ushanka.us: Communism: An Education

Friday, September 04, 2009

Communism: An Education

It is easy to say that Communism is bad.

It is easy to see what Communists want.

But an ideology that puts 100 million into early graves and causes the suffering of many more, in such a short span of time, deserves a closer look. And the timing is relevant. Americans are facing the same ideology in a new form: same suffering, less killing.

Readers of Ushanka.us know we are studying the history of Communism and sharing what we learn here in our blog and our videos. We list some of the books and movies that we've read/seen on the subject to the left to help others with their search for an explanation of why this particular history seems to repeat itself.

So when something comes along that provides a clear review of the history, the ideology, the tactics and the relevance for today, we clear the desk and give it our undivided attention.

Such a piece was published this week by our fellow blogger, Oleg Atbashian. Oleg blogs at the graphically-rich The People's Cube, and sometimes writes at Pajama's Media. His article, Obama Regresses to Cold War Methodology - and Switches Sides. Links to the article: PJM, and People's Cube) (We copied the article to a word processing program from the People's Cube site, then formatted into 22 pages of double-spaced reading.)

Oleg's article gives us the rare exposure to the two main study areas of Communism: the history, and the mindset that allows it to fester. We normally see one or the other in our other resources.

The 'Lens' through which Oleg offers his analysis:

A Russian saying suggests that "everything new is well-forgotten old" - which may also explain the voting pattern of recent public school graduates who think that nothing existed before they were born. However, as far back as 500 BC, Heraclitus cautioned that you cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. To paraphrase, Obama shouldn't apply old ideas to new circumstances, for the unintended consequences shall expose the absurdity of his leftist doctrine. Yet that is exactly where he is heading...

Excerpts:

But abandoning pro-American forces and propping up anti-American dictators can't really be what the word "change" meant to most voters during the elections. What is happening now looks more like restoring Cold War front lines and defecting to the other side, presumably in the name of correcting historical injustice. It's similar to the psychiatric method of regressing to an earlier stage of the patient's life in order to relive old traumatic experience with a more positive outcome.
The problem with that is, the ideas of Cold War-related injustice and guilt are the products of false conscience planted by elaborate propaganda. The picture that Obama is trying to reverse is an airbrushed, made-in-the-USSR fabrication. Flipping the wrong picture upside down doesn't make it right - it still is the wrong picture, only upside down.
---
Generated in the depths of KGB think tanks, the Cold War-era propaganda template is comprised of the following linked axioms:
1. Socialism is "progress."
2. Aversion to "progress" is a sign of outmoded backward thinking.
3. All forward-thinking people are leftists.
4. Leftists always speak for all people.
5. People always unanimously support leftist leaders.
6. Leftists are always under assault from the well-organized capitalist enemy.
7. All workers and peasants hate capitalist exploiters.
8. Armed resistance to a leftist government can only conceivably be staged by CIA agents in the service of American imperialism.
9. Capitalists engage in relentless anti-socialist propaganda, subversion, and sabotage; they will commit any crime in order to kill hope and prevent the masses from liberation.
10. The dying non-socialist sector of the world is run by a criminal conspiracy of capitalist oligarchs operating from the United States (and sometimes from Israel when appropriate).
---
The unsustainable generosity in sponsoring global anti-Americanism was one of the Soviet regime's many obsessive behaviors that hastened its own demise. If anti-American lies were anthrax, one might say the USSR had left behind enough stockpiles to exterminate all life on earth many times over.
---
And since such views are part of the ideological template that vilifies America and lionizes its enemies, Obama's instinctive reaction was to back Zelaya and throw a lifeline to Ahmadinejad.
Like John Kerry at the Senate hearings, President Obama may be acting in good faith, but his processing of reality is just as impaired by the same "metaphorical deformation." As a result, the leader of the free world strays across the frontlines and joins the Marxist leaders Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, Evo Morales, and Daniel Ortega, at least two of whom - Castro and Ortega - were committed Soviet clients.
The Soviet Union may have self-destructed in 1991, but the seeds of intellectual deception it had planted gave such a bountiful crop that seventeen years later America has elected a leader who is guided by received notions designed to subdue and destroy this country. Apparently, the rumors about America's victory in the Cold War appear to have been greatly exaggerated.
---
While free democracies invest mostly in the creation of goods and services, tyrants invest their nation's capital in the creation and dissemination of propaganda. It pays off handsomely in the form of moral support from the brainwashed "global community" when a tyrannical regime takes over another country allegedly "to advance progress in the interests of all people."

Gems:

To blame the hot spots on the U.S. presence would be as insane as to blame fires on firefighters because their trucks are always at the scene.
---
...it's impossible to disprove the leftist "history of American imperialism" without knowing that just about every Cold War conflict began as a premeditated KGB operation.
---
The important fact about modern-day anti-Americanism is that it spreads almost exclusively among impressionable cultural elites who are most exposed to ideological clichés delivered through media and educational channels.
---
...since anti-Americanism is incompatible with common sense that guides our daily lives, people must be reminded of it every day to keep it alive. That is the burden that radical intellectuals have taken upon themselves, dispensing daily quotas of leftist clichés to the "unwashed masses" down below.
---
One can only imagine the cognitive dissonance in the heads of believers in leftist myths who have campaigned their way into the U.S. government and are now discovering the real world at CIA briefings.

Links to the article: PJM, and People's Cube

Labels: Timeless Lessons

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