The blacklist resulted in hundreds of workers losing their jobs and being unable to secure new ones after being deemed troublemakers while raising legitimate workplace issues.
Huh. SFA about Communism.
It took a google search 1/1000 of a second to find this story.
Spend a whole second next time, and find one that has anything to do with communism.
I don't think there are any current Communists active on babble, are there?
Best that nobody hypothesize, until this whole "red baiting" silliness gets put to bed.
I couldn't live with the idea of a fellow babbler being fired from their job, and losing their family, because I flippantly referred to them as "comrade".
The German-Soviet invasion of Poland was an example of cooperation of socialist nations against Anglo-French imperialism.
- The Communist International
(An appeal issued by the Communist International on October 7, 1939 - that is, the 22 Anniversary of the October Revolution.)
http://www.17september1939.com/
Er...I assume that you realize that nobody here is follows the line of the CPSU, circa 1939. And that none of the small handful of posters here who might defend some aspects of the Soviet Union still defends the Pact.
I mention this because it appears that you started this thread in order to shame the left of 2016 for the actions of Josef Stalin in 1939. There are no Stalinists on this board and the USSR was dissolved a quarter of a century ago, so none of us deserve what you seem to be trying to do with this.
For the record Polish calvery never charged German tanks during the invasion.
BTW, anyone who know my posting here knows I've been one of the most anti-Stalinist(and anti-Putin)voices on this board.
I destest everything Stalin and his ilk did and everything Putin is doing now.
And from that viewpoint, I join all the others who are calling bullshit on this thread.
Whatever Stalin did and Putin is doing, even while I regard the Pact as an abomination and Soviet history after 1921 (when the Krondtstadt rising in defense of libertarian socialism and the autonomy of the local Soviets was crushed) an utter betrayal of the still-heroic ideas of socialism and even communism(in the form Marx envisioned it) I still recognize that Naziism was only defeated because the people of the Soviet Union crushed it(Hitler would never have been defeated by the the US, the British and Dominion/Imperial forces and the Free French alone-not that the troops from those countries, many of them men of the left didn't fight valiantly). You don't have to be an apologist for any dictator in Moscow to show respect to the heroic sacrifices of the Soviet people, including the Red Army in the decisive battles.
In the OP, what those people did was utterly pissed on. The loss of millions of lives was treated by Todrick as if it was nothing.
There is good reason to call out people for defending Putin.
There is no good reason ever to disrespect anyone who died fighting against the Third Reich.
For shame, Todrick.
For shame.
Why are you so obsessed with what Putin says? This is Babble...not the RT.Com talkboard. Nobody here is an agent of Putin.
The people who post things here that you don't like(and that I don't agree with, either) are doing that on their own.
Nobody gets "Moscow gold" anymore.
And the damn Cold War is over.
It's time to move on.
Really, Ken?
We aren't supposed to even talk about history, or about lies that are being told right now or fascist movement that are being promoted right now because why?
Because of the divine memory of the honoured war dead? Do you really think turning a blind eye to fascism, or ignoring lies from someone you just called a dictator honours them?
(and funny, I have never called Putin a dictator; I know he was elected)
I appreciate your honesty; it is better than some here, but that's quite the taboo if you don't dare say anything to those people you claim you disagree with.
Or in this case, challenge endless and open trolling.
Oh FFS, Ken.
Who is showing disrespect toward the sacrifice of the Soviet people? Show me where anyone has said anything remotely like that.
You're talking like some American who wraps himself in the flag rather than have an honest conversation about that history because even though you yourself acknowledge it, it would be sacrilege.
Now the posted article IS completely fucked, in that it spins the Nazis and Soviets in a noble effort to fight imperialism. That ain't quite how it happened; there was nothing noble about it. And they made things far worse - in Poland, in the Baltics, in Finland, and in Western Europe, and in the end made far more death and sacrifice necessary.
You can talk about Soviet sacrifice to end Nazism all you want, and I will agree with you.
And ikosmos can amen and hallelujah all he wants, but none of that changes the fact that this happened.
Why is it important? Not because I or anyone here hates the Russians, or denies that they were crucial to ending the war, or disrespects their sacrifice, but because ever since Barbarossa their leaders have spun this lie that they are the only nation which is truly opposed to Nazism, even though they were one of the greatest collaborators, and even though they turned a blind eye to that collaboration when it suited them.
In that, they are no different than our governments.
They still use that lie about others being Nazis, even as Putin's government funds neo-Nazi organizations in Europe.
You can be as outraged and cry shame as much as you want, but it doesn't change what Stalin did, and how their nation has used that lie since then.
Of course we can talk about history. I just did in the first post you responded to. And it's fine to challenge trolling. It's even fine to be anti-Putin(I'm probably more anti-Putin than you are, it's just that I reject the neo-Cold War way you are doing it. I called him a dicatator because I see the guy that way myself).
But that's not what you guys were doing. You were bringing up the Pact(even though nobody today, including the posters you're calling out here, actually defend it to my knowledge)and both of you were essentially saying that the Soviet Union deserves no significant credit for Hitler's defeat.
I agree that the Pact shouldn't have happened. But the fact that it happened does NOT mean that the Soviet people didn't play an epic role in the defeat of the Reich(Hitler would have done everything he managed to do even if the Pact hadn't happened
The way you and Todrick made your arguments here ended up disrespecting a lot of people who bore no responsibility for Stalin's crimes and who would never be supporting Putin if they walked the Earth today. It would have been one thing to say "the Soviet record on this was mixed, although the Soviet people themselves were heroic". But you didn't do that. It sounded like you were both saying that the USSR shouldn't get any real credit at all for the defeat of Naziism, and that the Soviet state was on the same moral plain as the Third Reich.
You could have made the points you were trying to make without swinging so wildly and sounding so dismissive.
Why not just start a thread called "Enough Already With The Pro-Putin Trolling"? Why take in this ugly direction, instead? It's not as if this board is in danger of being taken over by Putin supporters. Were basically talking one or two people here. And if the repetition in their threads is that much of an issue for you, you could simply have gone to the mods about it.
Instead, you've ended up sounding like Adlai Stevenson making a bloody fool of himself at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia is simply one other country. Putin is just one other head of state. There is no horrific global conspiracy afoot.
Of course we can talk about history. I just did in the first post you responded to. And it's fine to challenge trolling. It's even fine to be anti-Putin(I'm probably more anti-Putin than you are, it's just that I reject the neo-Cold War way you are doing it. I called him a dicatator because I see the guy that way myself).
But that's not what you guys were doing. You were bringing up the Pact(even though nobody today, including the posters you're calling out here, actually defend it to my knowledge)and both of you were essentially saying that the Soviet Union deserves no significant credit for Hitler's defeat.
I agree that the Pact shouldn't have happened. But the fact that it happened does NOT mean that the Soviet people didn't play an epic role in the defeat of the Reich(Hitler would have done everything he managed to do even if the Pact hadn't happened
The way you and Todrick made your arguments here ended up disrespecting a lot of people who bore no responsibility for Stalin's crimes and who would never be supporting Putin if they walked the Earth today. It would have been one thing to say "the Soviet record on this was mixed, although the Soviet people themselves were heroic". But you didn't do that. It sounded like you were both saying that the USSR shouldn't get any real credit at all for the defeat of Naziism, and that the Soviet state was on the same moral plain as the Third Reich.
You could have made the points you were trying to make without swinging so wildly and sounding so dismissive.
Why not just start a thread called "Enough Already With The Pro-Putin Trolling"? Why take in this ugly direction, instead? It's not as if this board is in danger of being taken over by Putin supporters. Were basically talking one or two people here. And if the repetition in their threads is that much of an issue for you, you could simply have gone to the mods about it.
Instead, you've ended up sounding like Adlai Stevenson making a bloody fool of himself at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia is simply one other country. Putin is just one other head of state. There is no horrific global conspiracy afoot.
But that's not what you guys were doing. You were bringing up the Pact(even though nobody today, including the posters you're calling out here, actually defend it to my knowledge)and both of you were essentially saying that the Soviet Union deserves no significant credit for Hitler's defeat.
I asked you once already to back up that false statement with evidence.
No one said that. I have pointed out numerous times in this thread that no one made that smear, and I said myself that they were critical to the defeat of Nazism.
Repeat it again and you can expect to get called for knowingly telling a lie.
That sacrifice does not change the fact that so many want to ignore - that they started the war as aggressors, and working to help the Nazis. You know it, and I know it. What is the problem? Do you think we are too stupid to deal with that discrepancy in a mature way, and that we can't talk about it without dishonouring the dead?
If this is just some other country and some other leader and there's nothing special here how come people are getting so twitchy and insisting we be quiet and move on?
Perhaps you should follow your own advice and just ignore people you disagree with.
And gee, I wish I could set such a bad example as Adlai Stevenson.
(edit)
And no, I suppose ikosmos didn't defend the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pakt. He called it "karma".
From post #18:
"Maybe I'll spell it out again, just in case anyone else claims that Russia was a bulwark against Nazism, and saved the world."
You didn't say "Stalin".
You didn't say "The Soviet State".
You said "Russia"...which clearly implied(before you slightly modified your stance later) that every ethnic Russian(and by small extension, every Soviet citizen of any ethnicity) was complicit in the Pact and the (temporary) collusion with Hitler and that the entry of the Soviet Union in the anti-Nazi effort(including the millions of lives lost in the winter battles against the Reich) were of no real importance to the outcome.
Opposing Putin is a legitimate stance, but a stance that could have been taken without writing Soviet heroism out of the defeat of fascism. If the USSR hadn't ended the Pact, Hitler would have been victorious in Europe. Naziism would never have been stopped without the decisive blow the Soviet troops inflicted on the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad and the other places where Soviets fell. Yes, Stalin should never have aligned, even temporarily, with the Reich. Yes, Stalin was a monster. But the Soviet people still played the key role and some of us think that their valour and their deaths atoned for the Pact a million times over. Without them, North America would be under Nazi military occupation to this day.
It isn't necessary to diminish the Soviet role between 1941 and VE Day to challenge pro-Putin spammers. And honoring the Soviet dead doesn't equate to whitewashing Stalinism or giving Putin a stamp of approval.
I get what you were trying to do, but it was a totally inappropriate way to do it. You didn't just nail minor online nuisances(do you really think it's possible to cause a global Putinist takeover by posting on a small left-wing Canadian discussion board? By that logic, Babble should have caused a socialist revolution in Canada within six months of the site launch), you insulted a whole nation and its war dead-most of whom have done nothing to you or to anyone else.
You never needed to use this tactic to make your point.
"This tactic"?
Ken, if you read back I explain exactly why I used those words: because they are the same ones ikosmos used (and pulls out every time they are handy) about Western barbarians, and that Russia saved the world from Nazism.
It's right there in the quote you pulled, for heaven's sake. I am holding our good friend to task for his claims. I can't do that without being seen as attacking Russia?
So the problem is not that I am failing to make the argument using the words you think I should use. I used those words advisedly.
It's not even alleged "cold war mentality", an odd charge, considering I said quite clearly that Russian leaders lie and twist history just as much as ours do.In short, bringing them down from ikosmos's superhuman and divine (Amen, after all!) heights to where the rest of us are.
And if you think I am blurring Stalin and "The People", maybe you should re-read my argument.
(self-delete. dupe post.)
There is some relevant info being omitted here. First, Stalin was negotiating with France and Britain to establish a mutual defence treaty. Unfortunately, the negotiators sent by France and Britain went by ship and were not of a senior rank. This seemed to have sent a message to Stalin that they were not serious. And indeed they weren't. They were several problems to the pact. First, Poland refused to give the Soviet army transit rights. Without this ability it would be very difficult for the Soviets to offer any serious help to the Western Allies. Second, Stalin's purges of the late 30's had damaged the reputation of the Soviet forces. Some in the West thought that the Polish army would do just as well against the Nazis. Though that sounds foolish now it must be remembered that the Soviet forces were dreadful in the first few months of the war as as well against the Finns. Stalin had murdered many officers and the ones who remained tended to be skillful only in their slavish devotion to Stalin. There were some exceptions as in the example of Zhukov. So, there was some basis for this belief in the West about the lack of effectiveness of the Soviets. Finally, anti- communism made many in the West reluctant to make a deal with the Soviets. At this point Stalin decided to make a deal with Hitler hoping that the war would drag on and that by 42 or 43 his reorganized and re-equipped army could take on Germany while she was occupied with France and Britain. That is why he kept his forces in forward bases. Of course the quick collapse of France upset all his calculations. His decisions were to have disastrous consequences when the Nazis invaded. Of course many in west were hoping that Hitler would turn against the USSR. This belief was especially prevalent in the late 30's as France and Britain fed Czechoslavkia to the Nazis. In other words France, Britain and the USSR were all acting out the need for self preservation hoping that the beast would eat one of their neighbors first. None of it particularly noble but understandable.
It isn't being omitted from my argument, since all I am arguing is that Russia was no better than the rest of us when it came to appeasement and collaboration - contrary to the myth they have built their reputation on since then.
And yeah, I have heard that theory; I won't challenge it, but it does not account for everything Stalin did.
A bit of a tangent, but on the subject of denying history, the Polish government just passed this law:
(the story is from February when it was introduced)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35581708
It isn't being omitted from my argument, since all I am arguing is that Russia was no better than the rest of us when it came to appeasement and collaboration - contrary to the myth they have built their reputation on since then.
It isn't relevant that the USSR had tried to join an alliance with the US and France against Hitler in the late Thirties, but weren't ALLOWED to?
You don't see that as a cataclysmic blunder that may well have CAUSED Stalin to make the choice he made in '39?
So... Stalin wasn't quite the monster you said he was? We made him do all that?
Look Ken, I just said I didn't want to challege that theory because it doesn't account for everything Stalin did, and as I said, it isn't relevant to my main point, which is about that big lie that Russia Saved the World from Nazism.
Do you really want to talk about the fact they had been playing poker for months before August? That France also offered to let Russia invade Poland? That Stalin dismissed Maxim Litvinov (who proposed the the Allied agreement), in part because he was Jewish, in part because Stalin didn't trust the capitalists (fair enough) and began negotiations with Germany in May?
None of this came down to an 11th hour gaffe on the part of Britain and France.
And when I say it doesn't account for everything he did, surely I don't need to repeat again the far more bloody things that happened after the Pact.
Again, I am kind of surprised at the notion that I am somehow desecrating millions of war dead by simply pointing out that someone isn't telling the truth, and that I should do anything - anything - to avoid mentioning it.
This is Basil Fawlty territory.
Sadly, it is also reality in Russia, which now has a law against "Denigrating Russia's Second World War record".
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/worldpolitics/vladimir-putin-cracks-down...
A letter from Ivan Kurilla, head of the Free Historical Society, mentioned in the article above:
http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/201408_Kurilla
The law also uses exceedingly vague language. The ban against desecrating symbols “of Russia’s military glory” seems distant from the “rehabilitation of Nazism.” Equating hooliganism to the whitewashing of Nazism erodes the meaning of the latter as a unique evil. Also, the clause about “spreading information on military and memorial commemorative dates related to Russia’s defense that is clearly disrespectful of society” is simply difficult to understand. How can information be “clearly disrespectful of society”?
...
Finally, the new law is dangerous even to the dominant Russian historical narrative. The Great Patriotic War is the focal point of the nation’s memory; it plays a socializing role and unifies Russians. A legal ban against addressing that history turns the central part of Russia’s historical narrative into a blind spot, ruining the whole edifice. If nobody will ask new questions about the war—if it is in the public space only in the form of ossified sacred texts and untouchable memorials—it will cease to represent the actual past and lose its significance.
So... Stalin wasn't quite the monster you said he was? We made him do all that?
Look Ken, I just said I didn't want to challege that theory because it doesn't account for everything Stalin did, and as I said, it isn't relevant to my main point, which is about that big lie that Russia Saved the World from Nazism.
Do you really want to talk about the fact they had been playing poker for months before August? That France also offered to let Russia invade Poland? That Stalin dismissed Maxim Litvinov (who proposed the the Allied agreement), in part because he was Jewish, in part because Stalin didn't trust the capitalists (fair enough) and began negotiations with Germany in May?
None of this came down to an 11th hour gaffe on the part of Britain and France.
And when I say it doesn't account for everything he did, surely I don't need to repeat again the far more bloody things that happened after the Pact.
Again, I am kind of surprised at the notion that I am somehow desecrating millions of war dead by simply pointing out that someone isn't telling the truth, and that I should do anything - anything - to avoid mentioning it.
This is Basil Fawlty territory.
Sadly, it is also reality in Russia, which now has a law against "Denigrating Russia's Second World War record".
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/worldpolitics/vladimir-putin-cracks-down...
A letter from Ivan Kurilla, head of the Free Historical Society, mentioned in the article above:
http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/201408_Kurilla
The law also uses exceedingly vague language. The ban against desecrating symbols “of Russia’s military glory” seems distant from the “rehabilitation of Nazism.” Equating hooliganism to the whitewashing of Nazism erodes the meaning of the latter as a unique evil. Also, the clause about “spreading information on military and memorial commemorative dates related to Russia’s defense that is clearly disrespectful of society” is simply difficult to understand. How can information be “clearly disrespectful of society”?
...
Finally, the new law is dangerous even to the dominant Russian historical narrative. The Great Patriotic War is the focal point of the nation’s memory; it plays a socializing role and unifies Russians. A legal ban against addressing that history turns the central part of Russia’s historical narrative into a blind spot, ruining the whole edifice. If nobody will ask new questions about the war—if it is in the public space only in the form of ossified sacred texts and untouchable memorials—it will cease to represent the actual past and lose its significance.
I hadn't heard about that specific point either before I started getting into this. The bio of foreign minister Georges Bonnet has a good summation of the terrible mess those talks were:
During the ultimately failed talks for an Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance in the spring and summer of 1939, Bonnet and the rest of the French leadership pressed quite strongly for the revived Triple Entente, often to the considerable discomfort of the British.[122] In the spring and summer of 1939, Bonnet very strongly believed believing that a "grand alliance" of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France would deter Germany from attacking Poland.[123] At a meeting with Lord Halifax on 20–21 May 1939 in Geneva, Daladier, Bonnet and Saint-Legér pressured the British Foreign Secretary repeatedly for a "grand alliance" as the only way of stopping another world war.[124]
In the spring of 1939, Bonnet went so far as to inform Moscow that he supported turning over all of eastern Poland to the Soviet Union regardless of what the Poles felt about the issue if that was to be the price of the Soviet alliance.[125]
It is in the section on the Danzig crisis. In the last weeks before the war, Bonnet actually told his government to lie to the Soviets and tell them the Polish government had given them permission to go into Poland. That didn't happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Bonnet
It is worth reading, if one can keep one's head straight, because it shows that they really were all in bed together, and no party trusted any other party.
I hadn't heard about that specific point either before I started getting into this. The bio of foreign minister Georges Bonnet has a good summation of the terrible mess those talks were:
During the ultimately failed talks for an Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance in the spring and summer of 1939, Bonnet and the rest of the French leadership pressed quite strongly for the revived Triple Entente, often to the considerable discomfort of the British.[122] In the spring and summer of 1939, Bonnet very strongly believed believing that a "grand alliance" of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France would deter Germany from attacking Poland.[123] At a meeting with Lord Halifax on 20–21 May 1939 in Geneva, Daladier, Bonnet and Saint-Legér pressured the British Foreign Secretary repeatedly for a "grand alliance" as the only way of stopping another world war.[124]
In the spring of 1939, Bonnet went so far as to inform Moscow that he supported turning over all of eastern Poland to the Soviet Union regardless of what the Poles felt about the issue if that was to be the price of the Soviet alliance.[125]
It is in the section on the Danzig crisis. In the last weeks before the war, Bonnet actually told his government to lie to the Soviets and tell them the Polish government had given them permission to go into Poland. That didn't happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Bonnet
It is worth reading, if one can keep one's head straight, because it shows that they really were all in bed together, and no party trusted any other party.
