Five hecklers shout at Pilger from the back of the room. Archived Message
Posted by Der on September 8, 2020, 9:37 pm, in reply to "How many times have you posted your considered opinion responding to the points made?"
Not a reference among the lot of them. Though some guy mentioned "Kruschev Lies". Doesn't sound like much of a book. But I'll keep an eye out for it. Presumably, he's referring to when Kruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin and released the many thousands still incarcerated in the Gulag. I have a lot more time for Kruschev than I have for Stalin and his henchmen. And, of course, they all lie. Though on that occasion Kruschev told it like it was. Your five hecklers are people who either have no idea of what Stalin did or, more likely, if this current thread is anything to go by, don't want to know. If it was anybody other than Pilger they would have accused him of being in cahoots with NATO. They came close. One idiot pretty much accused him of being a liberal. And yet, you seem to think infantile stuff like that is of value. Not one of them addressed the question as to why Stalin would have the leaders of the 1917 revolution killed. As if those revolutionaries had all suddenly become "enemies of the people" - that wretched expression that Stalinists like so much and use to justify a multitude of crimes. Regarding Gowan's remarks on fifth columnists - he doesn't say where he got this idea. There's no reference. Off the top of his head? It's an interesting idea. But Gowans seems to see nothing wrong with Stalin "catching the innocent and harmless in his net as well as the dangerous and guilty.” Presumably, you don't either, Laurie? The end justifies the means? Like the US locking up all those Japanese nationals? It's something worthy of Madeleine Albright. Stop trusting politicians, for goodness sake. They're all shite. Megalomaniacs all. None of them care for the people. Just look at how Stalin, despite repeated entreaties by his top brass, was completely taken unawares by Hitler's invasion. Ian Kershaw describes it as "a calamitous error of judgement that saw the German army advancing at breakneck speed over 300 miles into Soviet territory within days, capturing or killing huge numbers of Soviet soldiers, and destroying thousands of tanks and aircraft in the first wave of attack." (Fateful Choices, Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 2007, p243, Ian Kershaw) It was the Soviet people who defeated Hitler. Stalin had little to do with it. He came within a whisper of admitting his blunder when he said, "Lenin has left us a great legacy, but we, his heirs, have ####ed it up" (Ibid). Gabriel Kolko points out how in 1946, after the war, Stalin even downplayed the number of Soviets killed, "grossly minimis[ing]... the Soviet Union's losses at 7 million total dead for the war". Kolko suggests 17 million. Rising to at least 20 million (13 million soldiers and 7 million civilians) "if one includes excess mortality because of the war's hardships and its impact on family units". (Century of War, Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Gabriel Kolko, The New Press, New York, 1994, p207). That's enough to be going on with. The stuff you would have us discuss is nonsense. And a betrayal of the Soviet people. Stalin was a dangerous lunatic. It's quite astonishing that anybody would attempt to whitewash his name. To say nothing of hijacking a thread on Assange to save your hero, Stalin, from some perceived calumny. I'm done with it. I need a good scrub.
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