Socialist Superstars -- Both Left And Right
Author: Jim Guirard -- TrueSpeak Institute
Source: The Wanderer (National Catholic Weekly), April 16, 1987
In many clever ways, Communist propaganda paints a highly self-serving picture of world affairs. On the one side are the Soviet-sponsored "Forces of Socialism." On the other are the American-led "forces of Imperialism, Colonialism, and Fascism." But, in truth, both sides of this good-guy/bad-guy depiction are wildly disinformational.
Looking first at the black-hat labels hurled by the Soviets at the United States and our allies, it will be noted that each applies far more appropriately to the perfidious Soviets themselves than to us.
First, they call us imperialists. But a quick survey of the planet reveals that the only remaining empire (built, of course, by imperialism) is the Soviet Empire -- though it hides its true face behind a semantic mask called "wars of national liberation," wars which produce neither national nor individual liberty.
Second, they accuse us of colonialism. But our survey reveals few if any unwilling territorial possessions held by the democracies. By contrast, the Soviets rule over some 30 colonies and puppet states. These are held together (and periodically added to) by a very aggressive form of Communist colonialism -- though it, too, hides behind such euphemistic labels as the "fraternal socialist states" and the so-called "Non-Aligned Movement."
Finally, they call us fascists. But this is simply their cynical tactic for keeping the well-deserved label off their own necks. They cleverly hurl the pejorative "fascist" label at any and all who oppose Mir -- the Russian word for "peace" and the Soviet code word for "Soviet World Order," without which there can be no true and lasting peace.
Actually, in terms of Communism's unrelenting repression of human rights and civil liberties, it is simply a brutal variety of Fascism -- that is, of vicious police-state illiberalism. The liberal intellectual author and literary critic Susan Sontag correctly calls it "the most dangerous variant of fascism. Fascism with a human face."
Now, what about the other side of the picture -- namely, the self-serving Soviet portrayal of the "Forces of Socialism" as the ultimate good guys? Crucial to the success of this charade is, of course, the need to inhibit both the realization and recollection of the fact that the most genocidal tyrants of the hated "ultra-right" -- Hitler and Mussolini -- were full-fledged socialists, too.
The fact that this is so little known or publicly stated is testimony to the great effectiveness of Soviet propaganda, whose goal is to make ultra-left and ultra-right seem inherently different from each other, rather than to have them recognized as the moral equivalents they really are.
Adolf Hitler called this variety of socialist repression "National Socialism," or "Nazism" for short. And Benito Mussolini, before creating the ism called "Fascism," was for ten years a self-declared Marxist! Yet the perception has been created that socialism is ipso facto "progressive" -- supposedly anti-reactionary and, therefore, "liberal" at heart. The viciously illiberal Hitler and Mussolini would be amused.
Any Totalitarian Must Be A Socialist
The truth of the matter is that any totalitarian (if the word "total" means what it says), must be a socialist. He must either own the economy or control it to a degree which is tantamount to ownership. For if this is not the case, much of the nation's power (the private, non-nationalized apart) will remain outside his control. He might then be a tyrant; but without the tool of socialism, he cannot really be a functioning totalitarian.
Of course, socialism -- state ownership of production and distribution -- can be a small ingredient of democratic, multi-party systems of government. Witness Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and Spain. But many of these so-called "socialist" governments in Western Europe are actually "Welfare States," without particularly high levels of government ownership of the economy itself.
Perhaps in order to distinguish such governments from truly socialist (that is, Communist, Fascist and Nazi) ones, we should devise a brand new name for pluralist, welfare-state varieties of government which does not involve the words "social" or "socialist" -- both of which have been co-opted by the fascist-left Communists.
The 20th century features many such legitimate "social democratic" (for lack of the much-needed new term) states, led by men and women who embrace pluralist, civil-libertarian, multi-party politics. But the century also exhibits a frightening array of other truly Socialist leaders (both fascist-right and fascist-left) who have used and abused stated ownership and state control of their respective nations' economies as a prime mechanism for imposing dictatorship over the people.
Here is a "dirty dozen" (plus two) of this century's most brutal, fascistic and often genocidal dictators -- all of them, you guessed it, Socialists of one brand or another:
- V.I. Lenin (USSR)
- Joseph Stalin (USSR)
- Adolf Hitler (Germany)
- Benito Mussolini (Italy)
- Mao Tse-Tung (China)
- Pol Pot (Cambodia)
- Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam)
- Idi Amin (Uganda)
- Moammar Qadhafi (Libya)
- Ayatollah Khomeini (Iran)
- Fidel Castro (Cuba)
- Hafez al-Assad (Syria)
- Mingistu Haille Miriam (Ethiopia)
- Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe)
Of course, the history of geopolitics boasts of still other thugs and tyrants: among them, Tito of Yugoslavia, Marcos of the Philippines, Ortega of Nicaragua, Nasser of Egypt, Peron and "The Generals" of Argentina, "The Colonels" of Greece, and Duvalier of Haiti. But these unsavory characters are really second-stringers, even benchwarmers, when compared to the real Superstars of World Socialism.
The latter despots, as history is our tearful witness, have presided over the wholesale murder of perhaps as many as 250 million (250,000,000) of our fellow human beings -- to say nothing of the starvation, the torture, the political imprisonment, the death marches, the enslavement, the forcing into exile, and the daily repression (a.k.a. "social justice" and "people's democracy") they have showered upon literally hundreds of millions more.
And for those naïve souls who persist in the fantasy that "Communist" and "Fascist" varieties of socialism are inherently different, let us end with a quotation from none other than Adolf Hitler, reflective of the glory days of his infamous Friendship Pact with Joseph Stalin:
"The petit bourgeois social democrat and trade union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will… There is more that unites us than divides us from Bolshevism… above all the genuine revolutionary spirit."
The bottom line is that "Forces of Socialism" are themselves the dreaded forces of fascism and reaction -- or as President Ronald Reagan once labeled them, "the focus of evil in the modern world."
JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak Institute 703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com