Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
>
>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.
Andrew:
Thanks for the reply. I would like to clarify what you are claiming here,
so that I understand it better. Your theory is that you are being subjected
to a systematic propaganda campaign which is generated every time you try to
make objective statements about the Soviet system during the Stalinist era.
The propaganda campaign is functional to the workings of the capitalist
system, and typically employs sophisticated rhetorical strategies such as
--the invocation of a fictional "we"
--reliance on the discursive weight of "historians,"
--personal anecdotes and references to "gulags"
--and personal attacks directed at you.
If I were to criticize this theory, I would probably ask the following
questions:
(1) Are your claims about the Soviet system accurate? How many people died
in the gulags? How did they die? What do historians have to say about this?
(2) How does this systematic propaganda campaign operate? Is it a
conspiracy of intellectuals? Or, is it a subconcious impulse among what we
might call intellectual dupes whose attacks on you are activated in a
knee-jerk, unthinking way?
(3) Did anyone "sling personal attacks" at you in recent posts?
(4) Are the personal experiences about the Soviet system genuine, or fictional?
Do you accept these questions as a good basis to critique your theory? IF
not, how might we test your theory? How might your theory be falsified?
Regards,
Ronald J. Deibert
>
Ronald J. Deibert
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
r.deibert@utoronto.ca
416-978-5304
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~rdeibert/