The Political Philosophy of Juche

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Sat, 2012-03-17 04:50

Fared Gaderi

This is not my own work, but it's an educational article nonetheless:

Link: The Political Philosophy of Juche, by Grace Lee

"Establishing juche means, in a nutshell, being the master of revolution and reconstruction in one's own country. This means holding fast to an independent position, rejecting dependence on others, using one's own brains, believing in one's own strength, displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance, and thus solving one's own problems for oneself on one's own responsibility under all circumstances."

Sat, 2012-03-17 06:14

Ken Burch

Fair enough...the problem is...the "one" in this philosophy has ended up meaning, in the one state in which "actually existing Juche" has bee established, the DPRK, the "Supreme Leader" and his herididary successors.

It SHOULD have meant the people of the DPRK themselves, being empowered by the revolution to use ALL of their brains, ALL of their strength, collectively and democratically to find solutions.

If only it hadn't been yet another example of the old Leninist fear of democratizing the revolutionary state...so much more could have been achieved.

The failure was in tying it to the notion of ONE figure trying to do all that by himself. Nobody can pull that off...and nobody should try.

(interestingly enough, when summarized as it was in the paragraph you quote in the intro, juche appears to have, of all things, a superficial similarity to the original concept of Irish independence as formulated by the first incarnation of Sinn Fein...a name that translates as "ourselves alone" and which also conceived of a nation working to solve its problems entirely on its own...a philosophy that stunted the development of post-1922 Ireland in different ways than actually existing juche stunted the DPRK, yet stunted it nonetheless).

Sun, 2012-03-18 02:01

Ken Burch

I read the link after posting that...and it reinforces the sense I had that Actually Existing Juche missed a huge opportunity to be a genuine force for liberation in the part of Korea where it held and holds sway.

Calling upon "creativity" is a great idea...but you CAN'T do that when you reduce life to nothing but indoctrination in a cultic obedience of a "Maximum Leader" figure. Creativity requires decentralized thought...it requires freedom for the human mind to grow and breathe and express itself...that kind of mental flowering can't happen in a country in which fear and suppression are used to the exclusion of any other method of holding and consolidating power.

"Independence" can't really be created in such a situation either...since independence requires the massive utilization of the resources of a country...including the resources of the human spirit and the human ability to come together find, in pooling the minds and hearts of the people, the solutions to the problems a revolution faces...this means that true juche would require letting the people themselves, not just the leaders, not just the "party", democratically, openly, without fear or reprisal or punishment, discuss, debate, create, and unite to move the revolution into the future. And what kind of "independence" is achieved by using most of the revenues of the state to purchase weaponry rather than to find some way to feed people?

Juche COULD have been beautiful...it could have transformed Korea...instead it became, in practice, nothing more than a pathecic, freakish cult. It is not clear whether the people of the DPRK, once freed of this perversion of a "revolution", can ever recover the capacity to imagine a better, different world. They've been trained for so long not to think, not to speak, but simply to follow orders, on pain of death. How will they ever find the way to function as full human beings again after all those years of mental death imposed from above.

And it's not even a fair argument that this approach was the ONLY possible way to "defend against aggression". Does anyone really believe that the DPRK could ONLY have maintained its independence from Western Imperialism by ruling exactly in the manner that it has? That the revolution could ONLY survive by inventing some mutant form of mutant heriditary Stalinism-on-meth?

There was such potential when Kim Il Sung came to power. It was all sacrificed. And, really...for what? Nobody can seriously argue that actually existing juche is, in any sense, socialism or "anti-imperialism". How can you be "anti-imperialist" when your state is led, in effect, by an emperor?

Sun, 2012-03-18 03:27

Fidel

Ken Burch wrote:
If only it hadn't been yet another example of the old Leninist fear of democratizing the revolutionary state...so much more could have been achieved.

They gave up on Marxist-Leninist communism some time ago and replaced it with self-reliance. U.S. hawks typically refer to North Korea as Marxist-Leninist for the sake of repeating their ideologically driven meme that communism always fails on its own. Cold war hawks tended to lump nationalist governments together with socialist ones and never discerned between the two, and that is because whether foreign governments are nationalist, socialist practicing self reliance, they are denying corporate America and multinationals the chance to profit at the expense of those countries and their citizens. Threatening other countries with military force is illegal since Nuremberg, and yet the US Military government does so regularly. Their real crimes in North Korea are that they refuse to open up the country to marauding capital and corporate raiders, and they must be punished for that by a decades-long medieval siege and denying them humanitarian aid, which is also illegal according to the U.N.

Ken Burch wrote:
And it's not even a fair argument that this approach was the ONLY possible way to "defend against aggression". Does anyone really believe that the DPRK could ONLY have maintained its independence from Western Imperialism by ruling exactly in the manner that it has? That the revolution could ONLY survive by inventing some mutant form of mutant heriditary Stalinism-on-meth?

I remember having this mini-debate before. The problem is that, yes, it is a valid excuse. Just as the Sovs had 20-30 million dead and missing after WW II as an excuse to raise an iron curtain against western aggressions, so does North Korea have the Korean war as but one excuse to fear the west and UN invaders after losing 3 million human beings to a senseless war with the US military and UN troops, and the destruction of some large percentage of North Korean infrastructure and cities after U.S. bombing raids. Those military attacks are historical and resultant death and destruction very real in the minds of North Koreans and their leaders.

Py9ngyang might be the immediate architect of its own militarization, but the central architect is the U.S. Military government. The U.S. Military government has threatened North Korea off and on with nuclear incineration for six decades.

The U.S. Military occupation of the peninsula is ongoing and involves more than meets the eye with nuclear-armed U.S. warships patrolling the coastlines off N.Korea, and regular military and naval war games carried out near the borders meant to menace and threaten the government. U.S. military jets have invaded NK's air space numerous times, and the Rooskies and Koreans had the USAF pilots from Saber jets and U2's held prisoners to prove it.

Your strategy of tension guys would love nothing better than to be marauding in over the border and perpetrating acts of terrorism as American William Blum describes occurring in Europe during cold war. Pyongyang's hyperallocation of resources to military ends is not due to unfounded paranoia, Ken. And that's the Washington wants things to be. The US and its corporations want to keep the Koreas divided. That is unwritten goal statement number one for Korea and authored by in Washington since 1953.

Sun, 2012-03-18 03:33

Ken Burch

A valid excuse for what? Complete repression in all aspects of life? A state based solely on obedience to the leader, maintained through fear? How can you seriously say that U.S. militarism justifies ossifying the DPRK into the nation without life it currently is?

It's not as if they're going to stop running the place like this as soon as the Yanks back off.

I like you, Fidel, but why, after all the evidence that repression always end up destroying everything that is revolutionary in a revolutionary state, do you still buy into the "necessity doctrine" when it comes to these things? Do you really believe the people of the DPRK would not fight to defend their country from outside aggression UNLESS they were living in mortal fear of their own government? That they would ONLY defend their country's sovereingty because they live in the only state in the world with an official hair-length policy? Why?

people resisted fascism in World War II here, in the US, and in the UK without resort to this sort of state tactics in World War II. Why assume that only Western states can do that? Kind of an insult to Asians, don't you think?

I'll amend it to "self-reliance" rather than "Leninist"...but still, they haven't exactly achieved self-reliance.

The DPRK is great at militarily defending itself...but, at this stage, what, exactly, is being defended? It's not as if actually existing juche has HAD any dometic achievements. They didn't even create a decent educational system...something every other state that claimed to be communist in any form achieved with relative ease.

What the DPRK needs is an end to internal repression...it needs to encourage the people to think again, and to speak without fear. NEITHER of those things would assist U.S. aggression.

No state, anywhere, needs a leader who is treated like a living god. And such a thing is the antithesis of any valid form of socialism-in fact, it's the antithesis of the true values of juche.

And, as you know, I say this as an opponent of the continued U.S. presence in Korea...a presence that has preserved the ludicrous situation in which, over fifty-five years after open military conflict ended, the Korean War is still not technically over.

There is no inconsistency in wanting the U.S. out of Korea AND an end to the completely unnecessary non-socialist police state in the North.

Sun, 2012-03-18 03:38

Ken Burch

Actually, they don't really have anything to give up. If there ever were any social gains for the people of the DPRK, they were lost when its leaders decided it was more important to buy weapons than feed the population(the same insane choice Stalin made in the early 1930's...and fat lot of good it did the USSR).

The key to defending ANY "socialist" state is to actually BUILD SOCIALISM...not build an army. The people of a country with true socialism would automatically fight to defend their country...what have the people of the DPRK got to fight for? It's silly to say that they should fight to defend their nuclear warheads or their massive army...neither of which benefit the people of the DPRK.

Socialism is its own best defense.

Sun, 2012-03-18 03:48

Fidel

Ken Burch wrote:
NEITHER of those things would assist U.S. aggression.

You mean like it didn't assist the former Yugoslavia or Libya and Syria since the "Arab Spring"?

North Koreans must be punished for their resistance to market ideology and marauding international capital. They must be forced down the capital road, like Vietnam and Eastern Europe. And then they will know what they have given up after that happens.

Ken Burch wrote:
The DPRK is great at militarily defending itself...but, at this stage, what, exactly, is being defended? It's not as if actually existing juche has HAD any dometic achievements. They didn't even create a decent educational system...something every other state that claimed to be communist in any form achieved with relative ease.

Militarily, North Korea is a mouse compared to the nuclear-armed giants surrounding it. They would be squashed like bugs in a conflict after a Gulf of Tonkin-like escalation. And don't think for a minute that the Gladio gang haven't tried that on a number of times.

What scares hell out of the corporatocracy here in the west is a scenario whereby the Koreas unite, like the Germanys were united. That's all they are worried about at this point, Ken.

They are worried because the Asia-Pacific countries are already producing the most wealth - Anglo-American imperialists don't want a united Korea feeding the Asian tiger phenomenon. That's what this illegal occupation of the peninsula since 1953 is all about. At first it was ideological. Now its a matter of fearing those countries which are destined to become the largest economies in the world.

The barbarians must remain divided at all cost.

Sun, 2012-03-18 04:40

Fidel

Ken Burch wrote:

Actually, they don't really have anything to give up. If there ever were any social gains for the people of the DPRK, they were lost when its leaders decided it was more important to buy weapons than feed the population(the same insane choice Stalin made in the early 1930's...and fat lot of good it did the USSR).

Was Stalin's choice insane, Ken? They did require steel and lots of it by 1941. And the man of steel delivered. The result was Stalin 1 Corporate-sponsored military machine nil.

And now the fascist countries are surrounding Russia and China militarily, once again. The grand chess board is still a playground for corporate raiders and their bought and paid-for friends in government. They would rather lead the world into a new dark ages than allow countries to exist peacefully and prosper independently of predatory capitalism.

Ken Burch wrote:
The key to defending ANY "socialist" state is to actually BUILD SOCIALISM...not build an army. The people of a country with true socialism would automatically fight to defend their country...what have the people of the DPRK got to fight for? It's silly to say that they should fight to defend their nuclear warheads or their massive army...neither of which benefit the people of the DPRK.

I think they stand ready to defend because they know their own history since 1950. They know what life is really like for hundreds of millions under actually existing capitalism and not what Radio Free Europe or Radio Marti broadcasted to millions in Eastern Europe and Cuba for decades. They know how ruthless western military governments can be when it comes to false flag attacks and how the clandestine services departments never sleep. They do have free education and health care in North Korea, Ken. And part of the problem for the market ideologues is that North Koreans really are capable of thinking for themselves.

Understanding North Korea Stephen Gowans

In conclusion Gowans writes:

Quote:
A revolutionary, it's said, recognizes it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. North Korea has never lived on its knees. I think Che would have liked that.

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, like hundreds of millions are living on their knees around the democratic capitalist third world today. It's better to strive to be free. It's even better to die while struggling to be free than submit to a predatory and globalizing economic system that has no soul.

Viva la revolucion!

Sun, 2012-03-18 04:45

Ken Burch

If that is the case...then the people of the DPRK will fight for their homeland WITHOUT being massively repressed. The regime should trust the people.

And NONE of the police state shit is going to lead to the U.S. troops leaving, btw. It never did in Europe, in case you've forgotten.

Sun, 2012-03-18 05:15

#10

Ken Burch

As I said, I WANT the U.S. to leave the peninsula.

Sun, 2012-03-18 05:15

#11

Fidel

Ken Burch wrote:

If that is the case...then the people of the DPRK will fight for their homeland WITHOUT being massively repressed. The regime should trust the people.

Likewise the people should rise up and overthrow their oppressive leaders if they trust the military regime at the ready and staring them down on the other side of the border. North Koreans must surely realize they would have full assistance and cooperation from the U.S. and South Korean militaries as well as their former Japanese occupiers.

The American CIA told Eisenhower, and then Kennedy, that the Cuban people would assist them in overthrowing a repressive Castro regime. Michael Moore reveals that this information was leaked by internal US government cables and leaked for a purpose. The purpose of those cables was as a moral booster to the ideologues in Washington and the military bent on restoring a repressive mafia regime in Havana. The Cuban people, like North Koreans are today, are willing to defend the revolution with blood, sweat and tears.

A real test of North Koreans' loyalty to Pyongyang might occur if the U.S. Military were to exit the peninsula. In that way the military regime in Pyongyang would have no excuses. There would be a period of introspection without outside coercion to extremes in the form of constant military threats at the border.

Read Gowans' comparison of the military principals involved, it's a good one. It's like a mouse versus Magic Johnson on the court. We are led to believe that a seven foot basketball player is fearful of a mouse sneaking up and devouring him. This is basically the reason given for the US military occupation of the peninsula. And it would be laughable if it wasnt so sad. The real reason Magic Johnson is there menacing mouseville is to ensure that no humanitarian or food aid reaches North Korea, and to force NK into allocating precious resources to watching out for what are very real military and even terrorist threats along the border.

I don't believe our imperialist ideologues are willing to put it to a test, Ken. The barbarians shall not be allowed to choose on their own without a foreign military presence at the border. That is how imperialism operates when occupying other countries militarily and threatening aggression for decades on end. Fear is a useful tool, and hope is their greatest enemy.

Sun, 2012-03-18 05:17

#12

Ken Burch

Double-post. Sorry.

Sun, 2012-03-18 05:18

#13

Patrick Mahoney

"Juche" is not progressive or socialist & is actually far right wing nationalism.

It makes the military & the "leaders" the vanguard of the revolution not the workers, so it is basically the same steaming pile of reactionary horse crap as stalin & mao.

Here's a good article by the late influential Christopher Hitchens on North Korea:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a...

Sun, 2012-03-18 05:26

#14

Fidel

Then why don't they leave, Ken? Are they afraid of the military equivalent of a mouse in North Korea? I don't believe they are. The hawks would squash the mouse in seconds flat in the event of an aggression by the North.

So if we realize that a seven foot basketball player has nothing to fear with a mouse backed into a corner and living on fresh air, then we can only presume that the basketball player intends on starving the mouse to death. Not even actually existing Juche can be allowed to collapse all on its own. Even actually existing Juche must be laid medieval siege to and starved into submission lest they exist outside the influential sphere of a system that has no soul. North Koreans are told about this vicious and spiteful cycle of outside influences, and it drives them to struggle even moreso for freedom. They should be allowed to choose for themselves.

Sun, 2012-03-18 05:54

#15

Fidel

Patrick Mahoney wrote:

"Juche" is not progressive or socialist & is actually far right wing nationalism.

It makes the military & the "leaders" the vanguard of the revolution not the workers, so it is basically the same steaming pile of reactionary horse crap as stalin & mao.

Here's a good article by the late influential Christopher Hitchens on North Korea:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a...

Is that the same Christopher Hitchens who swung to the right after 9/11? Was it the same Chris Hitchens who would have had us believe that the only murdering bastards in Uganda are Kony and the LRA?

That guy?

Sun, 2012-03-18 06:20

#16

Patrick Mahoney

Everyone at one time or another has to make inconvient alliances. Hitchens never "swung to the right" and was always a committed liberal and socialist. His decision to support the neocons was a pragmatic one given the choice of siding with reactionary religionists or secular republicans. Yes republicans were reactionary but their enemies even more so at least to Hitchens.

Hitchens repeatedly said, "I'm not any kind of conservative".(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/sep/18/otherparties.iraq) In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues.

Anyhow Hitchens was right on a number of issues. I do not support his stance on Bush's war or his support for the republican party but that does not make the truly decent stuff that he wrote invalid.

Sun, 2012-03-18 07:11

#17

Ken Burch

Well, actually, while Hitchens could probably have claimed to be some sort of liberal to the end, he made a point of announcing, on several occasions, that he was no longer a socialist. Had he not done this, he would never have risen to the levels of influence he held in elite U.S. policy-making circles in his last years.

Mon, 2012-03-19 14:16

#18

Fidel

Christopher Hitchens wrote:
The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea's food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader.

Hitchens is full of shit. A 60 year-long U.S.-led sanctions regime has been in-place since 1953. They've done the same thing against Cuba through to Iraq. Japan cut off rice exports to North Korea years ago after being pressured by Warshington.

Four countries control food aid to North Korea: the U.S., South Korea, China and Japan. Three of these countries have actually cut off food aid to North Korea at various times and using nuclear blackmail in the process.

U.S.-based Amnesty International reports over the years have referred vaguely to "political conditions" tied to food aid to North Korea, and that basically means that economic warfare has been waged against North Korea since the dissolution of the former USSR.

Food as a weapon, nuclear and military threats and nuclear blackmail are the basis for U.S., Korean and Japanese relations with North Korea. They have the Seventh Fleet on one side, nuclear-armed threats at the southern border, and a 1950s hot war that wiped-out more than 3 million and destroyed every city by U.S. bombing raids to point to as reasons for their "nuttyness" and "paranoia" in the North.

Hitchens was full of shit if he thought that North Korea has not been treated like a pariah since 1950 and cut off from trade and food imports tightly controlled by its cold war nemesis since 1991.

This is what the west refers to when they say that a political and economic system undergoes the process of collapsing "all on its own." A tiny country the size of Mississippi with about seven times the people in a mainly mountainous region of the world and suffering inclement weather patterns(typhoons and droughts) and laid medieval siege to not unlike Cuba or Vietnam or Iraq, is said to be chronically hungry and unable to provide for themselves for domestic political reasons and nothing to do with outside political interference to extremes. It's a case of sanctions of mass destruction, and we know all too well by now which country and their little helpers wage that kind of warfare against developing countries merely trying to exist outside the west's oppressive sphere of influence, coercion, military threats and clandestine policies for exporting terrorism.

In the end Hitchens was a weak lefty and made a personal decision to subscribe to the philosophy of toadying to a vicious empire. The world is well rid.

Tue, 2012-03-20 06:35

#19

Dale N. Gandurski

Patrick Mahoney wrote:

"Juche" is not progressive or socialist & is actually far right wing nationalism.

I suppose to you anything which isn't Trotskyist is "far right wing nationalism".

As for Hitchens, he's a hypocrite at best in that article. He is doing exactly what he accuses the North Koreans of doing.

He comes across as arrogant believes that his way (the "Western"/liberal one) is better than anyone else's and won't even pause to think that others have different views than he does.

Tue, 2012-03-20 07:44

#20

MegB

What many of you have failed to see is that the "educational article" linked to in the OP is published on a site that contains some of the most insidious anti-Semitic screed I've seen in a while. The site also contains opinions that are blatantly anti-feminist and anti-Marxist/socialist.

But do continue to enjoy critiquing Christopher Hitchens. Since it's so relevant to the thread and all.

Tue, 2012-03-20 08:21

#21

Patrick Mahoney

Rebecca West wrote:

What many of you have failed to see is that the "educational article" linked to in the OP is published on a site that contains some of the most insidious anti-Semitic screed I've seen in a while. The site also contains opinions that are blatantly anti-feminist and anti-Marxist/socialist.

Good observation & thanks for pointing this out ;)

Tue, 2012-03-20 10:02

#22

Glenda Rasdunik

The article is hosted on Stanford University's website (domain is Stanford.edu), and is found under the Stanford Journal of East Asian Studies. I hardly see how that qualifies as "anti-semitic".

Tue, 2012-03-20 10:34

#23

Unionist

Holy shit, the Jew-haters are coming back with anagrams!

Tue, 2012-03-20 10:51

#24

Glenda Rasdunik

Unionist wrote:

Holy shit, the Jew-haters are coming back with anagrams!

Is the best you can do squawk about "anti-semitism" whenever someone points out something that you don't like? It's the same behavior as the "conservatives" use to deflect criticism from Israel.

The article doesn't even have anything to do with Israel, and the site it comes from is that of a top university in the United States, and doesn't contain any of the things certain members have accused it of having.

It seems everything these days is anti-Semitic. Breathing is anti-Semitic, eating is anti-Semitic, sleeping is anti-Semitic, thinking is anti-Semitic, not thinking is, moving is, not moving is, existing is.

If I blamed Bush and Cheney for the Iraq war, people often agree. If I mention names like Wolfowitz, Kristol, Perle, Feith, Wurmser, Scooter Libby, and so on. These old White men should be held accountable, I'm a Jew-Hater.

If I blame America for going to war in Iraq for Oil, then I'm a good guy. If I point out that we also went to war because Israel did not like Saddam Hussein's support of the Palestinians and wanted to remove his power base in the region, then I'm an "anti-Semite"

Tue, 2012-03-20 11:21

#25

voice of the damned

I think Rebecca West might have been cofusing the website on this page, with the blog that Gaderi linked to in his other thread(now locked).

That blog was given to promoting the ideology of Julius Evola, an Italian thinker who could without exaggeration be described as an aristocratic fascist(or as Orwell put it in his essay on Yeats, someone who comes to fascism via the aristocratic route). It did indeed use anti-semitic code words(eg. "rootless cosmopolitanism"), and, on its North Korea page, cite North Korea APPROVINGLY as an example of "Third Positionism", and then go on to mention Hitler and the Nazis as also "Third Positionist".

So yes, it was an anti-semitic, fascist website.

Tue, 2012-03-20 11:22

#26

voice of the damned

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Evola]Julius Evola[/url]

Tue, 2012-03-20 11:25

#27

Catchfire

Glenda and Dale have, sadly, moved on. Let us remember them as they would have wished.

Tue, 2012-03-20 11:29

#28

voice of the damned

Catchfire wrote:

Glenda and Dale have, sadly, moved on. Let us remember them as they would have wished.

I'll crank up the Wagner.

Tue, 2012-03-20 11:33

#29

Catchfire

Heh.

Tue, 2012-03-20 11:39

#30

Patrick Mahoney

voice of the damned wrote:

I think Rebecca West might have been cofusing the website on this page, with the blog that Gaderi linked to in his other thread(now locked).

That blog was given to promoting the ideology of Julius Evola, an Italian thinker who could without exaggeration be described as an aristocratic fascist(or as Orwell put it in his essay on Yeats, someone who comes to fascism via the aristocratic route). It did indeed use anti-semitic code words(eg. "rootless cosmopolitanism"), and, on its North Korea page, cite North Korea APPROVINGLY as an example of "Third Positionism", and then go on to mention Hitler and the Nazis as also "Third Positionist".

So yes, it was an anti-semitic, fascist website.

The third position started during World War 2 and and after wards. A lot of the Nazis escaped to Arab countries after Germany lost the war, converted to Islam and tried to start Nazi-like movements in those countries. A lot of modern-day terrorism including Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Palestinian terrorism has third-positionist roots.

Here's some information on the third positionists:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Third_positionism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCOfN4DHJ38

Also the SPLC, which monitors hate groups in America has a lot of information on them:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-iss...
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/american...

As you can see they are a despicable group of people - absolutely vile individuals who shouldn't even be considered part of the humyn race. People like that literally should be shot, and i'm not exaggerating.

Tue, 2012-03-20 11:53

#31

voice of the damned

Well, I'm happy to see you employ such gender-sensitive terminolgy("humyn") while issuing calls for certain people to be considered subhuman and worthy of extermination.

I don't much care for the Third Position myself(to say the least), but I don't really see the benefit gained from using fascist rhetoric against fascism.

And yes. Some Nazis might have gone over to anti-Zionism. That's hardly the whole story of arab resistance, however.

Tue, 2012-03-20 16:56

#32

MegB

voice of the damned wrote:

I think Rebecca West might have been cofusing the website on this page, with the blog that Gaderi linked to in his other thread(now locked).

So yes, it was an anti-semitic, fascist website.

No, there was no confusion.

In this thread I was drawing attention to the site where the blog was posted, not the blog itself or opinions contained therein. In the other thread, it was the article that was blatantly anti-Semitic (though the source was the same as this thread).

Tue, 2012-03-20 17:28

#33

Fidel

Unionist wrote:

Holy shit, the Jew-haters are coming back with anagrams!

I'm not so sure about this one. According to Wikipedia the first known reference to Juche was a speech given by Jewish-Korean leader Kim Il-singer on December 28, 1955.

And don't quote me but I'm pretty sure he was related to the friendly dictator Syngman Rhee.

Sun, 2012-03-25 06:08

#34

Nathaniel.Mossiblov

While Juche in practice isn't what it is in theory (then nothing is), Kim Il Sung was a pragmatist and anti-imperialist and he at least deserves credit for that. For instance, he maintained a strong relationship with the King of Cambodia because he thought that Cambodia should have been independent, even if their leader was a King. Consequently the King replied that even if Cambodia had to be communist to be independent, then that was the cost. Pyongyang didn't recognize the puppet state that the Vietnamese tried to set up there, even though the Russians tried to pressure him into doing so. Kim Il Sung spoke out against all the forms of imperialism in the modern day and was a supporter of the non-aligned movement.

Tue, 2012-03-27 15:40

#35

contrarianna

Forgive me if I'm not charmed by his murderous personality cult:

Quote:
Kim's hold on power was rather shaky. To strengthen it, he claimed that the United States deliberately spread diseases among the North Korean population. While Moscow and Beijing later determined that these charges were false, they continued to help spread this rumour for many years to come. He also conducted North Korea's first large-scale purges in part to scare the people into accepting this false account. Unlike Stalin's Great Purge, these took place without even the formalities of a trial. Victims often simply disappeared into the growing network of prison camps....
In 1956, anti-Kim elements encouraged by de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union emerged within the Party to criticize Kim and demand reforms.[28] After a period of vacillation, Kim instituted a purge, executing some who had been found guilty of treason and forcing the rest into exile.[28]
[9]