The Aged P

UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband is angry because the Daily Mail drew attention to his father’s Marxist views. I think Benedict Brogan hits the nail on the head…

But the key point surely is that Marxism hated – hates – Britain. It hates our institutions, our economic model, our democracy, our independent media and our freedoms. And before the Marxists and their chums lost the argument, it wasn’t just some academic debate played out around the dining tables in well-heeled north London neighbourhoods: it was deadly serious. Yes, there is something distasteful about trashing a dead man’s reputation, and by the same token something noble about the way Mr Miliband and other politicians have risen to his defence. But Ralph Miliband, however well intentioned, was on the side of those who wanted to turn Britain into something dreadful. It is a testament to how comprehensive the defeat of Marxism has proved to be that the Cold War is all but forgotten, and our politics are repulsed by its harsh truths.

The Stalinists are here, says Dan Riehl, referring to Think Progress and their latest antics in the left’s Tucsonesque Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke blitzkrieg.

There is no real difference between today’s un-American U.S.-based left and regimes such as Stalin’s – only they don’t quite yet have enough power. But they are busy aquiring it. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. These are very dangerous people that need to be defeated for an America anything like how Conservatives view her to survive.

Sandra Fluke, a professional agitator, has become the poster girl of the left and the left supported President Obama and his administration. She appears to be a humourless, single-minded apparatchik, ruthless and intolerant of those with opposing views. Nevertheless it would be unwise to underestimate this woman. She is intelligent and has a superb feel for any political opportunity. She will no longer operate in the political shadows. She, and many like her, is the future of the Stalinist left.

You see the thing about Stalinists (or Marxists, as they should be called since the key element of Marx’s Communist version of socialism was the need for a dictatorship of the revolutionary elite) is that they are quite content to use the arena of freedom provided by parliamentary democracy to further their cause and impugn their political rivals. But once they have power that arena of free debate and discussion is dismantled and we enter the dark world of Orwell’s 1984 where it is no longer sufficient to withdraw from political activity and remain silent. Stalinists require that everyone publicly celebrates and praises the regime however degraded their circumstances.

As is often the case art can encapsulate the essence of this essential truth (largely ignored/forgotten by a complicit media that constantly revisits Hitler, Franco, Pinochet and other non Marxist authoritarian regimes)….so maybe this 1938 French political cartoon could give us a glimpse of the USA in 2037 at the beginning of President Fluke’s second term….

French anti stalinist cartoon 1938

BTW….The sign reads “We are very happy”

h/t GlobalSecurity Org

Since the eruption of the banking crisis in 2008 and the justifiable public anger in the UK & USA at the amount of taxpayers money that had to be pumped into the subsequent bailouts there has been a marked revival of anti-capitalist, class war rhetoric and a renewed interest in the ideas of Karl Marx.

At the same time the bombastic posturing of the former KGB agent Vladimir Putin who now rules Russia with the help of a gang of vindictive and sticky fingered ex secret policemen seeks to restore the reputation of that archetypal left wing dictator Josef Stalin who spent thirty years claiming to have constructed the world’s very first perfect socialist where all men were equal and where all the means of production were controlled by the workers themselves – or rather, since it would be impossible to run a business dependent on the fluctuating wishes of the masses – controlled by the officials of the Communist Party claiming only they knew the “true” wishes and feelings of the working classes.

Russia and communism are both getting a big media makeover.

Which is why every sane man and woman in the west should read “Child 44” by Tim Rob Smith

Read it and realise the true nature of Russia in the 1930s and early 50s, the society that lay behind the Five Year Plans and People’s Arts festivals and the edifice of lies and hypocrisy that was shored up by the Bolshevik hacks and their brutal enforcers – and the useful idiots in the west who fell hook line and sinker for the whole sham.

It is essentially a crime novel in the police procedural mould, a hunt for a serial killer of children in Russia during the 1940s and early 50s during the latter years of the Stalin regime. Or rather the non hunt because the Communists claimed to have created a new kind of society where poverty and greed had been abolished and therefore crime no longer existed. If crimes were committed they were deliberate anti Soviet counter revolutionary acts, political crimes – therefore almost all policing resources were poured into the political police, the NKVD /MVD. Everyday policing was left to the underfunded and despised Militia. It followed that if an act could not be considered a political crime then it just drifted under the radar.

The novel is about an up and coming NKVD officer who upsets his bosses because he wants to track down a serial killer. He continues this obsession even after he is transferred to a dead end Militia placement.

It is a cold story set against the background of the moral vacuum of Soviet Russia where the only imperative is to survive the dead weight of an oppressive and secretive regime. There are disturbing snapshots of the darkness within the NKVD/MVD – one of the most chilling moments is the description of NKVD “specialists” (i.e.torturers) leaving the Lubianka at the end of their shift, going home to their families after a day of breaking bones and smashing bodies as if they were office commuters.
Read it if you can – then keep it burned in your memory next time you see somebody waving a hammer and sickle claiming to represent “the workers” – or watch Putin posturing on a Russian TV clip….

On a freezing December day family and friends trudge through snow carrying a coffin to the edge of a bleak graveyard. Ten other coffins follow behind. Eleven men are being buried on that wintry morning, eleven miners shot by police and soldiers, crushed by a brutal regime for daring to demand the right to strike in defiance of a decree promulgated by the ruling elite.

It is an iconic image of working class families beaten but unbowed by the vicious and ruthless security apparatus of an authoritarian government. Off camera hard eyed riot police ensure that the funeral does not transform into an anti government rally. Plain clothes security officers and police informers mingle with the crowd listening out for any whispered manifestation of discontent. Wives, mothers and children of the slaughtered strikers sob quietly for their lost ones. Grieving fathers, brothers, sons and fellow miners mourn in bitter silence, fearful of saying anything that would bring police batons smashing onto their heads….

It would seem a natural scenario for a Hollywood film or a BBC play or a Bruce Springsteen album cover….brave strikers…..brutal police……the proud but silent funeral…..but it is highly unlikely you would ever see this story win an Oscar, a BAFTA or a Grammy. For the striking miners were Polish, the year was 1981 and the regime that ordered the shooting down of defiant miners was a Marxist/Leninist dictatorship struggling to crush a peaceful mass movement  demanding basic human rights – and that sits uncomfortably on the shoulders of many writers and directors and musicians who, though immensely rich, perceive themselves as radical activists of the left using their undoubted artistic talents and skills fighting for the underprivileged in support of Marx’s electrifying slogan

Workers of the world unite – you have nothing to lose but your chains

But if those chains have been hung on you by Communist rulers – that doesn’t fit too easily into the world view of some on the left. So the Chomskys  and the Redgraves and the Fondas tend to put it outside their vision – they ignore it…..and thus what appears to be one of the major seismic events of the Twentieth Century, the political and intellectual and moral collapse of Marxism in Europe has never been  the theme of any major western movie or music album. Nor has there been any artistic declaration of regret or plea for redemption from those in America and Western Europe who for decades prostituted their intellect and values by acting as cheerleaders and apologists for the bullies, thieves and torturers who ruled the Soviet empire and it’s lackey states.

The miners at Wujek were striking as an act of defiance against General Jaruzelski’s declaration of Martial Law in December 1981. The General  had become Prime Minister determined to crush all resistance to the Communist regime after several months of strikes and demonstrations. Unofficial trade union activities were banned, thousands of people were arrested and dragged before military tribunals and strict censorship was imposed on all forms of media and communication. Tanks and heavily armed soldiers and special police units patrolled the streets in an aggressive and confrontational manner and the government decided to deal with the miners of Wujek in a way that would send a lesson of fear and terror to all its opponents.

The miners had occupied the mine as a demonstration of defiance against the regime. A huge force of soldiers and riot police, accompanied by tanks and armoured cars, broke into the mining complex. The miners resisted fiercely, fighting back with picks, shovels and bricks. Finally an officer commanding a special police unit ordered his men to open fire on the miners, killing eleven of them and wounding many more. This broke the strikers resistance and the mine was brought back under government control.

There were critical comments in the west but the Marxist/Leninist regimes had long ago discounted western “opinion” as empty rhetoric. Jaruzelski , like all communists, believed that bullets were more effective than words when resistance needed crushing. He even solicited advice from Hungarian colleagues who had organised the repression of the 1956 anti communist uprising. He also took heart from western communists like the British miners union leader Arthur Scargill who remained silent over the fate of his fellow miners in Poland.

One day, perhaps, the implosion of the Marxist/Leninist charade will attract some future Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens to chart it’s ignominious collapse in soaring prose and golden epithets.

For the time being, unfortunately, we shall have to put up with Sean Penn…..

Footnote #1

At least it might be claimed that those eleven Wujek miners and others killed by Poland’s communist security forces did not die in vain. Poland is now a lively democracy and a member of NATO and the EU, free at last from Marxism’s iron grip. The remnants of the Jaruzeski regime are mostly mouldering away in ignominious retirement. Even better, some former members of the security apparatus have been brought to book for their actions at Wujek and elsewhere. Outside the Wujek mine is a stark memorial for the victims of repression.

Who knows, perhaps one day similar monuments will rise up to the sky in Beijing and Tehran….

Footnote #2

For an intensely moving pictorial and personal review of Polish resistance to Communist dictatorship go here…..