Wednesday, November 1, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
9
Commentary...
Meet the new boss: Dawn of the Red Century
By Jim Cornelius
News Editor
“…The most improper
job of any man, even saints
… is bossing other men. Not
one in a million is fit for it,
and least of all those who
seek the opportunity.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Next week will mark
the centenary of the great-
est evil to befall mankind in
the dark, catastrophe-ridden
annals of the 20th century.
On November 6-7, 1917
(October 24-25 on the
Julian calendar — thus the
title October Revolution,
or Red October) a small
cadre of radical commu-
nists known as Bolsheviks
hijacked the nine-month-
old Russian Revolution. In
a nearly bloodless coup, the
Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir
Lenin and Leon Trotsky,
overthrew the floundering
Provisional Government
that had come into power
after Nicholas Romanov
abdicated his 400-year-old
throne in the midst of World
War I — and locked Russia
(and eventually much of
Central Asia and Eastern
Europe) in an iron grip that
would last until the 1990s.
The echoes of the Red
Century continue to roll
through geopolitics to this
day.
Many in the media and
the academic and political
elite in the 1980s mocked
Ronald Reagan when he
called the Soviet Union the
Evil Empire. Perhaps the
simple-minded former actor
had watched too many Star
Wars movies. But Reagan
was right — and the failure
to call the evil of Bolshevism
for what it is persists.
Decent people are rightly
outraged when the sym-
bols of National Socialism
are paraded by Tiki torch-
bearing “white nationalists.”
Yet when so-called “Antifa”
counter-protes ters d is -
play red banners and flaunt
T-shirts bearing the iconic
image of the murderous
Argentinian Marxist revo-
lutionary Che Guevara…
silence.
Perhaps the double-stan-
dard reflects a fallacy of
“good intentions.” National
Socialism was racist and
racialist from its poisonous
conception. Its hatefulness
and evil is easy to discern.
Communism purported
to usher in a better, more
equitable world, a class-
less utopia, free of exploita-
tion. The intentions, at least,
were good — or so goes the
apologia.
But that was a lie.
Ruthless repression of
dissent and non-confor-
mance to the new order was
baked-in to Bolshevism.
The Bolshevik leadership
were determined to usher
in their “worker’s paradise”
— with themselves in unas-
sailable control — no matter
who or how many they had
to kill.
“We do not promise any
freedom, or any democracy,”
Lenin thundered to the Third
Congress of the Comintern
(Communist International)
in 1921. “We tell the peas-
ants quite openly that they
must choose between the
rule of the bourgeoisie, and
the rule of the Bolsheviks
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— in which case we shall
make every possible con-
cession within the limits
of retaining power, and
later we shall lead them to
socialism.”
Someday never comes.
The Bolsheviks held onto
power — and expanded it —
through the systematic use
of state terrorism. In defense
of Red Terror, Leon Trotsky
scoffed, “We were never
concerned with the Kantian-
priestly and vegetarian-
Quaker prattle about the
sacredness of human life.”
Slaughtering and starving
class enemies and enemies
of the Soviet State was a fea-
ture, not a bug.
Millions died in the hid-
eous civil war that followed
the Bolshevik coup, and
Lenin’s successor, Joseph
Stalin, would kill tens of mil-
lions more through purges
and deliberate campaigns of
starvation.
In Russia and in the West,
apologists for the Bolsheviks
— once forced to acknowl-
edge the crimes of Stalin
— gnashed their teeth over
the agonizing question of
“where it all went wrong.”
The writer Martin Amis,
whose father Kingsley Amis
renounced his own infatua-
tion with Communism, has
written trenchantly on this
subject — and he’s having
none of it.
“It was not a good idea
that somehow went wrong or
withered away. It was a very
bad idea from the outset, and
one forced into life — or the
life of the undead — with
barely imaginable self-righ-
teousness, pedantry, dyna-
mism, and horror.”
Yet the notion that some-
how “real” socialism or
“true” Communism would
be lovely — but has never
really been tried — per-
sists. As the Socialist Party
of Great Britain recently
insisted, “It has NEVER
EXISTED! It comes AFTER
global capitalism!”
Just ignore the dictator-
ships of the USSR, China,
Cuba, North Korea, or the
abysmal condition of con-
temporary Venezuela —
we’ll get it right… eventu-
ally. Talk about whistling
past a graveyard.
Anybody who trotted
out the argument that “true”
National Socialism would be
wonderful — it just hasn’t
really been tried — would
be savagely ridiculed. Yet
you still hear the old “true
Communism” canard in col-
lege classrooms.
It is worth noting that
democratic socialism, which
has become more attrac-
tive to the left side of the
American political spec-
trum in recent years, is
not at all the same thing as
Bolshevism. Bernie Sanders
isn’t Vladimir Lenin. The
Bolsheviks might have
classed a Bernie Sanders
among what Lenin liked
to call “useful idiots” —
or Lenin and his cohorts
might have given him an
appointment in the basement
of the Lubyanka. Social
Democrats died in droves
under the Bolsheviks.
The danger in the kind of
apparently benign socialism
promulgated by the demo-
cratic left is that it is vulner-
able to being hijacked by
control-freak tyrants whose
intentions are far from
benign. Socialism central-
izes a lot of control in the
interest of economic and
social security. That may be
safe enough, as long you can
maintain robust democratic
institutions and protection
of individual liberty under
the law. But the Iron Law of
Oligarchy inevitably comes
into play: All complex orga-
nizations — no matter how
democratic they are origi-
nally — eventually develop
into oligarchies of elites that
know how to run the show.
And when that happens, you
have handed an “elite” —
that cares much more for
their own power and con-
trol than for your well-being
— a tremendous amount of
power.
The Red Century has
many lessons to teach.
Perhaps the most important
is that the ends cannot jus-
tify the means, that purport-
edly good intentions mean
less than nothing in the face
of sheer, bloody tyranny.
The empire that was born
100 years ago this week was,
indeed, evil. We must be vig-
ilant lest it take new shape
and rise again.