There was a song from the anime "Trigun" where a pacifist with an undeserved reputation for killing millions uses his tarnished fame to scare a bunch of kidnappers into letting their hostages go. Whilst tracking them down in a warehouse he goes on the intercom he sings the following song;
"Total slaughter.
Total slaughter.
I won't leave a single man alive.
La di die die!
Genocide.
La di da di dud.
And ocean of blood.
Let's begin,
The killing time."
I was naturally reminded of this toe tapper when I saw this chart in of all places, the National Geographic.
Not exactly known for its right-leaning politics, I'm amazed they showed this chart showing their socialist predecessors killing more people than any other group in the world. And need I remind you those "right-wing Nazi's" were in fact, socialists.
33 comments:
No surprise here. Jolly old Chairman Mao looked like a nice guy despite starving peasants to death.
From what I can tell, Communism "succeeds" because if you have a one-fifth shortfall on food, and then wipe out one-fourth of the population, then everyone suddenly has enough to eat. B^)
I once read a comment from a guy who suggested that WWII was a contest between Hitler and Stalin to see who could kill the most Russians, and Stalin won handsdown.
HARRRRR!
From the anime trigun, the "pacifist" isnt a pacifist. He just doesnt want to kill, inflicting pain is all good though. Great anime... only ones really worth much merit are full metal alchemist, cowboy bebop and trigun, anything else is just flavor of the month in my opinion.
Of course you already know.. Socialism is a very very very broad paint brush.. for example, you know from 8th grade civics class.. any govt that pays for it's peoples services through taxation is a form of socialism..
What I'm getting to is.. the U.S. is also considered a socialistic country. Stalin was the one that bastardized socialism into the extreme communism that we know and for some reason fear today.
Go to Switzerland, you'll wish you could be a citizen. It's beautiful, no homeless, and people there have a better quality of life than we enjoy. It's amazing! Sure not the rule, maybe the exception.. but neither does one well run company prove that every company is run well.. it's simply a great model.
Just a quick point: Bosnia is misrepresented. 'Genocide' in Bosnia has never been proven. The figure of 225,000 was souped up by adding up the number of actual civilian+military deaths (circa 20,000) and the number of displaced people (circa 200,000). In fact, in most newspapers today, the figure has been deflated to 100,000 quietly. Only a matter of time before it deflates further.
Turkey is still in complete denial about the Armenian genocide 90 years ago. Admitting that it occurred is against the Turkish law. It's been a much-discussed issue in Europe lately. In Netherlands, three candidates of Turkish origin were removed by their parties from the parliamentary election lists after they had denied the systematic mass murder of Armenians. French president Jacques Chirac also recently made a comment that Turkey should recognize the genocide. Turkey itself is trying to blur the issue by asking for more independent studies, although the issue has been thoroughly studied already and facts are undeniable.
There isnt any certain proof that there had been a genocide done on Armenians.Everybody forgot about the terrorist organization who killed lots of Turkish burocrats in past 30 years.This fact shows who prefer unhumankind ways.
Some european countries assemblies accepted the law that forbids to say "there is no genocide done on armenians".Its sad to see that cultures who passed through restoration and renaissance periods, start to lose their rational thinking.Assemblies that accept this laws without any consultings to historians, dont they just embarrass their past and people.
Why Mr.Chirac went to the Armenia and opened a genocide monument there? Shouldnt he first open another one in Algeria? Why didnt anyone listens French historians or others?For example how can we explain the things done to a word famous historian Bernard Lewis, Who is been judged by French politics for his statements about Armenian facts.Isnt it a two faced behaving?
what are these for? Just to get some votes from Armenian based citizens?
Viva Europe!
I think an important point to note is that just because a party calls it self something (eg. the NAZIs calling themselves socialist) doesn't mean they were.
Likewise the Soviets and Chinese communist governments never would be mistaken for the tenets of communism layed out by Marx and Engels.
Totalitarian goverments, whatever they claim to be seem to enjoy using any and all means to retain power.
Lets hope we can avoid that in the future more than we did in the 20th century
scottbp said:
>Likewise the Soviets and Chinese communist governments never would be mistaken for the tenets of communism layed out by Marx and Engels.
Could you enlight me (as a former Soviet Union citizen) where exactly Stalin deverged from Marx way?
There is no such bullshit a socialism wih human face. As soon as you start to forbid the private propery - you forbid freedom.. Freedom of be reach.. Freedom of thinking and saying and e.t.c...
I'd like to take this time to remind scottbp that the Nazis brought in gun control, wage and price controls, universal (except for "smokers"...er, I mean Jews) public healthcare, public education including university, national ownership of resources, physical education for youth, and old age pensions. If you wouldn't call these programs "socialist", what would you call them?
Socialist apologists:
The Nazis and the Soviets were but two examples of where socialism leads. Once you decide that people have no right to the fruits of the labor, it isn't much further to deciding that they do not have a right to their own lives (one and the same thing, really), and what the world saw in the last century is the result.
Read some Hayek.
In case it wasn't clear, my comment was directed at Feynman and Coulter's Love Child's partisan piffle.
Umm, If you think Switzerland is the model of happiness, can you explain the prevalence of substance abuse and suicide in Swiss society. I am no expert on such things, but I would think that neither of these indicators commends the superiority of the culture. The Swiss are the perfect example of "if you want to kill a man, pay him to do nothing"
People who call the Nazi Party socialist forget that one of the largerst groups of people persecuted by them were socialists and communists (including many who later went on to hold important positions in East AND West Germany after the war). If you'd like to learn more just check out the wiki entry on the song "Peat Bog Soldiers" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat_Bog_Soldiers_(song)
google "Democide"
Prof Rummel's site is very complete.
Fred's Rule of thumb:
Right wingers kill 1000 leftists actively engaged in trying to overthrow them: a CRIME that will live forever.
Left Wingers kill a million otherwise innocent people going about their business to reasons like "tall", "Short", have 12.50 in chnage on their person and don't want to share it...: HEROES of the revolution with certain regretable excess forced byt he capitalist scum.
One if the most successful lies the communists have told is that the Nazis weren't socialists.
To the anonymous poster who so admires Switzerland, let's observe that Switzerland's population is overwhelmingly European in origin and therefore relatively homogeneous in outlook. It has no appreciable African component to "enrich" it with "diversity". The Swiss are very cautious concerning immigration, to a degree that many socialists (you perhaps?) would find repulsive.
I would caution that when someone claims that Serbians were the "good guys" during the Bosnian War, they tend to either be Neo-Nazis or Pat Buchananites. (Yugoslavia was pretty fucked up in all regards, but the Serbians pushed the "destruct" button hardest.)
Ditto for people who say the Armenian Genocide never happened.
yeah...never understood how some consider the Nazis to be "right wing." The Nazis were socialists. Big time. So were the Italian fascists, IIRC.
How exactly does one define right wing / left wing, anyway?
The estimates on China seem a little low. I have seen a number of 70 million or more referenced for Moa- the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Secret Famine mostly accounting for those numbers.
"Could you enlight me (as a former Soviet Union citizen) where exactly Stalin deverged from Marx way? "
Apparently you never actually read Marx. For starters, Marx opposed armed revolution. He believed that the only way for Communism to succeed is through the wealth-generating capacity of capitalism. His idea was that once all nations were rich enough, Communism would naturally arise without needing to be forced.
If you can't see how that differs from Stalin, then you're RTFO.
For the record, I have nothing but distaste for the ideas of communists and socialists. But just because my opinion happens to agree with yours, that doesn't mean I'm going to turn a blind eye to your ignorance.
And Captain, as for you ... you don't really believe that the Nazis were socialist, do you?
You may as well claim that the Christian Crusaders were devout followers of the teachings of Christ. They clearly weren't - they simply used Christianity as an excuse to legitimize their own bloodthirsty ambitions.
Likewise, I think it's much more accurate to state that tyrants and fascists like the Nazis, NK, or China, often rise to power on the pretense of communism, or use socialist rhetoric to control their citizens. What better way to control the sheeple than to tell them that you're doing things "for their own good", and then arrest and murder those who
"oppose the common good"?
I care more about Trigun than Turkey.
I'm pretty sure that counts as Insulting Turkishness, and would get me a stiff prison sentence in Turkey.
By the way ~kraw, have you seen Ghost in the Shell? That's a good one you might want to add to that list of awesome anime you've got going there. And since this is an economics blog, I can't go without mentioning Spice and Wolf. Much love for any anime that's explaining how currency speculation works by the end of the second episode, and ends up being a crash course in medieval banking practices by the end of the first (and so far only) season. :)
too bad Cuba is missing. By the direct hand of Fidel and Raul Castro or the beloved Che Guevara, thousand of Cubans were slaughter at the beginning of the revolution, others died in concentration camps and yet others were killed escaping the island. Too bad we forget about the genocide of Cubans at the hand of communists only 90 miles away from American shores.
Got some news for the admirers of the Left here:
First, Wiki isn't a source. Deal with it.
Second, if you think Commies can't fall out, two words: Leon Trotsky. Unless you think he shoved the ice pick into his own skull, of course...
Third, of COURSE the Nazis were socialists! They implemented so many socialist programs, it's hard to list them all! The major bugaboo that the lefties have about them is that they were anti-Bolshevik; well, no kidding. Considering, if you trudge through the sodden mess that is Mein Kampf as I have, you'll find that a certain German leader thought the Russian Revolution was run by (wait for it) the Jews!
Nothing like mixing your conpiracy theories. So, the Communists were, well, Communists, and the Nazis were Socialists who also happened to be official anti-Semites. It's not that hard to figure out.
If the Nazis had been actual German right-wingers, the first thing they'd have done upon seizing power is restore the still-living Kaiser, or at least the monarchy in some form. They did not. Kind of throws out that argument.
Karl Marx never went near a factory in his entire life.
The Nazis were socialists. They either controlled or owned the means of production.
Nazism, communism, fascism, marxism, leninism, maoism, fabian socialism...they are all just different flavors of the same poisonous flavor aid. The distinction is meaningless drivel from academia.
In order to be efficient, a command economy must be omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolvent. Because all economies inherently strive for efficiency, command economies inherently develop mechanisms to achieve these, e.g. secret police, dictatorships.
Devolving into an evil oligarchy is the inevitable end of every socialist venture...every one, for all eternity.
The grandest delusion of socialists is that socialism will work if the right people do it. The right people are always them. They are always wrong.
Death due to starvation is questionable genocide.
Death due to execution or deleberate effort is truely genocide.
The Nazis were not socialists. That demonstrates a real ignorance of history as well as of socialism, facsism and capitalism.
The Nazis allowed the free market and personal profit to reign over almost all of the economy. Certain production industries were certainly directed or managed, but even then the mode and method was usually left to the individual owner of the plant who was allowed to reap personal profits.
Hardly different than the US in wartime. That was not wartime is obviously a huge difference. I would not call them free marketers, but nor were they socialists.
We tend to think of "fascism" just for the militarism and anti-semitism that was its hallmark. And we should never forget that aspect because it was essential part of fascism. But it was an ideology and it believed that the national purpose was highest, but the means to that end were open to the most effective. For socialism, all means to all ends must be the state.
Saying fascists were socialists is like saying Christians are Muslims because they both believe in one god.
Captain... is this subtle trolling for us NOT to be afraid of... IRAN?
I'm not surprised that you found this in a National Geographic, as the numbers corresponding to the USSR and China are on the far side of low... they're just doing their best for their friends on the left.
and a nod to Alfred and Rob, of course the Nazi's were socialists, they were just from the other side of the family, ;) they're all from the same club.
I wish someone had the balls to include Cuba in that graph... it somehow seems incomplete.
marc in calgary
Were the Nazis socialists? I recently reread large chunks of Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" in search of the answer.
It's true that Hitler added "National Socialist" to the name of the "German Worker's Party", and he made liberal use of socialist rhetoric in his speeches. He even proclaimed May 1, 1933 "Day of National Labor" and flew trade union leaders from all over the country to Berlin for a grand celebration.
It was a trap. The next day, all unions were outlawed, their assets seized, and their leaders arrested.
Hitler was not stupid. He saw clearly how Stalinism had shattered the Russian economy, society, and military (defeated by Poland in 1920!), and was determined to adopt only those elements of socialism that would strengthen Germany.
Hitler's best friend, Ernst Rohm was a true socialist. Shortly after the Nazi takeover, Rohm began calling for a "second revolution" that would liquidate big business, finance, the aristocracy, and the Prussian generals. Instead, Hitler liquidated Rohm and hundreds of his followers.
The essence of socialism is state control of the means of production and profit from industry.
By that standard, Nazi Germany was definitely and decidedly not socialist.
It was definitely totalitarian and the government certainly managed or directed the economy, but German businesses were allowed to make and keep profits for themselves and run the business as they saw fit. Entrepreneurship was not supressed - market capitalism - as long as it did not directly conflict with the state - totalitarianism. If you wanted to start up a clothing business or your own photography or sausage business, you were completely free to do so and free to keep the profits.
Entrepreneurship was not supressed - market capitalism - as long as it did not directly conflict with the state - totalitarianism. If you wanted to start up a clothing business or your own photography or sausage business, you were completely free to do so and free to keep the profits.
There is no difference in principle between the total regulatory state and actual state ownership of everything. The fact that you get to "keep the profits" doesn't matter, because you are the owner in name only.
Well I would say there is a big difference in principle.
But that is besides the point because, as I said, Nazi Germany was not even a total regulatory state. In some specific industries, like anything related to armaments, they took a heavy hand though not much more than Britain or the US at the time in the immediate pre-war.
For everything else, it was as open market as any other regime (though there were of course lots of "moral" restrictions relating to sex and race, which again was not in law that different from the US which also outlawed political groups, distribution of sex information (even for health reasons) and mingling of races).
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