On Dogma

Let’s begin by sketching an imagined, but I would say wholly realistic, debate between a Christian and an atheist. The atheist might reject Christianity on the grounds that it has been responsible for much bloodshed over the course of its history – and just the thought of the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the years of bloody conflict in Northern Ireland support this case. The Christian might respond that secular movements have also got a lot of blood on their hands – and it would be ludicrous to deny that something like Stalinism was not responsible for immense death and suffering.

Of course, either one of the participants in our imaginary debate could deny that their particular view is responsible for the slaughter. A Christian might point out that it is only a corruption of their faith that could allow for something like the Inquisition – after all, didn’t Jesus talk about the most important commandment being that you should love your neighbour? Likewise, a secular Marxist could point out that Stalinism is a gross distortion of Marxism. Now, I’d argue that both positions require highly selective readings of their sources. Just a cursory flick through the Old Testament will show you a God happy to smite as well as offering a vertiable myriad of regulations designed to control many aspects of life, often backed up by the threat of death. Likewise, Marx may not have intended to create Stalinism, but it is difficult to really see “the dictatorship of the proletariat” ending up as anything other than, well, a dictatorship.

There might be more merit in a secular libertarian like me pointing out that the Christian has, to some extent, created a straw man to fight – after all, not all secular beliefs are like Stalinism (libertarianism being a good example). But this is to miss the point the Christian might be trying to make – that slaughter is not unique to religion, and therefore the root cause of that sort of slaughter needs to be located somewhere other than in religion.

I’d be inclined to agree. The problem isn’t the belief in a god or the teachings of a secular thinker per se, but rather the way in which that belief manifests itself. The problem comes when a belief becomes a dogma, and those who follow that belief see their view as an unassailable truth that must be protected at all costs. It is a short leap from that position to the idea that anyone who does not share your beliefs is a problem, and either needs to be converted or silenced (with all the menacing implications that the latter concept has). And it is here that an atheist can be just as dangerous as a Christian, and there is far more common ground between the two views than might at first be expected.

This is why I can’t stomach someone like Richard Dawkins. Yeah, I agree with him that God does not exist. I see no reason to believe in a benign being in the sky watching over us than I do in a benign being living at the North Pole and having an impossibly busy night once a year. But I don’t care too much about what other people believe. As long as they don’t proselytise their faith, they can believe exactly what they want. Which is precisely where Dawkins fails for me – he wants to convince the God-botherers that their views are delusional*. I don’t care what beliefs they hold just so long as they bother God rather than me.

And the dangers of dogma is one of the key challenges facing any thinker genuinely interested in liberty, in part because sometimes the beliefs you hold will be changed by others into a dogma. There are many who believe whole-heartedly in liberal democracy – but when this becomes a dogma that the most powerful nation wishes to force on other countries through violence whether they like it or not, it becomes a concern.

It is the challenge of the liberally minded to always question the extent to which a view has become dogmatic, and whether other views – regardless of whether a liberal likes them or not – are being allowed to be heard. It is not religion that is the problem; it is a dogmatic religion that refuses to allow dissent that is the problem (or religious fundamentalism, to put it another way). The problem is dogma, and the solution is a commitment to critical thinking that challenges any “truth” that is blindly and unthinkingly held, especially if that “truth” is intolerant of the views and beliefs of others.

*A curious tactic to take, I’d argue, when you are trying to win over other people – always difficult to build up rapport with someone after you have attempted to destroy someone’s belief system and then called them mental for having those beliefs in the first place.

Climate Change - Blowing Up the Enemy

Once again, I'm late to the party. But I'd now like to add my own little voice to all the other angry statements being thrown around about this video:

It is supposed to be a joke, apparently. But as DK points out, it isn't funny. Not even in a bad taste sort of a way. It is simple, stupid and offensive. It's crass. It is, at best, a massive misjudgment on the part of the 10:10 campaign. But I'd also agree with Mr Eugenides - I don't quite believe this is an incitement to murder, and anyone who genuinely takes it as such is getting a little hysterical.

However, for me this is very revealing of the mindset of many people involved in the environmental movement. They have become convinced that they have found a "truth" - that the survival of the human race is dependent on pursuing the policies they back. And this is not something that is open to debate anymore - what they believe in is the truth. Those who don't agree aren't equal parties in a debate. They are wrong. Worse, they are being obstructive in the creation of a better tomorrow. And, as this video shows, they are lacklustre, lazy people who just can't be bothered to help build a utopia and avoid future dystopia. Hell, you wouldn't miss them if someone in authority blew them up.

Of course, it isn't just the environmentalists who fall foul of this sort of thinking. Pretty much anyone who has discovered the truth starts to believe that those who oppose them are a little less than human. That's how Stalinism came into being. That's how the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge came about. And so on. And that's what environmentalists have to avoid. Those who oppose them aren't doing so because they are bad in some way - they do it because they are not convinced by the evidence and/or the suggested policies to change the world.

Which is the point of plurality, democracy and debate. If you want to silence people, then win them over through talking with them. Because whatever this video was trying to achieve (and I genuinely don't know what that was), it has done nothing other than further alienate me from their cause.

Stalin's Facebook Group

Here's a Facebook Group that one might hope is being ironic (albeit it in a very twisted way) - yup, here you can become a fan of Stalin.

It is difficult to tell, though, whether this group is actually meant to be a postmodern joke (and a joke in very bad taste) rather than genuine. However, a couple of Marxist associates have joined the group so if it is a joke, they don't seem to be getting it.

But it is worth emphasising just how offensive this group is. Imagine the outcry if there was a group where you could become a fan of Hitler. Well, Stalin was just as bad as Hitler. The fact is that Stalin was a brutal, mass-murdering anti-semite - just like Hitler. Stalinism was a hideous, dehumaninsing totalitarian regime - just like Nazism.

Stalin was a monster. He was one of the twentieth century's most nightmarish figures. He certainly isn't the best punchline to an ironic group, and there is no way in which anyone with even an iota of intelligence should want to become a fan of him.

The Devil and the Pope

Sometimes you don't need to satirise the Catholic Church; it just does it for itself:

"The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences," said Father Amorth, 85, who has been the Holy See's chief exorcist for 25 years.

Doesn't the Pope live in the Vatican as well? If the Devil resides there as well, does that make them roomies? Or something more?!? I think we should be told....

"I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler and Stalin did."

Err, Stalin wasn't a Nazi. Small point, but worth highlighting. And the Nazi's weren't possessed by anything than a heady brew of undeserved power mixed with deeply held prejudice. To dismiss them as possessed by evil is rather to miss the point about the banality of evil; the willing killers of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are not necessarily evil - although their actions certainly are - but are rather normal humans given permission to become inhuman by the state. That's why we need to have constant vigilance against the tendencies of government to drift towards authoritarianism. And also why we need to combat any such drift (with something a little more realistic than exorcism).

Plus, wasn't the Pope once in the Hitler Youth? Does that mean he was possessed as well? Perhaps that's why the Devil feels so at home in the Vatican.

"(The Devil) can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic. At times he makes fun of me. But I'm a man who is happy in his work."

The Devil makes fun of you, eh? Can't think why...

Being Afraid of the Government

In modern society, the government is, more often than not, seen as a Good Thing. Sure, it could be run a bit better - a little more efficiently, - but a modern liberal democracy is perceived to be a million miles away from the nightmare dystopias of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al. So when a Libertarian mentions being afraid of the government, a lot of people simply roll their eyes and wonder what you have done with your tinfoil hat.

For what it is worth, I don’t think there is an imminent danger that the UK will slip into an aggressive, murderous dictatorship. Sure, there are some very concerning developments – like ID cards and the attempts to get 42 days detention onto the statute books – but I think that Gordon Brown is so cack-handed and incompetent that he would struggle to create a dictatorship even if he had absolute power.

But that is rather the point. It isn’t the intentions of government that I fear, but rather the incompetence of government. It is the stupid things they do while trying to do the right thing that really worries me. 42 days detention is a good example – the government desperately wants to stop terrorism. However, it doesn’t understand that 42 days detention doesn’t actually stop terrorism, and also has all sorts of potentially dangerous side effects. You can see the same thing happening with the economy. The Labour government swooped in to save the banking sector, like Superman with a fat wallet stuffed with someone else’s cash. As a result of their panicked, knee-jerk and ultimately pointless attempts to head off the recession, the country is nearly bankrupt and the coming recovery is being jeopardised. The government is currently paving our road to hell. With good intentions. Oh, and our money as well.

Then there is the commitment of the modern politician to trite political expediency. We can see this in Gordon Brown’s claim to be securing British jobs for British workers. Fuck knows whether he actually thought what he was saying was actually morally acceptable, but his determination to win the BNP vote led the British Prime Minister to plunge headfirst into the politics of ignorance. Political expediency – or political cowardice, as I’d rather call it – led to Brown jumping on the racist bandwagon. Sure, it is a minor point, relatively speaking, and Brown doesn’t speak for me on this issue or on any other. But it does beg the question of where this political cowardice could lead this ruling elite. I’ve heard some whispers that one of the reasons why we went to war in Iraq was because Blair was afraid of the Tories painting him as weak on security. I don’t know whether this is the truth, but I find the fact that I can consider it as a possible reason for that conflict speaks volumes. I think the desire to win votes now exceeds almost everything else for our politicians. I’m not afraid of them selling their own grandmother for a vote, I’m more afraid of them selling our grandmothers, grandfathers and then us out for an extra couple of votes.

And then we have the problem of the massive bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with “liberal” “democracy” in this country. Of course, with a government this size and with this scope, a large bureaucracy is an inevitability. But the problem with any bureaucracy is that it is fundamentally inhuman and amoral. It does not recognise the human. That is how innocent people can end up with their DNA on a criminal database in perpetuity, and how people can end up dying from cancer despite the drugs that could be used in their treatment being on the market. The bureaucracy, the rules and regulations, further remove people from each other, and do not take into account that basic human compassion that is seen so often when individuals interact with individuals. Most people, if they could help someone with cancer, would do so – however, when it comes to a vast, heavily regulated monolith like say, the NHS, the individuals who make the rules and therefore make the choice are so far detached from the dying person that it becomes a case of “bureaucracy says no”.

Ultimately, I believe humans are capable of great things. They are also capable of being small-minded, self-serving incompetents. I’m in far more danger of being killed by a bad driver than I am by a serial killer; just as I am far more likely to be adversely affected by an incompetent government than I am by a proactively malign one.

Which is why government needs to be – why it must be – limited as much as possible in its scope. It means well, but its actions end up being anything other than positive. And the unintended but still devastating impact of government can only really be minimised by returning as much power and as much responsibility as possible to the people.

Oliver Stone, Uncle Joe and old Adolf

Oliver Stone has sent us a missive from the parallel universe where, judging by his moronic opinions, he resides. With David Icke, Donald Rumsfeld and L. Ron Hubbard. He's given us a history lesson. Of sorts. Most outstanding are his comments on Hitler and Stalin. They really do defy understanding. First up for the Stone revisionism is old Adolf:

"Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply," he said.

Hitler as a scapegoat... right. I struggle with this one. Hitler was the leader of a regime that murdered six million people and fought both the UK and the US in a brutal battle for survival. Hitler is responsible for so much evil that I wonder why anyone would even need to scapegoat him. It's a bit like trying to pin a burglary on the Yorkshire Ripper; no-one is really going to care because, to be honest with you, the other crimes seem a little bit more important.

And then we have Stalin:

"Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any person."

I'm glad that Stone realises that Stalin shouldn't be painted as a hero, because his regime is one of the most lethal in history. But this concept that he fought the German war machine more than any person demands a slightly closer analysis of actual historical events. Before Stalin fought the German war machine, he signed a peace treaty with them, carving up Poland and allowing for the invasion of Western Europe. And Stalin fell apart after the German invasion of Russia, creating a power vacuum at the top of his regime at one of the most crucial moments in the war, and thus allowing Germany to invade far more of the USSR than they might otherwise have managed. And the brutal war of attrition against the Nazis saw both sides commit atrocities. Whilst it is tempting to think of good ol' uncle Joe taking down them nasty Nazis, the truth is somewhat more sordid and a little less like a John Wayne movie.

I suppose some might agree with Stone. Stranger things have happened. I suppose it comes down to your personal political opinions. And whether or you have a connection to the real world, or life in a twisted world detached from the reality where every one else lives, and believe that Hugo Chavez is a truly great leader, a Che t-shirt is the very pinnacle of cool and Stalin was a bit misunderstood.

If it is the latter, of course, you are a total wanker. Much like Mr Stone.

Stalin's Grandson Tries to Save the Family Name

You might have thought of him as one of the worst dictators and mass-murderers to walk the face of the earth. However, according to his grandson, you'd be wrong - Uncle Joe Stalin was actually ok, and is just a bit misunderstood:

"Half a century of lies have been poured over Stalin's reputation and he cannot defend himself from the grave, so this case is essential to put the record straight," Mr Dzhugashvili's lawyer, Leonid Zhura, said.

Of course, they could be right, but I somehow doubt it. The evidence against Mr Dzhugashvili's grandfather is overwhelming. And the sort of historical revisionism that attempts to make him anything other than a dictator of the very worst order is on a par with Holocaust denial. Nonetheless, it does open the door to reappraising other dictators in a positive way. Perhaps we can have a movement to reappraise Pol Pot's regime as the Kindly Khymer Rouge. Or perhaps rebranding Idi Amin as a bit of a scamp who, nevertheless, was good at dancing.

The truth about Stalin's reputation and his legacy should be clear for all to see. He was a horrific murderer, who created an inhuman dictatorship that is responsible for the deaths of millions. And any attempt to say otherwise should be doomed to utter failure.

You can take your Marxism and you can shove it right up your...

… well… you can probably guess the rest.

One of the many negative aspects to this economic downturn is the rush of people towards socialism and the big daddy of socialist morons, Karl Marx himself. And what is even worse than people trying to register support for ol’ Karl is people trying to be funny about their suddenly vaguely fashionable Marxist tendencies. As this article proves.

I could do a detailed fisking of that article, but holy Jesus, I have better things to do with my ever diminishing life. The author tries and utterly fails to be funny repeatedly, at the same time as revealing his ignorance of the very ideology he is championing. A word to the not-so-wise; if you are going to pursue an ideology, make sure you actually know the details of whatever it is you are meant to be defending and advocating.

However the rush towards Marx, and the constant veneration of odious Marxists like Che Guevera by some, reveals a deeper ignorance of an ideology that is deeply destructive. Yeah, Marx got some things right. He reckoned that boom and bust are natural parts of capitalism. But most economists would recognise that. He also had some interesting theories about alienation of labour – ideas that still have some relevance today. But for a man who wrote as prolifically as Karl Marx, getting something right at some point was inevitable. Just as that infinite number of monkeys at those typewriters could, in theory, come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.

Yet in so many different ways, Marx was utterly wrong. And his errors are so numerous that it would almost be compelling, if they weren’t so dangerous. None more so in his conclusions about where his spurious theories of society would take us all. As counter-culture and cool as it might be to support Marx during this (perfectly natural, even according to Marx) downturn in global capitalism, I think everyone should be very clear about supporting Marxism means. It means you support violent revolution. It means you support dictatorship. It means you support the collapse of the society we live in, and handing over absolute political power to violent revolutionaries who are going to divine some sort of better society for all from a non-existent blue-print. You can claim that Marx’s ultimate intent was utopian; the practical ends of his ideology are thoroughly dystopian.

Marxist theorists (for, believe it or not, they do still exist) will argue that we have never had an actual application of Marx’s ideas. Well, bollocks to that. The Stalinist state, the Maoist state, the regimes of Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il are all examples of the deluded, insane and deeply destructive implementation of Marxism. The problem isn’t that Marxism has never been correctly applied; the real problem is that Marxism is a deeply flawed political ideology that advocates dictatorship and sees people in general as largely bovine and in desperate need of firm guidance from portly, disconnected from reality philosophers such as Marx. The end result of Marxism is the Soviet State, pure and simple.

The recession will have come as a shock to many, and will cause some to review their political beliefs. That’s fine – it is a healthy thing to review what you think in light of events (something Marx himself wasn’t that good at). But the answer to any review of ideology should not be Marxism. Marxism doesn’t work; if you try to force Marxism on societies, then your utterly, utterly destroy those societies. Applying Marxism to countries damaged by the recession will lead to the death of democracy in those countries, and the complete stagnation of their economies.

You might ask the question about what we need to do in the face of the credit crunch. The answer is not turn to Karl Marx.

Summing up Stalinism

From an article in The Independent:

"Legend has it that the institute, which opened in 1927, was born of a secret Soviet plan to create a man-ape hybrid that would become a Soviet superman and propel the Soviet Union ahead of the West. The Soviet elite, goes the apocryphal tale that has appeared widely in Russian media, wanted to create a prototype worker that would be inhumanly strong and mentally dulled, to carry out the gruelling work of industrialising the vast expanses of newly Sovietised territory."

Legend or not, it neatly sets out the Stalinist mindset. If I was feeling unkind, I'd say the the creation of a dull but strong worker is pretty much the mindset of any socialist.

Stalin The Scamp

Via DK I see Arthur Scargill - failed Union boss, failed revolutionary, and, well, failure - has recently been asked about his thoughts on Stalin. That is Stalin - the mass murdering, sociopath former dictator of the Soviet Union, by the way.

"Next Scargill was asked by a listener about his views on JV Stalin: did he regard him as "a good socialist"?"

If Scargill had even a basic knowledge of his own political creed, then he would know that Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist, and therefore not a socialist. Yes, we’re getting into political semantics here, but socialists were not leftwing enough for Stalin. In fact, Stalin would have had Scargill arrested, locked up, tortured and then shot in the back of the head. Mind you, if I was a totalitarian dictator, I’d probably have Scargill arrested and shot as well.

""Arthur replied that he thought Stalin had been a "very good leader", especially during World War II."

A very good leader?! Presumably Pol Pot was a really good leader as well.

And World War Two was not exactly Stalin’s finest hour. The war began partly because he signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis. Then, Stalin was utterly unprepared for the Nazi invasion. When it happened, Stalin suffered a nervous breakdown, and one of the reasons why the Nazis were able to plough so far into Russia was because Stalin was not ready and was, initially, not able to fight the war. And the Soviet campaign was not one of heroism and audacious warfare. It was a war of attrition, pure and simple. One of the reasons why the Soviet army kept on advancing is because the front line troops knew that if they turned round or retreated, their fellow Communists would gun them down just as freely as the Nazis.
It is difficult to have a "good war" as a leader, and all war leaders are open to criticism. But the Soviet victory in World War Two was despite Stalin, not because of him.

"It was true that he had committed "many, many errors", but, there again, "Churchill in Britain was also criticised"."

Interestingly, whilst you could criticise Churchill during the war, no-one could criticise Stalin until well after he died. That is because Churchill was a leader of a democracy. Where as Stalin was the same as Hitler – regarding any criticism of his leadership and personality cult as a crime deserving the death penatly.

"Campbell at this point mildly suggested that it was perhaps not Stalin's record as war leader that was the main issue. After all he stood accused of being a "mass murderer". Did Scargill think Churchill had killed more people than Stalin? And what about the gulags, the show trials? Yes, yes, said Arthur, but these "mistakes" must be seen in context."

Mass murder in context? Sheesh. It is difficult to put the murder of millions of people into perspective. But perhaps Scargill has revealed more than he realises about his own intentions than he realises. Maybe in Scargill land murder is ok, as long as it is pursing some sort of dysfunctional socialist utopia.

"Don't forget, "the problems of the Soviet Union were infinitely worse after Stalin than before his death"."

No, the problems of the Soviet Union were bad after Stalin died, but nowhere near as bad as during his reign. Because the mass murder and intentional starvation of large swathes of the population at least slowed down under Stalin’s successors, even if they didn’t stop. And, not being a socialist, I tend to see the lessening of starvation and mass murder as a good thing. Crazy, eh?

"As Scargill was unwilling to venture an opinion on whether Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Churchill"

Historical consensus on the number of people murdered by Stalin? Millions (possibly as many as 60 million). Historical consensus on the number killed by Churchill? Zero. It is therefore a tough question to answer, if you can’t count.

"Campbell tried another tack: who did our general secretary think was worse - Stalin or Thatcher? By now Scargill was really getting tied in knots. Until and unless he knew the truth, he could not go along with allegations against the former Soviet leader: "If people were killed, or put into concentration camps, it was wrong.""

What evidence does Scargill need?! The resurrection and confession of the long dead Soviet dictator? Nice clarification that killing and concentration camps are wrong. It does say something that Scargill had to make that clarification, though.

"Arthur conceded that Stalin may have done those things, but he knew that Thatcher had "destroyed our manufacturing industry, people's hope"."

Destroying the manufacturing industry is on a par with mass murder and the elimination of a political class in the world of Scargill.

"The listener who had originally asked the question compared Scargill's response to the holocaust-denial of David Irving."

Which is a very nice comparison. I rather think that Scargill would be disgusted with the crimes of Hitler, but tacitly accepts the murders of Stalin et al, simply because Stalin’s opinions are closer to his. Nothing like being a two faced bastard, is there?

"Scargill did, however, state that he had always opposed the restrictions on travelling abroad that the USSR had imposed."

Apparently mass murder is ok, restricting travel isn’t. The mind boggles.

The world according to Scargill – a world where Stalin made "some mistakes". Proof (if anyone really needs further proof) that socialists live in a parallel world that has no connection with reality.