Helluva defensive play!
The ol’ possum fake!
That was the possum fake, wasn’t it…? Quick, somebody go check on Ole.
Olentzero, you rapier satrist, thou doust slay me with thy humour. I shall undertake to boast throughout the countryside that thou are supreme in brevity and quick with mockery of the capitalist running dog lackey apologists!
Sing on Beria, I hear a record deal around the corner of Lenin’s tomb!
Hmmm… Olentzero excusing murder when committed in support of communism. I’d care, but what’s the use. He seems to be blind to morals that interfere with his cause. The best I can hope for is that he never has the courage to act on this belief, and actually take matters itno his own hands. And that those who think like him never achieve power.
Personally, (and I’ll admit I’m kind of broadening the topic to general flaming) I have tried to ignore him completely ever since his comment “The only military action in Vietnam I support would be fragging,” in this thread last year. Some things I just find inexcusably morally repugnant. Condoning cold-blooded murder is one of them.
Something about this thread bugged me; I had to think about it a bit before I realized what it was.
magdalene, how very nice to see you in here. Especially after that contribution to the original GD thread about what? Lawn chairs and vodka?
Sadly, you’re displaying the typical behavior of most of the student body at Georgetown… nothing to say individually, but jump right the hell on the bandwagon once someone else starts up with the Red-baiting.
Is this why you blew me off last June? Were you afraid Georgetown would revoke your diploma if they found out you were freely associating with the campus Bolshevik?
Spineless bitch. Grow the fuck up.
But Ole, what was the context? We have to know that to fully appreciate, right?
A link, perhaps?
Aw, look, of course we have to consider the context of why the Bolsheviks murdered the entire Romanov family. I mean, if only Clinton had been as smart as Lenin he’d still be President! I mean, after deposing Bush the First he should have murdered him, along with Barbara, Bush the second, Laura, the twins, Jeb (to keep him from perpetrating the coup in Florida), Millie…
I mean, consider the context. Clinton was trying to create a better society. How could he let the Bushes stand in the way of that? Since the Bushes were obstructing the historical dialectic, then killing them is justified, right? Think of the millions of people who would be better off if the entire Bush family was dead. The ends ALWAYS justify the means. And if we have to kill a few ex-presidents and their families and pets and a couple of million other people who are standing in their way, well that’s the price we have to pay.
Surely we all remember last year’s shocking and tragic headlines:
Clinton Declares Self President For Life
Bush Executes 253 New Mexico Democrats
Retakes State’s Five Electoral Votes
How very fucking personal. 
Maybe I could post some photos of you in your Lenin costume from those years? You wore it every day, maybe I have some at home.
How much time have you spent in the Eastern Bloc, O? I learned a great deal from the GD thread and enjoyed reading it very much. I’m not an expert on that period in history - most of my personal and educational experience deals with things that happened further west and later in time - I could go on and on about the “show trials” in Czechoslovakia in the 50’s for example, or the way that socialist societies functioned later on. I didn’t post because I didn’t have much to add and I wanted to let the experts hash it out. The readings I have done, the evidence presented by Sam Stone in Lenin’s handwriting, and the things that went on to happen in the society he created add up to Lenin = butcher. I was interested to read your opinions in the GD thread, but I also think you happen to not have a whole lot of perspective on this matter, and I take your arguments with a grain of salt.
I partially refrained from posting in it because I DO sort of know you in real life, and saying “O, you used to dresslike this man, he is your personal hero, and I think you ignore or over-justify a lot of the nastier facts about him in service to your ideology” would not have been a good way to add to the debate- it would have been something of a personal attack. Others with a better knowledge of the time period were doing a good job of debating you on the facts, so I stayed out of it. I could go post this there if you want, I stand by it and it seems to sum up your arguments and those of every Lenin-apologist I’ve ever heard:
Here is what I know from years of study and time spent in the region:
Socialism, as it was practiced in the Eastern Bloc, was a horrible, society-destroying, vicious, oppressive force that brought out the absolute worst in individuals and involved the worst abuses of state power. An idea and a system of government that cannot stand without mass murder and imprisonment of civilians, without prosecution for thought crimes, without forbidding citizens from voting with their feet by leaving the country, that must stamp out all forms of artistic expression not expressly sanctioned by the state, that turns citizens into creeping groveling spies …well, Olentzero, it’s a bad system. I cannot say it more simply than that. I did not wish to hijack your thread with a debate of the ideology, and I enjoyed reading the discussion of the history.
Your refusal to acknowledge the documentation presented by Mr. Stone pissed me off. I posted here initially to attack Lenin and the arguments defending him, not you as a poster and certainly not as a person.
You know, as I was reading the early parts of this thread, I had the urge to post that Olentzero wasn’t such a bad guy, and cut him some slack.
He may be a little fanatical, and misguided, but his heart is in the right place, and doubtless he’ll eventually figure out what the Beatles figured out 30 years ago.
If you go carrying around pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
I suspect that his Marxism is more a reflection of a rebellious nature than anything else, as he’s certainly not a scholar on the subject.
In my experience that rebelliousness usually matures, and the fanaticism becomes tempered with wisdom, or maybe gets completely abandoned, and the former rebel is a much smarter and more productive person, and a little savvier for being a nonconformist and able to think and make decisions on his own without succumbing to the occasionally faulty pressure of consensus thought.
I was thinking about saying something like that.
I’m glad I didn’t. I would have regretted it.
Olentzero:
Your behavior in this thread, especially towards Magdalene is truly despicable.
I strongly suggest you step back, take a deep breath, look over the criticism here, and consider that some of it may be valid, and reevaluate your behavior.
[Homer]
Of course it does, in theory. But in theory, Communism works.
[/Homer]
D’oh! Lenin wasn’t nice, but hey, neither was Tipeecanoe, and he was a US president. I think that Lenin’s attrocities were overshadowed by the actions taken by Stalin/Beria, and his attemts to endorce Trotsky (and the kindler, gentler forms of socialism) in the end of his life have cause modern historians to gloss over his revolutionary actions. OTOH the czars weren’t exactly saints, there is a reason that the Russian people rebeled against them.
Cameron
Perhaps because we like our history carved into neat little easy-to-swallow chunks:
[ul][li]Tsar Nicholas = bad guy[/li][li]Lenin opposed Nicholas, therefore Lenin = good guy, yes?[/li][li]Then Stalin opposes Lenin, and we know Stalin = bad guy too, thus confirming Lenin = good guy[/li][/ul]
Muddying the moral waters just causes people to stop paying attention, as thinking about it is too much work.
Oh great – now I have this vision of Lenin shouting “RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!” That’s going to take a while to fade…
OK, OK let’s not get into personal shit, here. This is exactly the kind of Hoya-on-Hoya violence that The Man wants us to engage in.
I’m not liking this thread in general, really. This is the classic Vicious Debate that I try to prevent. If there is any opinion that anyone whould like to contribute regarding Lenin that can be expressed eloquently in non-flame form then please do so in GD.
Go for it. I’ll point and laugh at it just as much as anyone else.
Nine months in St. Petersburg, but if you notice I didn’t use that as a basis for credentials in any of my arguments. What’s that got to do with anything?
Good. That’s really what I was aiming for in the GD thread, and whether or not you agree with me, it’s nice to know it has generally kept to that.
I happen to disagree with you there, simply because I really made an effort to use and quote from sources that had either studied the Russian revolution or had actually been in the thick of it (such as Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, which I explicitly cite at least once in that thread).
And for that I thank you. It’s all too easy, as Sam has demonstrated, to throw Pitworthy material into a GD thread if you seriously disagree with someone.
Posting this, however, in a thread simply because it’s there and it is apparently the only way you feel confident in expressing a difference of views is pretty shallow. Whether or not it was directed at me or the whole universe of “Lenin-apologists” is irrelevant. I had thought we got along OK (and I do apologize for the hard time I gave you in the “Hajj” thread, if I haven’t already) and this was a bit of a nasty shock.
From my point of view they were stating facts, but they weren’t analyzing them well, if at all.
Since you asked me, how long did you spend in Eastern Europe, and where?
Eastern Europe was not by any stretch of the imagination Socialist. . The view of socialism held by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky had nothing in common with what was proclaimed as “socialism” either in Russia under Stalin and later, or in the countries of the Eastern Bloc. The reasons behind that, however, are material in nature, not because of some inherent philosophical or logical flaw in the theory of revolutionary socialism.
Well no kidding. :rolleyes: I do not support anything like that and claims that I do because I am a revolutionary socialist are flat out wrong.
Au contraire. I specifically addressed that letter in a post devoted entirely to it.
Well, considering that this was the only contribution you made on the subject, it certainly came off that way.
So is sticking your baby daughter’s shitty diaper in your wife’s face because you’re too much of a lazy jerk to get up and change it yourself. I guess we’re even.
Goodness me – is that the time? I really must be going. It’s been a lovely evening, really.
[sub]jr8 runs for the door as dishes fly[/sub]
Oh shit, that is funny! I’m going to have to play with Illustrator some this afternoon… you want a copy if it comes out?
Ya know, kid, when folks of all sorts of political stripes start piling on you and saying you are acting like a jerk AND that you should take another look at your beliefs because they are idiotic, maybe they have a point.