More good news tomorrow

knecht wrote:

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Before one gets self-righteous about another's choice of newspaper, tcm, your avatar is symbolic of a regime which murdered millions and was indirectly responsible for millions more. It is little better than a Swastika. Just saying, like.

Interesting point, Mock, and one I have been thinking around since I read it this afternoon. I think the big difference is that a major aim of the Nazis was to eliminate whole swathes of the population of Europe (and then the world......) - Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, disabled, unionists etc. To the best of my knowledge, that sort of thing wasn't, so to speak, in the constitution of the Russian Communist party, despicable though its actions were. By the same token countries & institutions such as Great Britain, the Catholic Church, Spanish Empire, etc could also be included. Happy to be put right, though.

just wondering why your such moody(unt mock,,,bad life?or naturaly that way?,,,its party weekend,everones getting pissed up and stuff,,,try it?maybe that would help?

Que?

knecht wrote:

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Before one gets self-righteous about another's choice of newspaper, tcm, your avatar is symbolic of a regime which murdered millions and was indirectly responsible for millions more. It is little better than a Swastika. Just saying, like.

Interesting point, Mock, and one I have been thinking around since I read it this afternoon. I think the big difference is that a major aim of the Nazis was to eliminate whole swathes of the population of Europe (and then the world......) - Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, disabled, unionists etc. To the best of my knowledge, that sort of thing wasn't, so to speak, in the constitution of the Russian Communist party, despicable though its actions were. By the same token countries & institutions such as Great Britain, the Catholic Church, Spanish Empire, etc could also be included. Happy to be put right, though.

Communism certainly doesn't include the racial idealogy that Nazism, Hitler's version of fascism, did. And actually by the same token, Mussolini's and Franco's versions of fascism didn't either. Individual totalitarian communist leaders - Josef Stalin and Pol Pot to name two - did use a policy of widespread terror on their populations to deter and crush any political dissent and these policies certainly resulted in what can only be described as genocide. Saddam Hussien, although not a communist (Saddam's Ba'athists were actually a form of national socialists), brutally ruled Iraq very much on Stalinist principles.

Freathy wrote:

knecht wrote:

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Before one gets self-righteous about another's choice of newspaper, tcm, your avatar is symbolic of a regime which murdered millions and was indirectly responsible for millions more. It is little better than a Swastika. Just saying, like.

Interesting point, Mock, and one I have been thinking around since I read it this afternoon. I think the big difference is that a major aim of the Nazis was to eliminate whole swathes of the population of Europe (and then the world......) - Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, disabled, unionists etc. To the best of my knowledge, that sort of thing wasn't, so to speak, in the constitution of the Russian Communist party, despicable though its actions were. By the same token countries & institutions such as Great Britain, the Catholic Church, Spanish Empire, etc could also be included. Happy to be put right, though.

Communism certainly doesn't include the racial idealogy that Nazism, Hitler's version of fascism, did. And actually by the same token, Mussolini's and Franco's versions of fascism didn't either. Individual totalitarian communist leaders - Josef Stalin and Pol Pot to name two - did use a policy of widespread terror on their populations to deter and crush any political dissent and these policies certainly resulted in what can only be described as genocide. Saddam Hussien, although not a communist (Saddam's Ba'athists were actually a form of national socialists), brutally ruled Iraq very much on Stalinist principles.

Possibly only on ATD could this conversation appear on a thread entitled "More good news tomorrow"

Freathy wrote:

knecht wrote:

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Before one gets self-righteous about another's choice of newspaper, tcm, your avatar is symbolic of a regime which murdered millions and was indirectly responsible for millions more. It is little better than a Swastika. Just saying, like.

Interesting point, Mock, and one I have been thinking around since I read it this afternoon. I think the big difference is that a major aim of the Nazis was to eliminate whole swathes of the population of Europe (and then the world......) - Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, disabled, unionists etc. To the best of my knowledge, that sort of thing wasn't, so to speak, in the constitution of the Russian Communist party, despicable though its actions were. By the same token countries & institutions such as Great Britain, the Catholic Church, Spanish Empire, etc could also be included. Happy to be put right, though.

Communism certainly doesn't include the racial idealogy that Nazism, Hitler's version of fascism, did. And actually by the same token, Mussolini's and Franco's versions of fascism didn't either. Individual totalitarian communist leaders - Josef Stalin and Pol Pot to name two - did use a policy of widespread terror on their populations to deter and crush any political dissent and these policies certainly resulted in what can only be described as genocide. Saddam Hussien, although not a communist (Saddam's Ba'athists were actually a form of national socialists), brutally ruled Iraq very much on Stalinist principles.

Mass murder in the Soviet Union sometimes involved motivations, especially national and ethnic ones, that can be disconcertingly close to Nazi motivations. Stalin's prequisition of Ukrainian grain & complete lockdown on it's borders ensured the survival of his pure-bred Russians, at the expense of millions of non-Russians who died. In fact, the fallout of Stalin's brutality is still there - it is almost no surprise that many of the disaffected youths of Eastern Europe now have strong Nazi sympathies. The enemy of my enemy, etc.

Basically, Hitler's 11m vs Stalin's 20m, is almost irrelevant. At the end of the day what matters is 1. Being responsible for 1 death is horrendous. Being involved in 1+1+1+1+etc deaths is horrendous multiplied by horrendous multiplied by, etc. Neither was less abhorrent than the other, yet there is somehow less stigma surrounding the Reds than the Browns. Probably an ignorance thing, but Mocky C is on hand to point things out.

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Freathy wrote:

knecht wrote:

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Before one gets self-righteous about another's choice of newspaper, tcm, your avatar is symbolic of a regime which murdered millions and was indirectly responsible for millions more. It is little better than a Swastika. Just saying, like.

Interesting point, Mock, and one I have been thinking around since I read it this afternoon. I think the big difference is that a major aim of the Nazis was to eliminate whole swathes of the population of Europe (and then the world......) - Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, disabled, unionists etc. To the best of my knowledge, that sort of thing wasn't, so to speak, in the constitution of the Russian Communist party, despicable though its actions were. By the same token countries & institutions such as Great Britain, the Catholic Church, Spanish Empire, etc could also be included. Happy to be put right, though.

Communism certainly doesn't include the racial idealogy that Nazism, Hitler's version of fascism, did. And actually by the same token, Mussolini's and Franco's versions of fascism didn't either. Individual totalitarian communist leaders - Josef Stalin and Pol Pot to name two - did use a policy of widespread terror on their populations to deter and crush any political dissent and these policies certainly resulted in what can only be described as genocide. Saddam Hussien, although not a communist (Saddam's Ba'athists were actually a form of national socialists), brutally ruled Iraq very much on Stalinist principles.

Mass murder in the Soviet Union sometimes involved motivations, especially national and ethnic ones, that can be disconcertingly close to Nazi motivations. Stalin's prequisition of Ukrainian grain & complete lockdown on it's borders ensured the survival of his pure-bred Russians, at the expense of millions of non-Russians who died. In fact, the fallout of Stalin's brutality is still there - it is almost no surprise that many of the disaffected youths of Eastern Europe now have strong Nazi sympathies. The enemy of my enemy, etc.

Basically, Hitler's 11m vs Stalin's 20m, is almost irrelevant. At the end of the day what matters is 1. Being responsible for 1 death is horrendous. Being involved in 1+1+1+1+etc deaths is horrendous multiplied by horrendous multiplied by, etc. Neither was less abhorrent than the other, yet there is somehow less stigma surrounding the Reds than the Browns. Probably an ignorance thing, but Mocky C is on hand to point things out.

What you say is true but mass extermination of ethnic peoples was not Communist policy per se. Stalin's actions were the actions of individual leader who wanted to eradicate any nationalist aspirations that would be a threat to communist Russian influence and expansionism at that time. He didn't trust the Ukrainians who he saw as increasingly nationalist so they had to be dealt with in a very brutal manner. It did explain why the Ukrainians practically welcomed the Germans as liberators when they entered the Ukraine in 1942. The Germans found there were no shortage of Ukrainian volunteers for the foreign legion divisions of the Wehrmacht on the Russian front.

We Brits are not squeaky clean when it comes to the Nazi's philosophy of creating a master race. For severeal years much of the British establishment embraced eugenics which proposed that only the athletic, beautiful and intelligent should be bred with other athletic, beautiful and intelligent people with a view to creating even more athletic, beautiful and intelligent offspring. If you were feeble, ugly and stupid then you were deemed to be of little value to society. Basically it was a controlled variant based on Darwin's notions of survival of the fittest although we Brits were rather more keen on keeping the working classes in their place and protecting the privilege of a self-regarding elite than with the mass murder of millions. Eugenics had all sorts of well-known proponents including Sir Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Marie Stopes, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and John Maynard Keynes. Eugenics was very popular amongst many intellectuals and thrived in universities across Europe and North America for a while during the 1930s. Sweden even passed laws that compelled forced sterilisation of people with learning difficulties. WW2 and Hitlers' atrocities saw the end to eugenics as a credible idea.

It was also Britain,during the Boer war, that invented concentration camps which is a sobering thought. Something like Nazi Germany could easily have happened here.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

We Brits are not squeaky clean when it comes to the Nazi's philosophy of creating a master race. For severeal years much of the British establishment embraced eugenics which proposed that only the athletic, beautiful and intelligent should be bred with other athletic, beautiful and intelligent people with a view to creating even more athletic, beautiful and intelligent offspring. If you were feeble, ugly and stupid then you were deemed to be of little value to society. Basically it was a controlled variant based on Darwin's notions of survival of the fittest although we Brits were rather more keen on keeping the working classes in their place and protecting the privilege of a self-regarding elite than with the mass murder of millions. Eugenics had all sorts of well-known proponents including Sir Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Marie Stopes, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and John Maynard Keynes. Eugenics was very popular amongst many intellectuals and thrived in universities across Europe and North America for a while during the 1930s. Sweden even passed laws that compelled forced sterilisation of people with learning difficulties. WW2 and Hitlers' atrocities saw the end to eugenics as a credible idea.

It was also Britain,during the Boer war, that invented concentration camps which is a sobering thought. Something like Nazi Germany could easily have happened here.

For sure. If there was a symbol synonymous with the atrocities perpetrated by the Empire or in the name of the Empire (to the above you can add famines in Ireland and India as well as scant regard for any 'locals' they came across pretty much anywhere) then I wouldn't particularly like it either.

The Union Jack might well mean that to some nations or peoples. I think it's current meaning has moved on from that, though.

The Swedish forced sterilization program was still happening a few short years ago I believe.