• American High School Band Marches with Hammer & Sickle
    100 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;37797571] you got called a reactionary and sent to a gulag if you objected to your house being seized by the state along with your food [/QUOTE] Also, accidentally wiping your ass with Kirov's face on the first page of a newspaper. And your neighbor proceeds to rat you out. No jokes.
[QUOTE=ashton93;37794702]Probably the best anthem ever[/QUOTE] When you are French and listen to it without any sort of knowledge of Russian, it sounds like they are singing about drowned gold, B rocks, pirates and thirst. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM5H1KthhUU[/media]
Sobotnik you are a terrible poster. Welcome to my ignore list. [QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37797488]Regardless it doesn't matter. Nazi Germany had approximately 90 million people within its borders in 1941[/quote] ...why are you included conquered peoples? [quote]and the graphs show that Russia had a population of just over 100 million in 1950[/quote] After losing 25 million soldiers and civilians in ww2 [Quote]so extrapolate backwards - Russia and Nazi germany would have had approximately the same populations at the time. Direct comparisons are completely legitimate.[/quote] There are no comparisons to be made between the USSR and the third reich. [Quote]But that's irrelevant because I never claimed anything like 60 million. I said 20 million, across the whole soviet regime. You're making a strawman.[/quote] You asked how I could say 'only a couple million', compared to surrounding statistics, 'only' fits well'. It has nothing to do with disregard for life. [Quote]I want to actually see reasons why such a gigantic spillage of blood was inevitable or acceptable.[/quote] You can start with the conditions the USSR existed in, with a backward, impoverished countryside rife with resistance from landowners, petty crime, and under siege by the rest of the world's empires. [Quote]Why should we give Stalin in particular a sticker saying "at least you tried" instead of seeing him as the psychopathic dictator he was?[/quote] Because it doesn't have much to do with stalin. If not him, someone else would be general secretary. It's a matter of securing the interests of the state People try excuse japanese imprisonment in WW2 as 'necessary' and 'pertinent to national security'. There exists a gross double standard where anything remotely bad done by people with a red flag is done because they're the spawn of the devil. [Quote]How many deaths would it take for you to admit that perhaps this whole communism thing isn't all it's cracked up to be? 30 million? 100 million? a billion? how many corpses would it take?[/quote] Communism isn't tied to any nation or its actions. [Quote]This is your brain on communism[/QUOTE] You haven't read that pdf, have you? What the hell are you trying to do in this discussion?
[QUOTE=Conscript;37796614]The 'russian people' would disagree. Rate dumb but you're still wrong. Also it's funny to talk about the revolution as something that 'happened to the russian people'.[/QUOTE] Implying the majority of Russians supported the revolution. Take a fucking history class jesus. Instead of trying to be a "progressive" edgy thinker you can you know stop being so delusional and ignorant to history. You know that you can abhor both McCarthyism and the Soviet Union right?
Why is it any time someone has a different opinion they're 'edgy'? That's pathetic mate. [QUOTE=Strider*;37797684]Implying the majority of Russians supported the revolution.[/qUOTE] The majority of workers and poor peasants did, through the factory committees and the various revolutionary socialist parties the soviets voted to support. In addition, this revolution defeated the whites who had the support of the world's empires, with an absolutely crippled economy. I doubt any 'unpopular revolution' (lol) could do so. Have you ever read anything about the russian revolution, at all?
[QUOTE=Conscript;37797717]The majority of workers and poor peasants did, through the factory committees and the various revolutionary socialist parties the soviets voted to support.[/QUOTE] The Bolsheviks lost the majority in seats and started a civil war because of it. They dissolved the constituent assembly literally the day after the election because they didn't win. The Bolsheviks promised peace, land, and bread to garner support of the peasants. How much of those did they see in their lifetimes?
Just wow Conscript. What the fuck are you even doing. "YOU DISAGREE SO I BLOCK YOU"
[QUOTE=Conscript;37797717]Why is it any time someone has a different opinion they're 'edgy'? That's pathetic mate.[/QUOTE] Because you're fucking clueless to reality, this isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of the substance of prosperity and happiness that the Bolsheviks brought to the Russian people, which was next to nothing. [quote]Have you ever read anything about the russian revolution, at all?[/quote] Yes but not from the historical revisionist newsletters you're basing your arguments off of.
What the fuck? The Soviet Union killed far, far more of its own citizens than Nazi Germany ever did. Why the hell is there something outrageous about comparing a march in Russian uniforms with hammer and sickle to a march in German uniforms with swastikas? The 1917 revolution was a violent, bloody coup d'etat that marked the start of an authoritarian regime that brutally repressed its populace and killed millions of people, and they were doing it long before and long after the Nazis came and left. Fuck, the Soviets were the first to implement concentration camps. Hitler was [i]inspired by the Russians[/i] years later. This isn't Red Scare bullshit, the Soviet Union under the Communist Party was legitimately every bit as brutal and terrifying as Nazi Germany could ever hope to be, and a show dedicated to its founding is in extremely poor taste IMO. [editline]25th September 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Conscript;37797717]The majority of workers and poor peasants did, through the factory committees and the various revolutionary socialist parties the soviets voted to support. In addition, this revolution defeated the whites who had the support of the world's empires, with an absolutely crippled economy. I doubt any 'unpopular revolution' (lol) could do so. Have you ever read anything about the russian revolution, at all?[/QUOTE] Read up on Lenin's vanguard. The Bolsheviks did not have the support of the people, that was the goal of the Mensheviks who wanted to pursue Marxism and make conditions right for the inevitable populist uprising against capitalism. The Bolshevik plan was a coup d'etat to seize power, levy a massive army (thanks to Trotsky), implement 'wartime communism' which was a total disaster, and control the country by force. It was in no way a populist movement.
[QUOTE=Conscript;37797665]Sobotnik you are a terrible poster. Welcome to my ignore list.[/quote] I'm a much worse poster than Sobotnik is. Ignore me too if you must. [quote]...why are you included conquered peoples?[/quote] I'm treating both sides of the equation fairly. The Soviet figure includes conquered peoples too. [quote]After losing 25 million soldiers and civilians in ww2[/quote] It doesn't make all that much difference. Say the population is 135 million, that isn't relatively much more than Germany's 90 million. Same order of magnitude, direct comparisons can still be made. [quote]There are no comparisons to be made between the USSR and the third reich.[/quote] Yes. Yes there is. The only reason people don't think so is that the Allies won and it became necessary to excuse communist crimes. It's why it's socially acceptable, if not popular, to sympathise with communism - any similar sentiment about Nazism leads to obvious consequences. [quote]You asked how I could say 'only a couple million', compared to surrounding statistics, 'only' fits well'. It has nothing to do with disregard for life.[/quote] Adding additional millions of corpses alongside your current pile of corpses doesn't make the original pile any better. A million is a million is a million. The only caveat I would accept would be comparisons to population size, but as I said above it's immaterial in this case since the populations of each country were comparable. [quote]You can start with the conditions the USSR existed in, with a backward, impoverished countryside rife with resistance from landowners, petty crime, and under siege by the rest of the world's empires.[/quote] These were all problems of their own making. [quote]Because it doesn't have much to do with stalin. If not him, someone else would be general secretary. It's a matter of securing the interests of the state[/quote] Completely at odds with the facts. Stalin was a paranoid, delusional nutjob who saw enemies everywhere he looked. A more sane and rational man or woman could have headed the country and been far less of a tyrannical waster of life and limb. [quote]People try excuse japanese imprisonment in WW2 as 'necessary' and 'pertinent to national security'. There exists a gross double standard where anything remotely bad done by people with a red flag is done because they're the spawn of the devil.[/quote] I don't try to excuse the japanese internment as necessary. The arguments given in favor of it were textbook cases of insanity. I don't try to excuse the American genocide of natives, nor the British concentration camps in the Boer War. However it is entirely legitimate to tally up the deaths and compare. Communism is the single most destructive ideology in the history of humankind, to the tune of 93 million deaths in total. (though as a proportion of contemporary world population, the mongols and the timurids were worse) [quote]Communism isn't tied to any nation or its actions.[/quote] Yes to the first, no to the second. By the same logic I could excuse capitalism of banana republics and Pinochet's regime by claiming that capitalism is nationless and not tied to any nation's (or corporation's) actions, but I don't. [quote]You haven't read that pdf, have you?[/quote] no it's long and boring
[QUOTE=Strider*;37797782]The Bolsheviks lost the majority in seats and started a civil war because of it. They dissolved the constituent assembly literally the day after the election because they didn't win.[/quote] The CA was dissolved in 1918, when the bolsheviks and left SRs were still allied. When the CA is filled with market socialists and social democrats (the right SRs), it's of little surprise communists dissolved it. Combined, the bolsheviks and the left SRs were a large constituent and not some minority like you make it seem. Regardless the existence of the CA itself shows the populace was strongly left-leaning and revolutionary. [Quote]The Bolsheviks promised peace, land, and bread to garner support of the peasants. How much of those did they see in their lifetimes?[/QUOTE] All in the 20s with the NEP which restored the economy to pre-war levels and saw the end of war communism.
[QUOTE=Conscript;37797665]Because it doesn't have much to do with stalin. If not him, someone else would be general secretary. It's a matter of securing the interests of the state[/QUOTE] What? Stalin had a HUGE impact on the development of the Soviet Union. After Lenin died, he was the one who weaseled his way into power through political maneuvering. He was the one who eliminated his opposition, evicting them from the party, and then consolidated his power. He was the one who created the forced labor camps for undesirables, and weakened the power of the village soviets to have no real say in government. Stalin was integral to the Soviet Union's early history. [QUOTE=Conscript;37797665]Communism isn't tied to any nation or its actions. [/QUOTE] Communism in this context is directly tied to the Soviet Union. The Soviet implementation of a socialist dictatorship has nothing to do with Communism as Marx described it. I recommend you read the Communist Manifesto because it's very clear where the Russian communists went wrong in their interpretation of Marxist ideals, starting with the Bolsheviks who decided to break away from Marxism even before the revolution. Look, there may be a lot of exaggeration thanks to our relationship with the Communists during much of the 20th century, but the fact is that the Soviets did some truly horrific things and were little better than their Nazi counterparts. Hell, we covered up Soviet atrocities, there was an article just a week or so ago about the execution of Finnish officers during the Winter War. That's not something to be glorified, celebrated, justified, or even defended.
[QUOTE=Conscript;37797971]The CA was dissolved in 1918, when the bolsheviks and left SRs were still allied. [B]When the CA is filled with market socialists and social democrats (the right SRs), it's of little surprise communists dissolved it.[/B] Combined, the bolsheviks and the left SRs were a large constituent and not some minority like you make it seem. Regardless the existence of the CA itself shows the populace was strongly left-leaning and revolutionary.[/QUOTE] how can you just casually support this sort of thing you're literally saying that because they disagreed, it was perfectly okay for them to just sweep their democratically elected enemies aside and take power
[QUOTE=Conscript;37797971]The CA was dissolved in 1918, when the bolsheviks and left SRs were still allied. When the CA is filled with market socialists and social democrats (the right SRs), it's of little surprise communists dissolved it. Combined, the bolsheviks and the left SRs were a large constituent and not some minority like you make it seem.[/QUOTE] That's right, they dissolved the democratically chosen assembly, eliminating the voice of the populace, and threatened to kill any who persisted in their dissent. How progressive. [QUOTE=Conscript;37797971]Regardless the existence of the CA itself shows the populace was strongly left-leaning and revolutionary.[/QUOTE] Go read about the Mensheviks. They were the ones who wanted to incite the populace to revolt and create a true socialist revolution, as Marx described. The Bolsheviks chose to seize power for themselves, by themselves. [QUOTE=Conscript;37797971]All in the 20s with the NEP which restored the economy to pre-war levels and saw the end of war communism.[/QUOTE] Forcibly restored the industrial output to pre-war levels, after an astounding number of deaths during the revolution, civil war, and subsequent reorganization, not to mention starvation due to war communism and execution via labor camps. I'd also mention that this industrial progress was at the cost of agriculture, and record numbers of people starved to death in brutal conditions. It was a terrible time and place to live, and it destroyed the sustainability of nations like Georgia and Kazakhstan. But Stalin did get the economy up, so it's all good, right?
[QUOTE=Conscript;37797665]Sobotnik you are a terrible poster. Welcome to my ignore list.[/QUOTE] [img]http://i.imgur.com/vQffh.png[/img] [QUOTE=Conscript;37797717]The majority of workers and poor peasants did, through the factory committees and the various revolutionary socialist parties the soviets voted to support.[/QUOTE] You're clueless. What about the anarchists? What about supporters of the old regime? What about Poles, Finns, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarussians, Estonians, Latvians, etc? [QUOTE=Conscript;37797717]In addition, this revolution defeated the whites who had the support of the world's empires, with an absolutely crippled economy. I doubt any 'unpopular revolution' (lol) could do so.[/QUOTE] if you think the bolsheviks defeated the whites based on their own merits you are detached from reality [QUOTE=Conscript;37797717]Have you ever read anything about the russian revolution, at all?[/QUOTE] yes i read books from different perspectives and covered the topic in school it wasn't as simple as "the tsar oppressed the people, then lenin saved them and created the ussr"
Oh fuck, there goes me thinking I was safe from seeing this kind of discussions in these parts of the Internet...
[quote=comment]Benjamin, I don't think you can put the words diversity and commies together, they don't' celebrate anything but conformity. Except when it comes to their own standard of living.[/quote] fucking kill me
[QUOTE=Xieneus;37794183]When I ran for class president I tried a communist era approach. My logo was a sickle and pencil. Propaganda posted everywhere. No one told me to stop. What happened here is just stupid.[/QUOTE] I would've rigged your election for you.
[QUOTE=Flicky;37798219]fucking kill me[/QUOTE] its not really surprising that people who comment on fox news articles can't tell the difference between marxism/communism and stalinism.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37797949]I'm a much worse poster than Sobotnik is. Ignore me too if you must.[/quote] You're not responding with assertions and 'lmao' and ignoring my warnings about it. I told sobotnik if he continued posting immaturely with simply assertions he would be ignored. [quote]I'm treating both sides of the equation fairly. The Soviet figure includes conquered peoples too.[/quote] There are no 'conquered peoples'. There are revolutionary governments and arose in the midst of civil war who aligned with the RSFSR. The fascists just drove across europe conquering state after their state that couldn't match their military might, treating them as occupied untermensch not republics in a union. [quote]It doesn't make all that much difference. Say the population is 135 million, that isn't relatively much more than Germany's 90 million. Same order of magnitude, direct comparisons can still be made.[/quote] There is no comparison to be made between the results of an empire's military adventure and a revolution that formed a union in place of an empire. [quote]Yes. Yes there is. The only reason people don't think so is that the Allies won and it became necessary to excuse communist crimes.[/quote] What nonsense. The allies littered the world with anti-soviet propaganda before and after the war, picking up some of the nazi's along the way. [quote]It's why it's socially acceptable, if not popular, to sympathise with communism - any similar sentiment about Nazism leads to obvious consequences.[/quote] More nonsense. There is nothing socially acceptable about communism, and nationalism is much better off in that regard. Nationalists have been on the rise in europe, for example. [quote]Adding additional millions of corpses alongside your current pile of corpses doesn't make the original pile any better. A million is a million is a million.[/quote] I don't know what your point is here. Nobody is trying to make the numbers 'better', only pointing out the dishonesty of cold war propaganda. [quote]but as I said above it's immaterial in this case since the populations of each country were comparable.[/quote] :rolleyes: you think people conquered by germans were turned into citizens of the reich? [quote]These were all problems of their own making.[/quote] Blaming the victim doesn't fly, sorry. [quote]Completely at odds with the facts. Stalin was a paranoid, delusional nutjob who saw enemies everywhere he looked. A more sane and rational man or woman could have headed the country and been far less of a tyrannical waster of life and limb.[/quote] Psychologist's fallacy. [quote]I don't try to excuse the japanese internment as necessary. The arguments given in favor of it were textbook cases of insanity. I don't try to excuse the American genocide of natives, nor the British concentration camps in the Boer War.[/quote] You don't have to excuse anything, because it WAS a matter of national security. I'm not trying to say anyone is 'bad', only that states secure interests and there is little surprise when they go to extreme measures in dire times. There is no use bringing up morals when it comes to interests. [quote]However it is entirely legitimate to tally up the deaths and compare. Communism is the single most destructive ideology in the history of humankind, to the tune of 93 million deaths in total.[/quote] Ideologies don't kill people, and none are tied to any nations. Otherwise we would have abandoned liberalism and republicanism after robespierre or WW1. [quote]By the same logic I could excuse capitalism of banana republics and Pinochet's regime by claiming that capitalism is nationless and not tied to any nation's (or corporation's) actions, but I don't.[/quote] You wouldn't actually try to make a case against say, mongolia developing capitalism because x random nation practiced capitalism and has performed actions regarded as crimes or immoral, would you? [quote]no it's long and boring[/QUOTE] Then I have nothing to do here.
[QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]You're not responding with assertions and 'lmao' and ignoring my warnings about it. I told sobotnik if he continued posting immaturely with simply assertions he would be ignored.[/quote] Lol ease out bro [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]There are no 'conquered peoples'. There are revolutionary governments and arose in the midst of civil war who aligned with the RSFSR. The fascists just drove across europe conquering state after their state that couldn't match their military might, treating them as occupied untermensch not republics in a union.[/quote] Pretty sure not everyone were agreeing with the soviets when they came by and flipped the table and I'm also pretty sure these people who disagreed weren't exactly listened to [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]There is no comparison to be made between the results of an empire's military adventure and a revolution that formed a union in place of an empire.[/quote] Actually there is. You can compare absolutely any regime, and comparing a regime that expanded thanks to force to a regime that was created thanks to force is not out of the question, at all. Oh by the way calling something an Union doesn't make it an Union. There is also the word Republic in USSR. Plus there are tons of states nowadays that have "republic", "democratic", "popular" and sometimes all three of those in their official full name, not all of them (if not to say the majority) are dictatorships. [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]What nonsense. The allies littered the world with anti-soviet propaganda before and after the war, picking up some of the nazi's along the way.[/quote] You know there is a point where you stop defending an ideology and you start sucking its metaphorical dick. Are you seriously denying the faults of the USSR altogether, like they have never done anything wrong ? Seriously. [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]More nonsense. There is nothing socially acceptable about communism, and nationalism is much better off in that regard. Nationalists have been on the rise in europe, for example.[/quote] You sound like you're basing your misinformed opinion on what people in the US think and only that. You do know there were a LOT of countries during the cold war whose major party was communist, right ? Including France, until the USSR stopped being such an appealing thing because of, you know, the political beheading of anything even remotely against the regime, the shit economy, the starvation, the deprivation of absolutely everyt [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]I don't know what your point is here. Nobody is trying to make the numbers 'better', only pointing out the dishonesty of cold war propaganda.[/quote] Because war propaganda is dishonest does not mean whatever was talked about instantly becomes exempt of all crimes. Nazism was also widely exaggerated back in the war through Ally propaganda, and was told to be some sort of world-eating superpower that could take down the freaking sun if it wanted to instead of, you know, an extremist party that lead a world war and was going to utter shit even halfway through the war; does that mean we should say Nazism is cool because propaganda exaggerated it ? [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]:rolleyes: you think people conquered by germans were turned into citizens of the reich?[/quote] According to Nazi bullshit they were. They weren't called "citizens" but probably some other silly facade name, but the point is there were people who had to accept a new authority by force. Whether that change was made in a clear motive of conquering more land or hidden behind a bullshit "whatever the people whatever" excuse is not important in this case. [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]Blaming the victim doesn't fly, sorry.[/quote] How about you try refuting his argument instead of just keeping your arms crossed and your breath held [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]Psychologist's fallacy.[/quote] Are you denying that Stalin was a delusional, completely psycho-maniacal paranoid tyrant ? Fucker even died because of his paranoia, he had seven different bedrooms, told no one in which would he would sleep in, and kept the door shut with more locks than Fort Knox, so when he got a brain attack, no one was there in time to save him, and he died in his pajamas, his pants stained in piss and lying on his carpet. It's also kinda obvious that a sane man would have a higher chance at leading a country in a sane manner than a crazy-ass man who was made mad by power and was probably not very well in his head before that. [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]You don't have to excuse anything, because it WAS a matter of national security. I'm not trying to say anyone is 'bad', only that states secure interests and there is little surprise when they go to extreme measures in dire times. There is no use bringing up morals when it comes to interests.[/quote] Then why criticize war propaganda if morals are not important. [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]Ideologies don't kill people, and none are tied to any nations. Otherwise we would have abandoned liberalism and republicanism after robespierre or WW1.[/Quote] For a start, Ideologies do kill people. This isn't a matter of badly interpreted religion, or beliefs gone wrong : some ideologies are designed to cause death. Then, ideologies are not "tied" to nations but there is no doubt their origins are. [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]You wouldn't actually try to make a case against say, mongolia developing capitalism because x random nation practiced capitalism and has performed actions regarded as crimes or immoral, would you?[/quote] I really, really don't get your point. I think that's because you don't have any and you're just trying to spew out rhetorical questions in hope that they make sense, but who am I to judge. [QUOTE=Conscript;37798691]Then I have nothing to do here.[/QUOTE] I don't know I find you quite entertaining. Wish you were actually joking though.
[quote]There are no 'conquered peoples'. There are revolutionary governments and arose in the midst of civil war who aligned with the RSFSR. The fascists just drove across europe conquering state after their state that couldn't match their military might, treating them as occupied untermensch not republics in a union.[/quote] lmao the whole of eastern europe was under the hegemony of moscow, it was an empire in all but name. the people in those countries certainly felt like conquered peoples. [quote]There is no comparison to be made between the results of an empire's military adventure and a revolution that formed a union in place of an empire. [/quote] there is a comparison. one was where military force was used to paint the map different colors. the other was where military force was used to change the words on the map. [quote]What nonsense. The allies littered the world with anti-soviet propaganda before and after the war, picking up some of the nazi's along the way.[/quote] they often could not release details of soviet war crimes as they themselves were complicit in them. there was an implicit understanding that if the west exposed soviet crimes, the soviets would do likewise to the west. [quote]More nonsense. There is nothing socially acceptable about communism, and nationalism is much better off in that regard. Nationalists have been on the rise in europe, for example.[/quote] what absolute twaddle. communism is [I]chic[/I] as fuck - look at all the Che t-shirts and all the marxist academics and writers. the adjective in "marxist anthropologist" is almost redundant. imagine how you would be perceived reading a copy of Kapital or the Communist Manifesto in public compared with say, Mein Kampf. look at the actual honest-to-god communist parties in europe. i've seen people waving around hammers and sickles and selling copies of marx's and lenin's works in my town centre and barely anyone batted an eyelid. had they been giving nazi salutes and selling swastika t-shirts they'd have been arrested. as for nationalists being on the rise, I'm not so sure of that. you've got nationalist politicians getting elected here and there, but on the other hand there has been a massive decline in nationalist violence throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. look at the IRA and the ETA - both defanged. [quote]I don't know what your point is here. Nobody is trying to make the numbers 'better', only pointing out the dishonesty of cold war propaganda.[/quote] Again, I [I]acknowledge[/I] that the west has played dirty and continues to play dirty. My point is that the communists were about an order of magnitude or two worse. Throwing out a [I]tu quoque[/I] is just pointless. [quote]:rolleyes: you think people conquered by germans were turned into citizens of the reich?[/quote] well as a factual matter, the austrians were, but that's beside the point. it doesn't matter that they weren't full class citizens of the reich because the people under soviet hegemony in eastern europe were treated as secondclass citizens as well. nazi germany and the soviet empire are comparable, deal with it. [quote]Blaming the victim doesn't fly, sorry.[/quote] so let me get this straight a government that had full control over its (vast) territory and was in literally no danger of enemy incursion, is somehow the victim when its own mismanagement and horrendous economic policies result in the deaths of millions of people note that I'm not talking during and right after the civil war when it actually looked as though the place might get invaded, i'm talking about in the stable years afterwards, in the 30s. [quote]Psychologist's fallacy.[/quote] No, this simply [I]is not the psychologist's fallacy.[/I] The psychologist's fallacy (which is really just an old fashioned way of saying the mind-projection fallacy, which is a more general phenomenon) would be if I had said that Stalin's behavior X was bad because had [I]I[/I] been in such a situation I would have done Y instead of X. I'm not supposing that I know how to run a country, I'm saying that other statesmen know how to run countries, and they don't end up running their countries into the ground in similar scenarios. I'm saying that Stalin did badly when compared to others that might have conceivably come to power instead of him. You asserted or implied that what happened under Stalin could not be directly attributable to Stalin, because it was due to factors outside of his control, and that furthermore had someone else taken power, similar things would have happened. I countered that no, Stalin was a direct cause of at least some of the problems and probably a lot of them, due to his own personal character failings such as paranoia. This is not an [I]ad hominem[/I] against Stalin, it is a legitimate explanation of his behavior and the resulting fallout. Plenty of governments, hell plenty of dictatorships, manage to go through hardships similar to what happened to the Soviet Union [B]without murdering a significant fraction of their populations.[/B] [quote]You don't have to excuse anything, because it WAS a matter of national security. I'm not trying to say anyone is 'bad', only that states secure interests and there is little surprise when they go to extreme measures in dire times. There is no use bringing up morals when it comes to interests.[/quote] [url=http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/]It actually wasn't a matter of national security.[/url] [quote]Ideologies don't kill people[/quote] I don't really know what you're saying by this. It's trivially true, but it's like saying that psychopathy doesn't kill anybody. [quote]and none are tied to any nations.[/quote] but what about explicitly nationalist ideologies [quote]Otherwise we would have abandoned liberalism and republicanism after robespierre or WW1.[/quote] but empirically, liberalism is (largely, not universally) successful, and neither it nor republicanism were the cause of world war 1. nationalist aggrandizement and brinkmanship were the cause. [quote]You wouldn't actually try to make a case against say, mongolia developing capitalism because x random nation practiced capitalism and has performed actions regarded as crimes or immoral, would you?[/quote] Well, actually ... yes. Not specifically for capitalism because I think its gains outweigh its costs, but say if we have Ideology X: X has all these ideas that sound great and will promise Truth, Justice and the American Way for everyone, and as such it's very attractive to people, and it's also simple to understand. But the first few times people rose up and established X in their country, it all went to pot and loads of people starved to death or perished in prison camps. So people think "okay maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be when you do it like that, but we can still give it the benefit of the doubt right?" at which point I would agree. People are after all stupid, so one or two failings shouldn't fail the whole of X. However, the next few times revolutionaries institute X, the same sort of thing keeps happening, even when they try to fix some of the failings of X by developing variants like X+ or X: Reloaded. Now were I to point out to one of these people that X might not be such a good thing, they'll respond with "but it wasn't [I]true[/I] X! Just wait and see, our X: Revengeance will do the job properly!" And of course it keeps happening. When someone tells me that they think it would be a good idea to put X in Mongolia, I will have to say that my patience with X has completely run out, that no matter how it is formulated it has led to catastrophe, so I create a general rule that says "no matter how good you think your X idea is, it isn't, so you should stop it, because the 30 or so other people that tried it said the same thing and look what happened." in the same vein as "no matter how much you think you've squared the circle, you haven't" Yeah it's evidential decision theory but it works.
I approve.
[quote]On the night Obama was elected, I was watching the news coverage in Chicago. All the gullible college kids dancing and shouting for joy. I will never forget the camera zoomed in on a group wearing red shirts with the hammer/sickle symbol. I thought to myself - This is the end of the USA as we know it. The dimwits have been brainwashed from kindergarten through university and this is the end result. A communist is in the WH. Why does this even shock us anymore?[/quote] Oh my god my sides
[QUOTE=Joazzz;37794105]let them homeschool their kids; this ensures the next generation of bigoted conservatives will be a bunch of socially awkward weirdos who don't know how to interact with real people might slow down the spread of the disease a bit[/QUOTE] I'm homeschooled... [IMG]http://forums.massassi.net/html/emot-saddowns.gif[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Damoman;37795059][img]http://i.imgur.com/ZjkWx.png[/img] Amazing series of comments for that post.[/QUOTE] threnody for the victims of hiroshima "sucks"? [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HilGthRhwP8[/media] it's the best classical piece ever, Doug Retter you suck
[QUOTE=thisispain;37800942]threnody for the victims of hiroshima "sucks"? [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HilGthRhwP8[/media] it's the best classical piece ever, Doug Retter you suck[/QUOTE] i think Dvoraks Slavonic Dance No.7 is much nicer imo
[QUOTE=thisispain;37800942]threnody for the victims of hiroshima "sucks"? [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HilGthRhwP8[/media] it's the best classical piece ever, Doug Retter you suck[/QUOTE] We actually performed that at my university a year or two ago. Talk about a counting nightmare.
I love these facebook profile pictures
Just shows how easily people can get distracted by something that barely matters. I mean for fuck's sake, everyone's on a high horse about [b]"THEYS IS TRYIN' TA MAKIN' US ALL COMMIES I TELL YOU WHAT SONNY BOI" "GOD BLESS AMERICA"[/b]
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