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If you're arguing for the side that says "Lenin was uniquely bad, that's an argument against you", and when someone answers
"Here are other bad things, are they arguments against you?" you go "Yeah of course there are other bad things, a lot of people are assholes", the conversation can't really go well from there.
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On July 11 2018 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:
If you're arguing for the side that says "Lenin was uniquely bad, that's an argument against you", and when someone answers
"Here are other bad things, are they arguments against you?" you go "Yeah of course there are other bad things, a lot of people are assholes", the conversation can't really go well from there.
Except no one did the first part. People just said that Lenin was bad for the people he ruled over and paved the way for a more rutheless dictator. There is nothing unique about that.
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On July 11 2018 12:05 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 12:01 Nebuchad wrote:
If you're arguing for the side that says "Lenin was uniquely bad, that's an argument against you", and when someone answers
"Here are other bad things, are they arguments against you?" you go "Yeah of course there are other bad things, a lot of people are assholes", the conversation can't really go well from there. Except no one did the first part. People just said that Lenin was bad for the people he ruled over and paved the way for a more rutheless dictator. There is nothing unique about that.
JimmiC definitely did the first part. That's basically the entire reason we're talking about Lenin, it's not like he's relevant today otherwise.
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On July 11 2018 12:01 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:48 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 11 2018 11:42 JimmiC wrote: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. dude for a guy who can see through "capitalist propaganda" you drink down the communist propaganda like cold water on a hot day.
It helps make your posts appear to be reflective of a more serious position when you actually present an argument.
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I'm still baffled on how trump is anyway near as bad as lenin. Lenin actualy had peopled killed en mass as a matter of policy. Trump is a bumbiling con man whos just shitty to people.
Seperatring families is better than killing families. Its not good but for christs said he hasn't ordered the undocumented workers killed after they are rounded up.
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On July 11 2018 12:30 Sermokala wrote:
I'm still baffled on how trump is anyway near as bad as lenin. Lenin actualy had peopled killed en mass as a matter of policy. Trump is a bumbiling con man whos just shitty to people.
Seperatring families is better than killing families. Its not good but for christs said he hasn't ordered the undocumented workers killed after they are rounded up.
Not for nothing, but he would order the army to fire on illegal border crossers if he could. He wouldn’t put them in death camps(I don’t believe?), but he would shoot at them to keep them away.
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You guys understand that the US while having a horrific domestic history of it's own does it's most horrific stuff in other countries? Trump has killed thousands of civilians already.
It seems to me that you guys are far too comfortable with killing people as long as they are in other countries.
On July 11 2018 12:37 JimmiC wrote:
Maybe, thank goodness there are laws that protect peoples basic rights. Including protecting GH right to believe that slavery is only bad if people can be bought and sold. Not that it is all awful.
You've said a lot of painfully ignorant things thus far, but this has to be my favorite at the moment.
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On July 11 2018 12:30 Sermokala wrote:
I'm still baffled on how trump is anyway near as bad as lenin. Lenin actualy had peopled killed en mass as a matter of policy. Trump is a bumbiling con man whos just shitty to people.
Seperatring families is better than killing families. Its not good but for christs said he hasn't ordered the undocumented workers killed after they are rounded up.
Trump is constrained by governmental institutions. He's an enfant terrible that is friends with mobsters. It's pure delusion to think that he would have any moral compunctions about killing and torturing people under different circumstances.
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On July 11 2018 12:43 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 12:38 GreenHorizons wrote:You guys understand that the US while having a horrific domestic history of it's own does it's most horrific stuff in other countries? Trump has killed thousands of civilians already. It seems to me that you guys are far too comfortable with killing people as long as they are in other countries. On July 11 2018 12:37 JimmiC wrote:
Maybe, thank goodness there are laws that protect peoples basic rights. Including protecting GH right to believe that slavery is only bad if people can be bought and sold. Not that it is all awful. You've said a lot of painfully ignorant things thus far, but this has to be my favorite at the moment. This is the exact same thought I had when you were trying ti claim capitalism caused slavery and no communist nation had it and when it was pointed out they did you went , no but not this kind of slavery.
I'm not surprised you wouldn't understand at this point but it's an important distinction whether you care for it or not. You think I was unaware/not taking consideration of the Gulag?
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On July 11 2018 12:42 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 12:30 Sermokala wrote:
I'm still baffled on how trump is anyway near as bad as lenin. Lenin actualy had peopled killed en mass as a matter of policy. Trump is a bumbiling con man whos just shitty to people.
Seperatring families is better than killing families. Its not good but for christs said he hasn't ordered the undocumented workers killed after they are rounded up. Trump is constrained by governmental institutions. He's an enfant terrible that is friends with mobsters. It's pure delusion to think that he would have any moral compunctions about killing and torturing people under different circumstances.
Perhaps now would be a good time to explain to your leftist compatriots why the rule of law actually matters.
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United States42262 Posts
On July 11 2018 11:56 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:46 IgnE wrote: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:
[quote]
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:
[quote]
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:
[quote]
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.
Lenin and his followers weren't members of the exploited class, they just saw fit to attribute their choices to acting on behalf of the exploited class.
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On July 11 2018 13:18 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 11:56 Plansix wrote:On July 11 2018 11:46 IgnE wrote: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:
[quote]
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,
[quote] 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.
[quote]
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.
[quote]
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.
[quote] 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. Lenin and his followers weren't members of the exploited class, they just saw fit to attribute their choices to acting on behalf of the exploited class.
Lenin and the bolsheviks were very popular among the workers in the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg and amongst the soldiers stationed in that city in 1917. They did not "just see fit to attribute their choices to acting on behalf of the exploited class." They actually were elected by workers' councils in that city and confirmed by soviets from cities all across the Russia.
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United States42262 Posts
On July 11 2018 12:50 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2018 12:42 IgnE wrote:On July 11 2018 12:30 Sermokala wrote:
I'm still baffled on how trump is anyway near as bad as lenin. Lenin actualy had peopled killed en mass as a matter of policy. Trump is a bumbiling con man whos just shitty to people.
Seperatring families is better than killing families. Its not good but for christs said he hasn't ordered the undocumented workers killed after they are rounded up. Trump is constrained by governmental institutions. He's an enfant terrible that is friends with mobsters. It's pure delusion to think that he would have any moral compunctions about killing and torturing people under different circumstances. Perhaps now would be a good time to explain to your leftist compatriots why the rule of law actually matters.
When the President believes himself above the law it's a little silly to worry about whatever petty infraction you're presumably up in arms over today. Tone at the top matters, and we have a President who advocated for the murder of his political opponents and said he would pardon himself if he ever needed to.
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EPT
