The Chinese Way
Anyone who tuned into the special election edition of ‘The Weakest Link’ last week would probably have experienced few revelatory moments when hearing what the seven party leaders had to say in their allocated 90 seconds. True, Leanne Wood and Natalie Bennett were less familiar to the wider audience accustomed to either the Punch & Judy theatrics of PMQs or Nasty Nigel’s regular TV oratories on Europe and immigration, but it’s doubtful whether any floating voters would have decided upon the colour of the harbour to head for as a consequence of viewing this scripted and somewhat stale spectacle.
Those who retain old party loyalties and those who plan a protest vote will also have been unaffected by what they saw or heard on Thursday evening; yet, we are told, this was democracy in action. This was the only opportunity the electorate would be given to witness a not-so magnificent seven sharing the same platform and persuading us to scrawl a cross next to their name, even if relocating to Wales and Scotland would be a prerequisite for favouring two of the participants. It was not an event that inspired democratic action, if truth be told, but what alternative do we have?
Democracy has been a useful buzzword in recent years where American and British foreign policy is concerned; it vindicates illegal invasions and regime changes and is sold to people who have lived their whole lives under systems where they have had no say in who governs them as a social panacea. Democracy has become an ideological equivalent of a microwave meal, implemented overnight in countries with little or no history of democracy when it took centuries for it to develop and establish itself in Europe. The French, for example, needed a good hundred years from 1789 to finally settle on the kind of democracy they have today, a century encompassing several more revolutions as well as a self-made Emperor and a staggering body count. But the confused citizens of the instant democracies are told this is their reward for liberation from decades of oppression under an evil totalitarian state. So, go away and get on with it.
The dramatic collapse of the Soviet Bloc twenty-five years ago highlighted what can happen when a political system in which generations have been schooled abruptly ends with no long-term plan in place to supersede it. The understandable euphoria when a corrupt president or regime is suddenly overthrown, as manifested by the multitudes dancing on the Berlin Wall and statues of Saddam Hussein, is often quickly followed by a revival of either sectarianism or nationalism, symptoms of division that the previous system suppressed. Giving people ‘freedom’ is an admirable notion on paper, but in practice the post-revolutionary celebrations are a brief prologue to a storm unleashing anarchy, bloodshed, civil war and military coups that eventually install an unelected dictator. And we’re back where we began. It’s like the headmaster and the entire teaching staff of a school resigning en masse and inviting the pupils to take over the running of the establishment, with next-to no idea of how to do it. Inevitably, the school bully and his cronies would punch, kick and kill their way to the top.
Similar chaos followed the abrupt withdrawal of the British from India and from their numerous colonies dotted throughout Africa; in many cases, a pseudo-Marxist system of governance was viewed as the proper successor to the ‘Imperialist oppression’ that introduced strong legal and educational systems, gradually raised literacy levels, improved the health and wellbeing of the native populace, installed modern communications and a civil service. Sometimes, regimes that the people haven’t chosen can have genuinely beneficial and overlooked offshoots, such as the protection the endangered Siberian Tiger received in the USSR or the childcare programme of the GDR. The end of the Soviet Union saw Yeltsin attempt to impose western capitalism with a haste that plunged the country into economic meltdown, leading to a thriving gangster underworld on one hand and dubious oligarchs on the other. It’s no wonder so many Russians regard Putin as a saviour, and why they are content to turn a blind eye to the less enlightened aspects of his rule when he has restored a semblance of order to the chaos that preceded him. And, for all the controversy surrounding the process, Putin was (lest we forget) democratically elected.
Perhaps the two non-democratic countries to have garnered more media attention and column inches in recent years than any others have been China and its notorious neighbour, North Korea. The latter employs the mother of all totalitarianist systems, one Christopher Hitchens surmised was derived from ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, with Orwell’s novel being used as an effective manual; China, however, is a more intriguing proposition for a political system.
Under the iron fist of Mao, China was as closed to the rest of the world as North Korea is today; the late-60s Cultural Revolution he instigated as a means of maintaining his cruel rule was an exercise in state-sponsored mass-murder that sits alongside the Holocaust in the dark annals of the twentieth century’s most appalling crimes against humanity. And yet, Mao’s deceptively-benign image still looks down from the exterior walls of public buildings in China, a curious anachronism surrounded by every international chain-store imaginable, from MacDonald’s to Starbucks. What China has achieved economically since the tentatively cautious reforms begun in the wake of Mao’s death in 1976 has seemingly gone against the historical and political grain, blending free-market capitalism with a theoretically communist one-party state to produce an economic superpower within the space of little more than a generation. Would China benefit from the dismantling of the unelected body that has overseen this stunning transformation of a nation so vast in terms of landmass that the thought of British-style elections being introduced would constitute something of a logistical headache? I sometimes wonder if universal suffrage is really that essential after all.
Of course, the many opponents of the Chinese way have much to point at – the poor human rights record, the imprisonment of anyone publicly opposed to the party, the heavy state surveillance, internet censorship, Tiananmen Square, the occupation of Tibet and absorption of Taiwan, not to mention the obvious fact that its people do not choose who rules them. And yet, can we in the west afford to be so smug and superior?
How many innocent men, women and children languish in British and American penal institutions? How many of those falsely imprisoned have been brutally fried alive in certain US states? How many cameras monitor our every move outdoors? How much of our internet traffic is free from the prying eyes of GCHQ or the CIA? How many citizens of the UK or US dwell in abject and intractable poverty? How many mentally ill and physically disabled subjects of Her Majesty or Mr President been abandoned and regarded as capitalism’s collateral damage? How many draconian laws have our elected representatives introduced to curb our civil liberties, including those that limit what we can and cannot say online and warping the legal system by dispensing with juries in the name of National Security? How uncensored is a press that selects an agenda as truth and will not allow voices to be heard that contradict this agenda? How many residents of the Free World are shot down whenever they air a ‘controversial’ opinion in public, losing their jobs and set upon by media hounds, both mainstream and social? How many terror suspects were whisked away to clandestine army prison camps and detained for years after interrogation, torture and a military trial held behind closed doors? How many illegal incursions into foreign territories have we sanctioned, endorsed or participated in, many of which make the invasion of Tibet resemble a coach-trip to see the Blackpool Illuminations? But…we choose our leaders, so we must be better than China, right? No doubt we’ll prove it on May 7.
As Confucius said, I can’t bloody wait
Petunia Winegum
-
April 8, 2015 at 9:36 am -
Humour is the main thing lacking in today’s politico’s.
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
(Churchill: from a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947)When the news came out he had lost the Election in 1945, Churchill remarked “They have a perfect right to kick me out. That is democracy”.
When he was offered the Order of the Garter, he asked “Why should I accept the Order of the Garter, when the British people have just given me the Order of the Boot?”.
-
April 8, 2015 at 10:40 am -
My favourite Churchill qoute is the well known one aimed at either the socialist MP Bessie Braddock or the Conservative Lady Astor.
When accused by one of them of being ‘disgustingly drunk’ the Conservative Prime Minister responded: ‘My dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.’
-
April 8, 2015 at 11:06 am -
I suspect it was Bessie, who was unashamedly ugly and no doubt playing along with the joke.
http://www.corbisimages.com/images/Corbis-HU047277.jpg?size=67&uid=5ae30381-2966-4b66-a3d4-8c1c96ba38a0-
April 8, 2015 at 11:12 am -
I think he left it hanging after pointing out that in the morrow he would be sober. But then he probably wasn’t.
Sober, non-smoking, vegetarian politicians are the worst kind – Adolf anyone? I betcha Tony Blair is too.
-
April 8, 2015 at 2:50 pm -
British politics…Churchill the titan to Bliar, the guitar strumming ninny, in 42 years.
Someone said to Churchill after his big defeat in the ’45 election –
“Winston, it’s probably a blessing in disguise…”
“It’s shirtenly a very GOOD dishguise” – the great man shot back.-
April 8, 2015 at 7:54 pm -
-
April 12, 2015 at 11:12 pm -
Trouble is, he believes it…
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 9:51 am -
It seems that the only difference is that one lot end up with unelected dictators, and the other lot get elected dictators. It has always angered me when UK MP’s trot out that old chestnut about not being elected to represent the views of their constituents, but to make their own judgements on the issues. However,if the Western democracies are so bad, how come so many from the rest of the world flock to them, and will try all sorts of dangerous methods of gaining entry to say the UK or USA?. I guess at the end of the day our flawed democracy is better than the alternatives. Does China have an immigration problem?.
-
April 8, 2015 at 10:06 am -
I think it’s just changing the dictators that is the important bit. China’s version of Communism probably feeds off it’s long-standing Emperor culture, just as Putin succeeds as a Tsar sort of figure. Britain is somewhat unusual in having a constitutional Monarch taking all the glamour away from “The Leader”. There has been a lot of media pressure to create a de facto President out of our Prime Minister – hence these silly set-pieces that Petunia has written about. The urge for the British to be American remains powerful.
-
April 8, 2015 at 11:34 am -
Even more ironic is that the Americans would love to have a monarchy; the urge for the Americans to be British remains powerful.
-
April 8, 2015 at 12:31 pm -
Unbelievable that I’m reading that the two most likely candidates for their next Prez is another Clinton and another Bush.
Incest is best in politics it seems.-
April 8, 2015 at 2:12 pm -
Incest as well? I thought the claims were limited to paedophlia (and homosexuality before it was legalised). Can’t trust these damned politicos at all, can you? You’d think they were human, the number of faults they have….
-
April 8, 2015 at 2:55 pm -
Isn’t it just bad old nepotism?
-
April 8, 2015 at 3:49 pm -
When does nepotism become hereditary?
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 4:08 pm -
You mean homosexuality’s only been legalised – I thought it was compulsory now !
-
April 8, 2015 at 4:21 pm -
Nepotism is using your power/influence to get your family into jobs. I don’t think you can “nepot” someone you aren’t related to.
-
-
-
-
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 11:13 am -
MPs aren’t elected to represent the views of their constituents: they can’t possibly do that, as many of their constituents hold views of a different complexion.
-
April 8, 2015 at 12:09 pm -
Watching the the hoi-polloi on twitter makes me hope nothing changes too much…
-
April 8, 2015 at 4:10 pm -
Take yourself off for some extra Greek homework – ‘hoi polloi’ does not need a definite article, and certainly not two of them.
-
-
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 10:14 am -
A sermon to the converted, on this blog, Petunia.
In my view, all politicians are hypocrites.
And it seems many of the electorate are gullible, voting for the politicians who promise to give them ‘the most’.
Our grandkids will simply inherit a millstone.
-
April 12, 2015 at 11:16 pm -
Bread & Circuses, Joe.
Invented by despotic Roman Emperors, and used by so-called democratic politicos ever since. Unfortunately it seems to work.
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 10:47 am -
A frighteningly astute article, and so well timed. My only comment would be that the description Petunia gives of the situation in America and UK is not, in fact Democracy. Instead it is a corruption of Democracy, where, over the passage of time, we have become decadent, illiterate, lazy, non-responsible and non-accountable.
Because we have not had to struggle for anything that is vital to our lives for about 70 years, we cannot identify with the “failures” in our society who have “screwed their lives up” by being unnecessarily poor (they must have squandered their money), homeless (probably due to drugs or another addiction) or sick (they have chosen unhealthy lifestyle options).
We have become parasites who only need to have the required cash to buy what we need or want. We have no inkling of the skills or knowledge needed to sustain life or survival.
We used to live in a democracy. Today we simply live in a hedonistic bubble, playing at democracy in our X-Factor, TOWIE infantile way.-
April 8, 2015 at 2:03 pm -
Speak for yourself mate. What wrong with a “hedonistic bubble”, if, at the same time, we are meeting our responsibilities and trying to live a good life? Is the future meant to be doom, gloom and squalor just so we know we’re alive? There’s me thinking progress is MEANT to make life easier, more comfortable and less like “Deadwood”. That has nothing to do with democracy or lack of it (ask the richer Chinese).
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 11:45 am -
Strange that this subject should be aired. Just reading/read a somewhat scary book by a Russian/ English TV ‘documentary’ producer ( Peter Pomerantsev) about the process of Democracy as mastermind Putin organises his version….Czarist with a Stalinist twist. Democracy aided by criminals and mafias, money laundering. Stealing small business’s capital. Rapid changing rules that catch small fry out. Leaves the mafia still functioning. Then away to the crowded prison cell. The body search. No visitors or phone calls. The tidal wave of Russian money to London. Most of it laundered along the way! We trade with it or go down, according to this writer’s Russian take on money matters. He says Democracy is fragile. Any fool knows that it morphs into forms we do not understand in Europe. You cannot get the oligarch, the criminal, or army demagogue, tribal leader or religious zealot to relinquish power. Why should they let it go? I saw Blair performing on Tele last night. The plastered on smile, smart suit, sun tan, smart words, an escort of bodyguards looking dramatically around, defending the big wheel….delusions of grandeur? Back seat driving, because a new sibling back stabbing PM pretender is on an L plate? Not to be entrusted with the weighty EU matter.
Democracy is a chamaeleon, it changes colour, even shape, to fit a purpose. It is just become an ever changing word, to be used whenever it suits. Putin is chief shape-shifter. -
April 8, 2015 at 12:38 pm -
Norfolk Great Gran was a very wise woman, infact I think she probably was the village ‘Wise Woman’ (and in a County where an entire village shares an IQ & DNA Sequence that is saying something). When she wasn’t being buggered on the backstairway of The Big House by His Lordship, Charming Warts or ‘making Angels’ (procuring abortions for the teenage daughters of the tribe) she was given to mull over her mulled ale and woodbines of an evening and would declare : “Remember boo-i, ‘owld yow haard,thay aare all poli’icians and thay aare all ‘aarred wi’h Sa’an’s Brush” (“Remember and stop to think Boy, they are all politicians and they are all tarred with Satan’s Brush” ).
Never seen much cause to disagree with her on that one. I don’t vote, hell I’m not even on the Electoral Roll.
-
April 8, 2015 at 1:09 pm -
I have read that the difference between Soviet and western propaganda is that Soviet propaganda was hamfisted and obvious, whereas western propaganda is clever and appears truthful.
-
April 8, 2015 at 1:24 pm -
I think you might be confusing propaganda with advertising.
-
April 8, 2015 at 1:25 pm -
-
April 8, 2015 at 1:28 pm -
Not really. In Propaganda there is only one product available.
-
April 8, 2015 at 1:34 pm -
In Propaganda there is only one product available.
and for a limited time only?
Try our big, green , pleasure machine.
-
April 8, 2015 at 1:41 pm -
The Ford Model T: available in any colour, so long as it’s black…
-
-
-
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 2:04 pm -
It’s called advertising.
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 1:12 pm -
I’ve always thought it rank hypocrisy that we try to impose Western ‘democracy’ on less developed states. It’s less than a century ago we let our own women vote, after all, and first past the post is going to look pretty sick after May, isn’t it? There seems to be a failure to appreciate the social cohesion of tribal & other societies in the rush to elections. Are our party political systems any better?
Back to the oily Blair- did his reptilian performance make Miliweed minor seem more attractive?
I couldn’t watch the magnificent seven on tv; a few minutes was all I could cope with. If what I saw was representative the future won’t be changed.
I reckon I’ve got a decent MP; I don’t suppose my one vote will make a difference, but I’ve never had so much difficulty deciding how to vote.
Shame, but on the day I guess it will be against reds, yellows & blues.-
April 8, 2015 at 3:36 pm -
And don’t forget that as recently as 1976, in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, the church that Jimmy Carter attended still practised segregation.
-
April 8, 2015 at 4:16 pm -
In 2015, Bradford mosques still do.
-
April 8, 2015 at 4:38 pm -
This story had me completely baffled I have to say…..
Fury of Muslim father after Catholic school orders Islamic students to shave off their beards
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3024406/Muslim-father-facing-jail-racist-tirade-teachers-Yorkshire-school-barred-Islamic-students-lessons-refusing-shave-beards.html
-
-
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 2:28 pm -
I’m not so sure that Western democracy is all that bad. Britain (well, England actually) started it. Exactly when we started it could be open to some debate – the formation of England under King Athelstan and the beginnings of Common Law, the signing of Magna Carta, or perhaps the institution of Constitutional Monarchy after the failed experiment with rupublicanism under Cromwell. Whenever you choose as a start date, it has come to work quite well; so well that nations like America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand adopted the model, and nobody could call them failed states. More recently, many former countries of Empire have adopted many of the constitutional building-blocks we take for granted, and many of those nations are settling down nicely, though with one or two (Pakistan, for example) still struggling.
If it’s a choice between the British and the Chinese model, I’ll stick with the British one thanks, for all we grumble about it. At least we’re ALLOWED to grumble about it without being locked up….
-
April 8, 2015 at 3:20 pm -
Yes, I’d rather be here than there; but it did strike me that for every accusation that could be levelled at China, there’s one that could be levelled at the UK or US as well.
-
April 8, 2015 at 4:04 pm -
I think it’s a question of degree. We grumble about GCHQ possibly having access to some of our emails under some circumstances; Chinese can’t grumble about having very controlled access to the internet without risking imprisonment. We’re a lot freer, for all our grumbles. China quietly admits that it has to emulate the West, at least economically, if it is to survive at all; democracy will follow I suspect, but slowly.
-
April 8, 2015 at 5:29 pm -
I cannot say as I mind the cops reading my emails. It’s more that they might decide to give copies to the daily Mirror or Mail that pisses me off.
-
April 8, 2015 at 5:51 pm -
I think I’d be a bit bothered if the cops were reading emails. I don’t mind GCHQ or MI5/6 reading them, though. Two reasons; they don’t often sell stuff to the press, and there are fewer of them, so they’ll only read emails they have to. I tend not to write stuff like, “I’m going to blow up a cultural icon, but I need some semtex. Where can I buy some – can’t find any on Ebay.” so they probably won’t bother with mine. (Mind you, I did buy a couple of things from Amazon, so that’ll no doubt put me on the Guardianista Hate List. Maybe it’s best if my emails did stay totally secret, after all…)
-
April 8, 2015 at 9:47 pm -
Given that they cannot even keep Obama’s secrets, what chance yours or mine?…..
-
-
-
-
April 12, 2015 at 11:27 pm -
“…we’re ALLOWED to grumble about it without being locked up…”
Just for the time being, Engineer, just for the time being. For ages, our legal system has been one in which Everything is permitted, except that which is expressly forbidden.
Successive gubmints’ politically-appointed Chief Constables, with ACPO’s assistance, are bypassing Parliament off their own bat to change it to one where Everything is forbidden, except that which is expressly permitted.
And we’re letting it happen.
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 3:16 pm -
Taiwan hasn’t been absorbed by the Communist ruled mainland, though, of course, Hong Kong and Macao (the latter formerly Portuguese) have.
Mao was a monster, as you say, Pet. His rule was a monumental disaster for millions. Even the left can no longer say good things about Stalin, but Mao whose despotism and crimes are every bit as appalling, can still bring out the misty eyes of worship in some on the left. Thus that “national treasure” (silly old fool) Tony Benn, after the chairman was dead and his atrocities and epic misrule were public knowledge –
“Had a long talk to the Chinese First Secretary at the embassy — a very charming man called Liao Dong — and said how much I admired Mao Tse tung or Zedong, the greatest man of the twentieth century”
– Benn diaries
Benn’s standard for admiration and greatness seems to have been based on how many dead bodies you can pile up.
-
April 8, 2015 at 3:23 pm -
The reverence for Stalin lingered even during the purges of the 30s, yet I would’ve thought any admiration for Mao would have gone along with the posters of Che on the student bedsit wall. Do his defenders also stick up for Idi Amin or Pol Pot, I wonder?
-
April 8, 2015 at 3:31 pm -
Idi Amin – did he ever have an “ideology”, apart from his own infallibility?
-
April 8, 2015 at 3:40 pm -
April 8, 2015 at 4:03 pm -
It took Khrushchev himself to say “Yes, this is what happened, it’s true” in his 1956 speech before a lot of the USSR’S western groupies on the left would believe it wasn’t largely “capitalist propaganda” about the Stalin years. In 1968 there were still those who slammed Robert Conquest over “The great fear”, the first really comprehensive account of the Terror. They were the same as the holocaust deniers in this respect. Ralph Miliband’s mentor, Harold Laski, said he saw little difference between Stalin’s 30’s show “trials” (often of other Bolshevik luminaries) and British judicial practice. The likes of Laski, Hobsbawn, GB Shaw, the Webbs, Paul Robeson, Lillian Hellman etc would most likely have been killed by Stalin if they had lived in their worker’s paradise instead of in the wicked capitalist lands they spent their lives attacking and trying to subvert.
Years ago I once had a bust up with an idiot leftist at work who thought what China had before Mao in the 20th century was worse – Chaing, “the warlords”… hardly in the same ballpark as the Yanks say.
-
April 8, 2015 at 4:14 pm -
Replying to myself. Conquest’s book was, of course “The great terror” not “The great fear”. “The Great fear” is an old book by David Caute about the so called US witch hunts of the 40’s and 50’s – Caute needs to be hit over the head with a copy of the Venona transcripts.
-
April 8, 2015 at 5:59 pm -
It’s possible with Robeson being black in America and Shaw being Irish in England that they viewed the USSR as a paradise without prejudice and regarded it in a romantic light – without, of course, experiencing the less-than-romantic reality.
-
April 8, 2015 at 9:46 pm -
Robeson and Shaw both visited Russia in the thirties, but back then poor folks were much the same everywhere. It’s hard to see that the feted black man and the feted Irishman could have been especially sensitive about race issues since they’d both been allowed to succeed. Robeson ended up in England in the 50’s but not because he was black but rather because he was a commie.
-
April 9, 2015 at 12:19 am -
Oh, yes – both successful men whose talent elevated them beyond their origins; but both, I would imagine, aware of discrimination experienced by their race (in Robeson’s case) and countrymen (in Shaw’s case), something I’m pretty sure they viewed as a by-product of the political and social systems they lived under. Russian communism as a theory or ideal appealed as an alternative to many on the left in the west when the propaganda had yet to be tarnished by the truth. Even Anthony Blunt offered its appeal as an excuse when he was ‘named and shamed’.
-
April 9, 2015 at 8:43 am -
Blunt rather blunts any notions of socialists being inspired by being underprivileged themselves. Champagne Socialists were ever thus. What is perhaps of human importance is that whilst Shaw was plain wrong-headed in his worship of socialism, he was was a brilliant man in many other ways. A problem of the 21st Century is the way the entire tree of life of a person is now utterly condemned, just because when a mote is discerned in their eye. I cannot imagine Stalin’s regime would have been any the weaker for the lack of any of these guys. Remove one useful idiot and you can be sure another will pop up in it’s place. Look at George Galloway: did Saddam need George or did George need Saddam? Who was exploiting who.
-
April 12, 2015 at 11:32 pm -
“…I cannot imagine Stalin’s regime would have been any the weaker for the lack of any of these guys…”
But they did earn the epithet “Useful idiots”, if I remember correctly.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
April 8, 2015 at 7:28 pm -
Just a thought about the first paragraph. I don’t think it does politics any good at all to be reduced to the level of a television game show. It tells us little about any of the parties’ policies or their reasoning for those policies.
I think it’s high time that the politicians told the broadcasters to back off. It’s for the politicians to set the political agenda, and for the broadcasters to report it. We’re getting dangerously close to the point where the broadcasters are making the rules, without being in any way accountable to the electorate. That demeans the political system, and robs us of our proper influence through the ballot box because we haven’t heard what the politicians want to say, only what the broadcasters have allowed them a very short time to say.
-
April 8, 2015 at 9:38 pm -
I was somewhat baffled that the first twenty or more minutes was devoted to a fairly mundane question asked by a 17 year-old. How did he even get served in that bloody pub?
-
April 9, 2015 at 2:26 am -
Yes, Petunia. Both Shaw and Robeson were certainly radicalised to a significant degree by the injustice in their societies, but it led them into embracing the Devil. Personally they both did very well for themselves, despite being “outsiders” and “out of step” with some of the prevailing mores of their societies (though personally Shaw was no more of an “outsider” than other notable Irish literary men like Swift, Goldsmith, Stoker, Burke, Wilde, Yeats etc, who also prospered in England). The thing about many of the the western leftists of the 30’s, is they were either at best staggeringly credulous (plain dim, a hard label to put on “thinkers”), being willfully blind, or at worst, they knew exactly what the score was and were conscious, articulate collaborators with a great evil. Robeson’s love affair with the USSR reflects very badly on him; an unedifying story, at variance with his saintly reputation as a campaigner for civil rights and notable “witch hunt” martyr.
It’s important to recall, when comparisons with some “conservatives” flirting with Hiter in the 30’s are made (Rothemere/ the Daily Mail’s Nazi fling are still being thrown at that paper to discredit it today), that the Nazi’s were seen by many as a bulwark against a communist threat with a objective in power that was aimed at “righting the wrongs of Versailles”, comparatively mild as far as repression went (their greatest evils were committed during the war) when measured alongside the record of the USSR in the 30’s – with the great collectivisation famine, the slave labour, the mass murders, the horrific camps which were a hell for countless victims of political persecution. To all of these the fellow travellers and sympathisers and their publications either turned a blind eye, or they denied they were happening (or, at best, minimised them) , promoting the Soviet Union as a happy clappy land of progress, with no unemployment, well fed citizenry, and social justice which would take bourgeois capitalist states centuries to equal, if they ever could. And many of the western Soviet promoters condemned loudly honest liberals, democratic socialists, and anyone else, who told the truth about Stalin, saying they were liars and/or “fascists”. They went along with the Stalin regime calling Trotsky a fascist agent, and swallowed whole the accusations that all the old Bolshevik leaders at their show trials were being exposed by the regime as secretly working for the Nazis/ were counter revolutionaries/saboteurs. There was nothing the Robesons, the Hellmans, the John Howard Lawsons, the Hewlett Johnsons (the “red Dean” of Canterbury) wouldn’t treat as a truth if that’s what Stalin told them – with an apparent credulity to make a believer in fairies blush. None of them actually went to live in the paradise they were praising as the way forward for the whole of humanity. The USSR never had a refugee problem caused by a flood of western intellectuals wishing to live in that land of socialist progress (Brecht bounced around many capitalist nations after leaving Hitler’s Germany in 1933, only ending up in the DDR in 1949, retaining his Austrian citizenship); nor were there hosts of black people who could stand the racism of the USA no more, pouring into a new Soviet Utopia where there was nominally no such bigotry, and a supposedly egalitarian society.
Though even Stalin’s some time henchman, Khrushchev, would finally admit to some of the atrocious crimes committed by the regime, Britain’ s radical left prelate, Hewlett Johnson and America’s crusader against oppression, Paul Robeson, both happily received “Stalin peace prizes” from the blood drenched old monster in the 50’s.
“From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!”
– Paul Robeson in the communist party US newspaper “The Daily Worker”Robeson’s eulogy to Stalin after the tyrant’s death, “To you beloved comrade” (a piece beyond satire), spoke of the industrial scale mass murderer, torturer and repressor, the killer of Trotsky, Bukharin etc, even of his own secret police chiefs, along with countless innocents, as a man of “deep humanity” and “wise understanding”, with a “monumental heritage” – presumably meaning the piles of victim’s bones Robeson’s great humanitarian idol had created during his “wise” career of making the world a much better place.
Robeson, like most of his ilk, was a dangerous ideological fool of epic proportions.
-
April 9, 2015 at 8:44 am -
as was that comment…
-
April 9, 2015 at 9:16 am -
epic proportions I meant…
-
-
{ 60 comments… read them below or add one }