DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Kramer on August 06, 2010, 09:24:59 PM
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FYI, Kagen is a lesbian.
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That's great, one more powerful defender of America's oppressed GBLT population. Now the high school Gay-Straight Alliances will have additional reserve strength to fight off any right-wing challenges to their efforts to beat down homophobia and gay-bashing. The thugs that beat Matthew Sheppard to death must be vomiting in their jail cell toilets right now. Tough shit.
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She is still in the closet, if she is in fact, gay.
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Who should be asking this?
Who should be telling?
The Supreme couort should not benefit from a "don't ask , don't tell " policy as our military does?
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<<Who should be asking this?>>
Everyone. Particularly the GLBT community, which needs all the role models it can get. Any citizen interested in how the Court might treat legislated homophobia such as the so-called "defence of marriage" initiatives, including Constitutional amendments aimed at permanent stigmatization. Liberals who want to know where and how far they can expect gains won in the "sexual revolution" to remain in existence against conservative Christian activism. I'd like to know if she's gay and also if she's covering it up, just as I'd like to know if any candidate is racist and/or anti-Semitic, either openly or covertly. How can it hurt to know more about any candidate for any high public office? In the U.S. particularly, these folks are being entrusted with your lives.
<<Who should be telling?>>
Any candidate if asked.
<<The Supreme couort should not benefit from a "don't ask , don't tell " policy as our military does?>>
Your military doesn't benefit from "Don't ask, don't tell." That was compromise with an organization composed of brutal thugs whose mores don't match those of the general American public. A compromise that was in effect a victory for the thugs. The values of a liberal society should have been dictated to the military from the top down, with the strictest discipline up to and including capital punishment applied liberally to all violators from the actual perpetrators of homophobic violence, to the cheerleaders egging them on, to the officers in the chain of command on whose watch it was allowed to happen. The so-called "problem" would have vanished overnight after a few well-publicized series of executions.
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Why should there NOT be a gay person in the Supreme Court?
I agree that "don't ask, don't tell" was a compromise to shut up the rightwingers in the officer corps and in the government who would rather liked the idea of stomping the crap out of gays and ignoring lesbians altogether.
I imagine that a ten-year sentence would be an adequate deterrent to gay bashing. I really don't think executions are necessary, especially if murder is not the offense.
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Rumors just rumors
no problem with a gay SC Justice, too bad she isn't a Conservative is all.
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The values of a liberal society should have been dictated to the military from the top down, with the strictest discipline up to and including capital punishment applied liberally to all violators from the actual perpetrators of homophobic violence, to the cheerleaders egging them on, to the officers in the chain of command on whose watch it was allowed to happen. The so-called "problem" would have vanished overnight after a few well-publicized series of executions.
Kinda like how Stalin handled it?
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Yeah, kinda like Stalin.
Brutal anti-social behaviour cannot and should not be tolerated. Whether or not murder was committed is beside the point. If you want to ban the behaviour, execute the offender. Remove them from the fucking planet. They won't be around to commit any more offences, or to encourage others to emulate them.
I guarantee you, that is one lesson that wouldn't be lost on anyone. Overnight, you would have changed military behaviour once and for all. But the will to do so just isn't there.
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Brutal anti-social behaviour cannot and should not be tolerated.
Having same sex sexual preferences is now brutal anti-social behavior?
Do you agree with Stalin's handling of homosexuality in the Soviet Union 9 which was a reversal of Lenin's policy) or are you just excusing it?
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<<The Supreme couort should not benefit from a "don't ask , don't tell " policy as our military does?>>
Your military doesn't benefit from "Don't ask, don't tell." That was compromise with an organization composed of brutal thugs whose mores don't match those of the general American public. A compromise that was in effect a victory for the thugs.
The Mores of the American public matter ?
Hey ,lets hold a referendum. You know thise things that they do in California to shock Liberals into the realisation that they arn't the norm.
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In 1960, segregation was the norm, along with the opinion hat Blacks were an inferior species. If they had held a referendum on segregation, anti-miscegenation laws and such, these would have won in he South for sure as well as a number of other places. If marriage is a basic right, then neither the state nor any referendum should be able to tell people whom they can marry.
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<<Having same sex sexual preferences is now brutal anti-social behavior?>>
Homophobic violence (gay-bashing) is brutal anti-social behaviour. What you are talking about, I have no idea.
<<Do you agree with Stalin's handling of homosexuality in the Soviet Union 9 which was a reversal of Lenin's policy) or are you just excusing it?>>
Persecution of anyone for any sexual preference that does not harm other individuals is wrong, and I don't give a shit if the person doing the persecuting is Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Jesus Christ, it is still wrong.
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In 1960, segregation was the norm, along with the opinion hat Blacks were an inferior species. If they had held a referendum on segregation, anti-miscegenation laws and such, these would have won in he South for sure as well as a number of other places. If marriage is a basic right, then neither the state nor any referendum should be able to tell people whom they can marry.
When did marrage become a right that cannot be regulated?
I have an enumerated right protected specificily in the constitution to worship as I please , speak as I like and bear arms without impediment.
......But the state and federal authority have conspired to restrict my worship by human sacrifice , require maximum limits on Magazine and minimum calibers on my hunting equipment and I have to refrain from threatening the physical health of the president .
Why indeed must the State forbid that I marry my mother , she is an adult and I am too, after homosexual marrage I suppose I could also try marrying my son.
Why does the state have an intrest in the number of women I marry ?
And of course why is there any intrest for the state to restrict what species I wed?
It isn't hard to imagine a Polyandrus society as was often written of in the fiction of Heinlein "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" , "Stranger in a Strange Land" etc.
Summing this up , I think it is easy to prove that the right of marrage is a right that the state can limit and until quite recently limited to one of each sex with no controversy. Removeing from the state the right to limit "marrage " to opposite sex couples really does open the door for complaints by even smaler minoritys who are discriminated against by anti beastiality , anti incest and ageist laws which serve what state intrest?
There is no real injury to correct , this is a fad that will cause its damage and blow over.
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<<Having same sex sexual preferences is now brutal anti-social behavior?>>
Homophobic violence (gay-bashing) is brutal anti-social behaviour. What you are talking about, I have no idea.
<<Do you agree with Stalin's handling of homosexuality in the Soviet Union 9 which was a reversal of Lenin's policy) or are you just excusing it?>>
Persecution of anyone for any sexual preference that does not harm other individuals is wrong, and I don't give a shit if the person doing the persecuting is Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Jesus Christ, it is still wrong.
For Stalin and Fidel wouldn't the arguement be that the sexual preference was harmfull to their societys?
Not individuals .
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Persecution of anyone for any sexual preference that does not harm other individuals is wrong, and I don't give a shit if the person doing the persecuting is Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Jesus Christ, it is still wrong.
Good. We are in agreement. Stalin is no better than the cowboys who bashed Matthew Shephard.
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Persecution of anyone for any sexual preference that does not harm other individuals is wrong, and I don't give a shit if the person doing the persecuting is Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro or Jesus Christ, it is still wrong.
Good. We are in agreement. Stalin is no better that the cowboys who bashed Matthew Shephard.
Far better at getting away with it.
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What exactly did Stalin do to gays, since we're on the subject and he's just been compared to the thugs who tortured and murdered Matthew Sheppard? Seems like some pretty extreme accusations are being thrown around here with very little evidence in support.
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Gays were not exactly well thought of in the 1950's by Hoover's FBI, either.
J. Edgar felt that cross dressing was something that was well kept a secret. He looked awful in a pinafore, perhaps that was the reason.
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What exactly did Stalin do to gays, since we're on the subject and he's just been compared to the thugs who tortured and murdered Matthew Sheppard? Seems like some pretty extreme accusations are being thrown around here with very little evidence in support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Russia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Russia)
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Thank you, BT, for pointing out the article on Stalin and the gays. Apparently, apart from criminalizing homosexuality (something that our "progressive" common-law countries had already done for decades before Stalin) there was no indication of any brutality, corporal or capital punishment decreed or executed against homosexuals.
I take it then that the unjustified smears of Stalin as a violent and deadly homophobe, comparing him to the goons who tortured and murdered Matthew Sheppard, will now be retracted. I sort of recognized them as meaningless twaddle the instant I saw them appear, but I wasn't 100% sure and so thought I had better make some inquiries before giving out with my first impressions of the point you were trying to make.
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I take it then that the unjustified smears of Stalin as a violent and deadly homophobe, comparing him to the goons who tortured and murdered Matthew Sheppard, will now be retracted.
I think not. Unless you think a trip to the Gulags was a summer vacation:
If American academia and media ever do start dragging Marxism's skeletons out of the closet, a whole new subchapter of gay-agenda Holocaust revisionism awaits invention to deal with Article 121 of the Russian Criminal Code, a statute instituted by Stalin in 1933, which of course is the same year that Hitler took power in Germany. Article 121 was a dictate not only outlawing homosexuality in the Soviet Union, but one meant to terrorize Soviet homosexuals against entertaining any of the fascist proclivities that brought Nazism to life in Germany. When the communist party's chief ideologue, Maxim Gorky, pronounced after Hitler's ascension to power in January, 1933, that "In order to eliminate fascism from Europe, one must first eliminate homosexuality from Europe," it is no mystery he was speaking for the Politburo and for The Boss. If Stalin couldn't eliminate homosexuality from Europe as a preemptive measure against fascism, he could certainly do that at home. Following Stalin's Article 121 edict, mass arrests of homosexuals and deportations to the Gulag were conducted in Russia, and the very mention of homosexuality in the press or in bureaucratic documents became nonexistent.
http://www.myjdl.org/misc/closet.shtml (http://www.myjdl.org/misc/closet.shtml)
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<<Unless you think a trip to the Gulags was a summer vacation>>
No I don't think it's a summer vacation, neither do I think it equates to being tortured and beaten to death. What an asinine insinuation. WTF does summer camp have to do with any of this?
Moreover, I did not see any factual material indicating gays were sent to the gulag by Stalin. The material was pure garbage. I indulged you by reading halfway through that pile of unsubstantiated, ridiculous accusations and refuse to waste any further time on it. If you can point to one sentence in the entire pile of illiterate shit that indicates that Stalin had anyone beaten and tortured to death for no reason other than being gay, please point it out to me.
Your source, JDL, is a fascist Jewish organization with zero credibility in any mainstream Jewish organization and in fact has been repudiated by many of them. The article you quoted from was a good example of its credibility. In the half that I was able to read, not a single accusation was backed up.
I am going to save you some effort. There is, to my knowledge, no credible evidence that Stalin ever had anyone tortured and beaten to death merely because he was gay. None. Your comparison of Stalin to the torturers and killers of Matthew Sheppard is just pure bullshit, as I initially suspected.
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n 1933, Article 121 was added to the criminal code, for the entire Soviet Union, that expressly prohibited male homosexuality, with up to five years of hard labor in prison. The precise reason for the new law is still in some dispute.
Some historians have suggested that Stalin's enactment of the anti-gay law was, like his prohibition on abortion, an attempt to increase the Russian birthrate and build a better relationship with the socially conservative Eastern Orthodox Church. Some historians have noted that it was during this time that Soviet propaganda began to depict homosexuality as a sign of fascism, and that Article 121 may have a simple political tool to use against dissidents, irrespective of their true sexual orientation, and to solidify Russian opposition to Nazi Germany, who had broken its treaty with Russia.[14]
More recently, a third possible reason for the anti-gay law has emerged from declassified Soviet documents and transcripts. Beyond expressed fears of a vast "counterrevolutionary" or fascist homosexual conspiracy, there were several high profile arrests of Russian men accused of being pederasts.[15] In 1933, 130 men "were accused of being 'pederasts' ? adult males who have sex with boys. Since no records of men having sex with boys at that time are available, it is possible this term was used broadly and crudely to label homosexuality."[15] Whatever the precise reason, homosexuality remained a serious criminal offense until it was repealed in 1993.[15]
The Soviet government itself said very little publicly about the change in the law, and few people seemed to be aware that it existed. In 1934, the British Communist Harry Whyte wrote a long letter to Stalin condemning the law, and its prejudicial motivations. He laid out a Marxist position against the oppression of homosexuals, as a social minority, and compared homophobia to racism, xenophobia and sexism.[16]
While the letter was not formally replied to, Soviet cultural writer Maxim Gorky authored an article, published in both Pravda and Izvestia titled "Proletarian Humanism", that seemed to reject Whyte's arguments point by point. He rejected the notion that homosexuals were a social minority, and argued that the Soviet Union needed to combat them in order to protect the youth and battle fascism.[17]
A few years later, 1936, Justice Commissar Nikolai Krylenko publicly stated that the anti-gay criminal law was correctly aimed at the decadent and effete old ruling classes, thus further linking homosexuality to a right-wing conspiracy, i.e. tsarist aristocracy and German fascists.[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Russia#Stalin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Russia#Stalin)
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As I said, not even a shred of evidence that Stalin had anyone tortured and killed merely for being gay, not even in your own sources.
As I said, your comparison of Stalin with the torturers and murderers of Matthew Sheppard is pure bullshit.
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Stalin wanted homosexuality to be discouraged in law?
What was the usual punishment, what was the max?
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The punishment was 5 years hard labor in the Gulags. And it was a complete reversal of the laws under Lenin.
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Wasn't all that different from the criminalization of homosexuality in Canada under the Canadian Criminal Code, and that only ended when I was in grad school, long after Stalin had died. Far as I know, "sodomy" and/or "buggery" were also criminal offences in the U.S.A. until some time in the 1960s. And five years in the gulag is a far cry from what Matthew Sheppard had to endure, so the comparison of Stalin to his (Matthew's) killers is absolutely nonsensical.
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What would be wrong with just saying that laws in both capitalist an Communist countries were unenlightened and homophobic, and that some individuals were even worse than that?
I see no reason to praise any of them for varying degrees of unwarranted thuggery. I don't think homosexuality is really a matter determined by economics.
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I don't think homosexuality is really a matter determined by economics.
Of course not. If Marxism were against homosexuality would Lenin have rescinded the law?
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The dislike of homosexuals is not determined by economics. It is basically a societal prejudice, which has been encouraged by religion, notably, but not exclusively, Christianity. The Bible has a number of violently anti-gay passages, and this attitude no doubt comes from the Hebrew culture.
I have no idea why Lenin or Stalin had whatever notions they did, but it was not a product of Marx or anything that could be deduced from Marxist theory. Lenin was a Russian/Chugash, Stalin was Georgian.
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And five years in the gulag is a far cry from what Matthew Sheppard had to endure, so the comparison of Stalin to his (Matthew's) killers is absolutely nonsensical.
Meanwhile Sheppard's killers got life sentences and Stalin gets your approval.
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<<Meanwhile Sheppard's killers got life sentences and Stalin gets your approval. >>
Yeah, ironic, eh? Or would be if you ever got around, despite your numerous failed attempts, to show that Stalin did anything as heinous to a homosexual as Sheppard's tormentors did to Sheppard.
And, BTW, my approval of Stalin has nothing to do with his homophobic leglislation, it mainly centres around his destruction of Nazi Germany and saving the world from fascism. If Sheppard's killers have any comparable accomplishments to their credit, I must have missed that part of their biographies.
And I wouldn't be so smug about their life sentences either. If they had killed a white mother of three, or a retired white grandfather, they would have both been sentenced to death. Where is the evidence for that statement? Just my own common sense and my knowledge of life in the U.S.A. generally.
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If they had killed a white mother of three, or a retired white grandfather, they would have both been sentenced to death.
One of the defendants copped a plea to avoid the death penalty pre-trial and the other copped a plea during the trial to avoid the death penalty. So yes the death penalty was on the table for these guys.
Stalin on the other hand was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of men (lesbianism was not outlawed) being sent to the gulags. How many do you think died under such extreme prison conditions?
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<<Stalin on the other hand was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of men (lesbianism was not outlawed) being sent to the gulags. How many do you think died under such extreme prison conditions?>>
Neither one of us knows if anybody was ever actually sent to a gulag for homosexuality, we don't know if any such survived or not. A gulag is not an extermination camp, it's a prison camp in a cold climate where there was probably a lot of abuse of prisoners by guards. A kind of Alabama penitentiary with snow and ice. If anyone died in a gulag and was there only for homosexuality, it's a fucking crime and if it was Stalin's fault that he died there, that would make Stalin guilty of his death.
For every guy that died in a gulag for homosexuality (and I'm not aware of a single one) we have to consider how many lives were saved by Stalin's destruction of Nazi Germany and the millions of Nazis that were killed by the Red Army under the guidance and leadership of Comrade Stalin. They don't excuse the deaths of any homosexuals who may have died in gulags, but they make Stalin less of a fiend than those bastards who murdered Matthew Sheppard in cold blood and never killed a single Nazi or otherwise contributed to the betterment of humanity.
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The lowest point in the history of the relationship between socialism and homosexuality undoubtedly begins with the rise of Joseph Stalin in the USSR, after Lenin's death, and continues through the era of state communism in the USSR, East Germany, China and North Korea. In all cases the conditions of sexual minorities, including transgender people, worsened in communist states after the arrival of Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of homosexuals were interned in gulags during the Great Purge, where many were beaten to death. Some Western intellectuals withdrew their support of Communism after seeing the severity of repression in the USSR, including the gay writer Andr? Gide.[33]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_LGBT_rights#The_homophile_movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_LGBT_rights#The_homophile_movement)
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Well, if that's true then it's sickening and it would certainly lessen my admiration of Stalin. At the same time I will never forget what he did to Nazi Germany, to the Nazis and to their collaborators, or the difference he made to the fate of the world and the human race. Too bad these positive contributions could not have been made by a better man, but our history is what it is.
I guess the lesson should be to avoid the cult of the personality and any kind of hero worship; human beings are complex and some can embody both good and evil impulses. Perhaps Stalin was simply mistaken in equating homosexuality with latent fascism, and in his campaign against homosexuality, he was liquidating people whom he sincerely believed to be fascists. An unfortunate error, but no different in principle from the errors of the Purges, when the dangers were recognized, but the net cast too wide. The intention was to save the Revolution from its fascist and capitalist enemies, and to preserve the gains of Socialism against the enemies of the people.
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The intention was to save the Revolution from its fascist and capitalist enemies, and to preserve the gains of Socialism against the enemies of the people.
Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?
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<<Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?>>
LOL. Only if you believe the Cold War propaganda bullshit equating the crimes of Hitler with the "crimes" of communism. But that's already happened. I knew Hitler would be rehabilitated one day. Human nature is what it is. You can't get away from it.
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The intention was to save the Revolution from its fascist and capitalist enemies, and to preserve the gains of Socialism against the enemies of the people.
Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?
Touche', Bt 8)
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<<Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?>>
LOL. Only if you believe the Cold War propaganda bullshit equating the crimes of Hitler with the "crimes" of communism. But that's already happened. I knew Hitler would be rehabilitated one day. Human nature is what it is. You can't get away from it.
This is no attempt to rehabilitate Hitler. What it is is an effort to point out inconsistencies in your logic. Who is to say that Hitler was not as motivated in protecting the homeland and the advances made by the revolution as Stalin was. Yet you make excuses for ones excesses and not the other.
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Communism/Naziism.......2 peas in the same evil pod
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<<This is no attempt to rehabilitate Hitler.>>
That would be the exact result of that kind of thinking. From a monster to the status of our former war-time ally.
<< What it is is an effort to point out inconsistencies in your logic. Who is to say that Hitler was not as motivated in protecting the homeland and the advances made by the revolution as Stalin was.>>
Say for the sake of argument they were both equally altruistically motivated - - the one to assure the success of the workers' and peasants' revolution and end the exploitation of man by man, the other to make the world a better place by exterminating all the Jews and reducing the non-Aryan races to servitude. Merely to state the competing objectives is to expose the ridiculous nature of your claim, which becomes even more ridiculous when one compares the crimes of the Nazis with the largely imaginary "crimes" of the Soviets, which are mostly Cold War propaganda BS.
<<Yet you make excuses for ones excesses and not the other. >>
As I say, Stalin's alleged crimes against homosexuals were balanced by his real-world good deeds, consisting, inter alia, of the destruction of Nazi Germany and the killing of millions of Nazis in the process. And Hitler's all-too-real crimes were balanced by . . . ?
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Homosexuals or Jews, whats the difference. Both were considered enemies of the state, respectively.
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I think that the campaign against homosexuals, if in fact based on their alleged complicity in fascism, was pure nonsense. That's why I claim, with the caveat that I am not sure it was as described, that it was a crime.
The difference of course is that only an idiot would equate five years in the gulag with the deliberate extermination of six million human beings, men, women and children, for the "crime" of being born to their natural parents and the intent to seek out and exterminate all the rest of them.
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Except that Stalin had far more blood on his hands than 6 million Jews.
Fact is Hitler brought Germany from the brink of starvation to a military industrial complex that took the blood and treasure of England, the US and the Soviet Union to crush.
It's funny that you accuse Hitler of subjecting the non-Aryans to servitude. What do you think Stalin did to the Eastern European countries after the war.
The biggest difference i can see between Stalin and Hitler was that Stalin was on the winning side. If you look at it objectively both had their countries best interest at heart even if you disagree with who they thought their internal enemies were.
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<<Except that Stalin had far more blood on his hands than 6 million Jews.>>
Bullslhit.
<<Fact is Hitler brought Germany from the brink of starvation to a military industrial complex that took the blood and treasure of England, the US and the Soviet Union to crush.>>
End result - - they crushed him flatter than anyone's ever been crushed before.
<<It's funny that you accuse Hitler of subjecting the non-Aryans to servitude. >>
Bullshit again. I accuse him of deliberate, industrialized murder of six million men, women and children on purely racist grounds.
<<What do you think Stalin did to the Easter European countries after the war.>>
Mostly, he paid them back for joining Hitler in his attack on the Soviet Union. Too bad he didn't kill as many of them as they killed of the Russians.
<<The biggest difference i can see between Stalin and Hitler was that Stalin was on the winning side.>>
Why am I not surprised? You don't see what you don't want to see, no matter how many times it's pointed out to you over and over again in this very thread.
<< If you look at it objectively both had their countries best interest at heart even if you disagree with who they thought their internal enemies were.>>
Let's assume that's true. How the fuck are you going to square the deliberate extermination of six million human beings and the attempt to find and kill all the rest of them with sending an unknown number of homosexuals to a gulag for five years? What the hell is wrong with you?
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<<The biggest difference i can see between Stalin and Hitler was that Stalin was on the winning side.>>
Why am I not surprised? You don't see what you don't want to see, no matter how many times it's pointed out to you over and over again in this very thread.
wow......sound the irony alarm
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How the fuck are you going to square the deliberate extermination of six million human beings and the attempt to find and kill all the rest of them with sending an unknown number of homosexuals to a gulag for five years?
As if that was Stalin's only sin.
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<<As if that was Stalin's only sin.>>
As if all of them together came anywhere near Hitler's.
How the hell can you even compare a man whose idea of bettering all of humanity may involve the liquidation of some class enemies and fascists, who pose a real threat to the people of the world, with a man whose idea of bettering the world is confined to the betterment of one race only (his own,) the extermination of an entire race of people and the subjugation of everyone else?
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So one dead man is worth more than another?
How about both men killed people who didn't need to be killed for the sole purpose of consolidating power and focusing the peoples attention on "others"
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<<So one dead man is worth more than another?>>
That's not what I said. (When is it ever?) You're confusing two issues, the morality of the intention behind the action and the action itself.
<<How about both men killed people who didn't need to be killed for the sole purpose of consolidating power and focusing the peoples attention on "others">>
Both men killed people who didn't need to be killed, sure, but then (a) the sole purpose was NOT consolidating power and focusing the people's attention on "others," that's just your own fabricated (and ludicrous) view of the purpose, and (b) it was not one-for-one, but millions killed by Hitler for the supremacy of the Aryan race, versus some infinitely lesser number executed by Stalin for purposes relating to the end of the exploitation of man by man and the defence of the workers' and peasants' Revolution.
So that as far as I am concerned, Hitler comes out much the worse (a) for the cause in which he killed, (b) in the number of his victims and (c) in the extent to which his victims were deserving of their fate. Hitler's victims did nothing to deserve their fate other than to be born to Jewish or Slavic parents, Stalin's were for the most part by their own actions, enemies of the people, but perhaps some were mistakenly executed as such, in which case Stalin's moral culpability is about on a par with a judge who convicts and sentences based on a trial that later turns out to have been (unknown to the judge) a travesty of justice.
I dunno, this stuff is pretty basic. Most people I know understand this stuff without any laborious discussion. The Cold War propaganda of the misdeeds of Stalin is a fucking joke (on the whole) and in any event, his entire focus was on wrongdoers and enemies of the people. Even the homosexuals that may have been persecuted were singled out for mistaken fascist leanings, not merely for who they were. As someone pointed out in this thread, Nazi Germany was probably the most homoerotic society of its day, and it was therefore natural for Russian thinkers to concoct a link between homosexuality and fascism, erroneous as that conclusion turned out to be in the fullness of time.
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[Stalin's] entire focus was on wrongdoers and enemies of the people.
That is also what Hitler claimed regarding the Jews.
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<<That is also what Hitler claimed [that they were wrongdoers and enemies of the people] regarding the Jews.>>
Of course that's what he claimed but who gives a shit what he claimed if the claim was so preposterous on its face (how the fuck can a three-year-old child be an enemy of the people?) that it's absurd? Besides, there's a moral relativism here that is absolutely appalling. Stalin's claims were mostly accurate - - the class war is real, there are real enemies of the people, and there are were really fascists, counter-revolutionaries, Nazi agents, Trotskyites and others who posed real threats to the Revolution and needed to be dealt with. The Jewish conspiracy to enslave the world was some kind of ludicrous falsehood, pure bullshit that couldn't have justified one single execution, let alone the cold-blooded slaughter of six million. You're equating the actions of a pure bullshit artist with the actions of a Revolutionary defending the Revolution against real enemies, albeit on occasion imperfectly.
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albeit on occasion imperfectly.
I'm sure his victims take solace in that.
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<<I'm sure his victims take solace in that. >>
What do you think Bush's victims take solace in? Or LBJ's?
Your solicitude for the "victims" of Stalin is really touching. You must be a real (LMFAO) humanitarian. What size Band-Aids do you use for your bleeding heart? Inquiring minds need to know.
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What do you think Bush's victims take solace in? Or LBJ's?
Both are pikers compared to Stalin.
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<<Both are pikers compared to Stalin. >>
Pikers, my ass. All their victims were innocent.
Most of Stalin's victims had it coming.
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<<Both are pikers compared to Stalin. >>
Pikers, my ass. All their victims were innocent.
Most of Stalin's victims had it coming.
Priceless.
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Missed points.
Hitler is responsible for many more than six million deaths , six million is just the number of Jews.
Stalin still may have a greater number of victims , depending on who is doing the counting .
Stalin made an allience with Chirchill and FDR eagerly , AFTER his allience with Hitler fell apart.
Since he chose to sign on with Hitler first , can we not assume that he was more in sympathy with Hitler than with Chirchill?
That Hitler turned two faced on Stalin is not amazeing in hindsight , Hitler had allience with homosexuals early on and turned on them when he could do so for advantage.
Stalin does not bear close examination by an admirer, merely a thug , not all that smart, he is guilty of many deaths because of the scale of the organisation he took over. If Stalin and Pol Pot were exchanged the diffrence in result would be negligable.
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<<Hitler is responsible for many more than six million deaths , six million is just the number of Jews.>>
That's true, but only the Jews and the gypsies were deliberately hunted down and rounded up with the intention of killing off every last one of them and exterminating their race from the face of the earth.
<<Stalin still may have a greater number of victims , depending on who is doing the counting .>>
That is bullshit. Pure Cold War propaganda.
<<Stalin made an allience with Chirchill and FDR eagerly , AFTER his allience with Hitler fell apart.>>
That is not correct either. Stalin pursued an alliance with Britain and France for almost three years, but had secret parallel negotiations going on with von Ribbentrop just in case. When it turned out that the British and French diplomats had secret orders to negotiate with Stalin but not to give him the mutual defensive alliance he sought, he surprised them by signing immediately with Nazi Germany. The secret parallel negotiations with Nazi Germany had been carefully hidden from the British and French. They thought they would fuck him, but then he wound up fucking them instead. THEN he was fucked by the Nazis and then the British and later the U.S. came to help him, albeit reluctantly and treacherously.
<<Since he chose to sign on with Hitler first , can we not assume that he was more in sympathy with Hitler than with Chirchill?>>
Yes, but only when the story is doctored, as you have doctored it, by completely eliminating the three years of negotiations with France and Great Britain, so as to make it look like Stalin's first choice was Hitler. Not true at all. Just more Cold War bullshit.
<<That Hitler turned two faced on Stalin is not amazeing in hindsight , Hitler had allience with homosexuals early on and turned on them when he could do so for advantage.>>
Hitler's alliance was not with "homosexuals" in general, but with one particular homosexual, Ernst Röhm, who he turned on in a power struggle because of Röhm's control of the S.A. (St?rmabteilung) the original corps of brownshirted street-fighters which had propelled Hitler to power. The S.A. were more right-wing than Hitler, and threatened the established social and financial powers of Germany. They felt that they and their members had earned the right to high Army rank and to sit on the board of directors of major German corporations, which pissed off the Prussians and Junkers who had traditionally monopolized such positions and were not going to give them up to a rabble of hoodlums and street-fighting thugs. Furthermore as soon as Hitler seized power, the S.A. began arresting Jews at random, bringing them to various private torture chambers that they controlled in major German cities, torturing them to death and stealing their property as well. This created image problems for Nazi Germany, which wanted to preserve a veneer of respectability, and there was another reason to rein in the S.A. Needing the support of the traditional ruling classes of Germany and worried by the power and independence and "wildness" shown by his old street-fighting comrade, Röhm, and his organization, Hitler built the S.S. into a rival organization to the S.A. and on the so-called Night of the Long Knives, used the S.S. to round up and liquidate almost the entire S.A. leadership, Röhm included. Many of Röhm's top associates happened to be homosexuals too, and died in the purge, but their homosexuality was not the primary reason for the purge. Hitler could not afford to be out-flanked on his right.
<<Stalin does not bear close examination by an admirer, merely a thug , not all that smart, he is guilty of many deaths because of the scale of the organisation he took over.>>
I disagree with every word of that, but it's such a broad series of allegations, it would take all night to refute.
<< If Stalin and Pol Pot were exchanged the diffrence in result would be negligable.>>
That's just way too speculative to even start in on. You're welcome to your opinion, of course,even if it's along the lines of "If Muhammed Ali had been able to fight Jack Dempsey, he would have beat the shit out of him." But I respectfully disagree with the whole thing.
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<<Stalin made an allience with Chirchill and FDR eagerly , AFTER his allience with Hitler fell apart.>>
That is not correct either. Stalin pursued an alliance with Britain and France for almost three years, but had secret parallel negotiations going on with von Ribbentrop just in case. When it turned out that the British and French diplomats had secret orders to negotiate with Stalin but not to give him the mutual defensive alliance he sought, he surprised them by signing immediately with Nazi Germany. The secret parallel negotiations with Nazi Germany had been carefully hidden from the British and French. They thought they would fuck him, but then he wound up fucking them instead. THEN he was fucked by the Nazis and then the British and later the U.S. came to help him, albeit reluctantly and treacherously.
Woah , you portray him as even more feckless that I thought!
He was playing both sides along and had no preference based on anything other than his advantage?
If I call him faithless and you also point out that he was two faced and untrustworthy , I wonder what we are left to disagree about?
Did the English refuse to promise him a bite of Poland? What do you mean when you say that "They thought they would fuck him" , did they plan somethign more harsh than Operation Barbrarosa?
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<<Hitler is responsible for many more than six million deaths , six million is just the number of Jews.>>
That's true, but only the Jews and the gypsies were deliberately hunted down and rounded up with the intention of killing off every last one of them and exterminating their race from the face of the earth.
Cold comfort to the millions killed for less personal reasons.
<<Stalin still may have a greater number of victims , depending on who is doing the counting .>>
That is bullshit. Pure Cold War propaganda.
No ,it is just as well documented as it possibly could be. If Hitler had won the war, Stalin's crimes would be much better known because Hitler would have a strong intrest in exposing them. Hitler lost and his crimes were subjected to close scrutiny more than Stalin's have been.
Of course anything you or I can say can be dismissed as "mere " cold war propaganda. Who could I quote who would have no intrest in promotion of a capitalist agenda , but who would be willing to accuse Stalin of something he had real knowledge of?
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev perhaps?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev)
On February 25, 1956, at the Twentieth Party Congress, he delivered the "Secret Speech", denouncing Stalin's purges and ushering in a less repressive era in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
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<<Woah , you portray him as even more feckless that I thought!
<<He was playing both sides along and had no preference based on anything other than his advantage?>>
Your theories are great, but unfortunately they need to ignore a lot of facts to get there. For example, the entire Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was negotiated in a few weeks, whereas Stalin had been negotiating with Britain and France for almost three years, during which, several important concessions had been made by the Soviets to secure a mutual defence alliance with the two so-called "democracies." It was only when Stalin realized that his two negotiating "partners" had been jerking him around that he ordered Molotov to approach Germany and buy some time for the U.S.S.R. to build its defences. (The way he began to realize that he was being jerked around was that after every Soviet concession, new demands were raised by Britain and France - - only later was it documented that the two "democracies" had publicly agreed to the negotiations only to appease left-wing domestic pressures, mainly from powerful labour unions, to negotiate, but that secret instructions had been given to the negotiators not to agree to a mutual defence pact under any circumstances; the ruling classes of the two nations were convinced that Hitler was going to smash communism once and for all eventually.)
Stalin was just a lot smarter than his two "Western" negotiating partners - - the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was swiftly and secretly arranged, and caught them completely flat-footed. They didn't have a clue - - never saw it coming. Days later, WWII began.
<<If I call him faithless and you also point out that he was two faced and untrustworthy , I wonder what we are left to disagree about?>>
Faithless my ass. His two negotiating partners - - and Poland - - were trying to fuck him up the ass and he turned the tables on them. (Sheees, plane, it's a jungle out there.)
<<Did the English refuse to promise him a bite of Poland? >>
On the contrary, it was the Polacks who refused at the last minute to allow access through Poland to permit the Red Army to come to the aid of France if attacked. This was the "last straw" that finally officially broke off the negotiations. Poland, which depended on its Franco-British alliance for its very existence, refused at the last minute to provide something without which, from France's POV, the entire Franco-British-Soviet mutual defence pact would have become useless. But since Poland itself depended on the support of Britain and France for its very existence, the refusal looked highly suspicious to Uncle Joe. As if the Polacks themselves had gotten some secret instructions from their protectors. Together with the pattern of concessions made only to see new demands arise, Uncle Joe started to wonder how those fucking Polacks could get away with obstructing the treaty that their defenders claimed they wanted so badly to negotiate. The answer of course became obvious. Can't fool Uncle Joe forever. Well. On the theory that when one door closes, you go and open another door, that is exactly what Uncle Joe did. Good for him. In the end, both Britain and France were bankrupted by the war and lost their empires. Fuck them. They tried to fuck Uncle Joe and in the end, they got fucked themselves. Served them right.
<<What do you mean when you say that "They thought they would fuck him" , did they plan somethign more harsh than Operation Barbrarosa?>>
In effect, they planned Operation Barbarossa itself, without knowing when it would be launched or what it would be called. Basically they contrived to refuse to give the U.S.S.R. a mutual defence pact, thinking that sooner or later Hitler would attack (and as they believed, destroy) the U.S.S.R., as he had promised to do in Mein Kampf. Didn't turn out exactly as they foresaw, but at least they got the Barbarossa part right.
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I don't doubt that Stalin was smart or clever, but he certainly had more people killed that I would think necessary. Attacking Finland was also unnecessary and tactically stupid.
Debating who was the bigger monster seems rather futile to me. It's not like history can be changed, or either of these will be reincarnated.
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<<Debating who was the bigger monster seems rather futile to me. It's not like history can be changed, or either of these will be reincarnated.>>
The issue is bigger than it appears on the surface. Following the failure of their protege Hitler to perform as expected, the "Western Allies" renewed their original campaign to crush the Revolution themselves. To do this, they recruited their former Nazi opponents on a wide scale, also their Eastern European former collaborators, now re-styled as "freedom fighters" as in "Hungarian freedom fighters," "Ukrainian freedom fighters," etc. Hilarious. These guys were Nazi collaborators and anti-Semites from top to bottom, and were more enthusiastic participants in the Holocaust than many of the Germans themselves, but now they were "freedom fighters."
To turn these guys into credible "freedom fighters," a wholesale revision of history worthy of the pages of 1984 had to be undertaken. The new history as re-written, was that these guys were not really allies of Nazi Germany, but signed up only to oppose the "evil" Soviets. Our former allies and comrades in arms, the U.S.S.R., were suddenly the "bad guys" and those who had collaborated with Hitler were now the "good guys." To make any of this plausible, "crimes" had to be invented and attributed to the U.S.S.R. which would dwarf anything that Hitler had ever actually committed. It was a tall order, but the "scholars" and the MSM of the USA, Britain and France were up to the task. A Cold War mythology developed, which as you can see is accepted holus bolus by the right wingers in the group: sure these guys may have allied themselves with Hitler, but so what? Hitler was just a piker compared to the real villain of WWII, Uncle Joe. Why Uncle Joe's "crimes" dwarfed Hitler's on a scale of something like ten to one, or twenty to one or a hundred to one.
THAT is really what's behind the rehabilitation of Hitler at the expense of our former ally, the U.S.S.R. George Orwell had it nailed in 1984. "Oceania was at war with Eurasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia." (Said the "newsreel" a few days after the end of Oceania's war with East Asia in which it had been allied with Eurasia.) Hitler and Goebbels showed the way - - the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.
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Anyone ready to shed the light on who exactly is trying to "rehabilitate" Hitler??
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I was not defending the Ukrainian "Freedom Fighters". I would not like to have lived in Nazi Germany or in Stalin's USSR, either. Both these guys were evil. Hitler may have rated a 10, and Stalin only a seven or eight, but passing would be a two or three.
And Stalin invading Finland seems both senseless and tactically stupid. I have this film, "Cuckoo" in which a Russian and a Finnish soldier are befriended by a Lapp woman. None of them speaks or understands the other's languages, and they have a number of conflicts, but eventually survival and humanity prevail.