From 6cc43a94ff73b897851ac0bb783d3b957c138502 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Dessalines Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 12:18:46 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Fixing prototypic red basher line. --- left_anticommunism_parenti.md | 4 +++- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/left_anticommunism_parenti.md b/left_anticommunism_parenti.md index ffabb52..87e7b0c 100644 --- a/left_anticommunism_parenti.md +++ b/left_anticommunism_parenti.md @@ -35,7 +35,9 @@ The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for be Even when attacking the Right, the left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that “when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, \[Reagan\] will change not his mind but the facts.” While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism “both of the Right and Left,” individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote. -[![Orwell-reactionary-quote-one-does-not-establish-a-dictatorship-in-order-to-safeguard-a-revolution-one-makes-a-revolution-in-george-orwell-139740](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Orwell-reactionary-quote-one-does-not-establish-a-dictatorship-in-order-to-safeguard-a-revolution-one-makes-a-revolution-in-george-orwell-139740-600x282.jpg)](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Orwell-reactionary-quote-one-does-not-establish-a-dictatorship-in-order-to-safeguard-a-revolution-one-makes-a-revolution-in-george-orwell-139740.jpg)A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was **George Orwell.** In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes. +[![Orwell-reactionary-quote-one-does-not-establish-a-dictatorship-in-order-to-safeguard-a-revolution-one-makes-a-revolution-in-george-orwell-139740](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Orwell-reactionary-quote-one-does-not-establish-a-dictatorship-in-order-to-safeguard-a-revolution-one-makes-a-revolution-in-george-orwell-139740-600x282.jpg)](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Orwell-reactionary-quote-one-does-not-establish-a-dictatorship-in-order-to-safeguard-a-revolution-one-makes-a-revolution-in-george-orwell-139740.jpg) + +A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was **George Orwell.** In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes. Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish–while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.