Has anybody else here watched it? [/QUOTE]And has any of you actually felt worried to know that leaders responsible for some of those crimes are still alive, haven't been judged yet, deny crimes commited by both the USSR and Nazi Germany and blame it on Jews?[/QUOTE]
Yara · Member since
I sat through the whole thing. As far as I remember, you're from Brazil too, aren't you? So it comes as no surprise to you, absolutely, that for most of the left-wing parties here this documentary would sound either as fiction or as a portrait of the unfortunate wrongdoings committed in the holy process of bringing about a socialist regime.
Our Minister of Justice, who's not much different from any of those figures who show up in the documentary, for instance, has literally delivered Cuban athletes to Castro's regime in the wake of the last Pan games, and did so in a plane offered by Hugo Chávez. Now, more recently, he has decided to overrule, alone, the decision of the European Court of Human Rights and the rulings of the Italian Justice by harboring, against the advice of our own Advisory Commitee for Refugees. His explanation was quite good: the guy, Cesare Battisti, who had murdered four people in the 70's and been condemned on all accounts, during absolutely legitimate procedures which he himself tried to evade, was under the risk of being persecuted by the...Italian authorities and had not been given a chance to make his defense since back in the 70's Italy lived a time of political persecutions.
Our Minister probably forgot that, differently from Brazil, Italy was a democracy during the so-called Anni de Piombo back in the 70's, not a military dictatorship - it was a fully democratic state based on the rule of law, despite all the flaws which are present in the most advanced democratic societies.
The guy was not a political target - on the contrary, he was a quite outspoken terrorist who killed four innocent people and sought to gain favour in France under the Mitterrand doctrine, which Chiraq maintained up to a point.
It's caused a lot of angry among the Italian politics from all sides of the political spectrum - even the Italian LEFT WING parties condemned harshly our Minister's attitude, emphasizing that Italy, despite all the problems, tried to deal with terrorism within the scope of the rule and the due process of law. He was part of a violence-based left wing revolutionary group, pretty much like the one which ended up killing Aldo Moro.
Here in Brazil, unfortunately, this kind of material is considered irrelevant: it doesn't matter and it'll never matter because the left-wing here never really repudiated its authoritarian and, at times, criminal ideals.
So then an interesting thing happens: the Nazis get their due share of comndenation, which is absolutely correct. I think they should all have rotten in hell, yes, and being myself Jewish it doesn't come up as a good sign the fact that Brazil has harbored Nazis in the past and that, now, our Minister of Justice wants to harbor a right-wing fascist scum just to show that he's not...biased in his policy!!!!
The Nazis, rightly so, are bitterly condemned, and I have nothing to say to people who undermine or deny the extent of their crimes - these people are as disgusting as their mentors.
But I have to be honest: the Soviet Regime or the "Socialist Experience" in general, as it's wonderfully called here in Brazil, has been responsible - think about Mao, Lenin, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge or, more recently, Mugabe and other African dictators - for the death of dozens of milllions of people.
When the subject comes to discussion, however, it's called the "socialist experience which went wrong", as if they wanted to try it again, or "the effects of the Cold War", even though our Government strongly supports, up until today, Cuba's hedious dictatorship and other dictatorships in South America, mainly Venezuela, which has by now clearly given up on the task of at least according the regime a democratic facade.
How ridiculous can it get?
Best Regards.
Winter Land Man · Member since
Why would I be worried about a bunch of old men? Of course idiots like that deserve suffering, but I don't think they are capable of harming me.
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
Mugabe isn't a socialist.
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
Nor, might I add, were Stalin (who referred to his system as "state capitalism", and claiming it was Lenin's idea) or the Khmer Rouge (who were just nationalist and deranged, without any further ideology other than killing everyone who didn't agree, and most of those who did).
Yara · Member since
There I agree. Completely. I don't deny for a second that they were, and are, flawed disciples who, as simple human beings tempted by the world's circumstances or state of things, didn't live up to the purity of the ideals. It's understandable.
Though, before being fully converted to another sect, and writing in a paper in the early sweet months of 1917, Gorki made a remark which does apply to them all: he bitterly condemned Trotsky and Lenin for despising democracy, human rights and freedom, and for not even knowing what these concepts were about. He was shocked, at the time, by the violence on the field and of the ideas - he got accostumed to it, though, in his way, as most of us flawed, imperfect human beings.
They all deviate, in different degrees, from the marxist scripture on their way to make the world better - heretics have always existed. But it's important, as Castro, Chavez and Kim Jong-il have shown, to keep trying make our society a reflex, even if a pale one, of those ideals.
Poor Kim Jong-il does what he can to honor the socialism he believes in, but the world just won't let him make it happen - so he ran amok, just like comrade Stalin, who did have good intentions and strong beliefs in the scriptures, even if in a more rudimental version as fit for countries in a more backward situation.
You know, the guy begins to read the scriptures without proper guidance and ends up like that.
There are all these sects and stuff, but from Cuba to China, there's one thing that has been strangely missing, for those who do miss this kind of things: basic civil liberties, rule of law, democracy and respect for human rights.
Once one gets things wrong, and starts eagerly embracing communism instead of socialism, not respecting the time frame defined by the scriptures, it's, yes, possible that the number of people killed end up being twice or more as the Nazi Holocaust. But I wouldn't, for a minute, deny Lenin, Stalin or Mao's intentions of building a better world based on those principles. It's just that, for doing that, one has to murder a lot, supress freedoms and so on, but it's part of the whole struggle.
Not everyone has the patience to follow the shrewd guidelines of St. Gramsci. It's too subtle, takes too much time and requires even more thinking than the original texts, which were written back in the XIX Century, when some people tended to express things more bluntly and without regard for the so-called public opinion.
But Gramsci's way, even if much more sinuous and hard, has been proved more rewarding to its followers, financially speaking, though for those who aim at the higher goals there always comes the moment when freedom of expression, never completely subverted, gets in the way of the making of the hegemony. Oh, and then the scandals, and denounces, the loss of the follower's credibility or even his public office. So the guy can't surveil the citizens anymore, for instance, because society thinks he's gone too far in meddling in people's lives, or is checked by traitors in the media who reveal his efforts to buy votes on the Congress.
That happens in all democracies - in some, this is done solely for one's own private purposes; in others, such as Brazil, there are people who do it because they do believe that the burgeois democratic model has to be constantly undermined in order to get the control of the state.
I respect those who still pray. Moments of financial crises make them stronger, and that's good.
I worry about the souls of my brethren.
Poo, again · Member since
Stalin's intentions were good.
He was a bit of a psychopath though.
Sergei. · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Poo, again wrote: [/b]
Stalin's intentions were good.
He was a bit of a psychopath though.[/QUOTE]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
Good intentions?
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
The problem with fundamentalists of all denominations, be they religious, Marxist, classical liberal or anything, is that they lose sight of the human measure. They get to the point where they start living by theories and statistics, not real life. That happened in the USSR, in Cuba, in China, but also in Holland, in Britain, in Germany, in France, the US, Canada, etc. Everyone believes 'their' system is the best, and they lose sight of the inherent imperfections: those who defend democracy lose sight of the fact that it too is a flawed system (populism, demagogues,etc.), just as the N. Koreans fail to see that their system is flawed (apathy, bureaucratization, etc.).
Some of the things he did were rather stupid, but after all, he was a communist - making him a good guy.
His way of achieving communism, I'm not really a fan of though.
Ms. Rebel · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Poo, again wrote: [/b]
Stalin's intentions were good.
.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, so were Hitler's. :)
April · Member since
Stalin was a bad guy. But he did win the war over the nazis. If not for the Soviet victory, who gave up their lives in that war, about 20 million people died, nazis might have won it. Americans joined the war when they saw that the USSR was winning, at the very end of the war, and hurried to share the victory. But they did let nazis kill first.
Poo, again · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Ms. Rebel wrote: [/b]
[QUOTE]
[b]Poo, again wrote: [/b]
Stalin's intentions were good.
.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, so were Hitler's. :)
[/QUOTE]
Really?
You decide for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
Ms. Rebel · Member since
Hitler killed 6 million people, Stalin over 20 million. They' were both massive assholes and they both made awful crimes. It's not sane when someone says that one of those two had good intentions.
Winter Land Man · Member since
Hitler has something to do with Volkswagen, doesn't he? [img=/images/smiley/msn/angry_smile.gif][/img] Get rid of those Nazi cars!
