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On July 11 2018 09:28 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +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:On July 11 2018 02:04 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 02:00 Sermokala wrote:
[quote]
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,
"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]" 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. 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. 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.
Yeah, all those Russia peasants they killed for not wanting to starve to death were enemies of the people.
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On July 11 2018 09:59 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 09:28 IgnE 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:On July 11 2018 02:04 Plansix wrote:
[quote]
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,
"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]" 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. 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. 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. Yeah, all those Russia peasants they killed for not wanting to starve to death were enemies of the people.
How is this a productive comment? You are collapsing a very complicated and thorny problem (food production and distribution) into a simple yay or nay on the October Revolution.
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On July 11 2018 10:49 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 09:59 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 09:28 IgnE 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]" 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. 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. 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. Yeah, all those Russia peasants they killed for not wanting to starve to death were enemies of the people. How is this a productive comment? You are collapsing a very complicated and thorny problem (food production and distribution) into a simple yay or nay on the October Revolution.
It is about as productive as the stirring historical argument that rutherless rules must be overthrown by ruthless revolutionaries. A stirring insight of historical merit.
Lenin was the son of a wealthly, but not aristocratic family, who went to overthrow the aristocracy of his country. And then immediately turned around and used violence against the remaining aristocracy and any memember of the poor, uneducated peasants that got in his way. His and his allies positions improved, while overthrowing some truly rotten aristocrats, but it was the half nots that suffered in the end.
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So I've read mixed things about the Cheka, but presuming for a moment that the worst stories are completely true, were they really worse than Pinochet and Manuel Contreras decades later?
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The trade war escalates as BMW moves its productions to Chine to above tariffs. BMW is one of SC largest employers and likely to lose jobs as the trade war escalates. And any hopes congress will stop Trump have evaporated. But I’m sure the GOP billionaire backers will keep the money flowing to make sure they get their Supreme Court pick.
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On July 11 2018 11:18 JimmiC wrote:
Does whos the worst matter?
Yeah, it sorta does. If Lenin was a despicable person for his role with the Cheka but the US was doing the same stuff decades later (through emissaries) or worse then it changes the relative position of Lenin compared to other world leaders.
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On July 11 2018 11:18 JimmiC wrote:
Does whos the worst matter?
Any discussion of history that revolves around which country, event, group or people is “better” is worthless. No one studies history through the lens of “merit” or to prove who had the better revolution. It is a fruitless discussion mired in subjective and the fact that all history is based on imperfect information. It is at best an amusing thought experiment.
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On July 11 2018 11:22 Plansix wrote:Any discussion of history that revolves around which country, event, group or people is “better” is worthless. No one studies history through the lens of “merit” or to prove who had the better revolution. It is a fruitless discussion mired in subjective and the fact that all history is based on imperfect information. It is at best an amusing thought experiment.
I would agree with you if people weren't presenting the opposite argument, that Lenin being "worse" than other leaders is super important to establish, and you hadn't joined them.
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On July 11 2018 11:11 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 10:49 IgnE wrote:On July 11 2018 09:59 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 09:28 IgnE 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]" 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. 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. 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. Yeah, all those Russia peasants they killed for not wanting to starve to death were enemies of the people. How is this a productive comment? You are collapsing a very complicated and thorny problem (food production and distribution) into a simple yay or nay on the October Revolution. It is about as productive as the stirring historical argument that rutherless rules must be overthrown by ruthless revolutionaries. A stirring insight of historical merit. Lenin was the son of a wealthly, but not aristocratic family, who went to overthrow the aristocracy of his country. And then immediately turned around and used violence against the remaining aristocracy and any memember of the poor, uneducated peasants that got in his way. His and his allies positions improved, while overthrowing some truly rotten aristocrats, but it was the half nots that suffered in the end.
Nope sorry. You just throw in this jejune historical trivia without ever addressing the point. I'm not sure what you don't understand about "sometimes it is a life and death struggle."
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On July 11 2018 11:32 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 11:18 JimmiC wrote:
Does whos the worst matter? Yeah, it sorta does. If Lenin was a despicable person for his role with the Cheka but the US was doing the same stuff decades later (through emissaries) or worse then it changes the relative position of Lenin compared to other world leaders. First your assertions that they had the same relationship to the US. And were following direct orders to kill their people is so far from the truth. And then even if you did call it equal/slightly better/ slightly worse what does it prove? I don't think anyone here thinks the US supporting evils abroad to fight communism is a good thing. And it wouldn't justify Lenin doing it.
They were literally trained in the US and sent to overthrow the Democratic Socialist government of Chile and the US continued to support them through their systematic kidnapping, torturing, and slaughtering of political opposition (various socialist groups). But K.
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On July 11 2018 11:35 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 11:32 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 11:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 11:18 JimmiC wrote:
Does whos the worst matter? Yeah, it sorta does. If Lenin was a despicable person for his role with the Cheka but the US was doing the same stuff decades later (through emissaries) or worse then it changes the relative position of Lenin compared to other world leaders. First your assertions that they had the same relationship to the US. And were following direct orders to kill their people is so far from the truth. And then even if you did call it equal/slightly better/ slightly worse what does it prove? I don't think anyone here thinks the US supporting evils abroad to fight communism is a good thing. And it wouldn't justify Lenin doing it. They were literally trained in the US and sent to overthrow the Democratic Socialist government of Chile and the US continued to support them through their systematic kidnapping, torturing, and slaughtering of political opposition (various socialist groups). But K. I'm honestly waiting for you to admit this is all an epic troll! Or do you honestly believe they did all those war crimes based on a direct order from a US president?
I would advise against holding your breath. They did what we trained them to do.
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On July 11 2018 11:32 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:11 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 10:49 IgnE wrote:On July 11 2018 09:59 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 09:28 IgnE 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]" 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. 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. 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. Yeah, all those Russia peasants they killed for not wanting to starve to death were enemies of the people. How is this a productive comment? You are collapsing a very complicated and thorny problem (food production and distribution) into a simple yay or nay on the October Revolution. It is about as productive as the stirring historical argument that rutherless rules must be overthrown by ruthless revolutionaries. A stirring insight of historical merit. Lenin was the son of a wealthly, but not aristocratic family, who went to overthrow the aristocracy of his country. And then immediately turned around and used violence against the remaining aristocracy and any memember of the poor, uneducated peasants that got in his way. His and his allies positions improved, while overthrowing some truly rotten aristocrats, but it was the half nots that suffered in the end. Nope sorry. You just throw in this jejune historical trivia without ever addressing the point. I'm not sure what you don't understand about "sometimes it is a life and death struggle."
There have been a lot of life and death struggles throughout history. Are you attempting to argue that the Russian revolution has some unique quality that allows us to overlook the brutality of Lenin and his followers?
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On July 11 2018 11:18 JimmiC wrote:
Does whos the worst matter?
Yeah it matters when "he's the worst" is used to to discredit the entire event in toto. That is doubly so when "capitalist" or "republican" revolutions end up instituting similar purges without any historical blemish. That is triply so when "he's the worst" is used as an argument without any consideration of the other side, any consideration of what counter-revolutionary intra- and international forces were acting to oppose the revolution, or any consideration of the nature and aims of the revolution. Most people who pronounce on the ethical quandries that revolutionaries find themselves in tend to reiterate facts that elide the complexities of the situation.
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On July 11 2018 11:42 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:32 IgnE wrote:On July 11 2018 11:11 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 10:49 IgnE wrote:On July 11 2018 09:59 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 09:28 IgnE 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]" 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. 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. 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. Yeah, all those Russia peasants they killed for not wanting to starve to death were enemies of the people. How is this a productive comment? You are collapsing a very complicated and thorny problem (food production and distribution) into a simple yay or nay on the October Revolution. It is about as productive as the stirring historical argument that rutherless rules must be overthrown by ruthless revolutionaries. A stirring insight of historical merit. Lenin was the son of a wealthly, but not aristocratic family, who went to overthrow the aristocracy of his country. And then immediately turned around and used violence against the remaining aristocracy and any memember of the poor, uneducated peasants that got in his way. His and his allies positions improved, while overthrowing some truly rotten aristocrats, but it was the half nots that suffered in the end. Nope sorry. You just throw in this jejune historical trivia without ever addressing the point. I'm not sure what you don't understand about "sometimes it is a life and death struggle." There have been a lot of life and death struggles throughout history. Are you attempting to argue that the Russian revolution has some unique quality that allows us to overlook the brutality of Lenin and his followers?
What the fuck are you even talking about? "There have been a lot of life and death struggles throughout history?" What kind of non-sequitur is that? Is it a coincidence that you haven't mentioned the French Revolution despite that being integral to my first post on this subject or are you just a fortune cookie that spits out irrelevancies and then asks loaded questions? What I'm actually asking you to do is to really do some history, wrestle with all the facts, and then make an even-handed assessment of the October Revolution and Lenin in view of those facts. You act as if his opponents are the "good guys" from the start.
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On July 11 2018 11:42 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 11:35 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 11:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 11:32 JimmiC wrote:On July 11 2018 11:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 11:18 JimmiC wrote:
Does whos the worst matter? Yeah, it sorta does. If Lenin was a despicable person for his role with the Cheka but the US was doing the same stuff decades later (through emissaries) or worse then it changes the relative position of Lenin compared to other world leaders. First your assertions that they had the same relationship to the US. And were following direct orders to kill their people is so far from the truth. And then even if you did call it equal/slightly better/ slightly worse what does it prove? I don't think anyone here thinks the US supporting evils abroad to fight communism is a good thing. And it wouldn't justify Lenin doing it. They were literally trained in the US and sent to overthrow the Democratic Socialist government of Chile and the US continued to support them through their systematic kidnapping, torturing, and slaughtering of political opposition (various socialist groups). But K. I'm honestly waiting for you to admit this is all an epic troll! Or do you honestly believe they did all those war crimes based on a direct order from a US president? I would advise against holding your breath. They did what we trained them to do. OK lets say for arguments sake that this is what they wanted all that shit to happen, it wasn't just what they thought was the lesser of two evils (stupidly). Do you think they were right to do so? Do you agree with it? If not why do with you with Lenin/Stalin? I find it appalling that the Americans supported these regimes in any way at all.
No, I don't think they were right or agree with it obviously.
Lenin was responding to a civil war and assassination attempts. The US sent a trained death squad to Chile to stop them from having a more equitable system than capitalism and seizing control over their own territory.
If you want to equate those things, that's on you.
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On July 11 2018 11:46 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:42 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 11:32 IgnE wrote:On July 11 2018 11:11 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 10:49 IgnE wrote:On July 11 2018 09:59 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 09:28 IgnE 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:
[quote]
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]" 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. On July 11 2018 03:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 03:02 Plansix wrote:
[quote]
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. 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. Yeah, all those Russia peasants they killed for not wanting to starve to death were enemies of the people. How is this a productive comment? You are collapsing a very complicated and thorny problem (food production and distribution) into a simple yay or nay on the October Revolution. It is about as productive as the stirring historical argument that rutherless rules must be overthrown by ruthless revolutionaries. A stirring insight of historical merit. Lenin was the son of a wealthly, but not aristocratic family, who went to overthrow the aristocracy of his country. And then immediately turned around and used violence against the remaining aristocracy and any memember of the poor, uneducated peasants that got in his way. His and his allies positions improved, while overthrowing some truly rotten aristocrats, but it was the half nots that suffered in the end. Nope sorry. You just throw in this jejune historical trivia without ever addressing the point. I'm not sure what you don't understand about "sometimes it is a life and death struggle." There have been a lot of life and death struggles throughout history. Are you attempting to argue that the Russian revolution has some unique quality that allows us to overlook the brutality of Lenin and his followers? What the fuck are you even talking about? "There have been a lot of life and death struggles throughout history?" What kind of non-sequitur is that? Is it a coincidence that you haven't mentioned the French Revolution despite that being integral to my first post on this subject or are you just a fortune cookie that spits out irrelevancies and then asks loaded questions? What I'm actually asking you to do is actually do some history, wrestle with all the facts, and then make an even-handed assessment of the October Revolution and Lenin in view of those facts. You act as if his opponents are the "good guys" from the start.
Are you fucking kidding me? The Russian aristocracy where complete shit. Legitimate abusive authoritarian monsters that abused the peasantry and growing middle class. Lenin and his followers were the result of generations of abuse by the aristocracy.
It is possible that two groups of assholes fight over power and one group of assholes comes out on top. That is a healthy number of conflicts in history. If you asked me which of those two groups would I rather be ruled by, given what I know, I’d risk exile.
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EPT
