I know I'm going to regret posting this, but the re-invention of history for current political purposes needs to be addressed.
To ensure this stays grounded on the facts here's what Bob Rae's motion stated:
"Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic, the Hon. Bob Rae, passed a unanimous Resolution in Parliament today to commemorate the victims of Europe’s totalitarian regimes.
“Millions of Canadians of Eastern and Central European descent whose families have been directly affected by either Nazi or Communist crimes have made unique and significant, cultural, economic, social and other contributions to help build the Canada we know today,” said Mr. Rae. “We must unequivocally condemn the crimes against humanity committed by totalitarian Nazi and Communist regimes and offer the victims of these crimes and their family members’ sympathy, understanding and recognition for their suffering.
“Every victim of any totalitarian regime has the same human dignity and deserves justice, remembrance and recognition by the Parliament and the government of Canada.”
http://www.liberal.ca/en/newsroom/media-releases/17005_liberal-mps-pass-...
On the surface who can refuse to endorse this. But please look at the words again: "the crimes against humanity committed by totalitarian Nazi and Communist regimes".
Notice that its only the Nazis being condemned? What happened to all those other fascist dictators like: Mussolini (didn't we fight a war against him?), Franco (didn't over 700 Canadians die fighting him?), how many people did Salazar kill, the Greek junta? not to mention all the fascist puppet governments during WW2 (e.g. Romania, Bulgaria, etc.)?
In terms of European deaths; the bloodiest of all forms of government to embark on mass killing sprees have been monarchies (like Kings, Emporers and especially Kaisers).
But facsism and monarchies get a pass yet another system of government doesn't.
Their press release goes on and reads like something dreamed up by Joe McCarthy about the "terrorised" peoples of eastern Europe.
Now here's the part I'm regretting about posting; but it has to be said:
a lot of those "terrorised" peoples are actually wishing for a return to the days when they had pensions, job security, health care and lives.
die Linke is the second fastest growing party in all of Germany and has over 30% support in the former East.
Now this isn't to say that people want to return to the days of the Wall (however there still are 10%
of East Germans who do want it re-errected) but almost 60% of East Germans say that capitalism is no better. And a staggering 40% say there lives are worse under capitalism.
That's why if you noticed all of those 20th anniversary celebrations were full of western leaders, western musicians and Gorby thrown in for "balance". In other words much of it was done for our western consumption.
So here's the question: why now? Why are we now seeing an almost endless parade of 50's era red scare propaganda?
As capitalism itself is imploding and millions are starving and dying in capitalist colonies (10 million are starving in Kenya as you read this - the same amount as the Holodomor) we only hear about past communist terrors.
How come famine in the Ukraine is attributed to genocide by its Communist system but an equally large amount of farmers in almost any third world country who are forcibly re-oriented to cash crops by the World Bank and IMF which cause them to have no means for survival if the cash crop fails or the market collapses leading to starvation or suicide NOT caused by capitalism?
How come the crimes of capitalist totalitarian governments (Suharto in Indonesia executed over 1 million of its citizens) are NOT worth remembering????
How come we don't commenrate the communist victims of capitalism (thousands executed in Finland during their civil war). How come we don't hear about the thousands of lives German communists saved by launching their revolution which forced the Kaiser's hand for Armistace and his eventual overthrow? How come we never hear what happened to them (like Rosa Luxemburg)?
Why don't we ever hear about the MacKenzie-Papineau Batallion and their bravery of fighting fascism when our government was still appeasing them (in fact at the time MacKenzie King was calling Hitler a "nice fellow").
Most of all how come we never hear about what our corporations and elites did to support the Nazis in their rise to power and during the war?
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/51/pauwels.html
The reason is simple: the more capitalism collapses the more people will start asking really unpopular questions about their corporate elites. This is what's happening in Latin America and in the former East Germany where Marx's "Kapital" is suddenly in fashion.
We sheep need it to be drummed into our head that capitalism is the only answer. The problem with this is that as they fight to save capitalism, people will take out their frustrations on easier targets: immigrants, the weak, women and poor, In other words the people will turn to fascism.
We see that already as the word socialist is purged from our language except to describe corporate bailouts - and only then in a negative way.
The danger we face in our future is a fascist one; not a Stalinist one.
Unless this issue is addressed and Canadians talk about the REAL issues instead of simplistic propaganda devices like public displays of stupidity then we are in for very hard times.
Oh and BTW, before someone calls me a Stalinist: I had Ukrainian family members killed by the Stalinists.
But my grandfather was also forced to report to a Canadian official every month and give a full account of his activities, where he worked, how much he got paid, any union activities, any political activities and if he attended church every Sunday. The only reason they did this was because he was too young (15) to be sent to a concentration camp (the real name) but old enough to be a Ukrainian which meant he also was a "commnist" in the eyes of our state. He was persecuted like this until the mid 1920's and never had an easy life after.
As I said, this hasn't been an easy post but we need to take a good long look at we're were going and how history is being manipulated for political purposes.
