Ronald,
History is not something exclusive to you and those you are thinking about
on this list (whoever they are--lot of ad populum appeals all the sudden
with everybody suddenly using "we" instead of "I"!). Nothing I said in my
post excuses the Russian prison system. Prison systems exist in many
societies, they are generally brutal, and they should be studied
comparatively. And they must be studied in context. The comparative
argument I made is not incorrect.
But perhaps all that is beside the point now?
What has happened here is predictable: the ideological point, that anybody
who attempts to talk objectively about the Soviet system is somehow
apologizing for oppression, has been viciously injected into the
discussion, accompanied by a passionate and personal anecdotal account.
That post was clearly designed to stop debunking activities that
threatened favored mythology. And the power of pathos over reason is
revealed in the bandwagon effect we see presently, an effect I suspect we
will see increasing over the next several days.
You see, I knew--in fact I made the prediction to my wife yesterday
morning--that as soon as I began defending the accomplishments of the
Soviet Union somebody would drag the gulags into the discussion. They
always do. The gulags are used ad nauseum to distract objective discussion
about the Soviet system. It is a base and shopworn propaganda ploy.
The reality of atrocities in the former Soviet Union during some of the
Stalinist era are bad enough without exaggerating those numbers. It is the
*exaggeration* I attacked. The predicted response: "Apologist!" It is not
true, of course. But it is functional, and its *function* is what is
crucial to expose here. This tactic legitimates the liberal and corporate
versions of totalitarianism, and diminishes the horror of authoritarian
capitalism, while making communism nonviable.
Those who inflated the numbers of killed--10 million, 30 million, 100
million--were evidently (and ironically, in a way) counting on the Soviet
Union never falling, and state records never coming out.
You may not like it, but debunking anti-communist mythology is a
legitimate activity and it is no way related to denying the Holocaust, and
it doesn't justify the character of personal attack that has been leveled
at me. When Chomsky demonstrated the way the corporate media lied and
exaggerated the Pol Pot atrocities in Cambodia, he did not expose the
fraud to diminish the lives of those who were murdered. To say that what
Chomsky was doing was "Holocaust denial" which is a frequent accusation
aimed at him, legitimates capitalist propaganda. And that is what is
happening here.
I am not worried that debunking favored mythology will draw fire from
dogmatists who sling personal anecdotes and hyperbolic rhetoric. What is
more important for me (and a lot of other people who are not represented
on this list) is that other sides are told. I am not going to be
intellectually intimidated by appeals to "historians" into not challenging
the extreme ideology that attempts to pass for scholarly thought here. It
is immoral to be complacent in the reactionary context that lies lurking
beneath the "civil" surface of this listserv.
I was fully aware that I would be standing here tonight having this
discussion when I took up the challenge of anti-communism. I can't imagine
that all this bullying is winning points in the eyes of people here who
have the slightest capacity to think for themselves.
Andy