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On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:09 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
For the record I bring them up not to say that socialism itself is bad. But to show that in practice it has had a lot of warts as well. Democratic Socialism has a ton of strengths. However that is not far enough for GH he wants the USSR and seems to believe that everything bad about it was either caused by the west or not bad and just western propaganda. I'd take Lenin over Trump or Clinton 100 out of 100 times. I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power.
If you mean literally not pulling the trigger of a gun pointing at an innocents head, maybe.
Other than that, your assertion is wrong. He literally started the terror himself, purposely. He literally asked for people to be executed and made an example of.
At this point, it feels like reading reddit where a flatearther argues with geeks.
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On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:09 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
For the record I bring them up not to say that socialism itself is bad. But to show that in practice it has had a lot of warts as well. Democratic Socialism has a ton of strengths. However that is not far enough for GH he wants the USSR and seems to believe that everything bad about it was either caused by the west or not bad and just western propaganda. I'd take Lenin over Trump or Clinton 100 out of 100 times. I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power.
Hitler certainly surrounded himself with incompetent but ruthless sycophants. Stalin was busy purging the Red Army of unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary sentiment until the USSR got invaded by Nazi Germany and he realized he needed actual competent generals to stop the Wehrmacht's advance. Rokossovsky, one of the best Soviet armor commanders of the war, was actually recalled to active service from the gulag, where he had been sent during the purges. Once the Great Patriotic War was over, however, Stalin quickly ensured his best generals, like Zhukov, were stripped of all real power so that they would not become political threats to his iron control of the Soviet Union. So Stalin only promoted based on merit until it was no longer absolutely necessary to save his own skin.
I agree that dictators often surround themselves with incompetent sycophants. But Dzerzhinsky was not an incompetent sycophant. He carried out the job he was ordered to do with great effectiveness and statues were built to honor him all over the Soviet Union. A statue of the man literally stood in the KGB headquarters at Red Square.
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On July 11 2018 06:23 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:11 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
I'd take Lenin over Trump or Clinton 100 out of 100 times.
I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power. If you mean literally not pulling the trigger of a gun pointing at an innocents head, maybe. Other than that, your assertion is wrong. He literally started the terror himself, purposely. He literally asked for people to be executed and made an example of. At this point, it feels like reading reddit where a flatearther argues with geeks.
I suggest you travel back and read my posts, because I never asserted that Lenin was anything less than what you said above. Authoritarian governments are things that empower monsters. But often the people who are the heads of those governments or front facing either appear to be buffoons, harmless or charismatic enough to be perceived as well intentioned.
On July 11 2018 06:25 TheLordofAwesome wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:11 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
I'd take Lenin over Trump or Clinton 100 out of 100 times.
I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power. Hitler certainly surrounded himself with incompetent but ruthless sycophants. Stalin was busy purging the Red Army of unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary sentiment until the USSR got invaded by Nazi Germany and he realized he needed actual competent generals to stop the Wehrmacht's advance. Rokossovsky, one of the best Soviet armor commanders of the war, was actually recalled to active service from the gulag, where he had been sent during the purges. Once the Great Patriotic War was over, however, Stalin quickly ensured his best generals, like Zhukov, were stripped of all real power so that they would not become political threats to his iron control of the Soviet Union. So Stalin only promoted based on merit until it was no longer absolutely necessary to save his own skin. I agree that dictators often surround themselves with incompetent sycophants. But Dzerzhinsky was not an incompetent sycophant. He carried out the job he was ordered to do with great effectiveness and statues were built to honor him all over the Soviet Union. A statue of the man literally stood in the KGB headquarters at Red Square.
There are always exceptions of course, including Dzerzhinsky. I only point this out because often these groups seem harmless and incompetent during their rise to power. And even when they are in power. But modern media, video games, movies and fiction has created a sort of mythology around the Nazi regime being this group of hyper expression of ruthless German efficiency. They make stories about the Nazis getting a space program or invading the US, when the reality was they would be lucky to plan an invasion across the English channel and fail before it started. They were a bureaucratic nightmare of petty infighting and graft.
And given the current state of politics, I do everything I can to undercut that myth because there is nothing mythical about the Nazis.
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On July 11 2018 06:30 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:23 m4ini wrote:On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:[quote] I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power. If you mean literally not pulling the trigger of a gun pointing at an innocents head, maybe. Other than that, your assertion is wrong. He literally started the terror himself, purposely. He literally asked for people to be executed and made an example of. At this point, it feels like reading reddit where a flatearther argues with geeks. I suggest you travel back and read my posts, because I never asserted that Lenin was anything less than what you said above. Authoritarian governments are things that empower monsters. But often the people who are the heads of those governments or front facing either appear to be buffoons, harmless or charismatic enough to be perceived as well intentioned.
I did read all posts, as painful as it was. And i absolutely understood what you said. Note that you said in that posting that "the true horrors were not commited by Lenin himself but by the people he put in places" - and that's factually wrong.
"Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.
Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Seize all their grain from them.
Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks".
Telegraph receipt and implementation.
Yours, Lenin.
Find some truly hard people"
Of course he enabled others to go ham, out of the question. But to say that the horrors came from the people he appointed, purposely or on accident, is just wrong. The Red Terror was his game, he was chairman of the Sovnarkom that "invented" the Cheka (pretty much the soviet GeStaPo) too.
To make sure, i didn't mean you with flat earther. You're one of the geeks.
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On July 11 2018 06:35 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:30 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 06:23 m4ini wrote:On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
lol...
You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power. If you mean literally not pulling the trigger of a gun pointing at an innocents head, maybe. Other than that, your assertion is wrong. He literally started the terror himself, purposely. He literally asked for people to be executed and made an example of. At this point, it feels like reading reddit where a flatearther argues with geeks. I suggest you travel back and read my posts, because I never asserted that Lenin was anything less than what you said above. Authoritarian governments are things that empower monsters. But often the people who are the heads of those governments or front facing either appear to be buffoons, harmless or charismatic enough to be perceived as well intentioned. I did read all posts, as painful as it was. And i absolutely understood what you said. Note that you said in that posting that "the true horrors were not commited by Lenin himself but by the people he put in places" - and that's factually wrong. Show nested quote +"Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.
Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Seize all their grain from them.
Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks".
Telegraph receipt and implementation.
Yours, Lenin.
Find some truly hard people" Of course he enabled others to go ham, out of the question. But to say that the horrors came from the people he appointed, purposely or on accident, is just wrong. The Red Terror was his game, he was chairman of the Sovnarkom that "invented" the Cheka (pretty much the soviet GeStaPo) too. To make sure, i didn't mean you with flat earther. You're one of the geeks.
My understanding of Lenin is that he encouraged and promoted violence, but there are no first had accounts of him participating in that violence. That doesn't excuse who he was or what he did or the goverment he created. I just didn't want to misstate that he committed the acts directly.
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On July 11 2018 06:30 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:23 m4ini wrote:On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:[quote] I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power. If you mean literally not pulling the trigger of a gun pointing at an innocents head, maybe. Other than that, your assertion is wrong. He literally started the terror himself, purposely. He literally asked for people to be executed and made an example of. At this point, it feels like reading reddit where a flatearther argues with geeks. I suggest you travel back and read my posts, because I never asserted that Lenin was anything less than what you said above. Authoritarian governments are things that empower monsters. But often the people who are the heads of those governments or front facing either appear to be buffoons, harmless or charismatic enough to be perceived as well intentioned. Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:25 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 06:12 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 06:03 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 05:50 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:[quote] I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating,
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. "The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" This illustrates a point about authoritarian people like Lenin. They are not the problem and do not directly commit the atrocities that we associate with the governments they create. The real terror of authoritarian governments comes the people they end up empowering. Like the man described above, who Lenin gave power. It is one of the things I love about the movie Rogue One. The villain in that isn’t some evil lord, but some talentless, bootlicking middle manager forcing someone smarter than him to build a war machine that will kill billions. All to get a tiny promotion and a little more power. These are the types of people that dominate these types of government, talentless bootlickers without a scrap of empathy. Lenin knew exactly what Iron Felix was doing and had zero problem with any of it. I don't think you intended to sound this way, but it seems a bit like you are trying to excuse Lenin's actions by placing all the "real" blame on Felix Dzerzhinsky. Lenin was pretty evil all on his lonesome, without any help from guys like Felix. I forgot to mention in my previous post that Lenin also invaded Poland in 1920, resulting in over 100,000 combat deaths and many more crippled or forced to flee. I was not making excuses at all, just pointing out that the true horrors committed during Lenin’s government were not committed by Lenin himself, but by people he put in powerful places. People who were often failures in the previous system or who’s only talent is ingratiating themselves with powerful people at any cost. The same can be applied to Nazi Germany and many other dictatorships. A cavalcade of incompetent, but ruthless yes-men willing to do anything to gain the favor of those in power. Hitler certainly surrounded himself with incompetent but ruthless sycophants. Stalin was busy purging the Red Army of unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary sentiment until the USSR got invaded by Nazi Germany and he realized he needed actual competent generals to stop the Wehrmacht's advance. Rokossovsky, one of the best Soviet armor commanders of the war, was actually recalled to active service from the gulag, where he had been sent during the purges. Once the Great Patriotic War was over, however, Stalin quickly ensured his best generals, like Zhukov, were stripped of all real power so that they would not become political threats to his iron control of the Soviet Union. So Stalin only promoted based on merit until it was no longer absolutely necessary to save his own skin. I agree that dictators often surround themselves with incompetent sycophants. But Dzerzhinsky was not an incompetent sycophant. He carried out the job he was ordered to do with great effectiveness and statues were built to honor him all over the Soviet Union. A statue of the man literally stood in the KGB headquarters at Red Square. There are always exceptions of course, including Dzerzhinsky. I only point this out because often these groups seem harmless and incompetent during their rise to power. And even when they are in power. But modern media, video games, movies and fiction has created a sort of mythology around the Nazi regime being this group of hyper expression of ruthless German efficiency. They make stories about the Nazis getting a space program or invading the US, when the reality was they would be lucky to plan an invasion across the English channel and fail before it started. They were a bureaucratic nightmare of petty infighting and graft. And given the current state of politics, I do everything I can to undercut that myth because there is nothing mythical about the Nazis.
I'm not sure why you are talking about Nazis because I've never mentioned the Nazi hierarchy, just been talking about the Russian one. A lot of modern media about Nazi Germany has nothing really to do with Nazis at all, they're just shoehorned in as a convenient shorthand representation of "evil villains."
Lenin gave orders and Dzerzhinsky was the point man on carrying them out. But it is false to say that Lenin did not know or approve of Cheka's actions or that Lenin was just some sort of puppet figurehead for the Bolsheviks while others ran the show. Lenin was in charge of the Bolshevik regime for as long as he lived. All the crimes of the Bolshevik state from 1917 to 1924, I lay at his feet and call due. Do not offer Lenin any absolution for the crimes committed by his followers. He deserves none.
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I certainly find the discussion on America's capitalism today a lot more interesting than the discussion of Russia's authoritarian regime 100 years ago. Probably a decent bit more productive too.
Are some of the things we know about Lenin and stuff the result of propaganda, is he better than the picture we have of him in the west? I have almost zero doubt that that's the case. It doesn't really matter to me either way though. His way failed, America's way is failing (arguably), now we have to try new things.
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@LordofAwesome. Sorry about that, I'm still in Russian/world history 101 and why authoritarian governments are bad mode from the last few hours of discussion.
I wasn't saying otherwise. We were in a bit of historical wrestling match earlier where people were really latching onto misstatements and characterizations that proved to be inaccurate. I may have been overly cautions and gave the impression that Lenin was somehow less responsible, which was not what I intended. All the crimes fall on Lenin in the end.
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On July 11 2018 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:
I certainly find the discussion on America's capitalism today a lot more interesting than the discussion of Russia's authoritarian regime 100 years ago. Probably a decent bit more productive too.
Are some of the things we know about Lenin and stuff the result of propaganda, is he better than the picture we have of him in the west? I have almost zero doubt that that's the case. It doesn't really matter to me either way though. His way failed, America's way is failing (arguably), now we have to try new things.
All I know is I've been disappointed in life ever since I found out that we didn't advance to communism along with universal suffrage. I'd read in a book about how first there were kingdoms and feudalism, then the budding democracy of the merchant republic came along with capitalism, and finally they invented universal suffrage and communism. I thought that's what we had at the time. But when I asked my teacher (I was 12 at the time) he said communism didn't work. I've never been the same.
This is how I know I'm "a leftist". I'd much rather try and find a way to make communism work than keep what we got now.
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On July 11 2018 07:15 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:
I certainly find the discussion on America's capitalism today a lot more interesting than the discussion of Russia's authoritarian regime 100 years ago. Probably a decent bit more productive too.
Are some of the things we know about Lenin and stuff the result of propaganda, is he better than the picture we have of him in the west? I have almost zero doubt that that's the case. It doesn't really matter to me either way though. His way failed, America's way is failing (arguably), now we have to try new things. All I know is I've been disappointed in life ever since I found out that we didn't advance to communism along with universal suffrage. I'd read in a book about how first there were kingdoms and feudalism, then the budding democracy of the merchant republic came along with capitalism, and finally they invented universal suffrage and communism. I thought that's what we had at the time. But when I asked my teacher (I was 12 at the time) he said communism didn't work. I've never been the same. This is how I know I'm "a leftist". I'd much rather try and find a way to make communism work than keep what we got now.
My tip: don’t call it communism. Rebrand that shit.
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On July 11 2018 07:15 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:
I certainly find the discussion on America's capitalism today a lot more interesting than the discussion of Russia's authoritarian regime 100 years ago. Probably a decent bit more productive too.
Are some of the things we know about Lenin and stuff the result of propaganda, is he better than the picture we have of him in the west? I have almost zero doubt that that's the case. It doesn't really matter to me either way though. His way failed, America's way is failing (arguably), now we have to try new things. All I know is I've been disappointed in life ever since I found out that we didn't advance to communism along with universal suffrage. I'd read in a book about how first there were kingdoms and feudalism, then the budding democracy of the merchant republic came along with capitalism, and finally they invented universal suffrage and communism. I thought that's what we had at the time. But when I asked my teacher (I was 12 at the time) he said communism didn't work. I've never been the same. This is how I know I'm "a leftist". I'd much rather try and find a way to make communism work than keep what we got now. The problem with Communism is that people are people. So the obvious answer to making it work is to not leave it in the hands of people.
AI controlled society might get there.
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A stain on our country's history. Apparently at least a dozen of the kid's parents have already been deported. Imagine the horror of not only being separated from your kids, but also being kicked back over the border while your kids rot in some internment camp god knows where.
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On July 11 2018 07:36 On_Slaught wrote:A stain on our country's history. Apparently at least a dozen of the kid's parents have already been deported. Imagine the horror of not only being separated from your kids, but also being kicked back over the border while your kids rot in some internment camp god knows where. https://twitter.com/BBCNorthAmerica/status/1016792224372350976
How to radicalize a population in 3 easy steps. God damn. We stole a bunch of people's kids. This is so unbelievably tragic. This is so, so, so wrong.
Edit: And the people who defend this inhumane bullshit think of it the wrong way. You aren't just punishing an immigrant for breaking the law. You are ALSO directly harming the child. You are forcing a child away from their parents and ensuring many children never see their parents again. Children are being harmed. In no way shape or form is it EVER acceptable to harm children. I don't care what their parents did. A child is always morally/ethically independent. Taking a child from their parents without a way of guaranteeing they are able to be reunited is inhumane.
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On July 11 2018 07:36 On_Slaught wrote:A stain on our country's history. Apparently at least a dozen of the kid's parents have already been deported. Imagine the horror of not only being separated from your kids, but also being kicked back over the border while your kids rot in some internment camp god knows where. https://twitter.com/BBCNorthAmerica/status/1016792224372350976 I'd pretend to be shocked but this is literally what people said was going to happen.
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It won’t get better. Just wait until we hear about how badly the teenagers were treated.
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Trump readying another $200 billion in tariffs towards China. Besides this insane policy you think the Nationalists inside the WH would be pushing towards government investing in modernizing Steel plants, and other factories that could replace this stuff. But once again the US way of thinking is why make 3 bucks when you can't make 100 by not employing domestically.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is readying tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese imports, ranging from burglar alarms to mackerel, escalating a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative proposed 10 percent tariffs Tuesday on a list of 6,031 Chinese product lines.
The office will accept public comments and hold hearings on the plan Aug. 20-23 before reaching a decision after Aug. 31, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
Last Friday, the U.S. imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese products, and Beijing responded by hitting the same amount of U.S. imports.
The administration said the new levies are a response to China’s decision to retaliate against the first round of U.S. tariffs.
President Donald Trump has threatened to tax as much as $550 billion in Chinese products — an amount that exceeds America’s total imports from China last year.
The United States complains that China uses predatory practices in a push to challenge American technological dominance. Chinese tactics, the administration says, include outright cybertheft and forcing U.S. companies to hand over technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market.
The initial U.S. tariff list focused on Chinese industrial products in an attempt to limit the impact on American consumers. By expanding the list, the administration is beginning to hit products that U.S. households buy, including such things as electric lamps and fish sticks.
“Tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products amounts to another multibillion-dollar tax on American businesses and families,” said Scott Lincicome, a trade lawyer and senior policy analyst for the group Republicans Fighting Tariffs. “Given China’s likelihood of retaliation, it’s also billions worth of new tariffs on American exporters.”
Members of Congress are increasingly questioning Trump’s aggressive trade policies, warning that tariffs on imports raise prices for consumers and expose U.S. farmers and manufacturers to retaliation abroad.
“Tonight’s announcement appears reckless and is not a targeted approach,” Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement. “We cannot turn a blind eye to China’s mercantilist trade practices, but this action falls short of a strategy that will give the administration negotiating leverage with China while maintaining the long-term health and prosperity of the American economy.”
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On July 11 2018 05:39 TheLordofAwesome wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 02:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:29 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:15 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:11 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 02:09 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 02:04 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 02:00 Sermokala wrote:On July 11 2018 01:52 Plansix wrote:
[quote]
Only if you tell use the story of the robber barons, Pinkertons, union busters, the imperial supreme court of the 1930, the great depressions and the prosperity gospel. We don’t even need to leave the US to see the worst of capitalism. We took it as far as it could go without destroying the country. This isn't an argument about how Capitalism is bad its an argument about how capitalism is white supremacist and socialism isn't. You don't get points by pointing out how admittedly capitalism has had its faults. You lose points by admitting that socialism has had the same faults. Nothing is more disingenuous then advocating for failed government types based on theoretical "but I'm sure we'll make it work this time" appeals. Socialism in its complete form doesn't work and its never worked. Capitalism doesn't work in its complete form either. But capitalism can be compromised and keep much of its benefits while socialism can't. You are right, that was not my argument. It is a response to bringing up the worst of socialism and communism as an argument against the merits of those systems. Don't bring up Chavez, the USSR or communist China if you don't want the Pinkertons and Union busters thrown back at you in response. For the record I bring them up not to say that socialism itself is bad. But to show that in practice it has had a lot of warts as well. Democratic Socialism has a ton of strengths. However that is not far enough for GH he wants the USSR and seems to believe that everything bad about it was either caused by the west or not bad and just western propaganda. I'd take Lenin over Trump or Clinton 100 out of 100 times. I'm not sure he was such a great guy. + Show Spoiler +Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police, the Cheka had conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people".[96][97][98][99] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]
The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[104] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".[108] I'm not a Trump or Clinton person myself either but I do prefer a system of government that keeps people from rounding up people and executing them based on anything. lol... You remember how that all started? No I don't I was not born yet, nor am I from Russia. But I have read about it yes. And I don't think that going in, rounding up the people doing shitty stuff and killing them all is justified. Like right now I wouldn't want some group to go into Venezuela round up all of Maduro's friends, family, their families and murder them all. I meant remember as in you didn't just google that and copy paste it. Like you actually studied that history at some point before this conversation. Because it doesn't seem like you did. It seems like you're oblivious that you're talking about a civil war or are completely unaware of how warfare was executed in the early 1900's. GH, I have read a lot about Russian history. From the Kievan Rus and the Rurikovich dynasty who ruled Muscovy right up until the Time of Troubles, to the Romanov dynasty and its two standouts, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the February Revolution, the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power. Lenin came to power in October of 1917. Lenin immediately established the Cheka on December 20, 1917. Cheka was the first iteration of the Soviet secret police, and it was led by the very weird Polish aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was very open about what Cheka did, stating, Show nested quote +
"We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence."
Cheka's name was changed a lot in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming the NKVD and then finally the KGB. But the organization never changed from being a bunch of fanatics and alcoholics in a chamber of horrors. Here are just some of the atrocities carried out by the organization that Lenin created immediately following his rise to power. Show nested quote +"The methods included:[36] being skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, or rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat in the tube closed off with wire netting, while the tube was held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape.[36] Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[36][37]
Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror. Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 13 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.[38]" And yet you have the gall to claim that Lenin would have been better than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? In fact, you double down on praising Lenin when other people started to call you out on your ridiculous assertions. Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 03:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 03:02 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 03:00 GreenHorizons wrote:
By what measure was Lenin not better than his contemporary international peers? He wasn’t. He was power hungry revolutionary that overthrew powerful monarchs. It’s just one group of assholes overthrowing another group of assholes. Notwithstanding your characterization, you're list sounds pretty pointless if everyone is on it. In the never-ending cycle of assholes overthrowing assholes he's one of the better ones, not making some list of (everyone) the worst. One of the better ones? You are one of the most aggressively ignorant individuals I have ever met. EDIT: I would like to award Plansix 50 points of awesomeness because this is the best description of GH I've read. Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 03:11 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 03:06 xDaunt wrote:
When I was talking about enjoying the exposure of GH's Bolshevism a few days ago, I thought I was just joking. I didn't realize it was quite literal. It is a combination of overwhelming confidence in his positions and a lackluster understanding of world history. It is both impressive and unassailable.
French Republicans also had a reign of terror and yet that doesn't diminish republicanism. Sometimes you must pass through the terror of abstract universalism to realize the concrete version. There are such things as real enemies. Sometimes it is a life and death struggle.
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EPT
