Post war anti-Germanism - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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'Cold war' communist versus capitalist ideological struggle (1946 - 1990) and everything else in the post World War II era (1946 onwards).
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
By Rich
#13637273
Potemkin wrote:Actually, Trotsky never disowned the Soviet state (after all, he had helped to construct it, and almost single-handedly saved it from destruction during the Civil War). He regarded the Soviet state under Stalin as a "deformed workers' state", which he regarded as still being preferable to a capitalist-imperialist state.

Actually, it was a Left Socialist-Revolutionary.

Wiki wrote:Around 4 a.m., the Commandant of the Tauride Palace, an Anarchist sailor called A. G. Zheleznyakov,[25] approached Chernov and said:
“ The guard is tired. I propose that you close the meeting and let everybody go home.[21] ”

Generally Anarchists have claimed him as one of their won. The main point being that Anarchists played a key part in bringing Lenin to power. They had significant influence for example in Kronstadt.

You are correct on Trotsky, although wasn't it a 'degenerate', rather than 'reformed'? ;) The Stalinist satellites being described by Troskyists as "deformed workers states" after 48.
By lessnot
#13637304
Did the 20% voting for the moderates 'deserve' it?


They were happy enough to go along with it when the war was going well for Germany. Apart from some various youth groups putting letters in boxes there was no concentrated effort by the population to remove him from power. Contrast that to the partisan movements in every other European country at the time. They got a small measure of what they sowed, unfortunately Stalins' plan for the Nazi party members never went into effect. Thank you Churchill for trying to gas brown people and saving the superior white people.
By Rich
#13637322
lessnot wrote:They were happy enough to go along with it when the war was going well for Germany. Apart from some various youth groups putting letters in boxes there was no concentrated effort by the population to remove him from power.

So what? When half a million children were murdered through sanctions against Iraq, so Americas could have cheap gas, I didn't see much of an uprising. Earlier it was British and American policy to supply Saddam's war machine against Iran. But that piece of garbage Margaret Thatcher was quite happy for British business to go to prison for actually carrying out secret British government policy. Again not much of an uprising.
By lessnot
#13637325
There is a qualitative difference between shoving children in ovens and letting them die through lack of medication. To pretend there isn't is to miss the point between murder and manslaughter. This isn't something that's just made up for this case, it is within the laws that the West runs its societies on and most other societies on the planet.
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By Potemkin
#13637335
Generally Anarchists have claimed him as one of their won. The main point being that Anarchists played a key part in bringing Lenin to power. They had significant influence for example in Kronstadt.

You are correct on Trotsky, although wasn't it a 'degenerate', rather than 'reformed'? ;) The Stalinist satellites being described by Troskyists as "deformed workers states" after 48.

I stand corrected, Rich. :)
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By Lightman
#13637871
Potemkin, I was referring specifically to the Anschluss.
By Smilin' Dave
#13639155
lessnot wrote:They were happy enough to go along with it when the war was going well for Germany. Apart from some various youth groups putting letters in boxes there was no concentrated effort by the population to remove him from power. Contrast that to the partisan movements in every other European country at the time.

Passivity is not proof of support, and I'm not sure passive behaviour in such a situation should not be cause for group punishment.
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By Potemkin
#13639337
Potemkin, I was referring specifically to the Anschluss.

Austria was itself being run by a (rival) fascist dictatorship. The rest of Europe saw the Anschluss as merely a spat within the German-speaking fascist world. Not our business.
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By Lightman
#13639736
Austria was itself being run by a (rival) fascist dictatorship. The rest of Europe saw the Anschluss as merely a spat within the German-speaking fascist world. Not our business.
Yes, but my point was that claiming the western powers were not respecting the sovereignty of the German Reich is nonsensical when the western powers were allowing the German Reich to blatantly violate the Treaty of Versailles.
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By Potemkin
#13639815
Yes, but my point was that claiming the western powers were not respecting the sovereignty of the German Reich is nonsensical when the western powers were allowing the German Reich to blatantly violate the Treaty of Versailles.

Well, it could be argued that the Allies did not respect the sovereignty of Germany by occupying the Rhineland between 1919 and 1930, which is probably what Friedrich has in mind. In fact, the Treaty of Versailles in general did not respect Germany's sovereignty as a nation.
By Rich
#14234392
peterm1988 wrote:There's a difference between trying to kill 30,000,000 and doing it versus trying to do x and killing 30,000,000 in the process.

What difference exactly? You see what is the purpose of remembering the holocaust? To prevent further holocausts? LOL of course not, millions have died in conflicts that have gone almost unnoticed. The purpose is to allow us to be complicit in the murder of millions and the terrorisation of tens of millions while still retaining a sense of moral superiority. You see Western governments must refrain from organising gas ovens. Western governments must refrain from organising genocide. So western governments must refrain form doing things that they wouldn't want to do anyway. What a hardship. What moral sacrifices we make!

Take the Khmer Rouge. They'd already killed up to 2 million people before Reagan and Thatcher threw their support behind them in the eighties. Remember that even though they weren't in power any longer in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge were considered such moral upstanding citizens of the world community that they were allowed to keep their seat at the UN. But just imagine the Khmer Rouge got back into power and murdered a another million people. What would the retort of the West have been: "We didn't do it on purpose. Its not our fault. We're not responsible." And of course if any western officials, leaders did feel a bit guilty they've only got to fire up another holocaust documentary so as they can feel all warm and fuzzy about how morally superior we are.

What people seem to ignore is that its actually worse when people kill without intention. If you're part of the victim people it actually creates less anger if the slaughter is intentional. When it was revealed that America had murdered eight hundred thousand people under Iraqi sanctions, so as they could have cheap gas, do you think it soothed Arab and Muslim anger that Americans didn't give a fuck, that Americans had barely noticed at best? Un fucking believable, this was after we'd called on the Iraqi people to rise up and then sat back while Saddam slaughtered his own people (as the saying goes) in the hundreds of thousands. But lets never forget we're morally better than the Nazis. We park the 5th fleet in Bahrain to defend democracy, but of course that's OK because we're better than the Nazis. Earlier of course we supported Saddam in his war of aggression against Iran. We supplied Saddam with chemical weapons and tried to blame Iran when he gassed the Kurds, but of course that's OK because we're better than the Nazis.

Just compare it to relationship break up. Which creates the most anger, when your partner splits up with you screaming "I hate you, I hate", or they just dump you out of indifference because they've found someone more exciting, better looking etc?

When some brave warrior in Utah clicks the mouse button and splatters some family of women and children across the rubble in North Pakistan, do you think it makes it OK that it wasn't intentional. Do you think it makes it OK that most Americans are more concerned with the latest episode of Dr House?
#14234622
Rich wrote:What people seem to ignore is that its actually worse when people kill without intention.

I don't think this is true. For example the offender in a car accident is treated marginally better compared to someone who deliberately ran a victim over with their car.

Had the car accident turned into a hit and run it becomes a different story, but that suggests that being ignorant of a crime doesn't make that crime worse than one you were conscious of.

Rich wrote:When it was revealed that America had murdered eight hundred thousand people under Iraqi sanctions, so as they could have cheap gas, do you think it soothed Arab and Muslim anger that Americans didn't give a fuck, that Americans had barely noticed at best?

The impression I get is not that the Iraqi people were angry with the West for not knowing. Their reaction was probably one of incredulity - who could people not know that this was happening? And a branch of this is conspiracy theory, where actions without thought behind them are re-cast as part of vast co-ordinated schemes against the victims. I probably don't need to tell you how popular conspiracy theories are in 'the Arab street'.

Rich wrote:But lets never forget we're morally better than the Nazis.

Your argument gets a bit difficult here, as you've just explained that unintentional killing is worse than deliberate. How is it that we can feel moral superiority over Nazi atrocities then?
#14234782
The impression I get is not that the Iraqi people were angry with the West for not knowing. Their reaction was probably one of incredulity - who could people not know that this was happening?

A mixture of schizoid indifference on the part of the Western population combined with the astonishingly effective (because largely invisible) propaganda machine of Western societies.
#14235349
Potemkin wrote:A mixture of schizoid indifference on the part of the Western population combined with the astonishingly effective (because largely invisible) propaganda machine of Western societies.

The large propaganda machine sounds suspiciously like the kind of conspiracy theories I mentioned.

I don't think there's a secret cabal that sat down and drew up a plan to ensure the evening news* isn't entirely informative of world events. Alternative and more likely explanations include that if the news is too 'depressing' people won't watch it. Or that local news sells better than international. The people making these decisions are in many ways just as ignorant and/or blind as the audience we're deriding.

*or vehicle of public information of your choice
By Rich
#14236513
Smilin' Dave wrote:Your argument gets a bit difficult here, as you've just explained that unintentional killing is worse than deliberate. How is it that we can feel moral superiority over Nazi atrocities then?

Ah well I'm not making statements about absolute morality. Apologies if I was a bit imprecise. I'm arguing that unintentional killing can feel worse for the victim. Of course for the group in power it feels like the reverse. Of course I understand how Americans genuinely experience it as what have we done? How can anyone possibly have any grievous against us apart from malicious envy. And this is not some special fault of Americans. It is just the natural dynamic between the powerful and the powerless. In my view rich people tend to be selfish self centred bastards. Poor people are just rich people without money. Things would no doubt be similar if some other group was top dog. I don't tend to believe the conspiracy theories even in their milder forms, but it seems to me quite natural that those who experience themselves as powerless should find them much more psychologically satisfying than that their perceived oppressions are due to indifference, bureaucratic inertia and political manoeuvrings within western polities that have nothing to do with them.

You see we can't up open up mass production death camps. We can't organise deliberate genocide. We also can't suicide bomb the market places and mosques of our enemies. But really this is hardly a restraint because we wouldn't want to do any of these things anyway. We generally prefer to enact our will through third parties to get them do our dirty work for us, always allowing us to be dutifully regretful of any atrocities that do occur. The actions of the Nazis, perhaps the actions of Imperial Japan and Italy in Ethiopia and for those who are more politically sophisticated even Imperial Germany's behaviour in South West Africa always provide a comfortable bench mark against which to compare ourselves. I don't wish to argue, there is no altruism, no genuine concern for others, no honest attempt to make the world a better place for less fortunate non western people amongst western politicians or amongst western voters. There most certainly is. Its just that America and Western Europe manages to get away with some really selfish policies on their own part and on the behalf of Jewish Israelis which Western Conservatives and Centrist tend to identify as some of us, while maintaining this over sized sense of moral superiority.

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