[michael3]

Michael, you are spot on regarding the ideologies. Some of our fellow PoFo members go ballistic when I point out the final end point of communism is fascism. But i don't think a few germans going ot train Cuban forces means those Germans thought Fidel was a-OK because he was a tyrant and someday the regime would evolve into a pretty good fascist dictatorship. I just don't see it happening that way. Those Germans were in it for the money, the same way a white Rhodesian friend of mine was flying choppers for Mobutu - that guy hated black Africans, but Mobutu paid well.

And sometimes you'll see people doing things you think they do for some reason, and it turns out to be a different reason altogether. I was in Venezuela and counseled PDVSA - I got paid a huge amount of money, but I also knew they were so stupid they weren't about to listen to me anyway. And to make matters even better, I used my position to recruit Venezuelan professionals and pulled them out of Venezuela to make sure PDVSA didn't have anybody left with brains to understand what the hell I was talking about.

So like Eminem said, you can't say anything about me, because I'm a lot worse than you think.

Lol...I may have misjudged you slightly in another thread....I do that, being of fascistic tendancies i'm recovering from, and being a recovering misanthrope as well. I'm like someone once said of Doestievsky in real life, the man said Doestievsky was; "the evilest Christian he ever met"...Or like Leon Bloy, who once said that he might enter heaven, but probably "wearing a crown of dung". How many Christians you know enjoy reading Neitzsche?

But yeah, you're right. Statism in all it's iterations leaves me rather cynical.

[Sandokan]

It is not surprise at all that the Communist regimes were hypocritical, they indeed sheltered Nazi war criminal. When you want to enslave and oppress your people, money is never an issue. In Castro’s case, his “objectives” were to keep his grip over the Cuban people no matter what. Castro’s real ideology was to hold on power at any cost and the worship of his ego.

[Stormsmith]

Perhaps true, but I suggest that the reasons go even a little further than even you suggest. Marxist-Leninism is a totalitarian ideology, as is Hitler's National Socialism and also Fascism. Furthermore Castro must have had some leanings towards National Bolshevism or Fascism himself, as he is a great well-known admirer of Mussolini....Come to think of it, so was Vladimir Lenin. Castro wasn't a Communist himself before the revolution's success, and the Communist Party of Cuba was in the Batista government Castro overthrew...

Statists admire and use other Statists for military and other purposes, the scientific control and management of human beings. And, contrary to what some have expressed on this thread, these Waffen SS vets probably served Castro quite well.

I imagine that you're correct in thinking the SS vets served Castro well. If Castro had leanings towards Fascism, I imagine it would be along the lines of social policy rather than economic.

Welcome to PoFo, Michael

[Sandokan]

The US did offer asylum to German scientists after WWII, but they were in fact scientists, not Nazi SS war criminals. In contrast, Russia capture and force most of the German scientists to perform work for them. Countries like Russia, Egypt and Argentina benefited from hiring former Nazis war criminals.

[Smilin' Dave]

The US did offer asylum to German scientists after WWII, but they were in fact scientists, not Nazi SS war criminals.

You are naive to think the US did not put war crimnals, or people who were involved in war crimes like human experimentation or the use of slave labour, to work after WWII. For example Shiro Ishii of the notorious Unit 731 ended up working the the US after the war to advise on their biological warfare program. You could even say he was forced to do the work, since he was granted immunity from prosecution on the basis that he would provide data about his work. If he didn't go along with it, he would have gone to jail or been executed.

[Sandokan]

Seem that the gap between the extreme left and the extreme right is very small, indeed they find common ground in a totalitarian dictatorship. If you're going to recruit people, try to recruit the best. Nothing like the Nazi SS re-education and brutality training program to build your political and secret police into a Gestapo, like Fidel Castro did. They will be right at home under the Castro fascist regime these days. No wonder Castro admire and imitated Adolph Hitler fascism.

[Rei Murasame]

We all happen to find common ground in being opposed to your ideological grouping. So I suppose if you look at it that way, yes, fascists and communists are 'the same' in the sense that one punches at you from the right and the other punches at you from the left.

The two seek to overturn the present order and replace it with a new order.

On a lot of other things though there is no similarity at all.

[Social_Critic]

Rei, there are similarities, because both rely on "patriotic nationalism" to rally the people around a dictatorship or autocracy of some sort. Both disenfranchise independent unions, create youth organizations, centralize power, silence independent media, and abuse human rights. It's common for both to use torture and to have irrational laws.

And what is really remarkable about these communist regimes is that either they end up in dire poverty and a dynastic, rotten system (see North Korea), and/or evolve into a fascist regime in which the communist party leadership gets rich as they privatize and develop what one could call savage socialism (see China, what the Cubans are trying to do, Venezuela today, etc).

[Bounce]

I view the SS more devoid of morality than Fidel in this case. He had some thing to gain by exploiting SS knowledge; what did they? Money?

The SS were no average military corps, it was the ideological bastion of the Nazi party.

[Rei Murasame]

Rei, there are similarities, because both rely on "patriotic nationalism" to rally the people around a dictatorship or autocracy of some sort. Both disenfranchise independent unions, create youth organizations, centralize power, silence independent media, and abuse human rights.

In other words, they both do things that annoy capitalists? You are just repeating what I said.

[The One.]

So what?

The East German Army was originally mostly staffed by Waffen-SS veterans.

This is not news.

That is actually news to me,

don't the communist seek to purge these kinds of people from their ranks?

Kinds of puts a dent into the SS' image.

[J Oswald]

That is actually news to me, don't the communist seek to purge these kinds of people from their ranks?Kinds of puts a dent into the SS' image.

When push comes to shove, any rational government will allow pragmatism to trump ideology.

[Social_Critic]

Rei, I do enjoy repeating what you say. I don't want to get specific, but there are individuals who do need the one-two punch. I don't think these guys do things to annoy capitalists. I teach a seminar about this subject, and demonstrate it's a triaxial shape, like a cube. Put private ownership to government ownership on one side, autocracy to democracy in the other, and libertarian to highly regulated in the third. The regimes migrate around the cube as times goes by, and it's easy to see how communist regimes fall into fascism in time.

[Rei Murasame]

It's not possible to 'fall into' fascism. It's possible for them to fall into being a degenerated worker's state, however.

[Social_Critic]

OK, so if you happen to be fascist you can say "ascend into fascism", as if they were ascending into heaven? I never did see it that way. I always felt fascism was a "down" state - I lived in Argentina during the military dictatorship and also in Franco's Spain, and I didn't like the corruption and the way the police and military behaved.

[Sandokan]

The recruitment of German scientists began after the surrender of Germany in May of 1945. US President Harry Truman, convinced that German scientists could help America's postwar efforts, approved the Operation Paperclip which has the purpose of recruiting German scientists, in August 1945. Its main purpose was to benefit from German scientific knowledge, and at the same time avoid that Russia benefit from it.

Truman expressly excluded anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a ‘nominal participant’ in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism.” The War Department's Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was in charge of conducting background investigations of the scientists. Based on these investigations the US government granted the scientists security clearance to work in the US. Despite the repeated and emphatic official statements that none of the Paperclip personnel were ardent Nazis or alleged war criminals, the critics assumed the Fascist nature of their past behavior and affirmed their guilt.

[Rei Murasame]

K, so if you happen to be fascist you can say "ascend into fascism", as if they were ascending into heaven?

No, what I'm saying is that when communist countries become dilapidated, it is called a "degenerated worker's state". Google it.

[Social_Critic]

Rei, calling it a "degenerated worker's state" implies it was a worker's state. But these regimes are never a worker's state, they are, from the beginning, a party state, that is the regime never becomes a worker's state. George Orwell put it well in Animal Farm.

[Smilin' Dave]

Truman expressly excluded anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a ‘nominal participant’ in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism.” The War Department's Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was in charge of conducting background investigations of the scientists. Based on these investigations the US government granted the scientists security clearance to work in the US. Despite the repeated and emphatic official statements that none of the Paperclip personnel were ardent Nazis or alleged war criminals, the critics assumed the Fascist nature of their past behavior and affirmed their guilt.

Hubertus Strughold, did work for the US Air Force, attained US citizenship 1956, had a library named after him at Brooks Airforce base. Was investigated on three occasions for his involvement in war crimes, and basically only avoided it the third time because he died. Strughold claimed to have no idea that his collegues were using human experimentation in places like Dachau, despite having attended a seminar where such research was discussed.

Wernher von Braun, Georg Rickhey and Arthur Rudolf were all linked to the Dora-Mittelbau forced labour centre. In fact the US ended up deporting Rudolf despite his never being charged with anything.

And again we have the example of Shiro Ishii, who was not technically part of Operation Paperclip. Ishii escaped prosecution by turning his research (based on human experimentation) over to the US, as well as going to work for them.

Insisting that Cuba was exceptional for bringing in some soldiers after the war in light of this sort of thing really is quite ridiculous. Oh did I mention SS personnel served in the US army?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni
There's a nice picture of him there with his SS uniform there. No pictures of him in Vietnam in an American uniform though.

[Rei Murasame]

Rei, calling it a "degenerated worker's state" implies it was a worker's state.

Here's the definition:

In Trotskyist political theory, deformed workers' states are states where the bourgeoisie has been overthrown through social revolution, the industrial means of production have been largely nationalized bringing benefits to the working class, but where the working class has never held political power (as it did in Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution). These workers' states are deformed because their political and economic structures have been imposed from the top (or from outside), and because revolutionary working class organizations are crushed. Like a degenerated workers' state, a deformed workers' state cannot be said to be a state that is transitioning to socialism.

I hope this settles it once and for all, now. The term exactly describes what you are complaining about.