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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Berlin Wall</title>
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		<title>The Berlin Wall Does Not Rest in Peace</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/the-berlin-wall-does-not-rest-in-peace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-berlin-wall-does-not-rest-in-peace</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Nov 2014 05:10:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Berlin Wall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fascism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GDR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[germany]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244489</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Remembering the Communism-Terrorism Axis.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/berlinwall1.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-244490" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/berlinwall1-450x270.jpg" alt="berlinwall1" width="362" height="217" /></a>Twenty-five years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down. The anniversary prompts a meditation on some realities that escaped the old-line establishment press, and which may remain unknown entirely to those growing up in the Age of the Tweet.</p>
<p>The wall was a project of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a one-party totalitarian dictatorship and the most slavish ally of the Soviet Union, which under Joseph Stalin grabbed half of Germany in the wake of World War II. The GDR was also the Communist state most involved in terrorism against the West in general and the United States in particular.</p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The official name of the wall was the </span><i>Antifaschistischer Schutzwall</i>, the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” the familiar inversion of reality. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/12/specials/sontag-communism.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">As the late Susan Sontag observed during the 1980s, “Communism is fascism.”</span></a> So the GDR was actually the fascist state, with goose-stepping troops decked out very much like those of the National Socialist regime under the <i>Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei</i>, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, also known as Nazis. Sontag was not the first to make this observation. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/hans-massaquoi-who-grew-up-black-in-nazi-germany-dies-at-87/2013/01/23/3faaa5bc-64b1-11e2-b84d-21c7b65985ee_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">The late Hans Massaquoi</span></a>, son of a Liberian father and German mother, who in <i>Destined to Witness</i> told of growing up black in Nazi Germany, saw no difference at all between the Nazis and Communists.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;">The Communist regimes were so repressive that people fled at any opportunity, leaving loved ones behind. More than 3 million people fled the GDR and no Stalinist dictatorship could allow people to vote with their feet.  So in August 1961 the regime put up the wall, along with barbed wire and guard towers holding vigil over the “death strip,” as it came to be known, embedded with anti-personnel mines.</p>
<p><span style="color: #272727;">So the GDR made emigration an exciting experience. Some 5,000 made the attempt to breach the wall, among them the Strelzyk and Wetzel families, who flew to freedom in a hot-air balloon. In the 1982 Disney film </span><i style="color: #272727;">Night Crossing</i><span style="color: #272727;">, Peter Strelzyk (John Hurt) calls GDR oppressors “pigs,” a rare case of </span>truth in <span style="color: #272727;">cinema dealing with Communism. For those who remained, life was bleak.</span></p>
<p style="color: #272727;">Marxist ideology guaranteed that the GDR would be an economic basket case, less consequential to the world economy than Hong Kong. The GDR’s crowning industrial achievement was the Trabant, doubtless the most inferior automobile ever produced. But as John O. Koehler showed in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stasi-Untold-German-Secret-Police/dp/0813337445"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police</i>,</span></a> the Stalinist regime was efficient at repression.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;">Beyond North Korea and Albania under Enver Hoxha, perhaps no regime has exercised such complete control over the people. Koehler documents the repressions of the “Red Gestapo” against both Germans and the West. The material on Stasi operations against the United States and NATO remains relevant, along with Stasi operations in the Third World.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;">In “The Stasi and Terrorism” chapter Koehler detailed the bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin a “massacre” carried out by the Libyan regime of Moamar Qaddafi. Koehler provides the full cast of characters, including Yasser Chraidi, the Libyan terrorist who planned the attack with Musbah Albugasem Eter, Musbah El Ablani and others who were not members of the Libyan People’s Bureau. Those included Mohamed-Suleiman Benali, a Moroccan “residing in West Berlin on welfare.”</p>
<p>The GDR was also a “playground for international terrorists,” such as Abu Daoud, leader of the Black September group that masterminded the 1972 Olympic attack that claimed 11 Israelis. The regime made Daoud a “guest of honor” at a Communist Party Central Committee event and housed at the Metropole, East Germany’s most luxurious hotel. “He was also given a reception at the mission of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and met with officials at the Syrian and South Yemeni embassies” before moving on unscathed. East Germany was also a safe haven for Carlos “the jackal,” Abu Nidal, and others.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;"><i>Stasi</i> provides a thorough account of how and why the Berlin Wall came down. But on the intelligence and terrorism sides, many loose ends remain. Libya is once again a playground for terrorists, and they now understand that they can kill American diplomats and torch the diplomatic compound with impunity. Not only so, but the U.S. Secretary of State will blame everything on a video and say “what does it matter?”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, 25 years after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, Barack Obama remains shrink-wrapped in statist superstition. Omnipotent government may have failed elsewhere, but in his view it remains precisely what America needs, along with more surveillance of the people. So no surprise if the anniversary draws no comment from the President of the United States.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Why We Must Fight Back</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dr-karen-siegemund/why-we-must-fight-back/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-we-must-fight-back</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Dec 2013 05:20:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Karen Siegemund]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Berlin Wall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Checkpoint Charlie Museum]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cold War]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213405</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The dire lessons of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/berlin-brandenburg.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213409" alt="berlin-brandenburg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/berlin-brandenburg.jpg" width="320" height="207" /></a><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.rageagainstthemedia.org/">RageAgainstTheMedia.org</a>.</strong></p>
<p>I’m not sure which exhibit it was at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin that brought me up short, but it was during my visit there last November that it dawned on me why I do what I do.  Was it the photo montage of Jutta Gallus, the East German mother who was forcibly separated from her two young daughters for several years and who protested at Checkpoint Charlie every single day during that time, finally being reunited when she won their freedom?   Or maybe it was the exhibit of the two windsurfing boards mounted back to back atop a car in such a way that a person could lie between them invisibly in <a id="FALINK_2_0_1" href="http://www.rageagainstthemedia.org/why-we-fight-com/#">order</a> to escape from East Berlin?  Maybe it was the photos of Peter Fechter, the 18-year-old  man who was shot going over the Wall and died over the next  hour, lying there, screaming for those nearby to help, nobody able to do anything as they, too, would be shot.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/po.gif"><img class="size-medium wp-image-213412 aligncenter" alt="po" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/po-253x350.gif" width="253" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>Or perhaps it was the exhibit honoring Ronald Reagan, whose steadfast pressure on the East and his “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech did, in fact, help to bring that wall down as well as the Evil Empire itself, that nightmare of an experiment in the ultimate “let’s make it all fair” ideology under which millions upon millions of human beings suffered, and to get away from which inspired those heroic efforts documented in the museum.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was the general sense from walking through the museum – and this was my third time there – and realizing that  these walls, these tyrannical and inhuman constructs happen slowly over time, and can only happen when people do not speak up. (Would they have dared to erect the wall under a Reagan presidency?  I doubt that.)</p>
<p>Whichever exhibit it was, at one point I was thunderstruck.  “This is why I do what I do,”  I thought.  “The way to ensure that tyranny doesn’t take over is by fighting it at every step; we must never stop speaking out, we must never submit, we must do all we can to ensure the liberties that we are guaranteed under the Constitution and not take our freedom for granted.</p>
<p>Of course, Berlin is not only the home of this museum, one of the most <a id="FALINK_1_0_0" href="http://www.rageagainstthemedia.org/why-we-fight-com/#">complete</a> and poignant memorials to the horrors of the Cold War and Communism and to the heroics of those escaping to freedom.  It is, of course, Ground Zero of Hitler’s Nazi regime, a tyranny so horrific that the realities of it are literally impossible to grasp.  But even more than the Cold War and the wall, this incomprehensible totalitarianism did not occur overnight.  Not in the slightest.  Chipping away at freedoms, sometimes with a mallet, sometimes with a pick, can be an all-too-effective way of taming citizens into a regime of fear; in the case of Germany, of course, this applied to all citizens, but infinitely more so in the case of those whom the regime demonized:  The Jews most especially, but others as well, to a much smaller degree.</p>
<p>One of the biggest mallets taken to destroy freedom was the seizure of the press.  This, combined with the really rather genius propagandizing stifled all alternative views and reporting, while advancing a single narrative towards a single agenda:  the Aryanization of as much of the world as possible, the increasing of the power and reach of the Third Reich.</p>
<p>Even before the recent revelations of the mind-bogging overreach of our <a id="FALINK_3_0_2" href="http://www.rageagainstthemedia.org/why-we-fight-com/#">current</a> administration here in the United States, it has been clear that our mainstream media had an equivalent single-mindedness in their “reporting” and that is the furthering of the liberal/progressive agenda.  While indeed, even from the earliest days of our nation various individual news sources have generally had political tendencies towards one side or another, two things were different historically.  First, there were news sources that voiced  both political sides; and perhaps more importantly, that they even had a  bias was understood and a given.</p>
<p>In recent decades, however, and even more so in recent years, there has been a nearly monolithic voice from our dominant media sources.  The “Alphabet Stations:” ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN all provide nearly identical perspectives on all the main topics of the day, all choose to cover essentially the same items while ignoring others, and most importantly, all make every effort to give the impression of impartiality.  Each of these networks considers itself “unbiased,” offering “The News” in such a way as to give the average American the sense – illusory as it is – that he or she now is informed about the world he or she lives in.  It is this illusion of being informed that is, in fact, deeply pernicious.  We don’t even realize we are being lied to; at least in Nazi Germany, that much was clear.</p>
<p>And in a way, what we have here with our own press, which operates under the First Amendment guaranteed right to its independence – the First Amendment, the very first one – is a voluntary ceding of this very right, this very independence, in favor of a unanimous advocacy of an agenda.  That it is voluntary, in this, the Land of Liberty, is difficult to fathom.</p>
<p>So what do we have?  A “free” press that opts, day after day, story after story, to not exercise that freedom and would rather be the mouthpiece of one political agenda, even under the guise of impartiality.  A press in the form of all the main media sites – with  the single exception of Fox –  with their attendant TV stations, websites, Facebook pages, phone apps and so on, creates a sense of the world that is inaccurate, and as we are now learning, dangerously so.</p>
<p>When there is only one exception to this unanimity, and this exception is deliberately, constantly, consistently vilified by the party in power as well as the monolith itself, what we are forced to admit is that our press cannot tolerate diversity of opinion to the exact extent that the party it protects also cannot.  The lock-step alignment both in narrative and focus on silencing alternative views is chilling and dangerous. That it is a voluntary alignment is even more so.  Journalists who, in the past, saw their charter as informing the public to empower us now seem to have as their primary responsibility the assisting of this president in his too-successful efforts to “transform this nation” and who have learned since grade school that the important thing is to “change the world” regardless of what that change might be.  Their lack of knowledge about the past and America’s uniquely beneficial role globally –in fact, their ingrained conviction that America has been a force for evil rather than good, and that we as a nation have more to apologize for than to be proud of – clearly taints their judgment regarding their politics and their role as journalists, and between them and those (equally ignorant) who run our schools, we have a near-perfect feedback-loop of anti-American misinformation and personal missions by young, energetic starry-eyed ignorami to change the world by hand-picking the narrative and denying the validity of any other point of view.  That it is those who crow loudest about diversity who are the quickest to shut down other opinions is ironic, yes, but it is also inevitable.  Only by silencing dissent can the voices of liberal policies ever win over those who espouse freedom.</p>
<p>In fact, what we have is a press that pretends to support the underdog, yet silences it; that pretends to empower the people, yet only advocates for and protects those in power; that pretends to tell the truth, yet lies, obfuscates, omits and distorts in order to advance a single agenda that has nothing to do with the truth but everything to do with their own personal view of the world.  In addition, our news media’s liberal mindset is also evident in how their confidence that they ought to be the arbiters of what we should know rather than assuming that we the people have a right to decide for ourselves.  The disdain that liberals have for the individual, for the individuals’ right to choose, is reflected in their policies as well as the press.</p>
<p>Ironically, while the Nazi press (and Pravda, and the press of other totalitarian regimes) worked in concert with the government’s agenda of enhancing the power of the nation and increasing its stance globally, the American press, also in concert with our government’s agenda, is working to diminish our stature globally and to cast, wherever possible, a negative light on America, American achievement, American traditional values and mores.  How ironic that one way in which our current regime is different from that of Hitler’s (fully acknowledging the unspeakable horrors of his regime) is that Hitler saw his country as great and in some twisted way wanted to strengthen his country, whereas our president sees nothing about our country as great, and believes that a weaker America is better for us and the world at large.    It is astonishing that a Head of State could even consider as a good thing the diminishing the power of the very nation he was elected to lead.  It is beyond comprehension that our Commander in Chief actually believes that a weak America is a good thing globally.  For a totalitarian leader to consolidate power in order to emasculate the nation he leads defies comprehension.  And our press, our popular culture and our schools all have made this possible, and continue to advance this “We are the Evil Empire” anti-patriotic worldview.</p>
<p>So why do I do what I do?  Because a press that supports the agenda that aims to weaken the very nation which gives it its lifeblood is a press that must be fought against.  A self-governing nation can’t survive without a press that informs the people of the truth, and we are seeing, every day, examples of how we are less and less a self-governing nation.  For our constitutionally-protected Fourth Estate to be voluntary propagandists for policies that are suicidal is something that must be fought at every turn.</p>
<p>So why do I do what I do?  Why do I spend my days either directly fighting against the lies and false narratives of our dominant media or else devising new ways of engaging in the battle?  Why do I do what I can to build an effective “army of citizen activists” to evangelize with the truth against the dishonest, depraved, destructive efforts of the media whose goal is to advance the cause of totalitarianism?  Because as long as they are allowed to propagate these lies unchecked, they will win.  As long as their monopoly in information is unchallenged, they learn the lesson that they have <em>carte blanche</em> to lie to us as they wish.  And until the American people have objective information about the world they live in, tyranny has a foothold that becomes increasingly difficult to cast off.</p>
<p>The lessons from the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and from Berlin generally are these:  totalitarianism starts with baby steps, and with a monopoly of the message.  We think we are immune; so did they.  Only by fighting back will the next steps be prevented.  The media should be the inoculant against totalitarianism, not its delivery system.</p>
<p>This is why I do what I do, why so many of us do what we do.</p>
<p>”Not to act is to act,” said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a resident of Berlin and victim of totalitarianism.  Let no one accuse us of not acting.</p>
<p><em>Dr. Siegemund is the founder and president of “Rage Against the Media,”  an activist organization committed to fighting against the corruption  of America’s dominant  media.  She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Mathematics, a Master’s Degree in International Relations, and a PhD in Education and American Culture.   </em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Proselytizing for Palestine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/proselytizing-for-palestine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=proselytizing-for-palestine</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 May 2010 04:01:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Religious Left preaches "Israeli apartheid" to turn followers against the Jewish State.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tony.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60838" title="tony" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/tony.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="480" /></a></p>
<p>Evangelist and activist Tony Campolo, formerly spiritual counselor to Bill Clinton post-Monica, recently sojourned to Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank for the school’s convocation of “Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Peace and Justice.”  This Palestinian evangelical school peddles a form of Palestinian liberationism that much of the Evangelical Left in the U.S., increasingly anxious to justify hostility to Israel and its U.S. allies, eagerly finds persuasive.</p>
<p>Besides Campolo, other speakers included British anti-Israel Anglican priest Stephen Sizer, author Lynne Hybels (wife of Willow Creek mega-church pastor Bill Hybels), Wheaton College professor Gary Burge, United Methodist missionary Alex Awad, and Naim Ateek of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre.</p>
<p>Campolo effusively rhapsodized about “Christ at the Checkpoint” in a column for Jim Wallis’ Sojourners.  The “horror stories” from “oppressed Palestinians” that Campolo heard at Bethlehem Bible College “sent chills” up his back and aroused his “indignation” and “compassion.”  Naturally, Campolo is angriest at pro-Israel evangelicals in the U.S. who are the real culprits for Palestinian suffering.</p>
<p>“Why don’t our Christian brothers and sisters in America care about what is happening to us?,” Campolo remembered one Palestinian imploring of him.  “Do they know that their tax dollars paid for the Israeli tanks that destroyed my house and the houses of my neighbors?”</p>
<p>Predictably, Campolo recited the usual narrative of Christian exodus from among the Palestinians, reporting that Bethlehem has declined from 70 percent to 15 percent Christian.  “Sometimes heartless and dehumanizing treatment that Bethlehem Christians have had to endure over the years has led most of them to emigrate to other countries,” he explained.  Supposedly Israel is exclusively to blame for Christians leaving the region.  But the overall Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, which is 95-98 percent Muslim, continues to grow.  For the most part, Muslims are not leaving. Why would the one or two percent of Palestinians who are Christian most likely emigrate?  Could radical Islam’s influence be a factor? Could it also be that Christians have more contacts with the West that more easily facilitate emigration?</p>
<p>Campolo, like most of the Evangelical and Religious Left, does not try to answer these questions.  Nor does he express a lot of public interest in Palestinian and other Middle East Christians except as a cudgel against Israel and, ultimately, against conservative Christians in the U.S. &#8212; Campolo’s favorite bête noire. “The most serious threats to the well-being of the Palestinians in general, and to the Christian Palestinians in particular, come not from the Jews, but from <em>Christian Zionists</em> here in the United States,” he charged.</p>
<p>Of course, Campolo repeats the usual canard that U.S. evangelicals are uniformly bewitched by “Dispensationalism,” which originated with 19<sup>th</sup> century English theologian Nelson Darby.  In the stereotype that Campolo rehashes, these Darbyite Dispensationalists blindly believe that Jesus Christ will not return “until all of this land is occupied by Jews, and all others are forced to leave.”  Trying to sound equitable, Campolo notes that “Jewish lobbies” are not the main villain behind the “30 percent of all U.S. foreign aid” going to Israel which enables the country to have the “fourth most powerful army in the world.”  No, it is the Christian Zionists who are the “primary sources of pressure on the U.S. Congress to financially back the Israeli military that has made the injustices I have described possible.”</p>
<p>In the Campolo/Evangelical Left narrative, pro-Israel Christians foolishly ignore how the “entire Islamic world views what is happening in the Holy Land,” U.S. evangelical support for Israel is “hindering evangelism among Muslims,” and “so many of the conflicts that exist between Muslims and Christians around the world are partially due to what is happening in the Holy Land.” The Muslim media is quick to link the “oppression of Palestinians to the justification of attacks on Americans, in particular, and the Western world, in general.”</p>
<p>For Campolo, the solution is simple:  “We should be calling for the demolition of the separation wall that is as offensive as the Berlin Wall was.” And “we should be demanding” a return to the 1967 borders.  He says he favors “safe and secure borders for the State of Israel and protection against terrorists.” But evidently, Israel should not be permitted to build walls against suicide bombers or to negotiate defensible borders. Presumably, good will and accommodation will create all the security that Israel needs.</p>
<p>Anti-Israel Anglican priest Stephen Sizer, who participated with Campolo at “Christ at the Checkpoint,” enthusiastically interviewed Campolo afterwards for his website. “The only talk of a resistance against the Israelis, that I heard, is non-violent resistance,” Campolo blithely assured an eagerly listening and believing Sizer about Palestinian intentions.  The evangelist apparently also likes the Israel-Apartheid comparison: “When you begin comparing this to Apartheid in South Africa, you immediately communicate to the American people…The phrase has power.”  And Campolo warned that “both sides,” i.e. Israel and Palestinians, are guilty of hateful portrayals of each other in educational curricula, but Israel is especially guilty. “Hate is allowed to reign free within the Israeli community,” he warned.  “And we incited the Hilltop situation in Hebron and the young men going in…” he continued, in an apparent reference to the 2008 incident when Israeli youth rampaged over Israeli court ordered evictions of Israeli settlers.  It’s not clear who the “we” is who provoked this violence, but presumably it is the dreaded pro-Israel Christians in the U.S.</p>
<p>According to a Pew poll, evangelicals, mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics in the U.S. all sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinian cause. But for the angry Evangelical Left, including Campolo, supposed Israeli oppression is due exclusively to Zionist evangelicals purportedly obsessed with biblical prophecies about the end-times.</p>
<p>Most American Christians sympathize with Israel because it is a pro-American democracy and not owing to 19th century Darbyite theology.  But Campolo and the Evangelical Left prefer not to discuss the merits of democracy versus its Islamist alternatives. Instead, they demonize pro-Israel evangelicals and hope cries of &#8220;apartheid&#8221; will persuade when sound argument will not.</p>
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		<title>Pro-Palestinianism: A Movement of Hate, Pt. II</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-harris/a-movement-of-hate-pt-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-movement-of-hate-pt-ii</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 11 May 2010 04:02:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rob Harris]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The appalling absence of freedom of speech within the Western pro-Palestinian movement. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/301211205.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-59919" title="301211205" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/301211205-284x300.jpg" alt="" width="284" height="300" /></a></p>
<p><em>[Editor&#8217;s note: This is the second installment of a four-part series. To read Part I of &#8220;Pro-Palestinianism: A Movement of Hate,&#8221; click <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/10/a-movement-of-hate-pt-i/">here</a></em><em>. For later segments, click: <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/12/a-movement-of-hate-pt-iii/">Part III</a></em><em> and <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/13/a-movement-of-hate-pt-iv/">Part IV</a></em><em>.</em><em>]</em></p>
<p>The pro-Palestinian movement is profoundly undemocratic with regard to dissenting views. All contentious issues have at least two points of view. A level of reasoned discussion is often required to bring about a fair resolution to a given issue. While most of us can have strong reactions to the opinions of others when they are unpalatable, we still recognize they are entitled to have differing opinions. The need for free speech is meaningless if we all agree with each other, and it is a necessary characteristic of having a free, open society. However, nowhere more so than with the Israeli-Palestinian debate does a genuine belligerence occur when there is a divergence of opinion away from the predominant pro-Palestinian narrative of the conflict. Whenever anyone endorses an opinion in the media or on the internet that is even mildly critical of the Palestinians or mildly supportive of Israel they are typically subjected to extreme criticism. Palestinian sympathisers often use a variety of dishonest methods of argumentation. One common method of counter-argument largely avoids confronting the issue at hand. A pro-Israel article dealing with a particular topic is broadly dismissed but typically, issues are cited that are beyond the scope of said article and as a consequence, vitriolic scorn is often heaped upon it. Even lengthy articles can only deal with a limited number of topics in a limited number of words, and can only address a limited number of responses. Yet they are typically attacked to such an extent it comes across as an attempt, wherever possible, to discredit articles supporting Israel.</p>
<p><em>The Guardian</em> newspaper has been for some time a notoriously biased publication when it comes to matters of the Middle East. Any article that doesn’t roundly condemn Israel is subjected to extreme prolific criticism below in the Comment is Free (CIF) internet comment sections that is often very abusive in nature. Furthermore, rather than just criticising the content of the article, many comments can be extremely personal in nature. An author’s reputation can be put into disrepute by claiming he or she is a “holocaust denier,” under the control of “Zionist paymasters” etc. The moderators of the Comment is Free section often allow deeply anti-Semitic views to also be expressed. The criticism is very prolific, with comments sometimes numbering in the thousands. The Comment is Free section is an extreme example from a mainstream newspaper but this sort of activity is nonetheless very common. It should be clear that this sort of behaviour represents an attempt to intimidate and essentially shout down any dissenting opinions. This does not only happen on the internet. One discussion shows the same often occurs, and in mainstream publications few moderate articles on the conflict ever go unanswered (forcefully) in letters pages. From colloquial evidence, many that defend Israel are sometimes subjected to serious threats, which needs to be discussed openly.</p>
<p>The mainstream media throughout the world bears a great deal of responsibility for promoting the pro-Palestinian movement. With Operation Cast Lead, the frenzied media continually misrepresented the importance of Hamas’ attacks. Many journalists said Hamas was wrong to attack but didn’t take the consequences of the matter seriously. This gave a false sense of balanced journalism while relentlessly exaggerating the actions of the IDF in Gaza and downplaying efforts to minimise civilian casualties. Very basic notions of journalistic balance are flouted with the corrupting of facts, the misrepresentation of opinions as facts, and a remarkable inability to seek alternative views. In recent years, inflammatory news coverage has been shown to result in increased violence towards Jews, such as in France where some news reports were proven to be faked. Given the evidential material and the depth of this bias, it is plausible to assert there is a certain level of genuine collusion between the Palestinians and the media but it is hard to say how common. Media bias is nonetheless so profound it can be asserted the Western media have some responsibility for promoting Palestinian terrorism. Little wonder Israel refused journalists access during Cast Lead.</p>
<p>It appears that most Palestinian propaganda is believed uncritically in the media even though it is very well known that Palestinian terrorist groups have been economical with the truth for a very long time. Profoundly dishonest reporting of casualty figures is a defining characteristic of Palestinian propaganda, and within a short time of the Israeli ground attack in January 2009, Hamas was claiming 300 children had been killed. As with previous conflicts involving Israel, the BBC and many other news institutions that should have known better repeated such figures verbatim even though it is widely known that the Palestinians can play fast and loose with such facts. The figures only increased to just under 400 after weeks of fighting on the ground which indicates the implausibility of such a death toll yet it continued to be a main feature of news coverage in 2009. To illustrate the depth of such bias, Irish Broadcaster RTE even mentioned the “1,300 Vs 13” death toll in an introduction to a story related more to Bin Laden, instead of referring to the many thousands he is personally responsible for murdering.</p>
<p>While the international media has become to an extent a sort of agency for Palestinian propaganda, the internet is perhaps an even more useful tool for disseminating anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic propaganda. Any nutcase can start a blog or site that can be seen around the world. This has led to a popular Western movement of hardcore support for Palestinian terrorism. Judging by the very prolific use of the Internet by pro-Palestinian groups it must be an ideal platform to attack Israel. The intent can clearly be seen even in the names of such sites e.g. “<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/">electronicintifada.net</a>”.</p>
<p>A defining characteristic of the anti-Israel movement is its tireless dedication to propaganda of a most opportunistic kind. For example, when the film “Blood Diamond” about the horrors of the illegal African diamond trade was released, pro-Palestinian groups started picketing jewellers that stocked diamonds from Israel. “Apartheid,” a very emotive term, is a real favourite of pro-Palestinians, e.g. Israel Apartheid Week. This is a sheer absurdity in a state with universal suffrage where minority interests are protected. During the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, they protested about the security barrier or “Apartheid Wall” as they prefer to call it. The wall that has saved hundreds of lives, and with less terrorism, economic progress in towns like Bethlehem was possible. Meanwhile few Arab Christians remain due to Islamic intimidation clearly assisted by the Palestinian authorities. Pro-Palestinians even hijack the memory of the Holocaust, e.g. with events leading to Holocaust Memorial Day. “Activists” and “internationals,” as they like to call themselves, go to the region armed with video cameras to hopefully film and write about the latest supposed Israeli atrocity. Many videos, as seen on pro-Palestinian websites, feature grandiose descriptions of Israeli brutality that display an extraordinary divergence from the reality presented in said videos. Many, as found on YouTube, actually demonstrate the restraint of the Israeli military. If these people confronted in a similar fashion the troops of nations that were genuine human rights abusers many would meet an unpleasant end.</p>
<p>Many of these supposed “activists” attempt to cause diplomatic incidents to embarrass Israel. One example is the repeated attempts to break the embargo on Gaza since the election of Hamas. In 2008, a ship carried 5,000 balloons to <em>lift</em> the spirits of the unfortunate people of Gaza. In 2009, the amusingly titled “Spirit of Humanity” attempted to barge into Gaza. It was, of course, known that the ship would be detained if it didn’t turn back. Not only did the ship break maritime law, but all shipping to Gaza is restricted primarily due to the transit of arms particularly from Iran. If aid was the true aim of these people it could have been supplied through border crossings. Pro-Palestinian groups milked the event for all it was worth and when those on the ship were released they wasted no time peddling lies that were at times breathtaking. For example, British minority newspaper <em>The Voice</em> (July 20<sup>th </sup>2009) featured an interview by Jamaican/British filmmaker Ishmail Blagrove in which he compared the low security prison where he was detained with a Nazi concentration camp. He said hundreds of black people were taken off the streets of Israel seemingly on a daily basis and imprisoned by authorities, redolent of the worst excesses of Apartheid South Africa.</p>
<p>Within the pro-Palestinian movement there is a profound lack of ownership of the fact that its own activities are clearly giving rise to anti-Semitic feeling and crime towards Jewish people generally. During the protests in response to the Israeli invasion of Gaza in January 2009 there were many anti-Semitic incidents. One of the more notorious occurred in Amsterdam where there were chants of “Hamas Hamas, Jews to the gas.” In the UK, many felt such a profound sense of menace that a reclaim the streets march was organised in response to the frequent Pro-Palestinian demonstrations which were heavily policed out of necessity. These are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many reports of an array of unsubtle anti-Semitic slogans and placards being waved about at such marches. Is any campaigner concerned about placards carrying messages like “Death to the Jews” as seen in numerous photos? Whilst some organisers may attempt to distance themselves from such sentiments, to my knowledge there have never been any strong condemnations or any real efforts to weed out such elements from demonstrations. Indeed it is surely not lost on the organisers that many if not the majority of those attending such rallies hold these opinions.</p>
<p>In the UK there was an three-fold increase in overtly anti-Semitic crime. Besides violent assaults, Jewish businesses and synagogues were attacked. Even Jewish primary schools were targeted. In stark contrast to the wave of support shown to the Muslim community principally by left wingers after the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London, hardly a word of concern has been uttered about rising anti-Semitism. Indeed left-wing groups, who tend to adopt all the concerns of ethnic minorities as their own, have been leading the charge of defaming Israel. Little wonder then that the same groups would not be terribly worried if the Jews in their midst are concerned for their safety. The problem of rising anti-Semitism is felt keenly in many parts of Europe (e.g. Paris and Malmo, Sweden) and increasingly in the US.</p>
<p>Besides the increased anti-Semitic crime rate, many independent surveys in recent years have shown considerable increases in anti-Semitism around the world. In supposedly enlightened Europe a very substantial number of people stated they blamed the Jews for the current financial crisis! Pro-Palestinian supporters strongly reject all accusations of anti-Semitism and continually assert they are only anti-Zionist. However, if they were sincere in their expressed intentions they would surely acknowledge the harm being done to Jewish communities. In various countries pro-Palestinians have notably targeted Jewish shops with no link to Israel as locations for campaign posters, sometimes daubed messages on windows (a la Nazi Germany), and sought boycott of similarly unassociated businesses. These and other examples of Jews being singled-out further disproves their activity has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>The figure of 300 child deaths in Gaza has been bandied about by the pro-Palestinian movement throughout 2009, along with inflammatory imagery of child murder, for example a poster of a Palestinian child clutching a teddy bear while an Israeli helicopter fires missiles at it. As with other Palestinian propaganda the image draws upon old blood libel motifs, in this case the Jew as child murderer. Witness the paranoid speculation of Israeli/Jewish conspiracies, e.g. the notion that Jews control the media and are limiting criticism of Israel. A recent example is the absurdity that British-Jewish-Israeli lobbying is having an undue influence on the British establishment and is controlling the UK media. This, like other theories advanced by pro-Palestinians, requires an absurd inverted down-is-up understanding of reality. Such cases demonstrate a will to hate and defame Jews regardless of fact. This is no different to the past.</p>
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		<title>Remembering the Cold Warriors</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/remembering-the-cold-warriors/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=remembering-the-cold-warriors</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:39:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Will the unsung heroes who guarded against the communist threat ever get their due?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/American-Soviet-Flag.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58333" title="American Soviet Flag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/American-Soviet-Flag.jpg" alt="" width="409" height="343" /></a></p>
<p>Both the public and policy makers will be debating the wisdom of the nuclear reduction treaty that president Obama recently concluded with Russia for quite some time, as well they should. The stakes don’t get much bigger. Joe Lieberman said that the treaty <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/11/lieberman-nuclear-deal-ob_n_533204.html">won’t make it through the Senate</a> unless there are significant modifications to the pact. That seems the probable result, especially if the Senate voting on the treaty includes, as seems likely, more Republican members.</p>
<p>I’m not up to speed enough on the merits and risks of this deal to comment on it. But, whenever nuclear reduction is on the table, I suspect that I’m not the only baby-boomer to recall a time when the ominous specter of nuclear war loomed just over the horizon, not as a somewhat unsettling possibility, but – in our then-young imaginations – a likely probability. For many young people today, the threat of terrorism, if they worry about it at all, is something that involves a couple of wars half a world away, and that threat probably wouldn’t exist at all if George W. Bush weren’t such an <a href="http://www.uswarcrimes.com/">arrogant, imperialist cowboy</a>. Could they even imagine a childhood that featured – not terrorism – but actual terror on a daily basis; the terror that a Soviet missile would streak over the horizon at any moment?  You learned to “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K_LZDXp0I">duck and cover</a>” at elementary school. Everybody knew where the nearest fall-out shelter was. If your dad drove you down the right road, you might get a glimpse of the nearby Nike defensive missile site as he grimly explained its purpose.</p>
<p>The nuclear Armageddon that everyone expected never happened, even after the guy that the Democrats assured us was a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/02/books-reagans-secret-war/">crazy cowboy from California</a>, certain to turn the world into a smoldering ruin, was first elected president in 1980. (Democrats using crazed hyperbole to advance their political prospects – who could have seen that coming?) A big part of the reason that we baby-boomers never had to run to the fall-out shelter or cower beneath our desks was the professionalism, vigilance and courage of the cold-warriors who stared down the Soviet  Union over the course of five decades. Will the Cold Warriors <a href="http://coldwarriors.net/">ever get their due</a>? For it’s certain that, but for their tireless dedication to the defense of this nation we wouldn’t even be in a position to talk to our somewhat subdued, but by no means emasculated, Cold War opponent about further reducing nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>It’s easy to overlook the Cold Warriors. In the forty-four years of the Cold War, the United States was engaged in two major “hot wars” with Soviet proxies – in Korea and Viet Nam – and numerous skirmishes in lesser theaters. We recognize, and justifiably so, the valor of the soldiers, marines, sailors and aviators who put themselves in harm’s way when bullets were flying. Yet, the Cold Warriors charged with keeping the peace were no less important to America than the grim soldiers slogging through rice paddies in Indochina.</p>
<p>The Cold Warriors’ mission demanded two diametrically opposed skills. On the one hand, they had to demonstrate unparalleled proficiency, such that the Soviets always knew that they were facing an opponent who was as least as good as they were, if not a fair bit better, at the art of waging war. On the other hand, while they might flaunt their proficiency, that demonstration could not be allowed to turn into outright confrontation. It was a very fine line and all of the Cold Warriors were expected to know exactly where it was drawn. The Cold War was a game of chicken on a global scale, with the greatest possible stakes on the table, and our troops played the game better than anyone could have ever imagined.</p>
<p>The Cold Warriors paid a price in blood as well. A friend who flew in <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/p-3.htm">P-3 Orions</a> chasing Soviet subs during the Cold War ruefully observed that daily losses of life among military personnel during the Cold War often exceeded monthly losses in today’s Iraq War. He wasn’t being disrespectful or ungrateful to the boots on the ground risking their lives in Iraq, rather he was plaintively observing that the nature of the Cold War meant that those killed fighting it were, by necessity, generally invisible to the public’s eye. Cold Warriors killed while doing their job were, the vast majority of the time, officially lost “in training accidents” rather than in combat. It had to be that way. If an Orion pilot dumped his aircraft pursuing a Soviet missile boat as part of a war that did not officially exist, how could the crew be honored for giving their lives in combat? That’s not a criticism of the way the United States government treated such situations, but – twenty one years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – perhaps it is an admission that is’s time to publically acknowledge the bravery, heroism and dedication of the Cold Warriors.</p>
<p>Hollywood heavyweight Tom Hanks has dedicated a great deal of time, money and effort towards telling <a href="http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1969606,00.html">the personal stories of the men</a> who fought and won World War II. For that, he is to be commended. But, most of us are well aware of the heroism and patriotism of our fathers and grandfathers that fought in that war. The inspiring stories of the Cold Warriors are, for the most part, still sadly untold. How about it Tom? Let’s give this generation of heroes their due, before they are too old to appreciate it. They sure as hell deserve it.</p>
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		<title>A Memorial to the Victims of Communism</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:04:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Barbara Kay]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Yuri Glazov]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A long-sought monument in Canada will thankfully soon be completed.]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/gulagwire.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54922" title="gulagwire" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/gulagwire.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="313" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[This article is reprinted from the <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/">National Post</a>]</strong></p>
<p>In 1968, naive anti-establishment American and Canadian students considered  themselves courageous for locking supine university presidents in their offices,  throwing computers out of windows and even burning out-of-favour academics’  research work. They knew that in the free, indulgent West, their childish parody  of a revolution would result in nothing more than a suspension from their  studies.</p>
<p>In the same year truly courageous Moscow academic <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/11/remembering-a-dissident/">Yuri Glazo</a>v signed the  famous “letter of the twelve,” protesting illegal arrests and trials of  dissidents, knowing full well that this real act of revolution would result in a  suspension of his human rights.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dad2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54936" title="dad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dad2.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="281" /></a></p>
<p>Glazov was predictably fired, meaning he was henceforth unemployable and  deemed a “parasite” on the state. Warned by a friend, he narrowly avoided  imprisonment on a trumped-up narcotics-dealing charge. Finally, through a stroke  of luck, Glazov came with his family to the West, and in 1975 took up residence  in Halifax as chair of the Russian Studies department at Dalhousie University, a  position he held until shortly before his death in 1998.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/leaving21.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54937" title="leaving2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/leaving21.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="288" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[Yuri Glazov's family shortly before departure from Russia. From left to right: son Greg, Yuri, daughter Elena, wife Marina and son Jamie.]</strong></p>
<p>An outstanding Canadian, Glazov deserves recognition, and so do many other  brave dissidents for whom Canada has been a refuge. Nine million Canadians —  that’s almost a third of us according to the 2006 census — came to these shores  from communist-ruled countries. Many are now dead or very old. Their descendants  deserve to see their sacrifices acknowledged and Canadians exposed to the full  panoply of communist atrocities.</p>
<p>Prospects for educating Canadians about the human toll exacted by communism  through their stories will brighten when a long-sought Ottawa Memorial to the  Victims of Totalitarian Communism is completed, a project singled out for  endorsement in the recent Throne Speech.</p>
<p>This memorial isn’t just a good idea, like an also-promised national  Holocaust memorial, it is a necessary idea.</p>
<p>The exhaustively researched Holocaust is in no danger of being forgotten. The  highest term of opprobrium in Western culture, whether from leftists or  rightists (rightly or wrongly) is “Nazi,” not “communist.” That’s not because  Nazis and communists have been compared and Nazis found to be worse. It’s  because people don’t know how bad communism was and is.</p>
<p>In 2006 the Swedish Ministry of Education initiated programs teaching the  crimes of communism because a poll had revealed only 10% of Swedish youth could  identify the Gulag. Canadian youth would not fare better. All educated Canadians  associate the word “Auschwitz” with “genocide.” The equally horrific “Holodomor”  is more likely to draw a blank stare.</p>
<p>Why has communism escaped the moral condemnation Nazism attracts in such  exuberant degree? In recent years several scholars have addressed the question  and provided a litany of reasons, amongst them:</p>
<p>z  Stalin was a war ally and therefore escaped the postwar censure he  deserved;</p>
<p>z  Only since the fall of the Berlin Wall has the most damaging data emerged;  by then witnesses were aging and focused on economic priorities;</p>
<p>z  There was no Nuremburg, no Truth and Reconciliation moment for communism  as there was for other genocidal regimes;</p>
<p>z  Communist propaganda machines are extremely efficient at positive branding  (Trudeau bought in; his fawning patronage of Fidel Castro was beyond  contemptible).</p>
<p>But all reasons pale beside the glaring failure of left-wing intellectuals to  admit — and to teach — that communism isn’t simply an unfortunate contingency of  socialist passion but an ideology as immoral and implacably ruthless and  dramatically consequential as Nazism.</p>
<p>Actually it is more than intellectuals’ failure, which suggests passivity; it  was, and is, active avoidance. Yuri Glazov was proud to become a Canadian  citizen, but was shocked and chagrined at the ignorance and even denial of  communism’s crimes he found amongst his fellow academics. As his son Jamie  Glazov noted in his 2009 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071076">United in Hate: the Left’s Romance with Tyranny  and Terror</a>, “[W]hile we were cherishing our newfound freedom, we encountered &#8230;  intellectuals in the universities who hated my parents for the story they had to  tell &#8230;”</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Left-wing intellectuals’ laundering of the truth about communism has  translated into a vast lacuna in the teaching of 20th century history in our  schools — one we can only hope the new memorial will help to fill.</p>
<p>The word “memorial” is somewhat misleading, though, suggesting that communism  is a closed historical chapter. The fall of the Berlin Wall notwithstanding,  communism in one guise or another still determines the fate of millions of  hapless people around the globe. Victims in communist regimes are still starved,  imprisoned, tortured and denied the most basic of human rights.</p>
<p>“Centre”? “Testament”? It is not too late to find a word to remind  communism’s ongoing victims that right-thinking Canadians know the truth and  will not abandon them.</p>
<p><strong>To learn more about Yuri Glazov and the Yuri Glazov Memorial Award, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/11/remembering-a-dissident/">click here.</a></strong></p>
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		<title>History as Heresy: The Socialist Immolation of Reality</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/barry-loberfeld/history-as-heresy-the-socialist-immolation-of-reality-3/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=history-as-heresy-the-socialist-immolation-of-reality-3</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/barry-loberfeld/history-as-heresy-the-socialist-immolation-of-reality-3/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:00:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Barry Loberfeld]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Marxist writer William Blum enlightens the masses on the "myths" of the Berlin Wall.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Berlin_wall.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52212" title="Berlin_wall" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Berlin_wall.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="295" /></a></p>
<p>Many FrontPage Magazine readers will probably know writer William Blum (<em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-Military-Interventions-Since/product-reviews/1567510523/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_3?ie=UTF8&amp;showViewpoints=0&amp;filterBy=addThreeStar">Killing Hope</a></em>) from <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32295">his critique of <em>Party of Defeat</em> and co-author Ben Johnson’s reply</a>. But a truly astounding piece of work by him appeared in October on Alexander Cockburn’s <a href="http://counterpunch.com/">CounterPunch</a> Web site.</p>
<p>The title is “The Fall of the Berlin Wall” and the teaser “Another Cold War Myth.” He begins, “Within a few weeks many of the Western media can be expected to turn on their propaganda machines to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989.” And what will this “propaganda” consist of?</p>
<blockquote><p>All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth.” What other reason could there have been?</p></blockquote>
<p>In Blum’s account, the Wall was built not to keep East Germans from fleeing Communism, but “to tighten up entry into the country from the West.” No, he doesn’t mean that masses of West German citizens were fleeing to Soviet Germany (the “German Democratic Republic” — GDR). Rather, he asserts that the Wall was built to keep out anti-Communist spies and saboteurs of the socialist economy.</p>
<p>That is, of course, the standard Communist invocation of “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_%28Soviet_crime%29">wreckers</a>,” those agents of reaction, foreign or domestic, who are really responsible for the seeming failures of scientific socialism. Specifically, it is the GDR model, which was the <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,628052,00.html">brainchild of Khrushchev</a>. For those who might question this version of events, Blum provides incontrovertible proof:</p>
<blockquote><p>Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears.</p></blockquote>
<p>Evidently in contrast to Blum’s credulous ears. One can easily imagine his condemning “the Soviets’ erstwhile allies” for blocking <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre#Katyn_in_judicial_proceedings">the Bolsheviks’ efforts at the Nuremburg trials to bring the Nazis to justice for the Katyn Forest massacre</a>.</p>
<p>Khrushchev’s propaganda line is Blum’s only shred of would-be evidence against the Wall’s history as understood outside the “progressive” community. That, and one other: “[B]efore the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will.”</p>
<p>Going by that line of reasoning, you’d never imagine that 3.5 million East Germans (about one-fifth of the GDR population) had left by the year the Wall went up. Nor does Blum explain why the Communist guards, if they were there to keep out Western saboteurs, would <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,499626,00.html">shoot to kill East German citizens who tried to flee over the Wall</a>. Such victims, along with those who were imprisoned for trying to escape, are never even mentioned. (Would Blum at least concede their existence? And if he does, will he admit that <em>they</em> were “held in the East against their will”?) And the thousands of East Germans who fled through Hungary in 1989? Indeed, the whole history of the escape to the West is ignored, with this exception: “The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government.” For Blum, the East German dictators were the victims — of Western sabotage/seduction and ungrateful citizens. (Note the implication: The State owns those for whom it provides — what an indictment of socialism’s “<a href="http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-perils-of-positive-rights/">positive rights</a>”! One cannot help wonder if he read <em>Atlas Shrugged</em> and chose its villains as his heroes.)</p>
<p>Blum’s claims don’t even hold up to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall">Wikipedia search</a>, a veritable mine of refuting facts, including these nuggets:</p>
<p>• “The major task of the ruling communist party in the Soviet zone was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties pretending that these were initiatives of its own. Property and industry was nationalized in the East German zone. If statements or decisions deviated from the described line, reprimands and, for persons outside public attention, punishment would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death. Indoctrination of Marxism-Leninism became a compulsory part of school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the west. An elaborate political police apparatus kept the population under close surveillance, including Soviet <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMERSH">SMERSH</a> secret police.”</p>
<p>• “After Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc">Eastern Bloc</a> aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave. Taking advantage of the zonal border between occupied zones in Germany, the number of GDR citizens moving to West Germany totaled 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovietization">Sovietization</a> with the increasingly paranoid actions of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin">Joseph Stalin</a> in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953.”</p>
<p>• “Soviet East German ambassador Mikhail Pervukhin observed that ‘the presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which unfortunately, does not always turn out in favor of the Democratic [i.e., Communist] Berlin.’”</p>
<p>• “The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated, leading to the brain drain feared by officials in East Germany. Yuri Andropov, then the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union">CPSU</a> Director on Relations with Communist and Workers Parties of Socialist Countries, wrote an urgent letter on August 28, 1958, to the Central Committee about the significant 50% increase in the number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees. Andropov reported that, while the East German leadership stated that they were leaving for economic reasons, testimony from refugees indicated that the reasons were more political than material. He stated ‘the flight of the intelligentsia has reached a particularly critical phase.’”</p>
<p>• “Before the Wall’s erection, 3.5 million East Germans had avoided <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_emigration_and_defection">Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions</a> and escaped from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin. From West Berlin, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration">emigrants</a> could travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. During its existence from 1961 to 1989, the Wall stopped almost all such emigration and separated the GDR from West Berlin for more than a quarter of a century. After its erection, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between around 100 and 200.”</p>
<p>One other inconvenient fact: The barbed wire signal fence, which sounded an alarm when someone tried to scale it, was placed on the <em>eastern</em> side of the barrier zone. And a question: How many people were caught trying to clear the Wall <em>into</em> the GDR?</p>
<p>Above all: What about those East Germans who commuted to work in the West? In <em><a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5101.html">Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification</a></em> (pp. 51-52), Professor A. James McAdams writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>Ever since the articulation of Khrushchev’s [threat to sign a peace treaty with the GDR], the East German population’s fears that <em>something</em> was about to happen in Berlin, <em><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872657,00.html">Torschlusspanik</a></em>, or “gate-closing panic,” had driven the refugee flight to unprecedented heights. Twenty thousand people fled the GDR in June alone, and more than thirty thousand in July. Despite the government’s efforts to slow the exodus by implementing more restrictive controls on movement between the two parts of Berlin — restrictive measures were taken in July against the so-called <em>Grenzgänger</em> (“border-crossers”) who lived in East Berlin and worked in West Berlin — even these steps merely added to the number of those fleeing to the West. As a consequence, when the member states of the Warsaw Pact met again on August 3-4 in Moscow, they finally voted to support the construction of the Wall.</p></blockquote>
<p>And in <em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/books/06grimes.html">The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989</a></em> (pp. 190-91), Frederick Taylor discusses what then happened to the <em>Grenzgänger</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Now that the party had all these people in its clutches, unable to leave via the escape hatch of the open Berlin border, its policy towards all of them could, and would, change.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>The former “border-crossers” were easily dealt with. They were directed to labour exchanges to be found work in East German factories. But their status as doubtful elements would still cost them dear. They were subjected to a policy of discrimination. “Concentrations” of such people in workplaces were to be avoided. They were not to be employed “in key positions and especially crucial areas of production.” By the middle of September, the <em>Stasi</em> reported that of 32,000 registered former “border-crossers,” 24,000 had accepted new employment “within democratic [i.e., Communist] Berlin.”</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Significantly, and given the regime’s preoccupations unsurprisingly, all qualified teachers who were resident in the East but had taught in the West were to be barred from the GDR’s education system for life.</p></blockquote>
<p>Now, against all documented history, Blum is left with only his moral insight that even if Communist leaders did erect the Wall to stem population flight, they were perfectly justified because, after all, what government can allow publicly educated citizens to freely emigrate?</p>
<p>At this point, we might be tempted to challenge Blum to conjure up exculpations for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_emigration_and_defection">uniform prohibition of emigration by the Eastern Bloc</a> — and the rest of the Marxist world. Is North Korea’s imprisonment of its citizenry merely an unfortunate consequence of impregnable borders still needed to keep out die-hard wreckers? Would letting people sail <em>from</em> Cuba hinder the <em><a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Albania+of+the+Caribbean.+%28Cuba%29-a07562271">mayimbes’</a></em> ability to stop wrecker ships from docking on the island?</p>
<p>But Blum is hardly finished:</p>
<blockquote><p>Let’s not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union and wipe out Bolshevism forever. After the war, the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.</p></blockquote>
<p>When Hitler, after such preliminaries as the Sudetenland, took his first goose step onto that highway on September 1, 1939, he was met with a declaration of war by Britain and France two days later. The only approval he received was from his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact">Bolshevik allies</a>, who marched westward into Poland on September 17 — a fact that Blum elides. Will he now explain this march — as well as, no doubt, the attacks on Finland, the Baltic states, Carpathian Ruthenia, and Moldova — as a <em>pre-Nazi-invasion-of-Russia</em> “determination to close down the highway”?</p>
<p>And what was the international Left doing in response to these events? <a href="http://97.74.65.51/Printable.aspx?ArtId=8615">This</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>During this era, compliant communist parties in the west supported Stalin and opposed efforts to stop Hitler as “capitalist warmongering.” While many on the left had misgivings about the Hitler-Stalin pact, most kept silent or rationalized Stalin’s actions as clever political moves designed to fool communism’s enemies. These internal contradictions were only relieved by Hitler’s attack on his erstwhile ally in 1941.</p></blockquote>
<p>Britain and France did not declare war on the Bolsheviks. With the United States entering the war, the Western forces fought the Nazi regime unremittingly, even when it invaded Soviet Russia, whom they embraced as an ally (and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-10-20/news/mn-14622_1">aided</a>). They did not stop until that regime surrendered unconditionally.</p>
<p>While Blum (who appears to be echoing, consciously or unconsciously, Stalin’s <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiers_of_History">Falsifiers of History</a></em>) enjoins us to “not forget,” he himself seems to have forgotten the Soviets’ earlier martial efforts to use Poland as a highway to reach the West and spread Bolshevism — or is he of the opinion that the U.S.S.R. was forced to invade Poland that time as self-defense against the West and/or <em>Gefreiter</em> Hitler? (See Adam Zamoyski, <em><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/warsaw-1920-by-adam-zamoyski-792497.html">Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe</a></em>.)</p>
<p>Also from the Let’s-Not-Forget Dept. is why Germany, in large part, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/The%20Road%20to%20Nowhere.htm">became National Socialist</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Stalinism was a far more palpable influence in shaping German politics in the Thirties than was Nazism in Soviet developments. The “Trotskyite conspiracy with the Mikado and Hitler” — the cabal which the infamous show trials claimed to expose — was a Stalinist myth; but the alliance that German Communists formed with the Nazi Party to attack the Social Democrats and destroy the Weimar Republic was an actual Stalinist plot. Without this alliance, the united parties of the Left would have formed a formidable barrier to the Nazis’ electoral triumph and Hitler might never have come to power.</p></blockquote>
<p>Finally, Blum’s last piece of “information” regarding East   Germany:</p>
<blockquote><p>In 1999, USA Today reported: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.” (USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1.)</p></blockquote>
<p>Let’s say the figure quoted by Blum is accurate. But what is the story today? “In a recent Pew Research Center poll,” wrote Cathy Young for RealClearPolitics.com on Nov. 14, “only 16 percent of people living in former East Germany took a negative attitude toward German unification; a positive view was taken by 81 percent…. That’s hardly evidence of communist nostalgia.”</p>
<p>And with that, we can now piece together what Blum has presented as history, as a corrective to “Cold War [i.e., anti-Communist] myth”: Soviet Russia was a peace-loving, anti-fascist nation that expanded its dominion only in response to a Western-approved Nazi invasion; East German citizens with access to the West always returned home; the GDR government did not censor and propagandize its people; the Berlin Wall was built, not in response to population flight, but to keep out Western spies and saboteurs; former East Germans today despise even <a href="http://www.economist.com/research/Economics/alphabetic.cfm?LETTER=S#socialmarket">social-market capitalism</a> and long for the days of totalitarian (i.e., total) socialism; the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall was predictably a propaganda opportunity for Western apologists to deny all these truths.</p>
<p>Blum’s article is nothing less than an inversion of reality: a whitewashing of Communism’s tyranny and warmongering — and an equally mendacious blackening of the Western liberal democracies’ record in relation to both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. It consists of the flimsiest of claims … and thus constitutes the most brazen of propaganda.</p>
<p>While the Left has <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-7961169.html">before peddled absurd explaining-aways of the lesson of the two Germanys</a>, Blum’s piece is so outrageous that its only bit of substance is the final question it raises: Whom is he trying to convince, and why?</p>
<p>There was an episode of <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0681838/">Quincy</a></em> that dealt with Holocaust “revisionism” in which someone asked Jack Klugman’s character why anyone would want to deny that part of history. He answered: So no one could point to it and say <em>This must never happen again</em>. Indeed, at the end of the show, when an aging Nazi actually affirms the atrocities with pride and boasts that he is preserving their movement in the history books, the denier replies: And because of you, that’s where it will stay!</p>
<p>As with Hitlerism, so with Marxism. The facts of Communist tyranny can never be revealed for anyone to say <em>This must never happen again</em> — and thus forever consign Marxism to hardcover. But while Blum’s piece seeks an exoneration of Marxism, it in fact makes an implicit (albeit inadvertent) confession to the indictment: the link between Marxist theory and Communist practice. Why deny the latter if it is not a true reflection of the former? Why not just regurgitate yet again, “That’s not real socialism”?</p>
<p>But the ignorant and the stupefyingly gullible may not be the only ones Blum is striving to convince. We commonly speak of something “too good to be true,” but there can be — for certain minds— something too good <em>not </em>be true. Its Beauty is its Truth.</p>
<p>If Marxism is repeatedly compared to religion, it is only because parallels so often manifest themselves. Blum, in trying to both convince prospective adherents and reassure old ones with pseudohistory, is not unlike the evangelist bolstering biblical literalism with an invented pseudoscience (“creation science”). But what is the counterpart to Blum’s own belief in the creed? What <em>drives</em> him to invent that pseudohistory?</p>
<p>The Beauty of Marxism.</p>
<p>Like other fundamentalists, Marxists will just not accept that their Truth has been exposed as myth. Thus, for Blum himself, his pseudohistory is not creationism, but <em><a href="http://www.translationdirectory.com/glossaries/glossary007_p.htm">presuppositionalism</a></em>. This is the epistemological premise that might best be described as dogmatic affirmation: You simply declare the myth to be the foundation of all fact, the standard by which everything else — including “evidence” — is to be judged. In Christian theology, it means you don’t disprove the Bible — the Bible disproves <em>you</em>. Muslim fundamentalists take an identical approach to the Koran.</p>
<p>For Blum, Marxian prophecy must be right and therefore <em>was</em> right. His entire “history” is a telling of events as dogma dictates they must have occurred. That is how he concocts a tale of Communist virtue and capitalist/fascist co-villainy. He needs no more than Marxist writ to deny the history of life under Communism, just as his Christian counterpart needs no more than Genesis to deny the history of life on Earth.</p>
<p>This mindset is essentially the origin of “postmodernism,” i.e., <em>neoprimitivism</em>. As <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Postmodernism-Skepticism-Socialism-Rousseau/dp/1592476465/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1265207566&amp;sr=1-1">Stephen R.C. Hicks writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Confronted by harsh evidence and ruthless logic, the far Left had a reply: That is only logic and evidence; logic and evidence are subjective; you cannot really prove anything; feelings are deeper than logic; and our feelings say socialism…. Postmodernism is a response to the crisis in faith of the academic far Left. Its epistemology justifies the leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism, and the same epistemology justifies using language not as a vehicle for seeking truth but as a rhetorical weapon in the continuing battle against capitalism.</p></blockquote>
<p>How the mighty have devolved. Once the champions of a “revolutionary” and “scientific” thesis, “socialists” are now the <a href="http://www.abcdunlimited.com/ideas/reactionary.html">reactionary</a> zealots of a pre-scientific — <em>anti</em>-scientific — worldview. The “battle against capitalism” has become part of a far wider assault.</p>
<p>Now none of this would be threatening if it were emanating from, say, only what’s left of the Communist Party USA. But neither Blum nor similar <a href="http://97.74.65.51/Printable.aspx?ArtId=24006">anti-anti-Communism</a> nor postmodernism is, to lift a phrase from Christopher Hitchens, “marginal to what remains of the left.” Blum’s article didn’t appear on PeoplesWorld.org; it appeared on one of the Left’s major Web sites, which is edited by the one of the Left’s most prominent voices and has been praised by some of its most popular representatives (e.g., <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1058">Barbara Ehrenreich</a>: “CounterPunch makes me think. It makes me laugh. Above all it tells me things I didn’t know.” Arguably that last line does apply to Blum’s piece.). The strength of these combatants is not negligible in the media— or academia. The danger is <em>not</em> contained.</p>
<p>But there is an answer, one that consists of simply extending what is already done without controversy. If the present author may <a href="http://www.abcdunlimited.com/ideas/doublestandards.html">quote himself</a>: “Our culture is not neutral or agnostic regarding Hitler and his followers, and it can no longer remain so regarding Marx and <em>his</em> followers.” Therefore: “[W]e should … denounce and marginalize those who propagate the ideas that inspired Stalin [<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=black+book+of+communism&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=cYurQJNhp4&amp;sig=oD59dWPLqcCuk7uekYJeFABXRwE&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=eKl9S8DACNKP8AaxjIzaCQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=4&amp;ved=0CCIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;q=black%20book%20of%20communi">and the other Communists</a>] just as surely as we denounce and marginalize those who propagate the ideas that inspired Hitler.” There are of course Nazi equivalents of Blum, but almost no one knows their names because decent society accords them no platform. <em>That</em> is the standard to replace the double standards of today’s media, academia, and other institutions.</p>
<p>There is no longer anything to adduce to the socialists themselves — by the very terms they set. We can build a Chinese wall of facts before the believer; even its blocks of human suffering will not stop him from envisioning that Beauty.</p>
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		<title>The Velvet Philosophical Revolution</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andr-glucksmann/the-velvet-philosophical-revolution/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-velvet-philosophical-revolution</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:03:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[André Glucksmann]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the battle for political freedom goes on.]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/havel.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50355" title="havel" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/havel.gif" alt="" width="450" height="348" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[This article is reprinted from <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_1_velvet-revolution.html">City Journal</a>]</strong></p>
<p>On the evening of November 9, 1989, the wall of shame was breached. The next morning, I took off for Berlin; shortly afterward, I experienced the Velvet Revolution in Prague, and finally the fall of Ceauşescu in Bucharest. The year 1990 opened joyfully for the human race. But I was struck by the difference in the emotions felt in the East and in the West. Representative of the West was Francis Fukuyama and his idea, which caused a sensation, that history had just come to an end. But those in the East realized that this was far from the case. Less than a month before the Berlin Wall fell, I had given a speech in front of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the cream of the Federal Republic of Germany in honor of Czech dissident Václav Havel, who was receiving the Frankfurt Book Fair’s prestigious Peace Prize while still a prisoner in his own country. I entitled the speech “To Leave Communism Is to <em>Enter</em> History”—the view of those emerging from behind the Iron Curtain.</p>
<p>The West’s confusion arose because it wasn’t prepared for such a fundamental unsettling of postwar geopolitics. During four decades of ideological confrontation, theoreticians and journalists had argued about how a society should move from capitalism to socialism. There was no research on the opposite question—that is, on the transition from socialism to capitalism—apart from a few inconclusive studies, most notably in Poland, concerning the possibility of introducing some elements of the free market into a Communist society. As the philosopher Josep Ramoneda has observed, the whole world—Communists, anti-Communists, and those in between—took it as given that the Soviet Union and its satellites could not “return” to capitalism. So when, during the Velvet Revolution, demonstrators posed exactly this question—How can we go from socialism to capitalism?—there was no ready answer.</p>
<p>As Western intellectuals watched Berlin in November 1989, they reconsidered their long belief that the world was fated to be Communist—but retained their belief in fate. Providence had at last spoken, chance was abolished, the terrible parenthesis of the twentieth century had closed. Forgotten, erased, transcended, surpassed were 1914–1989, the bloodiest and cruelest 75 years of the human adventure to date. Tocquevilleans rediscovered the ineluctable movement of universal democracy; Saint-Simonians passed on to ecologists the promise that the administration of things would replace the government of men; Hegelians like Fukuyama celebrated the End of History and of history’s wars; Social Democrats promised that understanding among peoples would grow. We were entering the peaceful, postmodern Promised Land, where great heroes, great dangers, great peoples, and great goals would all disappear, as Jean-François Lyotard, author of <em>The Postmodern Condition</em>, notoriously argued. The end of the Cold War plunged the “free world,” as it had been called, into a boundless euphoria. Western Europe immediately eliminated its military budgets, while Washington announced a “new world order.”</p>
<p>The other Europe, just emancipated from Moscow’s domination, did not share this optimism. The peoples extricating themselves from totalitarian despotism were at the same time rejoining history as freely choosing agents.</p>
<p>And they found before them two possible futures. One is symbolized today by Havel and Lech Walesa, Charter 77 and Poland’s Solidarity; the other by Slobodan Milošević and Vladimir Putin.</p>
<p>Czechs and Serbs faced the same post-1989 challenges as they confronted the dismantling of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In Prague, widespread poverty and corruption tempted the antitotalitarian dissidents whom the Velvet Revolution brought to power to choose repression rather than democracy. Their ultimate decision, though, was decisive: freedom would be the highest priority. Slovakia and the Czech Republic separated without conflict, and in the end, both entered the European Union. In Belgrade, by contrast, a sly and corrupt Communist bureaucrat seized power. Milošević forged an alliance of various forces of repression against the contagion of liberty. While he set aside Marxist ideology, he preserved its coercive methods. Wars and waves of ethnic cleansing ravaged Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1999. Milošević proved ready to spill blood in order to regain lost territories, and he ended up in The Hague, facing charges of crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>Ecstatic Westerners dreamed that the period of totalitarian cruelty was over, as if former Soviet bureaucrats could somehow emerge as new men, despite 70 years of brainwashing, or as if the chaos of radically nationalist dictatorships would easily resolve itself. But no great political savior awaited, Havel argued; Czechs were left to their own responsibilities, to “the power of the powerless,” to what the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, who inspired Havel, called the “solidarity of the shaken”—of those, that is, shaken by totalitarian regimes and devoted to opposing them.</p>
<p>More recently, we have seen this solidarity in the democratic uprisings in Georgia in 2003 and in Ukraine in 2004, which should have drawn the attention of those who remained deaf through 12 years and 200,000 deaths in the martyrdom of Chechnya. In Ukraine, President Putin intervened shamelessly in the affairs of a state whose independence he refused to recognize. In Georgia, he sent in the tanks. Responding to the international press, Putin denounced the peaceful uprisings that swept away post-Soviet puppets in Tbilisi and Kiev as “permanent revolution” and “its dangerous disorders.” Thus he defamed a liberating uprising of long duration, one that started in the blood of East Berlin in 1953; continued in Poznań and Budapest in 1956, in Russia with the dissidence of the sixties, in Prague in 1968, and in the struggle of Solidarity in the 1980s; and was crowned by the fall of the Berlin Wall.</p>
<p>It is an uprising that in Poland brought together Catholics and freethinkers, at odds for more than a century, who together founded Solidarity. In Russia, moderns like Andrey Sakharov and traditional believers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn worked side by side. In Prague and Bratislava, university professors, instead of teaching the official lies, chose to be window washers or furnace repairmen, and Charter 77 brought together the Left and the Right, skeptics and the religious. Antitotalitarianism cultivates its own convictions, without sectarianism; dissidence does not attempt to replace the official dogma with another one but instead introduces an intellectual revolution that precedes—and that alone makes possible—the social and political changes that will remake the map of Europe.</p>
<p>This revolution has not ended, which is why the Kremlin does not appreciate insurrections in Georgia and Ukraine. Europe’s new frontier is at stake on the uncertain terrain of history, and the alternatives are still these: Havel and Milošević.</p>
<p><em>André Glucksmann is a French philosopher. His story was translated by Alexis Cornel.</em></p>
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		<title>A Memorial to Communism’s Victims &#8211; by Jamie Glazov</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/a-memorial-to-communism%e2%80%99s-victims-by-jamie-glazov/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-memorial-to-communism%25e2%2580%2599s-victims-by-jamie-glazov</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:08:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A new group seeks to build a monument in Ottawa, Canada.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-41856" title="stalin_gulag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/stalin_gulag.gif" alt="stalin_gulag" width="450" height="316" /></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Alide Forstmanis, the chair of <a href="http://www.tributetoliberty.ca/" target="_blank">Tribute to Liberty</a>, a new organization based in Toronto that seeks to have a memorial built in Ottawa to the Victims of Communist Crimes, by November 2010.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Alide Forstmanis, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis: </strong>Thank you, I am grateful to FPM for this opportunity to inform its readers about Tribute to Liberty.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Tell us about this memorial you are planning.</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis: </strong>We want a memorial built in our nation&#8217;s capital Ottawa to the victims of communism, a commemoration to the more than 100 million who were subject to the denial of their fundamental rights and freedoms, to torture, to deprivation, and to murder.</p>
<p>We are doing our utmost to have it ready next year. You might ask, why the rush? It took 15 years to complete a similar monument in Washington DC. The answer is very practical: we do not have those years available here. The fact is that many of the Eastern European victims of communism have passed on and those who are still alive are getting very old. We would like as many as possible of them to have a chance to see the monument.  The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in November has re-inspired our cause.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What is your own personal background that explains your dedication to this issue?</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis: </strong>Both my parents are Latvian, but I was lucky to grow up in Sweden. Almost all of our relatives stayed in Latvia and some were also sent to Siberia. Living in Sweden I envied those that had cousins or other relatives living nearby, as we were just the four of us &#8211; my parents, my brother and me. I missed growing up with an extended family. Although that family lived on the other side of the Baltic  Sea, only about 150 km away, it seemed very far, one could really sense a wall. I remember my parents listening to &#8220;Voice of America&#8221; and the other news sources that were being jammed by the Soviets – so our relatives in Latvia wouldn’t hear them. Our correspondence with Latvia was censured by the Soviets, and telephone calls were complicated to make, due to Soviet technical backwardness.  In sum, communication was difficult.</p>
<p>For us in Sweden, very little, if anything was taught in the Swedish schools about the Baltic  States, and to us it seemed as if to Sweden and the rest of the world these states hadn&#8217;t ever existed. Balts where often called &#8220;Russians&#8221;. And if you were not a Swedish citizen you were a &#8220;stateless Soviet Russian&#8221; citizen, and needed a visa to be able to travel internationally.</p>
<p>These experiences left me with a strong sense of my Latvian roots, and with a feeling of urgency to respond to what was going on. I then became involved in the Latvian communities in the various places I lived &#8211; Sweden, the UK, Germany and Canada &#8211; and I have seen the passion and conviction the survivors, including my parents, have had and the need they felt to inform the world about communism&#8217;s evils. The least I can do is try to get their suffering recognized here in Canada.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What is the importance of monuments such as these?</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis: </strong>A monument like this will be a recognition by Canada of the determination of millions to come to a country like ours that celebrates liberty and opposes the oppression of totalitarian communism. This recognition will also help us remember the suffering that many of those Canadians endured, as well as the suffering of the millions who couldn’t come, and of the many millions that perished in the Gulag. Further it is also important for Canada&#8217;s future generations, to understand different Canadians&#8217; backgrounds and history and bring a better understanding of each other. This monument will hopefully generate curiosity about communist crimes and through studies teach Canadians to be aware of and vigilant about them, and of the capacity for such evil in the world when our liberties are not protected.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Why a memorial in Canada?</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis: </strong>According to 2006 Census almost 9 million of Canada&#8217;s 33 million inhabitants come from either former or current communist led countries. This is close to a third of the Canadian population. That’s an incredible number of people who can establish some kind of personal connection to lives under communist regimes. By building this memorial, Canada will show that it recognizes these connections. It will also underscore the seriousness with which we take our freedoms, our democracy, and the rule of law we are privileged to have.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Why do you think there is so much resistance in our society to talking/educating about the crimes of Communism?</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis: </strong>The resistance has been there for a long time. Make no mistake: communist regimes have consistently been imperialistic, genocidal, brutal, murderous, aggressive, discriminatory, destructive, oppressive, cynical &#8211; there is no end to the negative descriptors that can be used. This has frightened both governments and ordinary citizens.</p>
<p>Many families in the west did not dare talk openly about their families in their homelands, because it could hurt them there. Fear is a great and often very understandable motivator. In addition, communist propaganda machines like that of the former Soviet Union have been incredibly efficient around the world at hiding the evils of communism and spreading myths about the good life offered under it.  Many in the west bought this rhetoric – naivety, duplicity, ignorance – who knows the reasons. Many still refuse to acknowledge the truth about communism. And then there are those that say such extreme oppression is dead and that these crimes happened a long time ago so why dwell on them.</p>
<p>Luckily, in the last 20 years, archives have opened up and truths have been revealed. We must continue to bring this evidence to light however, to educate people about the monumental human suffering of the last century.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> How do you explain this monstrous evil of communism and how it has manifested itself &#8212; and continues to manifest itself? And even after massacring more than a hundred million people and causing unspeakable pain and suffering to millions of others, there are still myriads of believers. What are your thoughts on this phenomenon?</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis:</strong> Communism has existed for well over a century as an ideology and still maintains significant power in some countries. Ideologies can keep hold for a very long time.   But many wonder why communism – which was in part the inspiration for Nazism, managed to survive its brutal offspring for so long.   I think part of the reason was that the West had to make the communists our allies in the Second World War.   This was a necessary evil at the time, but the result was that Stalin emerged largely unscathed from public criticism in the West.   This despite his horrific abuses – the Holodomor genocide of Ukrainians, the Katyn slaughter of Poland’s senior officer ranks and intellectuals, to name just a couple.</p>
<p>Add to that the naive romanticism associated with communists – the legacy of the fight in the Spanish civil war against the fascists, the popular portrayal of Castro and Che Guevera, the popular portrayal of Mao (despite incredible slaughter) and you see a kind of branding that is extraordinarily positive. Finally, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, things begin to change, but people who had witnessed many of the worst horrors were older, and all were so focused on addressing economic anarchy that there simply wasn’t the kind of attention paid to the crimes of communism that there might have been otherwise.</p>
<p>There was no Nuremburg, there was no Truth and Reconciliation commission – that kind of public engagement still needs to occur. But when so many were caught up in the romanticism and are embarrassed by having to confront the realities, it makes it very hard to contemplate such engagement. After all, George Bernard Shaw himself denied the Ukrainian Holodomor – saying no famine was occurring.   So did New York Time journalist Walter Duranty. Such high profile endorsements are hard to ever shake free.</p>
<p>And then, recognize the continuing power of communism.   Speak to Chinese-Canadians about the fear – the still pervasive fear – about speaking out, when you have family and friends back home. Cuban Canadians understand it, so do Vietnamese, and Koreans and Tibetans. East Europeans understand constant fear of reprimand and reprisal – they all lived it.</p>
<p>So all of these factors combine to create an atmosphere where there is incredible ignorance. Here in Ontario the Ministry of Education decided to include teachings of genocide into its high school curriculum. They chose to include the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, ignoring the genocides communism has committed.</p>
<p>But things are starting to change. For example, in Sweden, the alliance government elected in 2006 is concerned about it. The Swedish minister of education has included teachings about communist crimes in his government declaration. This was done because a poll result a few years ago showed that only 10% of people aged ~15-25 knew about the Gulag.</p>
<p>I believe Hollywood has done a tremendous job in exposing and teaching about the Holocaust and its victims. It is time for Hollywood to make a few movies about life in the Gulag. It&#8217;s my understanding that there has been talk about making a film about the poisoned ex Soviet spy in London UK, however for some reason that production has come to a standstill, and the film might not be completed. I mentioned Shaw before.  Think about how many public figures were enamored with communism – the legacy of that remains hard to shake, and people are inclined to say oh why don’t we just move on. And today, when every one wants more trade with China, criticizing communism has economic consequences that many are afraid to deal with.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Is there any opposition to your efforts? The Left must not be very supportive.</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis:</strong> We recently received approval from the National Capital Commission of both projects for the concept and its name. To our original title “Memorial to the Victims of Communism” we added the adjective Totalitarian, in response to an early concern by NCC officials that the title might target legitimate political views in support of a communist party. With this, the NCC officials took the proposal forward to their decision-making body for a monument.   That body agreed to the project in principle but still found objection to the revised name, arguing that it might offend communists, that it was not politically correct, and that it should mark all forms of oppression.</p>
<p>Needless to say this sparked derision when it got out. The media had a field day with it, and we think the NCC suddenly recognized how absurd their complaints were.   I don’t bear malice towards them: they like many others were oblivious – I go back to my earlier point about ignorance. We were able to convince the NCC that the scope and scale of abuse by communism – directly and indirectly against Canadians &#8211; was deserving of public memorial.   We agreed to an amended title of “Memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism; Canada, A Land of Refuge”.</p>
<p>We have not encountered much other resistance. I would note that we have written endorsements from Members of Parliament in the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the New Democratic Party. The Communist Party of Canada has written a letter to NCC asking them to reverse their decision, but this letter itself has sparked responses already – including a recent letter from the Vietnamese community. I can not imagine NCC reversing its decision.   When you think that approximately 25% of Canadians trace connections to countries currently or formerly under the fist of communism it is hard to imagine this memorial being rejected now.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What do you hope the monument will help achieve?</p>
<p><strong>Forstmanis:</strong> I hope it will give an incentive to people to explore and learn about communism. To see it for what it was and still is. It supposedly died 20 years ago for the West, although ByeloRussians will tell you that isn’t the case yet. And certainly its remaining outposts – particularly China – are not to be treated as of little consequence. There are several lessons I think.</p>
<p>First, that this was an extraordinarily evil ideology that took hold of incredibly large parts of the world and subjugated – and still subjugates – hundreds of millions to its oppression. People need to know this history and this reality – it is a part of knowing what we are and where we come from.</p>
<p>Second, the excesses of communist authority can exist under another name: the undermining of democratic processes by various regimes around the world – in Russia, in the middle east, in Latin America – looks awfully like communism by another name. By understanding communism and its terrible affects better, we are better able to address other oppressive regimes.</p>
<p>Third, I would like this monument to be a recognition for the many, many refugees from communist countries that arrived in Canada. It acknowledges and memorializes what they endured, and what those who could not follow them endured.</p>
<p>And fourth, and related to that last point, I would like the monument to help us remember that Canada is a land of liberty. Our great country took people in from around the world, and still does, because it believes in the fundamental dignity and worth of every individual. This liberty is to be vigilantly guarded– memorials like this can help us do that. It is important every new generation gets informed so that past mistakes are not repeated.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Alide Forstmanis, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>Frontpage encourages all of our readers to visit <strong><a href="http://www.tributetoliberty.ca/" target="_blank">Tribute to Liberty</a></strong>.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>[To get the whole story on why the Left ferociously opposes a true account of, and final verdict on, communism&#8217;s crimes, read Jamie Glazov’s new book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071602">United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.</a></em>]</strong></p>
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