Josef Stalin, after he was dead, a time when he would no longer do harm to anyone again.
If you are looking for a group of Leftist misfits that are really ‘out there’, then the Socialist Workers Party, or the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) will surely be too tame for you. If you are looking for the ultimate in Leftist revisionism then what you need is The Stalin Society. Yes there is a society, based in Britain who truly believe that a dictator who murdered millions has been badly written up by historians.
The Stalin Society, a real group with real people that have real meetings (the next one is in Doncaster by the way) dedicate themselves to reclaiming the legacy of Comrade Stalin. According to their website::
“The Stalin Society was formed in 1991 to
defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him. “
They do this by publishing long apologias for Stalin and deny those crimes that occurred during his reign of terror. If the causes they were supporting weren’t so misguided and grisly, then some of the articles could almost be comical.
Treat yourself to the following dainties;
The Katyn Massacre according to the Stalin society was carried out by the Germans and it was partially the fault of the Poles for not wanting to be ‘liberated’ by Stalin.
Ukrainian famine, again according to the Stalin Society, this was nothing to do with Communism or Stalin but was all the fault of American journalists not telling the truth.
Basically according to the Stalin Society, any crime that is attributed to him, or the Soviet Union is a load of lies put out by the capitalists.
It is amazing how a group of people can so completely disregard evidence of the famines, the disappearances, the show trials, the gulags and the mass graves that characterise the rule of Stalin, and instead make him out to be a poor misunderstood champion of the workers.
Although the Stalin Society is a small extremist group following a discredited and embarrassing bit of Leftisim, the fact that they can ignore horrendous crimes if those crimes disrupt their particular worldview, should give people outside the left cause for concern. If a group of lefties can be so unrealistic as to rehabilitate Stalin what other ‘elephants in the room’ are the political left failing to see?
I’d advise a visit to the Stalin Society website because not only will you see good writers talking complete bollocks, but you also get the spectacle of a Communist group behaving in a very capitalist manner by selling paper copies of the website articles for up to a couple of quid a throw, which is a bit incongruous.
Surely the Stalin Society are one of the oddest groups on the political Left that can be found. It is interesting that even now there are educated people trying to convince others that Stalin is not a villain, but is a hero instead. Delusions don’t come much bigger than that.
Link
The Stalin Society
http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/
Has there ever been any “good” politicians? What I mean by good is a man or woman who never lied and always put the interests of the people they served 1st, whilst getting the vast majority of their big decisions right. Even Churchill had his detractors and some dodgy bits, like targeting civilians in Dresden for example.
On the whole, they’re an evil bunch.
Like all of us, politicians are all too human and subject to human frailties. You’d be hard pushed to find an individual human let alone politician who had never sinned or never behaved badly. In this case Netanyahu has decided to stop soft-pedalling about the history of ‘Palestinian’ Arab politics to avoid giving offence, and has told the murky truth about the background to groups like Fatah.
Thanks for the link to these dinosaurs, as it’s a glorious comedic reminder of the cul de sac of Olde Stylee left-wing onanism. The pamphlet on Orwell (which is a freebie) is hilarious. Defending their hormone-driven crush Stalin against the other boy band’s lead singer Trotsky through a complete trashing of Orwell’s writings will keep these people from ever doing anyone any harm. They’d never get any further down the meeting’s agenda than worrying which biscuit was more authentically proletarian.
Well, theyre not around any more, but this bunch look pretty far out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_Posadist
Yup they are pretty mad. Revolutionary violence and UFO obsessions. You might be interested in this article on the various flavours of leftist mentalists called ‘As soon as this pub closes’ It can be found here: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/sullivan/As-soon-as-this-pub-closes.pdf
No wonder Life of Brian was so accurate with its ‘political groups sketch with the classic line ‘whatever happened to the Popular Front of Judea, Reg’ ‘Oh he’s over there’.
Bear in mind when Dresden was targeted it was the home of a reserve army, and it is very easy to sit here nearly 70 years later and criticise others. I always did have a soft spot for Uncle Joe Stalin though, he may have been an unmitigated bastard, but thankfully he was an unmitigated bastard on our side.
Agreed that it is too easy to judge those in the past and Britain was fighting for its life at the time. Talking of bombing campaigns, one of the tragic unintended consequences of the bombing of Hamburg is that it accelerated the Nazi Aktion T4 programme of killing off the disabled and mentally ill because the mental hospitals surrounding Hamburg were commendeered for those bombed out of Hamburg. To make room for the homeless, the Nazis stepped up the killing in these hospitals. See Death and Deliverance by Michael Burleigh ISBN-13: 978-0521477697 for more on this. Re Stalin, at the time it was better for Britain to have him pissing out of the tent rather than pissing in.