Salon.com Defends Communism--Mass Murders and All
by Joel B. Pollak 3 Feb 2014,
11:49 AM PDT
Salon.com is a
reliably left-wing media outlet given to regular outbreaks of radical pique
that earn top billing on MSNBC's
prime-time panels. Yet even a hawkish outlet like Salon can go too far. On
Sunday, Salon's Jesse Myerson published an article, "Why you’re wrong
about communism: 7 huge misconceptions about it (and capitalism)," that
attempted to deny the scale of communism's mass murders, among other dubious
claims.
Excusing or minimizing the Holocaust is known as "Holocaust
denial," and those who truck in such crackpot theories are usually (though
not always) shunned by serious-minded people. Any media outlet that printed
Holocaust denial would immediately be the target of justified criticism, and
its staff would feel compelled to distance themselves from the claims of the
writer and the decision of the editorial staff to run such rubbish.
Denying the evil of communism is
morally and historically equivalent to Holocaust denial. Most of Myerson's
arguments are of the "capitalism is bad, too" variety, arguing the
absurdly obvious point that non-communist governments have also committed human
rights abuses, and that they rarely live up to purported ideals of freedom. The
fact that communism almost always requires such abuses is one Myerson prefers
not to notice.
Here is how Myerson defends the
millions of murders in the Soviet Union:
"For one thing, a large number of the people killed under Soviet communism
weren’t the kulaks everyone pretends to care about but themselves
communists." (That makes it all right, somehow--perhaps they were just as
willing to commit murder, except that Stalin got to them first.) He also likens
the violence in the American Revolution to the Stalinist purges.
Myerson argues that American
communism would not be as bad today, and offers this pearl of political
realism: "[C]ommunism is an aspiration, not an immediately achievable
state." Just think about that: Salon, a site that is taken seriously as a
barometer of intellectual fashion on the left, is running articles not only
sanitizing communist dictatorship, but advocating it. No clarification yet from
Salon's leading lights.
The fact that denial of communism
is not treated the same way as denial of the Holocaust in part reflects the
more obvious antisemitism of Holocaust deniers. Yet it is no less immoral--and
the fact that the left, the media and the academy generally deny and excuse
communism's evil as a mere administrative problem rather than a moral one is
part of the reason Americans must now suffer such leaders as Bill de Blasio and
Barack Obama.
Salon
Joan
Walsh is the editor at large for Salon,
the editor-in-chief for the Salon Media
Group Inc., and a frequent guest on MSNBC.
Note: Salon
is a publication for the Salon Media
Group Inc.
John
E. Warnock is the chairman & investor for the Salon Media Group Inc., and a trustee at the Sundance Institute.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Sundance Institute, the International
Rescue Committee, People for the
American Way, and the Climate
Reality Project.
Elie
Wiesel is an overseer at the International
Rescue Committee, and a member of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Harold E. Ford Jr. is an overseer at
the International Rescue Committee, a
political commentator at MSNBC, and
a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Up Late
With Alec Baldwin was an MSNBC
program.
Alec
Baldwin was the host for Up Late
With Alec Baldwin, and is a director at People for the American Way.
Norman
Lear is a director at People for the
American Way, a council of advisors member for Global Green USA, and was a donor for The Climate Project.
The Climate
Project is a merged organization with the Climate Reality Project.
Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet – Together
October 4, 2010
By Paul Kengor
A close look at the Saturday
"One Nation" rally in Washington
reveals something quite telling. It was a major gathering of the
"progressive" left, highly billed, vigorously promoted. And it
happened to include -- in fact, it warmly accepted -- the endorsement of
Communist Party USA.
Expectedly, a bunch of the
rally's endorsers carried the word "progress" or
"progressive" in their title, from People’s Organization for Progress
to Progressive Democrats of America. More still unhesitatingly describe
themselves as progressive, from racial eugenicist Margaret Sanger's Planned
Parenthood to Norman Lear's heirs at People
for the American Way, plus the usual suspects
from the "social justice" Religious Left.
Albert
A. Gore Jr. was a donor for The
Climate Project, and is the chairman for the Climate Reality Project.
Global Green USA
is a US
affiliate for Green Cross International.
Mikhail Gorbachev
is the founder for Green Cross
International, and was the general secretary for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Robert Redford (Green Cross International)
Robert
Redford is an honorary board member for Green Cross International, and is the founder & president for
the Sundance Institute.
John
E. Warnock is a trustee at the Sundance
Institute, and the chairman & investor for the Salon Media Group Inc.
Salon
is a publication for the Salon Media
Group Inc.
Joan
Walsh is the editor at large for Salon,
the editor-in-chief for the Salon Media
Group Inc., and a frequent guest on MSNBC.
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