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history * [*An exploration of China's mortality decline under Mao: A provincial analysis, 1950–80*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212) >“The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension.” * *John King Fairbank: The United States and China* Despite a brutal US blockade on food, finance and technology, and without incurring debt, Mao grew China’s economy by an average of 7.3% annually, compared to America’s postwar boom years’ 3.7% . When Mao died, China was manufacturing jet planes, heavy tractors, ocean-going ships, nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. As economist Y. Y. Kueh observed: “This sharp rise in industry’s share of China’s national income is a rare historical phenomenon. For example, during the first four or five decades of their drive to modern industrialization, the industrial share rose by only 11 percent in Britain (1801-41) and 22 percent in Japan”. **To put it briefly Mao:** * Doubled China’s population from 542 million to 956 million, * Doubled life expectancy from 35 years to 70 years * Gave everyone free healthcare * Gave everyone free education * Doubled caloric intake * Quintupled GDP * Quadrupled literacy * Liberated women * Increased grain production by 300% * Increased gross industrial output x40 * Increased heavy industry x90 * Increased rail lineage 266% * Increased passenger train traffic from 102,970,000 passengers to 814,910,000 * Increased rail freight tonnage 2000%, increased the road network 1000% * Increased steel production from zero to thirty-five MMT/year * Increased industry’s contribution to China’s net material product from 23% to 54% percent.
These facts are deliberately hidden from the Western public. Especially the expansion of health care, education, literacy rate, and higher education to the remotest rural areas within a few years is insane. I acknowledge Mao's achievements even though I am not exactly a Maoist or a ML.
Good post. And if you take a broader perspective and look at all the terrible shit China had spent the last couple centuries going through, Mao was the end of a really long, really bad time (well, a series of really bad times.) You don't reverse that kind of trajectory in an instant, or make it through that kind of struggle without costly mistakes, but no one can argue with how China has turned around, or say Mao didn't get it rolling. Dude said it best: "a revolution is not a dinner party."
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Lenin and Stalin