Saturday, July 31, 2010

Stalin, a YouTube Debate, & Star Wars metaphors (come on, you gotta read it now)

No, this blog is not defunct. Yes, I'm still working on my book - every day, every hour. In fact, I feel guilty that I'm not working on it now. However, I also feel guilt that I'm not putting something up. So here you go: A few months ago, I ran into this video: 


This illustrates a well-known story about Stalin - that the atmosphere of fear and paranoia he generated was such that when he was applauded, people kept applauding forever. Why? Because no one wanted to be the the first person to stop.

Anyway... I read the comments to this video on YouTube and was amazed by how many people were saying "this is fake" and even "Stalin wasn't that bad", etc. I couldn't let that stand and started commenting back. This led to some interesting debates that touch on a subject that I've wanted to blog about for a long time: the fact that most people don't think about how evil communism truly was. True, we may know intellectually that communism was evil, but do we really grasp it?
I wish that when people see a red star, they would have the same gut reaction as if they saw a swastika. I wish that college students who wore Che students would be threatened with expulsion - as they would be if they wore a Hitler t-shirt. I wish that a stock movie villain would be a character wearing green baggy clothes and ranting about the evil capitalists - just like a character with a shaved head ranting about the evil Jews.

We need to win this battle - we need to point out, at every opportunity, that Communism= Nazism. We need to banish Communism to the fringe, just as we did Nazism. Otherwise...it could come back.

But I'm getting off the subject. The video is interesting, but the comments are even more interesting, thanks to yours truly. Here's the link to the comments page, but WARNING! There is profanity. Some of it by me. I don't apologize - some ideas can only be accurately described by four-letter words. But children should not view the page.
My comments are under the name "jmdomaniii". Check out the debate between me and "anthonyhammill" - it's very interesting, starting with communism and then delving into ethics and whether they're relative or not. You can guess which side I'm on. Finally there's some amusing asides where I tweak some particularly arrogant and ignorant commies (but they deserve it, trust me).

Okay, that's it. Now descending back into the cave with my book. It's coming along swimmingly, by the way - and BUY BOOKS I and II! Both are good! In fact, Book II is BETTER than Book I (I'm talking to YOU, Irish!) - it's The Empire Strikes Back to my A New Hope. Hopefully Book III will be Return of the Jedi, not The Phantom Menace. And if you understood the previous two sentences, you get the World's Biggest Nerd prize.