"US worse than the USSR"? American Amnesia of the worst sort

[Hekate]

When is the US going to sequester an area the size of the Ukraine and take away all the food?
Collectivization especially targeted Ukraine, "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union," which clung stubbornly to its own national identity and preference for village-level communal landholdings. In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainian famine has only recently been recognized as one of the most destructive genocides of the twentieth century. http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html

Where is our Gulag Archipelago of forced labor camps designed to work millions of inmates to death?
In the worst camps, such as those of the Kolyma gold-mining region in the Arctic, the survival rate was just 2 or 3 percent..... Alexander Solzhenitsyn calls the prison colonies in the Solovetsky Islands "the Arctic Auschwitz," and cites the edict of their commander, Naftaly Frenkel, which "became the supreme law of the Archipelago: 'We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months -- after that we don't need him anymore.'" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 49.) http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html

Where are our denunciations, including by children of their parents?

I could go on and on, but I am so angry I am shaking. I recommend The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn for an eyewitness account.

American Amnesia strikes again.

Hekate

APPARENTLY THE OP THAT SAID "Now, sadly, we are even worse than the old Soviet Union," SANK INTO THE BACK PAGES, BECAUSE AN AWFUL LOT OF RESPONDERS TO THIS THREAD ARE ACCUSING ME OF MAKING IT UP. SO HERE'S THE LINK: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023230731

[leveymg]

1. Ask the Native Americans and African Slaves the same questions. We're immaculate.

Saintly. Exceptionally immaculate saints, Shining City on the Hill, G-d's Chosen . . .

[Hekate]

2. Are we worse than the USSR?

Who said we're immaculate?

[dipsydoodle]

4. Using unequal time frames doesn't really help your argument.

.

[Rex]

8. I agree, that allows anyone else to bring up slavery

or the near extinction of the Native Americans.

[dipsydoodle]

11. Both in fact.

[Rex]

48. Or the internment of Japanese Americans

or how the Chinese and Irish were treated by the rail road. Or or or...

[renie408]

58. Yep, those were all horrible things. And the US is STILL not worse than the USSR.

Please. Just because some people here enjoy this vision of themselves as members of a horribly persecuted populace, it does those who have lived through things that make the worst day in the US look like a cake walk a disservice.

The US is not some shining beacon on a hill and needs a lot of work. But ridiculous hyperbolic references that alienate half the people reading them are not going to help.

[Rex]

61. Never said it was, the OP decided to pick parts of USSR history as an example

maybe you didn't notice that. And the stating of what happened in the past, should not make people mad and play the alienation canard. Are you saying that at one time America was not as bad or worse than the USSR? Please elaborate.

[renie408]

67. I am saying that, as a whole, the US does not have the same history of human rights

violations as the USSR. The statement 'The US is worse than the USSR" is similar to the Hitler comparisons that get thrown around all the time. I feel sure that if you compared the worst things that happened in American history to an average day in modern Russia, the US would come off worse. But the statement that upset the OP was not about MODERN Russia. It was about the USSR. And, you know, I really don't think that the US now or EVER has been as bad as the USSR.

Is the US perfect? Oh, HELL no. And that's the thing that pisses me off when people make comments like that. Cause, really, the US is bad enough that we should all be doing something about it without it ever having to be worse than the USSR.

[Rex]

70. Really? Slavery? The forced relocation of Native Americans?

I disagree completely about our history.


EDIT - I think that in the PAST, America has been on par or worse than the USSR.

[renie408]

74. Seven million dead Ukrainians?

You got that, right??

Do the names Stalin and Lenin ring a bell? Look, I am not saying that the US is lily white. I am saying that these over the top comparisons are not helpful to rational discussion.

BTW...What was happening in Russia during the time of slavery in the US?? Was that just a GREAT time to be a peasant or what!!

[Rex]

75. So you want to keep with the binary thinking, fine.

Your the only one blowing this out of proportion. If you cannot handle American history, then I suggest not getting into these kind of arguments.

[renie408]

83. Do you know what binary thinking is? Cause I don't think you are using that phrase correctly.

And how, exactly, am I demonstrating an inability to deal with American history? Because I don't think that slavery was much worse than Russian serfdom? They both sucked.

You are conflating the Trail of Tears with the systematic starvation of seven million people and I am the one who cannot handle American history?? Really?

[Hekate]

165. Did you see this much-recced OP in GD Thursday night?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023230731

It's short -- read it to the end. Then see all the attaboys in response.

[Major Hogwash]

144. Are you an American?

Living abroad?

[dipsydoodle]

173. No.

English living in England.

[dbackjon]

134. And modern Russia is much better than the USSR?

[rhett o rick]

18. We have more persons incarcerated. nm

[iemitsu]

128. And many of the incarcerated are in work prisons

owned by private, for-profit corporations.

[leveymg]

19. Beyond better or worse, are we really that different?

I can't think of a single crime committed by either side during the Cold War that wasn't eclipsed by something equally or more appalling by the other. And, that's what I told the Agency recruiter who approached me in my sophomore year in college a couple decades ago, and frankly, it still seems as true today as it did that day.

[renie408]

76. How many punk bands are in jail here for protesting against the President?

I am really sorry, but we aren't worse and, yeah, I really do think we are somewhat better.

[ananda]

3. We have genocides on our own hands too.

We destroyed native populations and took their lands.

We put millions of Africans into slavery. Then after emancipation,
with 4 million Blacks freed, we allowed 1 million of them to starve
to death, put many others into horrible sharecropping conditions,
and instituted Jim Crow and freerange lynching and crossburning
for many years.

Yeah, we're really pure.

[snappyturtle]

125. IMHO you have hit the nail on the head. I have read many replies here.

America acquired and/or self promoted the picture that we are that shining city, the place for masses to huddle to be free, etc. Just because we haven't, thankfully, anililated as many makes us better, as some seem to be saying, doesn't hold water. There should have been none of it...and that fact we hide it....or at least did when I was in school...is brazen.

E.G. We have killed hundreds of thousands with sanctions and those who, somehow, survived that were bombed or killed in other ways, or tortured (Iraq) is hypocitical to our message of the platitudes we heap on ourselves. I don't feel other countries, for all the gross atrocities, have been so two faced. Again, imho.So maybe we are worse.

[leveymg]

131. You are right. We are worse because we are more hypocritical and blind to our own crimes

than practically any other nation in history. Have you ever heard the term American Exceptionalism applied to the Germans, the Russians, or the Chinese? No, of course not, they are not so brainwashed to believe it, themselves.

But, many of us have held onto the belief of American Exceptionalism for about a Century. We were issued with that belief about the time of the World War One (actually, a couple decades earlier when America started calling itself an empire as we expanded into the Philippines and the Pacific), and that belief was solidified as the mandatory kit of "Americanism" when we started going after the older European and Asian empires, in World War One, and for a while after another World War, we grabbed it, and held onto it.

But, no empire lasts forever.

[dbackjon]

135. Hogwash

You are free to live in one of those paradises.

[leveymg]

136. That does not address the issue.

Of course I wouldn't trade my empire for another. I'd have to learn a whole new set of rules for how to express my own differences. The point is, all big powers operate more or less the same way. The worst thing one can do is to deny that reality.

[Major Hogwash]

146. What?

I wasn't even posting in this thread!!

[dbackjon]

155. Lol

[dionysus]

196. !!!!

[polichick]

151. Well said.

[geek tragedy]

5. Lots of people who rooted for the USSR during the cold war are still bitter. nt

[randome]

7. Residual self-hatred, perhaps?

It seems to have been passed down to younger generations, though, when we have people like Snowden, Assange, etc. trying to impose their own values on the world and denigrate the U.S. at the same time.

It's easier to attack America because...well, we're more open to that, aren't we?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[geek tragedy]

10. Snowden and Assange aren't voices of a generation.

They're just a couple of guys.

[randome]

14. Well, they have an 'entourage' called Wikileaks but yes, you're probably right.

I didn't mean to denigrate any generation, just wondering why it seems to be 'in fashion' in some circles to think of America as an evil empire.

But I guess it's not really 'in fashion' except for a handful who couldn't find anything better to do with their lives than live the dream of 'heroes'.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[geek tragedy]

15. self-promoters who take aim at low hanging fruit.

When Wikileaks starts publishing documents from inside China, Russia et al then I'll be impressed by his dedication to undermining state secrecy.

[davidpdx]

181. That's the thing, it will never happen

Freedom in the east isn't a problem

[Cha]

174. You mean "the United States of Stasi"?

Ridiculously stupid hyperbole that weakens any points they're trying to make.

[leveymg]

139. How is that statement you just made not Red Baiting?

Aren't you just saying that those who disagree with you on details about the NSA leak are just dirty commie hippies, anti-Americans? "Love it or leave it" . . . "go back to Russian." I think we've heard that before. It sounds like the ghosts of Spiro Agnew and George Wallace are alive on DU, of all places.

[geek tragedy]

141. This isn't an NSA thread. nt

[leveymg]

148. Where else could this OP and thread have come from?

I'm going to grant you that Snowden's statements about Russia and China (actually, he was referring to Hong Kong) being protective of freedoms do seem a bit self-serving to my jaundiced ears.

[Hekate]

168. Where could the topic have come from? See link here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023230731

[Pholus]

215. Seems the original for this was from Ann Coulter's "Treason," page 16.

Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/anncoulter160231.html

You have apparently outed yourself. Care to say which other of Ann's pithy bits of dung you also agree with? Planning on telling us how McCarthy was a misunderstood patriot perhaps?

[Gravitycollapse]

6. We are not nearly as bad as the USSR. Not even close.

And I am someone who thinks the US is pretty goddamn fucked right now.

The USSR was a death machine post WWII for many decades. Their tactics were not as directly genocidal as the Third Reich but they killed more people in the process.

[HiPointDem]

24. The USSR was fighting a civil war (funded from the west) nearly right up to ww2. Post WW2

their population & life expectancy grew, so I'm not clear on what the 'genocide' was you're referring to.

In the transition to what was called capitalism, their life expectancy shrunk and so did their population, for nearly 10 years.

[Gravitycollapse]

35. In upwards of 60 million people died under the Soviet regime from 1917 to 1959.

Per Solzhenitsyn quoting Kurganov

If that is a transition period, than you and I have different definitions in mind.

The Gulags were, for all intents and purposes, death camps. And the social and political purges amount to catastrophic mass murder.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

36. From 1917 to 1922 a horrible Civil War took place ...

Some of it funded and aided by the Western Powers. Ironically, it was this aid that helped the Bolsheviks into power, as opposed to other socialists and anarchists. In 1924, Stalin took over, and furthered the Bolshevik tyrannical oppression, but by then, it was too late, as the resistance from other socialists were stamped out. The USSR became a totalitarian state, ironically, because of Western intervention.

[Gravitycollapse]

44. Both sides summarily executed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

54. Both sides?

It was mostly three sides in the civil war. It was mostly one side after the civil war after the Western powers did their thing.

During the Civil War, you had your Bolsheviks, and at times, Mensheviks and Left SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries) and Right SRs. On another side, you had your dissident Marxists, Left Opposition, and at times, Left SRs and Right SRs, and anarchists (and in the Ukraine, the Makhnovists <Insurrectionary Revolutionary Army of the Ukraine> ) and various other unaffiliated socialists and trade unionists. And yet on another side, supplied and aided by the West, were the Tsarists and White Armies.

To quell the White Army reactionaries, the Black and Red Armies worked together, but also helped the Bolsheviks consolidate all their power, which in turn led to Stalin.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[HiPointDem]

39. wtf does 'died under the soviet regime' even mean? all deaths? The first statement referred

directly to the post-war period & said there was genocide in the soviet union.

quote some applicable data.

[Gravitycollapse]

56. Here you go...

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM







http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.REFERENCES.HTM

[HiPointDem]

64. 1. that doesn't answer my request. 2. rudy rummel = not a scholar, but a propagandist.

you said there was genocide in the soviet union after ww2. i asked for some specific data about that.

keep in mind that genocide = the *deliberate* extinction, or attempt at extinction, of a specific group of people, such as hitler's deliberate & stated attempt to extinguish the jews & other sundry groups.

[Gravitycollapse]

69. Rummel's calculations are backed up by many other sources.

Some of them are available through publication that I currently cannot access. Otherwise, you're going to have to read books in order to figure that one out.

Read the Gulag Archipelago (Solzhenitsyn extensively researched these figures) or Europe: A History. The 50 to 65 million figure will continuously come up.

[HiPointDem]

77. no. they are 'backed up' by a limited number of sources which all feed on each other.

for example:

There's a string of authorities who seem to build their research on each other's earlier guesstimates: Sorokin, Small & Singer, Eckhardt, Levy, Rummel, the Correlates of War Project, etc.

Most mainstream statistical analysis of war is based on these authorities; however, if you look at the individual authorities on the Main Sequence, you'll see that some have specific problems that carry over as they borrow from one another. See the wars in Algeria or South Africa for examples of how the Main Sequence agrees with itself and not with historians of the specific war.

http://necrometrics.com/warstats.htm

iow, an echo chamber on the big picture with independent scholarship on the individual conflicts.

More on rummel:

- He generally goes high on the numbers killed by Totalitarian regimes. If the range of estimates for the number of deaths under a communist like Stalin run from 15 to 60 million, Rummel will usually pick a number near the top. Thus, his estimate for the total number of unnatural deaths under Communism even exceeds the number set forth in The Black Book of Communism.

- At the same time, he often goes low on the numbers killed by Authoritarian regimes. For instance, his estimate for the number of democides in the Congo Free State is the lowest of eight authorities I consulted.

http://necrometrics.com/warstats.htm


rummel is a cherry-picking propagandist & a right-winger to boot.

[Gravitycollapse]

81. Is Solzhenitsyn a right-wing propagandist?

After all, he lived through and documented the Gulags and Stalin regime.

[HiPointDem]

84. well, he's no leftist. his orientation was religious & nationalist. but let's stick with the topic

of rummel's scholarship, since he is the most-quoted 'authority' on such matters:

We can ignore the fact his "most probable estimate" of deaths the responsibility of the Soviet Union presupposes 40 million deaths in the gulag, which happens to be twice the number of people who passed through the camps.

http://books.google.si/books?id=kewLQwngUSkC&q=passed+through&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22some%2018%20million%20people%20passed%20through%20the%20prisons%20and%20camps%22&f=false

We can also ignore his "high estimate" of the number of people killed by the USSR presupposes the murder of a fantastic 115 million Soviet citizens — a number of deaths sufficient to demographically break a far more populous nation than the Soviet Union (148 million people in 1926). Ignore also his having "calculated" that Soviet Union extinguished 2.38 million lives in the gulag between 1961 and 1982, and an additional 200,000 lives between 1983 and 1987. Ignore, because there is an even better way to showcase the level of his scholarship than debunking any of these. Better because it is made by Rummel himself.

In Death by Government Rummel claimed 174 million killed by government, but has since revised the figure to 262 million. This is partly the outcome of his changing his estimate of the number of people killed by colonial regimes from 870,000 to 50,870,000! Rummel explains this revision became necessary when, having read a book on Belgian colonialism in Congo, he realized he had been ignorant of a huge state-caused loss of life in that African territory. That seems like an honest explanation, but should he really be left of the hook this easily?

To begin with, the enormous loss of life in colonial Congo is hardly new (or obscure) information that was not available before. Rummel himself gives examples of sources (including Encyclopedia Britannica) that speak about it and were published well before Death by Government...

Also, it is not the case Rummel found 50 million victims he was not previously aware of in Congo. No, it is the case that having read a book on one specific colonial experience he became aware of the level of atrocity colonialism rested on and so he now figures the number of victims in Congo and elsewhere could add up to something like 50,870,000. This means he could have easily picked up a study on any number of brutal colonial regimes besides the one in Belgian Congo and it could have had the same effect of convincing him his figure of deaths caused by Western colonialism was off.

In other words, Rummel admits that at the time of writing Death by Government he was ignorant of the true nature of colonialism, but in a manner of a dilettante gave the 870,000 figure anyway.... However, if an author is going to make errors of this magnitude he probably should not be merely "reevaluating" estimates, he should be reevaluating whether he has any business writing books on the topic.

http://www.crappytown.com/2011/12/why-rj-rummel-shouldnt-be-taken.html


Here's rummel arguing against a study of the number of iraq war dead. as always, his role is to slap down anything that reflects badly on the us government (or 'democratic' govt generally).

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/02/25/lancet21/

he's a right-wing (libertarian) apologist, that's always been his role. not a scholar, a cherry-picker.

[Gravitycollapse]

115. You're actually right.

[HiPointDem]

133. does that mean your claim that "he USSR was a death machine post WWII for many decades"

(which would be at least 3 decades, i.e. the ussr was a 'death machine' until at least 1975) is false?

1897 (Russia): 125,640,000
1911 (Russia): 167,003,000 (3%/yr)
1920 (Russia): 137,727,000 (-3%/yr%)
1926 : 148,656,000 (1%/yr)
1937: 162,500,000 (1.3%/%)
1939: 168,524,000 (3%/yr)
1941: 196,716,000 (14%/yr)
1946: 170,548,000 (-5%/yr)
1951: 182,321,000 (2.4%/yr)
1959 209,035,000 (3.3%/yr)
1970: 241,720,000 (2.9%/yr)
1985: 272,000,000 (2.1%/yr)
1991: 293,047,571 (3.5%/yr)

[Gravitycollapse]

137. Uh no. Because population growth has little or nothing to do with killings.

That would be kind of like saying that the US doesn't have a homicide problem because we are becoming more populous. That's a ridiculous argument.

The Stalin regime killed off large swaths of the population. Because they happen to be a large nation does nothing to negate that fact.

[HiPointDem]

145. "a death machine" does, in fact, imply decreasing population. "A problem with killings" does not.

You spoke of a post WW2 genocide.

I've seen absolutely no evidence presented by you for that claim.

The existence of the gulag is not evidence of a post WW2 genocide. In fact:

After Stalin died in 1953, the Gulag population was reduced significantly. The release of political prisoners started in 1954 and became widespread. It coupled with mass rehabilitations after Nikita Khrushchev' s denunciation of Stalinism in his Secret Speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in February 1956. By the end of the 1950s, virtually all "corrective labor camps" had been dissolved. Officially, the Gulag was liquidated by the MVD (Soviet Internal Affairs Ministry) Order 20 of 25 January 1960. Still, forced labor camps continued to exist on a small scale right up to the Gorbachev period.

http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-gulag/

Solzhenitsyn was in gulag 1945-1956, the last 3 years in internal exile rather than gulag per se.

It is interesting to me that despite what you call a policy of 'genocide,' Solzhenitsyn:

1. Had a tumor removed circa 1950 (while in the camps)
2. Was treated for cancer in hospital in 1954 (while in internal exile, he wrote a book about it).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

Why on earth would they bother if their aim was to genocide all prisoners?

Where was this post WW2 genocide that lasted for several decades?

Aside from the war years in russia, the only sustained drop in life expectancy & population has been post-ussr, for about 10 years.

[Gravitycollapse]

153. No, a death machine implies that it is a machine that produces death.

Don't project your own definitions onto me.

Solzhenitsyn was operated on while in a special camp for political prisoners. There were several different types of camps. Not all of which were as homicidal as the others.

As far as his ability to travel from his exiled town of Kok-Terek to Tashkent, I don't know how he managed that.

[HiPointDem]

154. When you call the post-war USSR a death machine for several decades, which you did,

it would imply that for at least 30 years after WW2, the USSR produced death, not life.

It is precisely the politicals that would theoretically be the *targets* of the death machine. Who else? Petty criminals?

[Gravitycollapse]

156. Are you waxing philosophical or attempting to argue the literal meaning of "death machine?"

"the USSR produced death, not life." - So your argument now is that I am denying the ability of Russians to procreate during the Gulag era? That's insane.

One of the most important aspects of these Gulags was to keep their effects out of the minds of Westerners. Which is why they did things like take several prisoners, clean them up, give them papers, fly them out to the West for inspection and then send them back to the camps when they were done. Political prisoners were some of the most potent issues the Gulags had to deal with. And it was easier to conceal or explain imprisonment than disappearances or mass murder.

The political prisons I've read about were actually extremely harsh. But they fortunately were not harsh in the same way that the camps were on the leading edge of the northern rail lines (where prisoners were sent out half naked into the snow to chop down trees until they froze to death). The political camps consisted largely of solitary confinement. The prisoners were often stripped down naked and forced to sit on stools in the dead of winter. The point was not to kill them but instead to break them.

The true expendables were those from the non-political, low economic class. They were simply disappeared and never heard from again.

[HiPointDem]

157. If a country is a death machine, that is not a limited claim. It's a generalized claim.

I read 'gulag' when it first came out, while taking russian history & studying samizdat.

You made the claim that post-WW2 russia was a death machine for at least 30 years. So far you offer nothing but this kind of anecdote:

"The true expendables were those from the non-political, low economic class. They were simply disappeared and never heard from again."

you claimed genocide after ww2. show me some evidence. that prisoners suffered is not evidence of 'genocide' anymore than this is:

A federal judge in 1999 concluded that Texas prisons were pervaded by a “culture of sadistic and malicious violence.” In 1995, a federal judge found a stunning pattern of staff assaults, abusive use of electronic stun devices guns, beatings, and brutality at Pelican Bay Prison in California, and concluded the violence “appears to be open, acknowledged, tolerated and sometimes expressly approved” by high ranking corrections officials.

In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars—not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.

Both men and women prisoners—but especially women—face staff rape and sexual abuse. Correctional officers will bribe, coerce, or violently force inmates into granting sexual favors, including oral sex or intercourse. Prison staff have laughed at and ignored the pleas of male prisoners seeking protection from rape by other inmates.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2004/05/13/prisoner-abuse-how-different-are-us-prisons

It's no damn accident that the prisoners holding the record for the longest period in solitary confinement (FORTY YEARS) are ex-Black Panthers.

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20130710141606261

We have chain gangs, prison labor for corporations, torture, extraordinary rendition, and a network of prisons (both public & secret) that spans the globe -- BUT WE DON'T HAVE A GULAG. LOL.

[Gravitycollapse]

159. I actually never claimed that there was a genocide after WWII.

I even specifically referred to the actions as "catastrophic mass murder." If I wanted to say genocide, I would have said genocide.

The death machine was the Gulag system. And especially the camps and exile settlements that were along the Northern and Eastern periphery. Mortality rates were extremely high even after the war ended. 3000 to 5000 per 100,000.

[Maximumnegro]

97. Yeah, Transition. LOL. A 'teachable moment' too I suppose...eom

[Hekate]

167. Ain't American Amnesia grand?

USA! USA!

[DisgustipatedinCA]

57. Take it from this Snowden supporter: Stalin most certainly carried out genocide in the USSR

Starvation (millions), a bullet to the back of the head (about 800,000), and one-way tickets to the gulag thousands of miles from home (1.7 million dead) were his methods of choice. Victim groups included lots of different ethnicities. Poles, Jews, Koreans--yes Koreans!, and Ukranians were targeted in different actions. So were farmers, but I don't guess one calls the mass death of farmers a genocide exactly.

Joseph Stalin was not a nice guy. He was genocidal.

[HiPointDem]

59. Genocide = "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or

cultural group."

[DisgustipatedinCA]

60. yep. that's what genocide is.

[HiPointDem]

68. you have not yet told me how that definition applies to your post.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

80. here you go: a tableau of Soviet genocide

Action: Famine/Starvation in the Ukraine:
Purpose: get rid of political enemies
Death toll: about 7,000,000.
Genocide rationale: deliberate and systematic extermination of a political/cultural group.

Action: Kulaks "to be liquidated as a class" (quote from J Stalin)
Purpose: collectivize farming, making villains out of the farmers.
Death toll: hard to tell, but the low estimate is 700,000. Many more than that died in the gulag system.
Genocide rationale: deliberate and systematic extermination of a cultural group.

Action: The Great Purge
Purpose: to weed out "bad elements" of the communist party.
Death toll: about 650,000.
Genocide rationale: this isn't genocide, since it was against the members of the selfsame party Stalin was in charge of.

The original hypothesis argued in this thread and in another was that the US was worse than the Soviet Union. Elsewhere in this thread, I have stated that the US killed more native Americans than Hitler killed people in the Holocaust. If you're hinging an argument about whether or not the USSR was/is "bad" on whether or not the death of millions is considered genocide or not, there's not much I can say that's going to help you. Sometimes, hundreds of thousands of people are violently snuffed out, and their deaths for one reason or another aren't classified as genocide. This in no way makes the perpetrators of the mass murder any less guilty, nor does it make the places where this happened any less horrible.

I will repeat, I hope that Snowden gets asylum. I appreciate the information he has given to all of us. But I refuse to rewrite recent history to make me feel better about Snowden's temporary host country.

[HiPointDem]

140. no link. my comments in this thread have nothing to do with snowden.

Holomodor:

The estimates of the death toll by scholars varied greatly. Recent research has narrowed the estimates to between 1.8[8] and 5[9] million, with modern consensus for a likely total of 3–3.5 million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#cite_note-10


happy to name this 'genocide' if you are willing to give that title also to the numerous famines prompted or exacerbated by e.g. british colonial policy in india, china & elsewhere, such as:

The Great Famine of 1876–78 was a famine in India that began in 1876 and affected south and southwestern India for a period of two years... The death toll from this famine is estimated between 5.5 million to 29 million. In part, the Great Famine may have been caused by an intense drought resulting in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau.[2] However, the commodification of grain, and the cultivation of alternate cash crops also may have played a role,[3] as could have the export of grain by the colonial government; during the famine the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat.[4]The famine occurred at a time when the colonial government was attempting to reduce expenses on welfare....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%9378

To make it perfectly clear, my quarrel is with:

1. the misuse of the word 'genocide'
2. the exclusive focus on 'genocide' as being something unique to 'communist' or 'totalitarian' systems while ignoring the near mirror images in western colonies
3. the exaggerated numbers which are not the product of deep or impartial scholarship.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

160. You don't care much about impartial scholarship

Not as long as you're making it conditional on me saying something similar about British imperialism. It's true, no matter what anyone does or does not say about British imperialism.

As to your points:

1. genocide wasn't a term I misused in my posts.
2. I am not exclusively blaming all genocide on totalitarian regimes. My first post in this thread talked about genocide against native Americans outstripping the Holocaust in numbers.
3. I lowball end the numbers. I chose conservative estimates in every case.

The genocide committed by Joseph Stalin is real. Reality doesn't give a damn about some particular person's angle or agenda. It's pretty shameful to attempt to lessen the horrific crimes against humanity committed by Joseph Stalin. Thank you.

[HiPointDem]

161. you haven't presented any impartial scholarship. impartial scholarship would mean using the same

terms to discuss the same things. how different are the famines under british rule than those under soviet rule?

there were fewer under soviet rule.

stalin died in 1953. i repeat, where is the evidence for the post-war genocide or death machine you claimed????

you refuse to answer that question.

[Hekate]

192. Remember what Barbie said when they gave her a voice: "Math is haaard."

The genocide committed by Joseph Stalin is real. Reality doesn't give a damn about some particular person's angle or agenda. It's pretty shameful to attempt to lessen the horrific crimes against humanity committed by Joseph Stalin. Thank you.

Thank you, Disgustipated.

[Gravitycollapse]

62. Stalin got away with a lot of it for two reasons...

A. He very rarely ordered that an individual be executed. They were merely sent to the edge of the railroad and forced to work semi naked in the ice and snow covered forests until they dropped dead.

B. A lot of the records that would have documented the deaths were either never kept, for fear of the recorders untimely demise, or destroyed.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

71. He mostly let Molotov and Berea craft the orders, but he was definitley behind it.

And although he personally may not have ordered too many individual executions, he did order executions en masse, non-personally, I suppose. And yes, people were worked to death in the gulags, and people were starved to death in very large numbers (ironically, it was the farmers and other rural people who suffered the most from this). But many hundreds of thousands of people were shot in the back of the head while two accomplices held the victims' arms apart.

Not many people knew about the starvation, the shooting, and the gulags for a variety of reasons. The Poles knew something about it, but they were really busy playing the game "Let's don't get killed by the fuckers on either side of our country". It didn't work out for them. As you mentioned, records were poorly kept or were lost. Churchill hated Stalin, knew he was a mass killer, but he also needed an ally to keep Great Britain alive. Hitler didn't have too much interest in narcing out Stalin, because he had similar plans. Yes, the Wermacht used Soviet atrocities as propaganda when they took Soviet land--the NKVD had a bad habit of executing all of the prisoners in a given jail before they fell back and lost territory. But this propaganda was mostly used in a very localized and twisted way--the Nazis were fairly successful in blaming the Jews for the atrocities of the Soviets.

[Posteritatis]

100. Holodomor/Great Purge denial? That's a new one. (nt)

[leveymg]

143. There's no scholarly consensus about the extent and causes of the Holodomor, other than a famine

occurred in the Ukraine in 1932-33 and Moscow made it much, much worse and millions died.

Scholars disagree on the relative importance of natural factors and bad economic policies as causes of the famine and the degree to which the destruction of the Ukrainian peasantry was premeditated on the part of Joseph Stalin.[7][12][13][14] Some scholars and politicians using the word Holodomor emphasize the man-made aspects of the famine, arguing that it was genocide; some consider the resultant loss of life comparable to the Holocaust.[15] They argue that the Soviet policies were an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and therefore fall under the legal definition of genocide.[16][17][18][19][20] Other scholars argue that the Holodomor was a consequence of the economic problems associated with radical economic changes implemented during the period of Soviet industrialization. Wike

[The Magistrate]

9. I View It As A Perverse Sort Of 'We're Number One!' Cheerleading For The Ol' U. S. of A., Ma'am

Gotta be number one in everything, eh?

[dipsydoodle]

20. Certainly #1 in incarerations

(August 2012) Since 2002, the United States has had the highest incarceration rate in the world. Although prison populations are increasing in some parts of the world, the natural rate of incarceration for countries comparable to the United States tends to stay around 100 prisoners per 100,000 population. The U.S. rate is 500 prisoners per 100,000 residents, or about 1.6 million prisoners in 2010, according to the latest available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).1

Men make up 90 percent of the prison and local jail population, and they have an imprisonment rate 14 times higher than the rate for women.2 And these men are overwhelmingly young: Incarceration rates are highest for those in their 20s and early 30s. Prisoners also tend to be less educated: The average state prisoner has a 10th grade education, and about 70 percent have not completed high school.3 Incarceration rates are significantly higher for blacks and Latinos than for whites. In 2010, black men were incarcerated at a rate of 3,074 per 100,000 residents; Latinos were incarcerated at 1,258 per 100,000, and white men were incarcerated at 459 per 100,000.4 Since 2007, however, the incarceration rate in the United States has tapered slightly and the 2010 prison population saw a decline—of 0.3 percent—for the first time since 1972, according to the BJS.

http://www.prb.org/articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx

[The Magistrate]

22. We Are Number One In Best-Ness, Sir --- Let's See Them Rooskis Top That!

But you know as well as I do that the U.S. at present is, in terms of freedom of expression and civil liberty, no match for the Soviet Union.

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. That is because the US is a paragon of the inverted totalitarian system

Like the PRI I grew under, it is critical to maintain the illusion. Do you want to go to Auckland and tell that to occupiers? They violated the edges of what is allowed...

[The Magistrate]

33. I Did Not Say There Were Not Limits, Ma'am

I said, and will repeat, that in freedom of expression and civil liberties, the United States at present is no match for the Soviet Union.

People who try seriously to maintain it is are simply letting others know not to take them seriously.

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. There are far more limits than you imagine

Or comprehend...

No, we are not, yet, at troops in the streets shooting people and disappearing people like October of '68 (that be Mexico) .or 1971 here...where kids were indeed shot

Nor are we yet at pick people in the dead of night like oh what happened to Muslim Americans after 911, many of whom went missing for months on end...

But we are far less free than people comprehend, and it's been sneaking on us slowly...creeping up.

It's a well trodden pattern, and we ARE NOT EXCEPTIONAL.

We still have time before that long night...but it is fast closing.

Oh and before you accuse me of being a randian, a racist, a Ron Paul fan, or whatever combo is in fashion this week for the though crime police...this is party independent and will not stop at the ballot box. That is part of the illusion needed.

Frank Zappa was a prophet. Right now the discussion among those aware is whether the wall is concrete or brick. So was Orwell by the way, and I am proud to be a thought criminal

[The Magistrate]

45. My Obliviousness And Ignorance Are Legend, Ma'am....

[Hekate]

99. I bow to your legendary obliviousness and ignorance, comrade

Thanks for your input into this affray, Sir.

Hekate

[ConcernedCanuk]

113. Just jumping in for a second here

.
.
.

To say



Glad to see you still hangin' around sir!

CC

[Posteritatis]

102. My favorites are still the ones claiming North Korea's freer.

I know it takes all kinds in the world, but goddamn.

[truebluegreen]

184. Links please.

[JoePhilly]

12. You are ruining perfectly good faux outrage!!!

Nice job.

[stevenleser]

13. This revisionism brings to mind Orwell's notes on Nationalism, specifically the negative nationalism

part. Clearly there exists a group on DU that are negative nationalists where the US is concerned. For them the US is worse than everyone else in history and is generally responsible for anything bad that happens in the world and they cannot bring themselves to complement the US on any good it might do. In fact they would argue that the US doesnt do anything that is good.

They are obsessively compelled to believe this. If you take the most jingoistic pro-US nationalist and think about and observe and listen to them for a moment, then compare them to those whose thesis is the subject of your OP, it's apparent the obsessiveness and indifference to reality described by Orwell that both positive and negative nationalists have in common.

http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat

It is also worth emphasising once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist — that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating — but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the upgrade and some hated rival is on the downgrade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.

And one example Orwell provides of this is:

Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

The above description of Anglophobia probably sounds very similiar to the USPhobia that exists among some folks here.

[randome]

16. Wow, that's some interesting reading.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[stevenleser]

21. I thought so when I first saw it too! I never forgot it!

[HiPointDem]

26. a mirror to those who would have us believe that any faction backed by the US is 'right'.

it's the same lousy propaganda machine that sets the frame.

[baldguy]

114. Eric Blair was far from the British Empire's biggest fan.

It's myopic to dismiss his observations of it's critics.

[HiPointDem]

124. nobody 'dismissed' anything. the fact is that the empire creates the frame. the frame sets up

Last edited Fri Jul 12, 2013, 07:39 PM - Edit history (1)

the opposition; one reason is that it's very difficult to discuss anything outside the frame, if only because discussion outside the frame requires a huge pre-discussion about background assumptions.

[Scurrilous]

28. Thanks.

Good stuff.

Reminds me of those here who did a complete 180 on the Libyan rebels overthrow of Qaddafi. At first they were enthusiastically for it (coming as it did on the heels of the Egyptian overthrow of Mubarak & the continuation of the Arab Spring). Then the US got involved on the side of the rebels, and all of a sudden the rebels were no good and Qaddafi was a victim of US imperialism. Why? Because the US is always wrong. Always. And so is anyone they back.

[dbackjon]

138. Great post

[pnwmom]

17. I think DU includes too many people who never paid attention in history class.

It's sad to see.

[leveymg]

25. And those who studied more history, perhaps, from other perspectives.

I was privileged to have studied with Howard Zinn for two years. I also had classes with Ernst van der Haag, and was introduced to William Rusher and Bill Buckley and the National Review as a boy, along with Ramparts Magazine and Izzy Stone.

Don't be patronizing.

[pnwmom]

31. Why did you assume I was talking about you? n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. I am envious. You studied under Zinn

I just got my masters, but these guys are blind to history.
USA, USA, USA, they still buy the mythology.

[Hekate]

38. It was my undergrad major

I was most interested in Asia and the Pacific, since I lived in Hawai'i, but that didn't mean I was indifferent to the rest of the world. Something about studying history gives you a certain perspective on the behavior of nations.

For recreation I read Solzhenitsyn's books as they came out in translation. I'm sure that you recall they were banned in his own country. Of course we ban books all the time in the US these days, don't we?

[pnwmom]

40. Yeah, all those books like . . . .. hmmm. Which books did we ban again?

[nadinbrzezinski]

46. You could not be that ignorant...

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica

[pnwmom]

50. Sorry, but you can't be ignorant enough to think that random librarians

or school boards banning Harry Potter is comparable to the governmental book bans in Russia.

Or that a parent "challenging" a book is the same thing either.

You just can't be.

(P.S. My sons' school library had special shelves devoted to the books other people had tried to ban, and they were the most sought after books in school.)

[nadinbrzezinski]

55. Dear where do you think those start?

The soviet impulse to ban books started in Tsarist Russia at local places to protect the few peasants who could read (and they were few) from dangerous ideas.

As one of my instructors put it...many moons ago...someday Americans will have to discover a zamisdat press of their own. By the by he was a specialist in soviet history, before you say he was clueless.

[pnwmom]

82. So they had freedom of the press in the Soviet Union?

Wow. Learn something new every day.

[nadinbrzezinski]

85. Early on...yes...from 1918 to about 1920-1

When the NKVD took form.

The NKVD is the successor to the Tsarist police apparatus, and the FSB is he successor to the KGB.

They do publish these things called books...we are still allowed to read some things outside the approved propaganda.

[pnwmom]

87. Oh wow. For two whole years. They're just like us.

[nadinbrzezinski]

92. But you did not know that

And freedom of the press...you really should google up project censored, before it goes down the memory hole.

We ain't as free as you think.

[DevonRex]

162. They had freedom of the press for 2 fucking years in the 1910s and that means they're better?

Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Your hatred and disdain for anything and everything to do with this country makes me wonder why you deign to speak to us lowly fucking idiots. Your condescension is obvious. Your posts to pwnmom just drip with it. That is my opinion of the way you just spoke to her. It was beyond rude. It was disgusting and uncalled for. Do you honestly believe people here aren't at least as well educated as you are? At the very least.

[Hekate]

170. nadin, nadin, nadin...

Consider this observation that I shared with pnwmom, from my time at University of Hawai'i, would have been about 1970 or '71:

79. My senior seminar professor was a specialist in Japanese-Russian history

The seminar was on Japanese history of WW II, but he was deep into Russian/Soviet history himself, with emphasis on the Kuriles. Interesting man.

A Soviet "research vessel" docked at Honolulu Harbor for a little R&R for the crew, and wherever they went they were accompanied by their handlers. My prof invited interested crew members to visit the University, and after pointing out this building and that he strolled them into the Library with its system of open stacks (oohs and aahs) and then a little trek downstairs where what to their wondering eyes should appear but shelf after shelf of books in Russian entirely unavailable to Soviet citizens (oopsie! end of tour!).

Yeah, we do that all the time here.

[nadinbrzezinski]

185. Hekate did I say we are at USSR levels?

No.

I said we are not as free as we think.

Reading comp would help here. It is slowly sneaking on us, actually the process is accelerating.

Please, try to leave the condescension, some of not only have the education, mine includes a masters in history, but recognize the inverted totalitarianism since we grew up in such a system.

Yes, you can read...you can travel, and you can do a lot of stuff. It's turn key. It can be turned hard very easily, the furniture of a total state in a classic sense is there. We are not exceptional, regardless of the American myth, and our wanna be kings are merely human

And project censored has more than a few stories that will never see the light of day here. Hell. Try foreign press for the Snowden affair, cause you know what? The propaganda in the US and the shielding of Americans from global anger and blocks emerging to yes...isolate the US is epic. Why is the vaunted free press not explaining this to you? Instead they are stuck on a local tragedy and a show trial?

That is not a free press, that is a controlled press. And don't tell me it's eyes to screens, cause you know what? The press is highly controlled in this country. It is no longer free, but a propaganda tool of the state. Is it as bad as Pravda? No...s is well on it's way? Yes.

So try reading...ok

[Hekate]

188. just as long as you don't call me "dear"

[nadinbrzezinski]

189. Tell you what

Since you have no clue what I am talking about...

I will proceed to do something I have resisted.

You are welcome to the denial, and my ignore list.

Good bye.

Don't forget the Pom poms...

And do remember, Sam Clemens said it best...nationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

[Hekate]

190. Not a nationalist, just a citizen who thinks we still have a chance for redemption

As for being ignored and unfriended, oh alas and alack, but somehow I am sure I am in good company

[zappaman]

201. See you at next Saturdays's Potluck Iggy Dinner!

[Hekate]

204. I'll bring guacamole and tortilla chips

[DevonRex]

163. Totally rude. Uncalled for. insulting.

[Hekate]

79. My senior seminar professor was a specialist in Japanese-Russian history

The seminar was on Japanese history of WW II, but he was deep into Russian/Soviet history himself, with emphasis on the Kuriles. Interesting man.

A Soviet "research vessel" docked at Honolulu Harbor for a little R&R for the crew, and wherever they went they were accompanied by their handlers. My prof invited interested crew members to visit the University, and after pointing out this building and that he strolled them into the Library with its system of open stacks (oohs and aahs) and then a little trek downstairs where what to their wondering eyes should appear but shelf after shelf of books in Russian entirely unavailable to Soviet citizens (oopsie! end of tour!).

Yeah, we do that all the time here.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. You know...not worst...but in some ways not better

Let's just put it this way...the nightmare is just begining and you are in the belly of it.

It's a little when we cover fires, sorry for the analogy. But when you see the header you realize what monster it is. Inside it never looks that bad

I hope we never get (again as others have pointed) to what we did in the 19th century, since we did have. Still do in fact, the remnants of it...a system of reservations that is in some ways not unlike the gulags.

As they say, pointing dirt in somebody else's eye is cute, when you got a log in yours.

[zappaman]

29. Some people want the US to collapse.

They talk about how the nightmare is just beginning, or how we are a dictablanda, or we are like a gulag, or our empire is crumbling, solely because their life is miserable and they want every one else to be miserable too.
They figure if the US somehow collapses, the playing field will be level.
Sad, really.

[leveymg]

32. Sadly, whether we want it to or not, that is what's happening. Like the USSR, for largely the same

reasons as all overextended empires collapse. Look at Great Britain, only we don't have the Beatles, Harold Wilson and MGs to make the experience a friendly one.

[Hekate]

41. It's rather like the people praying for the Apocalypse and the Rapture

Their own lives are miserable, and they want to see the entire world wiped out as a result.

The psychology seems to be the same, whether political or religious.

[zappaman]

52. agreed.

misery loves company.

[treestar]

199. Nailed it. nt

[valerief]

30. Guess you haven't heard about the profiteeting U.S. prisons and its slave labor. nt

[Hekate]

42. The comparison was made to the Soviet Union. Are we worse than the USSR?

I have never said my own country is without fault.

[valerief]

86. The USSR didn't have Jesus shoved down their throats like we do. nt

[Hekate]

93. Oh, golly. I await the witch trials. And have you seen your neighbors in the stocks lately?

They're down in the public square as we speak.

[valerief]

94. Try to get an abortion in some states. nt

[Hekate]

106. Try to get an abortion in the USSR, Hero Mother

The convenient thing about totalitarian states that allow abortion but make contraceptives almost impossible to obtain, is that the privilege can be withdrawn any time it suits said totalitarian state.

[valerief]

112. And that's the US in a nutshell. nt

[treestar]

200. They did not have freedom of religion.

[Hekate]

207. But hey, the suppression of all religions means they didn't have Jesus shoved down their throats!

indeed. Judaism, Russian Orthodox Christianity, any other kind of Christianity, any other religion whatsoever -- thoroughly suppressed and discouraged. Religious affiliation, especially public attendance at services, affected one's chances at education and career advancement.

The USSR was officially "atheist" and like countries where there is an official orthodox religion, the State was not in favor of conflicting thoughts on the subject.

The US, by contrast, for all its public piety, at least has a Constitution that states there shall be "no religious test" for public office, meaning you can be an atheist or a Hindu or a Baptist and it's all one to the law. (The GOP Talibornagains have to be slapped back, and hard.)

[valerief]

209. And we don't have freedom from religion. nt

[treestar]

212. You can't have that

People who are religious have the freedom to be that way; non-religious people can be that way. If you are going to be around other people, they will think differently on many things.

[valerief]

216. I should have freedom from it but it's in my pledge of allegiance and on my currency.

And in govt buildings and publicly funded classrooms.

[Hekate]

217. Are you required to attend church? Are you required to pray in government buildings and classrooms?

You are perfectly free to abstain from all outward religious observances. None of this is a requirement for you, as a citizen. You don't even have to use coins and paper dollars any more, if you want to really avoid that horrible Cold War era slogan: In God We Trust. Credit cards, debit cards, and personal checks will be accepted anywhere.

[backscatter712]

103. We've got the largest prison system in the industrialized world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

WE'RE #1!!!

USA! USA! USA!!!

And what are the things that we hear about routinely from our prison system? Prison rape, forced labor, supermaxing, forced nasal-feedings, beatings, withholding of medical treatment and medications, the list goes on.

Are we like the Soviet Gulags? No, we've got a uniquely American type of shitty. And I'll say we've got the worst justice system TODAY. Compared with all the other countries in the world, we've got the most draconian and most repressive prison system, today. Maybe it's not comparable to Soviet-era Russia, or Nazi Germany, but we're the worst today.

[Agnosticsherbet]

34. We don't have to be "as bad as" to point at something and say this is wrong.

U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations

Even at the height of the Soviet Union, we outnumber them in prisoners, the vast majority poor and of another race.

Does the U.S. have the highest percentage of people in prison?

So, for absolute numbers, we beat the Soviet system.

Worse, not quite so bad, you decide.

[Hekate]

47. Is it a policy to work them to death? "Gulag Archipelago" is eyewitness

Work for the US to change, because this is a bad system.

But the question was: Are we worse than the USSR?

[Agnosticsherbet]

66. In most states now, it is the policy to work them for profit.

in the exploding number of for profit prisons.

We often complain of slave labor in other countries, yet we keep prisoners is such conditions.

They have shorter lifespans.

Prison time cuts lifespan until parole ends

They are kept in for profit prisons to enrich large corporations who get no payday if they are released.

They caught this guy.

Pennsylvania Judge Gets 'Life Sentence' For Prison Kickback Scheme

How many are doing this without getting caught.

We should be asking why we have so many people in prison for very minor crimes in order to enrich large corporations.

The Gulags were mostly political prisoners, imprisoned for writing or saying the wrong thing. Our prisoners are economic prisoners, imprisoned because they are poor to make money for the rich.

The same, no, but just as wrong.

[Hekate]

89. It's a terrible, terrible system. Change it. But the Soviets....

Under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, tens of millions of ordinary individuals were executed or imprisoned in labour camps that were little more than death camps. Perceived political orientation was the key variable in these mass atrocities. But gender played an important role, and in many respects the Purge period of Soviet history can be considered the worst gendercide of the twentieth century. http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html

For Stalin, these dissident viewpoints represented an unacceptable threat. Anyone not unquestioningly loyal to him -- and many hundreds of thousands who were -- had to be "weeded out." The Communist Party would be rebuilt in the image of the "Great Leader." This was the origin of the "cult of personality" that permeated Soviet politics and culture, depicting Stalin as infallible, almost deity-like. (The cult lasted until his death in 1953, and provided George Orwell with the fuel for his satire Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a Stalin-like figure appears as "Big Brother.&quot Stalin's drive for total control, and his pressing need for convict labour to fuel rapid industrialization, next spawned the series of immense internal purges -- beginning in 1935 -- that sent millions of party members and ordinary individuals to their deaths, either through summary executions or in the atrocious conditions of the "Gulag Archipelago."
>snip<
But the impetus to "cleanse" the social body rapidly spilled beyond these elite boundaries, and the greatest impact of the Purge was felt in the wider society -- where millions of ordinary Soviet citizens assisted in "unmasking" their compatriots. Frank Smitha describes this mass hysteria well, writing that:
A society that is intense in its struggle for change has a flip side to its idealism: intolerance. People saw enemies everywhere, >snip<In factories and offices, mass meetings were held in which people were urged to be vigilant against sabotage. It was up to common folks to make the distinction between incompetence and intentional wrecking (i.e., sabotage), and any mishap might be blamed on wrecking. Denunciations became common. Neighbors denounced neighbors. Denunciations were a good way of striking against people one did not like, including one's parents, a way of eliminating people blocking one's promotion, and ... a means of proving one's patriotism.
>snip<
Much has been written about the absurdly minor infractions for which individuals were sentenced to ten years in labour camps -- standardly a death sentence. "A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn't get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of Kaganovich [a member of the Soviet Politburo]. A customer observed this. Article 58, ten years (terrorism). A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years." (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 293.)

http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html


Again, I recommend Solzhenitsyn.

[JDPriestly]

108. No. We just drive them crazy by holding them in solitary confinement for many years.

http://solitarywatch.com/2012/02/01/how-many-prisoners-are-in-solitary-confinement-in-the-united-states/

Still we are not nearly as bad as they were in the Soviet Union or in China or in NAZI Germany.

We are just headed in that direction.

I must have missed something.

I am unaware that anyone said that we are as bad as the USSR.

But I will say that the surveillance program is worse than what the STASI did.

[HiPointDem]

49. +1. not just in absolute numbers, but also per capita. and do we work them? yes, we do, &

getting worse. chain gangs coming back.

[renie408]

95. I know there is no comparison, but I was watching a group of Walmart employees sitting together

at a picnic table out in front of the store. It sat under a single, thinly leaved tree. We were in upstate SC in July on a horribly humid day. Most of the employees must have been on their break and were smoking cigarettes and chatting.

All I could think was that they are like modern indentured servants, only the servitude never ends. They only make barely enough to shop at the place that only pays them barely enough to shop there.

[OilemFirchen]

51. I have friends who recently emigrated from Krasnodar.

Meskhetian Turks in Russia, especially those in Krasnodar, have faced hostility from the local population. The Krasnodar Meskhetian Turks have suffered significant human rights violations, including the deprivation of their citizenship. They have been deprived of civil, political and social rights and are prohibited from owning property and employment.[22] Since 2004, many are now leaving the Krasnodar region for the United States as refugees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_in_Russia#Discrimination

This is not ancient history. It's not history at all - it's current events.

I want one fucking emoprog to cite a comparable human rights debacle in the current U.S.

[Hekate]

171. Oh, you'll only confuse them with facts

Glad your friends made it out.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

53. It's a mixed bag, really

After the Revolution and up through World War 2, Stalin killed nearly as many people as Hitler did. Numbers vary widely, but 20 million is a commonly accepted figure when you count starvation, which was intentional on Stalin's part. The Native American genocide has more victims than either Stalin or the Nazi holocaust. We don't like to remember that, but it's true. Interesting aside: Hitler, in planning to take the Ukraine and the western Soviet Union, had plans for mass starvation of Russians. He was apparently an admirer of the Native American Genocide, and wanted to mimic that action in the Soviet Union.

Since the turn of the 20th Century (semi-arbitrary date, but it includes czars as well as Soviets), Russia has been much worse for human rights than the US has been. That's still true today--ask a dead journalist.

None of this excuses the US government's abysmal behavior as regards Edward Snowden's case. I still hope Snowden gets asylum, and I don't blame him for seeking it in Russia, if that's what he needs to do while he hopes for a route to one of the countries that has offered asylum.

This also doesn't mean the US isn't headed in a very bad direction--I believe we are. We're going through precursor phases that can turn into Bad Ugly Things if we're not careful.

[renie408]

63. I know. Its very wearing.

You get so sick of talking to people who are too busy beating their breasts and ENJOYING it to hold a rational conversation. Just read some of the asinine replies you received.

If you do not agree that the US is worse than the USSR, you must be neo-fascist who thinks the US is perfect. Christ. How do you talk to that?

[JDPriestly]

110. Could you please link me to a post in which someone said the US is worse than the USSR?

I missed that. I have not seen that anywhere.

[renie408]

118. Literal much?

Go back and read the exchange between nadinebrezinski and The Magistrate and the one between me and....crap, I forgot his name. I think it was Rex? It was short, whatever it was.

I am sorry if you find my shorthand too brief, but the gist of several of those exchanges are people trying to convince others that the US is just as bad or worse than the USSR and, at least in mine, being told 'if you cannot handle American history don't get into these discussions' because I don't think the Trail of Tears is equal to the systematic starvation of 7 million Ukrainians.

[JDPriestly]

126. But no link to the post that set this OP off.

I haven't seen any such post.

I traveled in Eastern Europe and in the more liberal parts at that.

Our surveillance is, thanks to the technology, far more advanced than theirs was.

Our prison system is horrible

And we have more prisoners per 100 in prison than any other nation -- the highest percentage of the population of any country on earth. Higher than Russia or China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

KPFK in Los Angeles is now sponsoring a series of programs about the use of solitary confinement in California prisons. Of course, the SHU (solitary confinement) is a response to gangs in our society and in particular in the prisons. So the problem is complex and the government and private prisons are not entirely to blame for it. Economic inequality is so severe that we have ghettos in which gangs survive and are for some the keys to survival. But we can't say that we are best society. We are not nearly, nearly, nearly as bad as the Soviet Union or NAZI Germany were.

But we are definitely not facing or solving our problems effectively. The surveillance is just one symptom of that. No one wants a collective society. I don't think very many people want to change from capitalism. But we need better checks on the corporatism that has taken over. And we do not need to spend so much money on surveillance when we have so many homeless people among us, schools that are in terrible repair and such terrible disparity in income between the poor and the very rich and a dwindling middle class.

Our problems are very different from those of the Soviet Union, but ours are very serious.

I posted about my life in German-speaking countries and in Eastern Europe. We are headed in that direction. There is talk of placing manned drones at our borders -- like the towers in Eastern Europe, the primitive form of drones. Yes those in Eastern Europe, in our view, were intended to keep people in, but the heads of governments put them up at least in part because they feared armed aggression from the West. Seems incredible to us, but that was the argument. Our surveillance is far worse than anything they could do in the USSR or Eastern Europe. And that is why they don't need us to tell on our neighbors.

Also, we have been placed into perpetual war. I have no idea whether some of it is warranted because it goes on and on. It's very odd. The thirty years war in Europe was considered a horrible thing. How long are we going to fight over oil? Why don't we invest more in alternative energy and energy saving measures and less on the military.

The Middle East would be almost irrelevant to us if we and the rest of the world did not need so much oil.

But the perpetual war is the excuse for government repression of the citizens. We did not experience that too much in WWI because the war that involved American citizens lasted only about five years although the recovery of Europe and other countries hard hit by that war took much longer.

So, although the situation in the Soviet Union was not equivalent to our own, there are some frightening trends here.

For example, our media is increasingly owned and dominated by corporate interests that have no patience with opinions, facts or history that puts them in a bad light or does not serve their interests. In the USSR, the government controlled the media. Here, for much of the nation, corporations with a rather unified view on most things (within rather narrow parameters permitting some differences of opinion and focus) is the media. In many parts of our country there is no alternative media that is not dependent on the wealthy few to place ads or sponsor shows. Almost none of our TV is financially independent enough to feature unusual views much less dissent.

So, no we are not the USSR, not near it yet. But we are definitely headed in that direction.

And if you think you can go to court and sue a company and get a fair trial when you have been cheated, watch out. You may have signed an arbitration agreement that pretty much eliminates your opportunity to be heard in court and limits drastically what kind of settlement or damages you might get. Also, if you want to file a lawsuit, court costs have increase in recent years. Even if you just get a parking ticket in a city like Los Angeles, the cost is painfully high for a low-wage earner or a retired person on Social Security but a joke to wealthy people.

Our country has a lot of injustice and a lot of unfairness and the idea that so much tax money is spent on a boondoggle surveillance program while elderly people sleep under bridges in our big cities is just abhorrent to me.

Now about that link, I would like to see it. The accusation has been made that someone said we were worse than the USSR. I would like to know where that idea came from. We are not worse than the USSR. But we are headed in that direction.

[renie408]

178. Did you really think the OP was making it up?

>>Now about that link, I would like to see it. <<

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023230731

That link was provided by Skinner below.

I do not disagree what we have many, many issues that need addressing and that the need is pressing. The point I keep trying to make is that we don't need to be as bad as the former USSR to need fixing. And even with the examples you have listed, this country isn't a pimple on the USSR's ass when it comes to being seriously shitty. Who is the WORST POTUS you can think of? Nixon? Bush II?

Put them next to Stalin and Lenin and think about it. No, we are not worse than the USSR. I read somewhere on this thread that the former USSR was directly responsible for the deaths of 60 million people. There was substantial citation for that claim, and I will be happy to provide a link for you if you would like.

But do we have to be before people feel like they need to do something?

Everybody is so absolute these days.

[nadinbrzezinski]

186. So you think professor woolin was crazy when he started

Talking of inverted totalitarianism?

And is that the USSR? No, re-read the exchange with magistrate again. I said that we are not as free as you all think...you don't believe me...go ask occupiers who were exercising their first Amendment rights. Were they disappeared? No.

Were they suppressed by a coordinated national police action? Yes...that is not a marker of freedom.

Ask the Muslim community which faced, and continues to face, a lot of problems and fearing deportation/ disappearance...and having that happened to them after 911...use the google or just go ask.

Frogs in slowly heating up water comes to mind here.

Ignorance s bliss I s'pose...

[renie408]

197. Blah blah blah

Don't you have a Pulitzer Prize winning article you are working on?? It always amazes me that a world renowned journalist like yourself has so much time to spend here.

[nadinbrzezinski]

198. And people who engage in personal attacks

Last edited Sun Jul 14, 2013, 06:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Have no answers...and are usually scared

Notice, you did not address any of the points raised.

So let's ask them again.

Is a country using coordinated police raids to address these engaged in protected speech and assembly activities a free country?

Was Professor Woolin smoking something when he came up with the concept of inverted totalitarianism?

I don't expect a rational answer from you, just more personal attacks...the symptom of fear.

[renie408]

202. What is the point in answering you?

And who started with the personal attacks? 'Ignorance is bliss, I guess'?? You want to make snide comments and then get your feewings hewt when someone replies in kind.

And you still in no way demonstrated that the US is worse than the USSR. You demonstrated that the US is BAD, and I agree. But having had a couple of what I will generously describe as 'discussions' with you in the past, in my experience unless I say that your analysis is BRILLIANT and I completely agree with you, I am going to just get more patronizing snark.

So, again...what is the point in answering you?

And scared?? Please. Of what? Having some supercilious anonymous hack whose greatness lies primarily in their own imagination being MEAN to me?? Right.

[nadinbrzezinski]

203. Yay more personal attack

And inability to read

I never said it was worse than the USSR...but you cannot read...are incapable of reading and instead will continue to escape the reality...we are not as pure and exceptional, or free as you think we are. With that...*plonk*

No use in trying in trying to engage in an adult conversation with one who's opening gambit is indeed a personal attack

Suffice it to say...someday you might come to realize just how wrong you are...but I don't give two shits if you ever learn it or not...I really don't.


Suffice it to say, nationalism is the last refuge of te scoundrel, Sam Clemens.

With that my dear Patriot (instead of Kamerad or Comrade) I leave the loyalty tests and denial to you...have a good long live in ignorance...I see pride in it...good bye

[renie408]

205. So, tacking your personal attack to the end of your comment, like you did, makes it OK?

I might Coe to realize how wrong I am or I might Coe to realize that you do not edit your own posts before you hit Post My Reply, leaving me to ponder the over all success of your journalism career, but YOU negated any opportunity of a civil discussion with your obnoxious and unnecessary comments in your original response to me.

And I think you forgot to tack 'nahney nahney boo boo' to this post.

[Skinner]

130. Here you go.

"Now, sadly, we are even worse than the old Soviet Union."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023230731

[renie408]

177. Thanks, Skinner

[Major Hogwash]

218. Some may say that we are worse than the USSR, but . . .

. . . the people saying that we are worse than the USSR sure aren't packing their bags to rush right on over there and get a delicious bowl of borscht!

Have you ever had borscht?
It tastes like yuck.
Having a slice or two of days old moldy bread along with your borscht is a great way to start your day!
And end your day, too!

Borscht, borscht, borscht.

That's why they drink so much vodka over in Russia.
They're trying to wash the taste of borscht out of their mouths!

[Octafish]

65. If you want to talk numbers, there's no comparison.

Seven million starved in Ukraine by Stalin.

One million dead babies in Iraq by Bush Sr-Clinton-Bush Jr economic sanctions.

As for the GULAG, the prison system cost the Soviets a lot of money. They sent people there who may've been subversive, like Solzhenitsyn whose crime was commenting in a letter on the military know-how of "The Moustache," Josef Stalin. People they knew were subversive, they tried and shot, often the same day.

In today's USA, we have Detroit. The people there pretty much have to fend for themselves. Some get out, like one of the big guys at Microsoft. For too many, if not most, Detroiters, though, they experience a Dead End kind of lifestyle with no education, no job, no stake in the community, and no positive future.

[renie408]

72. Did you just compare living in Detroit to being imprisoned in a Gulag?

Cause I get that living in Detroit ain't exactly a party, but have you ever read anything about being imprisoned in a Gulag??

Why can't living in Detroit be bad enough to do something about without ever being nearly as bad as being imprisoned in a Gulag? Why do people feel the need to make these bizarre false equivalencies to make their points when all they do is muddy the water?

[Octafish]

78. Yes.

Of course, there is no comparison. The GULAG aimed to destroy its inmates, if not in body, in resistance to the State.

Detroit's residents, if they had the means, are free to go. Most, however, cannot afford to change their circumstances.

I read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" -- twice. I also read "The Gulag Archipelago" twice -- the year it came out, when I was in high school, and later in life, in my 40s.

I live next door to Detroit. I know many, many people in the City who have zero chance in this life. For them, they may as well live in Siberia for getting close to the "American Dream."

[renie408]

88. Ok, on that we can agree.

We really need to do something about Detroit and most likely will not. I almost said 'most likely will not until it is too late', but it is already too late. That is a horrible situation for the people trapped there, but I have to think even they have more hope that someone in a Gulag.

And our discussion illustrates nicely why I think such over the top allusions are unhelpful. To me, it is better to state "The current situation in Detroit is deplorable, disgraceful and solvable if only the American people will form the will to solve it."

I just listened to a good segment on NPR about Detroit and the problems there and I swear they said that if you added it together, there is currently FORTY SQUARE MILES of city that has been abandoned. They are trying to reclaim some of the abandoned land as urban farmland, but over all, the situation is just horrible.

[avaistheone1]

98. Yes, and do we even know how many lives were lost in Central America with the U.S. propping up

various regimes, and conducting covert wars on the people?

[Octafish]

104. William Blum has tried to make an accurate estimate...

&quot American leaders) are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things." -- William Blum, "Killing Hope"

Third World Traveler has an online resource: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html

[avaistheone1]

107. Excellent resource octafish.

More late night reading for me...

Thank you.

[stevenleser]

73. Kick nt

[dairydog91]

90. It's setting itself up to be spectacularly bad.

The American espionage complex just keeps growing. All it takes is one good, sharp crisis to get a majority of voters to panic and "flip the switch". Democracies have certainly been known to engage in bizarre or viciously tribalistic voting patterns when faced with bad times (even in its good times, the US wiped out or forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of Native Americans). In that situation, whatever temporary Froot Loop regime temporarily rides in will have a ready-to-go spying apparatus that vastly dwarfs anything the KGB, Stasi, Gestapo, or any other 20th century secret police regime had. Even the most ambitious secret police 50-60 years ago didn't have the technical capability to track everyone's movement at all times (Something that can be done with cell phone location data and a big enough processing infrastructure), or comb every single letter and phone call for key-flagged words, or use metadata mapping to assemble a real-time and historical map of every social interaction every citizen is or was carrying out by phone. The US either has or will soon have the ability to do all that. The FISA court provides about as much protection as a secret court could be expected to do, aka "Not Much" (And every judge is appointed by Justice Roberts, who manages to make Scalia look like Thurgood Marshall when it comes to restrictions on government searches).

[Egalitarian Thug]

91. The panic is actually palpable.

It's just too bad that no one that matters listened to the people who are right.

[Hekate]

169. You go ahead and palpate the panic

I'll continue to try to maintain some historical accuracy while still insisting my own country (the US) try to live up to its own ideals despite falling and rising, failing and succeeding, much like humanity itself.

[Pholus]

182. Huh, tried that too. The hyperbole I got back was that I was somehow a "Randian."

However, that is laughable and childish just like the claims you smash on your OP. I imagine you are nowhere near as worried about that of course as it supports the part of the narrative you like...

[Hekate]

187. Yes, we are so noted for our intelligent discourse these days. Passion I understand....

... but blindness I do not have patience for.

Not sure what you mean by your last sentence, but in terms of "worry" I'm of the generation that grew up under the nuclear cloud and when we didn't all die the week of the Cuban Missile Crisis I decided I was going to live the rest of my life without that fear. I lived through Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, and while I can say I am still disgusted at those bastards, I can assuredly tell the difference between them and the POTUS we now have. Obama is not any of them. Like the US itself, he is not without fault. He didn't ride into town on a unicorn and he can't walk on the waters of the Potomac, but he most assuredly is not one of them.

We've all got a narrative -- it's how humans live. It's important, though, to recognize which story you think you are living, or it will live you.

[JDPriestly]

96. I would not say we are worse than the USSR. That would be a gross exaggeration.

But we are definitely headed in that direction.

A free press cannot exist without freedom of access for journalists to sources including whistleblowers who tell us about what they believe to be corruption or wrongdoing in the government for which they work.

Gulag Archipelago -- How about Guantanamo? Suicides and life sentences without trial are not that unusual there. And now with new legislation, the administration claims the right to detain us indefinitely without trial. It isn't yet the reality for most of us. But our country is moving in that direction -- deliberately, but all you need is a crisis and jailing people for speaking up or having the wrong friends is not far away.

Denunciations -- who needs them when the government collects and can get easy access to ALL OF YOUR ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS. This is worse than denunciation. This is self-incrimination, possibly for laws that have not been passed since the records are kept permanently and can be accessed at some future date (or at least that is as far as we know the plan). And all of this is in violation of our Constitution.

Collectivization is not the trend today. Today, we have "free" markets, free for the very rich. If you have a small business, hold on tight because the laws will not favor your company as they do the big banks and the companies that Wall Street and the politicians favor.

Instead of collectivization, we have corporatization. Remember: corporations are now people for real with the same rights as the rest of us flesh and blood beings with, some believe, souls.

Times have changed since the Gulag, and we have a good president at the moment. But the stage is set. All the furniture is in place. We have to turn around and head in the direction of freedom before we do become a corporatist version of the USSR.

[Maximumnegro]

101. As long as Taco Bell is open til 1am

we are not 'headed in that direction'. This US is the most f'ed up place in the world BS is so wingnut no ordinary person will take it seriously. America IS screwed in many ways but hey guess what as a full blown capitalist society WE play a huge role in that. Like I said as long as Taco Bell is open til 1am, Amazon Prime gets me my shizz in 2 days or less, and I can buy Lakers tickets on Craigslist for whatever some third party foolio rips me off for - America is not turning into Russia. The 'brainwashing' and the 'media' blaming can only go so far, at a certain point we have to accept that Americans LIKE the way things are for the most part as long as they get to do stuff like I've listed. And that includes many people here -unless you want me to believe DU is comprised of people living sustainably off-grid, using organic internet.

[JDPriestly]

117. True.

An alternative to Amazon, by the way, is Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon. At least for books, it's just great.

I haven't been in a fast food place since the early 2000s, maybe 2003 or 2004 when I ate something from a fast food place and became very ill.

No one with a small kitchen (mine is tiny) needs to or should eat in a fast food restaurant. Take a lunch and be done with it. Sorry to be so judgmental but you are so correct except that we need to turn around or we will end up like Russia.

Get a Republican, Tea-Bagger, fundamentalist Congress and president and we are done for.

The scaffolding, that is the surveillance system, the private prisons, the putting-prisoners-to-work-for-private-companies-and-private-profit framework is in place. Very few Americans own any property. But corporations do. At this time, corporations have free reign to influence elections. And those with money are doing just that. They are also buying up property very rapidly. With a system of corporate landlords instead of homeownership, what do you think will happen to those who do not cooperate?

We are really headed in a wrong direction. And we need to turn around.

If you think I am paranoid, think about the people who are spending so much money to collect my e-mails. I am an old lady. I remember recent history. I know about the Soviet Union and NAZI Germany. We are not there yet, but we need to preserve and protect our freedom because we have put in place a lot of programs that lend themselves easily to repression.

I'm hoping that Obama will look critically at some of these programs like surveillance and go to the people and get some changes made.

My neighborhood is a wonderful place to live, yet we have gang killings not that far from my street. There has to be a solution other than massive surveillance and the gulag mentality.

[nadinbrzezinski]

206. All I can say to this post is...non sensical

At so many levels.

Wow!!!

[Pholus]

183. The absense of interest in this discussion is important...

Dismissed as "paranoid fantasies" with a libertarian bent. I've been "outed" several times as a Randian this last week as if that means a victory is won.

Never mind we had the same "paranoid fantasies" during Bush -- and as it turns out he was doing exactly that.

The luminaries in this thread believe we shouldn't worry that something like 75% of Total Information Awareness still definitely exists and probably its closer to 90%.

Nor should we be concerned about the new "fact of life" that we live each and ever day as a suspect in this country and will be for the rest of time.

http://business.time.com/2013/06/11/big-brother-is-watching-you-swipe-the-nsas-credit-card-data-grab/

"Based on what we’ve seen so far based on PRISM, that makes me think they’re going to be looking at weapons-making capability,” Pascual says. As the Boston Marathon bombings illustrate, a tactic today’s terrorists use to stay under the radar is using common purchases (pressure cooker, nails, ball bearings) to create weapons. A red flag may be raised with the NSA if agents detect several of these everyday items being purchased at the same time and/or in unusually large quantities."

Ari Fleischer used to tell us to watch what we say. That's been extended by General Clapper to watch what you buy...

[Herlong]

105. I believe what happens here is our responsibility

Comparisons like this are distractions.

I should refuse to pay attention to what is happening in my name because we are not like Soviet forced labor camp system?

[Hekate]

109. I hope you weighed in

on the original OP, then.

[renie408]

111. I think that is backwards.

I think it doesn't have to be as bad as a Soviet forced labor camp and we should still pay attention. I think that the point is that hyperbolic false equivalencies are the distraction. When people spend all afternoon debating about whether or not the US is as bad/worse than the former USSR instead of talking about how we can make it better, that proves that such comparisons are unhelpful.

[HardTimes99]

116. Pardon my obtuseness, but is this in reference to something someone

said today or in the recent past? I feel like I'm missing some reference point to place this thread in context.

[Hekate]

121. yes

GD 39 recs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3230731

[HardTimes99]

123. I've got way too many irons in the fire today. Apparently, I commented in that thread and

then completely forgot about it.

I must be getting senile.

So thank you for confirming for me my encroaching senility

[Sand Wind]

119. Just look who's the Russian Allies Today compare to the US allies, it tells a lot. Nt

[mikeypooh]

120. The state of the art of totalitarianism

Has evolved exponentially over the past 7 decades. The USA does things Stalin could only fantasize about.

How many Nazi officers did the US import after the war? Did they bring in the slackers, or the cream of the crop? Why?

Did they take in Russian officers? Sure, why wouldn't they?

The US took those people, learned from them, and incorporated and improved their methods.

You are allowed to speak freely because... like a nervous teenager who used to blush when people spoke behind his back, totalitarianism has grown into a powerful salesman. You are allowed to speak your mind because it helps the system learn, and strengthen itself, when everything you type or say is recorded and run through various algorithms and stored for posterity. You know, just in case in the future it turns out you did day something offensive to the juggernaut.

The Russians killed way more people than the USA has? Maybe. But quaint Russia did what it could to kill people. Modern USA is in the process of killing ecosystems. The nightmare we are facing is only beginning.

Oh and by all means please get out and vote. The system loves and needs people who still believe in it, and what it says it stands for. It is a powerful salesman who helps you to pull the wool over your eyes and make that big ticket purchase that deep down you know you should walk away from.

[Hekate]

195. Thanks so much for your input. Those votes won't suppress themselves, you know.

Just love it that you dropped by to share your wisdom:

Oh and by all means please get out and vote. The system loves and needs people who still believe in it, and what it says it stands for. It is a powerful salesman who helps you to pull the wool over your eyes and make that big ticket purchase that deep down you know you should walk away from.

[Cleita]

127. We don't want to get there. That's the thing.

Stalin did most of the evil shit in the Soviet Union. If we got a young version of Dick Cheney in office who would manage to take away term limits in his administration and then make sure that there is only one party, his party, you would see the same thing. Because our Constitutional safeguards are being eroded, they could accommodate totalitarianism in the future. Just because our gulags aren't as bad as theirs, doesn't make them a good thing.

This accounting for our bad actions by degrees is like saying we are only a little bit pregnant.

[Hekate]

180. I surely do want this country to improve, Cleita, but spreading misinformation will not do it

please see my post #179 below where I expand on the theme...

[grantcart]

129. kick

[burnodo]

132. And just exactly who said the US is worse than the USSR?

nt

[NuclearDem]

147. I sure didn't, and I've been exceptionally critical of the intelligence and military complex

My grandfather was born in Latvia during the early years of the Soviet occupation. He joined the resistance at 19, saw a lot of his family and friends disappeared by the USSR into the gulags, nearly died at the siege of Leningrad after he was drafted by the Wehrmacht, and walked with a limp for the rest of his life when the shrapnel from a Katyusha exploded near him as he was fleeing Berlin.

If you visit the Latvian Community Center here in Indy, you'll see a monument by the treeline to all of the Latvians disappeared and murdered by the Soviets. The point behind my criticism here is the hope that we'll never have to erect another one like that.

[Hekate]

164. Here's your answer

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3230731

That OP got a lot of Recs and attaboys.

[burnodo]

176. I see

I know the Soviet Union was fucking horrendous, and the poster did not think it through.

[Hekate]

179. Likewise a lot of posters in this thread display blithering ignorance of historical facts...

Likewise a lot of posters in this thread do not think it through.

Part of it is blithering ignorance of historical facts, and part of it is actual hatred of the US itself. I don't use either term ("blithering" and "hatred&quot lightly.

When Bush/Cheney were in power I used to be so appalled at the destruction they were wreaking inside the country that I would say, "Who does it serve?" i.e. "Who does it serve to wreck public education?" because it must have been serving someone, just not us ordinary folks. An accountant friend of mine in the anti-war movement turned my question around by saying: "Follow the money."

So I'm looking at DU these days and I am asking: Who does it serve to make wildly inaccurate statements about our US history, the history of USSR/Russia, the history of China. Who does it serve? Because it surely isn't serving the cause of improving the faults of the US. It's extremely destructive of DU. If the population of DU mattered, it would be destructive of the US itself to spread so much misinformation, disinformation, and falsehoods. Who does it serve to display so much hatred of our own country? Because that is what it appears to be when the US is considered to be "worse than the USSR" where estimates of the slaughter of their own citizens ranges up to 60 million, and China supposedly has free speech, like Tienanmen Square never happened, like "re-education camps" never happened.

It's really, truly, crazy-making. I for one am not ignorant of US history and our many faults. But the internment of Japanese Americans during WW II was in no way the same as Nazi death camps like Auschwitz, where my father in law's entire first family perished. We had slavery -- we abolished slavery. We had Jim Crow laws -- we had the Civil Rights Movement. We had the Vietnam War -- we took to the streets and made Richard Nixon declare victory and pull out.

We are currently in a time of regression -- but as Dr King said: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." He was talking about us, but we have to make it happen. This hatred will not make it happen. Who does this ignorance and hatred serve?

Hekate

[Major Hogwash]

142. If the President of the United States were white, would we even be having this conversation??

No.

[NuclearDem]

149. Yes, because his race has absolutely nothing to do with it.

[Major Hogwash]

150. Major fail.

And you thought I wasn't paying attention to what was going on here at the DU.

*tsk tsk*

[NuclearDem]

152. Oh? What is going on here at DU?

All I see is blind Obama supporters trying to label critics as racist.

[Gravitycollapse]

158. Hooooooly shit.

[Pholus]

210. We certainly did when that president was Dubya.

As I remember, it wasn't that popular an issue at the time.

It's just the difference between blindly rooting for team colors and belonging to a team that matches your ideals.

[Major Hogwash]

211. No, we did not.

Nobody here talked about moving to the "great ol' USSR" when Dubya was President because the USSR was better than the United States.
And it is not about team colors, but if that makes you sleep better at night, then you go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe.

I think you took the blue pill many years ago, anyway.

[Pholus]

213. A "blue pill" for me versus "kool aid" for thee....

I would address the points you made, but besides pure name-calling you only mentioned some "mass exodus to the USSR" that seems to come out of nowhere. Frankly it's just not worth my time to see what quote you twisted around to get to it.

[dionysus]

166. it's en vogue for some clowns to equate us to nazis and worse these days, don't fret about it.

they're just harlequin clowns at this point.

[Hekate]

172. Pass me some of that vino, Dionysus

I need something to steady my nerves.

[Major Hogwash]

191. Well, I wish they'd hurry up and make up their minds.

Because learning how to speak Russian is harder than learning to speak German!!

Nyet!
Comrade Hogwash

Plus, I hate borscht.

[Cha]

175. Mahalo for your OP, Hekate.. Too bad for the

OP in the link that some DUers actually know their history. Or she would get away with posting stupid revisionist history.

[roamer65]

193. We are no where near the USSR, but certainly not the best.

Many freedoms have been stifled, mainly due to our militaristic and imperialistic ways.

We should have listened to President Eisenhower's warning in January 1961.

[NaturalHigh]

194. Yes. Ridiculous and offensive.

[On the Road]

208. The Unfavorable Comparisons to the Soviet Union are Really Something

It's difficult to believe that anyone paying attention to what they're saying could come out with something like that, much less defend it.

This is what happens when people follow words without regard to observation or context. It has really started to resemble NRA nonsense. The logic and temperament on DU has become more like Free Republic more than at any time since 2001.

[ermoore]

214. True.

And some people need to have this mentioned more often.