Review: "The Trotsky"

I missed this earlier:

KenS wrote:

Bullets to the head as a consequence of searching for socialism don't happen if you have grown up in North America.

What did Gore Vidal say about "The United States of Amnesia" again?  Whatever it was, it applies to Canada too, by the looks of it.

Ever hear of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Regina "Riot," the Estevan massacre?

How about the catalysts  for the creation of international Labour Day, the Haymarket Martyrs?

KenS wrote:

Bullets to the head as a consequence of searching for socialism don't happen if you have grown up in North America.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

What did Gore Vidal say about "The United States of Amnesia" again?  Whatever it was, it applies to Canada too, by the looks of it.

Ever hear of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Regina "Riot," the Estevan massacre?

How about the catalysts  for the creation of international Labour Day, the Haymarket Martyrs?

I'm well aware of our heritage, thanks very much. And there was at least as much deathly repression in Canada.

Operative word: "was".

As I said "Bullets to the head as a consequence of searching for socialism don't happen if you have grown up in North America." Even those of us over 60 or 70 [not that I'm that old, yet] have never lived in conditions where searching for socialism is going to earn you a bullet. Thats what is relevant to the context of this discussion.

melovesproles wrote:

Quote:

Bullets to the head as a consequence of searching for socialism don't happen if you have grown up in North America.

That's certainly not historically true.  In my neck of the woods, Ginger Goodwin is a good example of someone who took a bullet for being a socialist and resisting conscription during WW1.

And just because bullets are not used as much against the left in Canada these days doesn't mean contemporary anti-labour/left violence should be minimized or ignored.  Maybe for some NDP lefties, the class struggle all seems a little surreal but (one example)I highly doubt the workers who struggled to (re)unionize Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta would agree.

Who said anything about minimizing struggles? I was making the point that people obssess on the protaganist being a rich kid. That it would be different if it were a kid with a single mom. Again, it wouldn't be different. If you go literally looking for the Russian Revloution, or Marxs world, you are a charming goof whether you are a rich kid, or the poor kid like I was when I did that.

Obviously, not everyone, or most even, have such a literal and romantic picture when they are searching for socialism.

But the reactions to what I said are a reflection of the problem that the template of struggling for socialism that people hanker to apply happens or happened in another time and in a different kind of place than the one we live and act in.

KenS wrote:

Even those of us over 60 or 70 [not that I'm that old, yet] have never lived in conditions where searching for socialism is going to earn you a bullet. Thats what is relevant to the context of this discussion.

You're absolutely sure the political power of the wealthy classes was seriously threatened by anyone "searching for socialism" in the last 60 or 70 years in Canada? If and when that ever happens, you'd better have your bulletproof vest and your bunker ready to go.

And depending on your social class or racial origin, you will get a bullet in Canada, today, for doing a lot less than "searching for socialism".

Tim Buck, Communist politician, was shot at (by prison guards and such) while in jail in the early 1930's. The CP had been banned and the entire leadership was incarcerated in a Canadian dungeon. The judge, later in court, tried to silence Buck as well. However, the latter managed to get a "I was shot at while in jail ...." or words to that effect into the record before the court thugs dragged him away.

Around the same time, a number of miners in Estevan were murdered by the RCMP when the latter opened fire on unarmed protestors. Even the gravestones of the victims were defaced by the police.

In March 1988, aboriginal leader JJ Harper was gunned down in Winnipeg by police constable Robert Cross. The shooting took place a few blocks from where I lived. The killing was variously described as an execution or assassination.

What was that about no danger of being shot in Canada?

An interesting theory of the reason for detached, critical analysis of power in the emergent period of social welfare, aQ.   :)

Not even while storming the barricades?

melovesproles wrote:

I also agree with the points made above that the relatively 'restrained' use of violence directed against the left in Canada is entirely based on how unthreatened the elite feels.

Well, duh. Since I'm the only one speaking in the direction at all of the comment made a number of times now, that "To say that the state would have the same reaction to dissent regardless of whether you were a rich or poor, white or First Nations is extremely naeive." could only be directed at me. But you all are talking to some straw person of your own making, not to what I said.

Nor was I  taking issue with the overall point of the last paragraph. I was making the point that people obsessed about the role of the rich kid protaganist, that it would have been just as much a farce with a protaganist from the family of a struggling single mom.

I made that point not just to carp, but because the left wallowing in our sub-cultural isolation makes us easy marks for trivialization.

But the point about the movie being the same if it wasn't a rich kid is itself pretty limited....not in the same league as the sweeping repostes to it.

Fidel wrote:

It was either Mao or Chiang Kai-shek and his gangsters who murdered ten million Chinese before Maoists chased them away to Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek was an incompetent dufus, yes, but pound for pound, the biggest all-around murder and destroyer was and is Mao Zedong.

Here's a reminder: http://ninecommentaries.com/