Inspired by reading King Leopold's Ghost, which compares the Belgian genocide in late 1800's-early 1900's Congo to the Soviet Gulags, and then reading Imperial Reckoning, which compares the British torture camps in 1950's Kenya to the Soviet Gulags, and also by reading Golden Gulag, which compares mass incarceration in California to, you guessed it...

  • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    2 years ago

    Parenti gets it right in Blackshirts & Reds:

    For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the United States have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist Left.

    Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they “weaken their credibility” {Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in cold war condemnations of communist societies.

    Was pretty funny reading King Leopold's Ghost and noticing all the anti-Soviet shit and then reading Blackshirts & Reds and seeing Hochschild get called out by name

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      imagine thinking "credibility" matters more than class interests

      • VILenin [he/him]M
        ·
        2 years ago

        Liberals barely even acknowledge that class interests exist. A lot of the things that Marxists consider to be the most basic and elemental foundations of the world are like alien concepts to libs, who might as well be the politics version of geocentrists.

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Parenti gets it right

      something that's basically always true