Tiananmen Square, 20 years later

Forostar said:
You can't seriously relativate the killings of millions and millions of innocent civillians, committed before, during and after WWII.

Defending responsible people from those dark times is remarkable. And that's an understatement.
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Is "relativate" similar to juxtapose or compare? I'm not familiar with the word.

To build on Foro's point here, although the extent of Stalin's brutality far far outweighs Lenin's, Lenin was still responsible for the "Red Terror" and the murders carried out by the Cheka.

Lenin can be portayed as a man of good intentions: his leadership brought social reforms such as the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion and he was vehemently against anti-semitism. But can't we all agree that spilling blood is spilling blood? I'm making this point so we don't absolve Lenin as being a champion of good in his time.

However, there is a scale for these things. I'm not sure what goes through the mind of a man who kills one person, but I am certain that it is completely different to the man who kills a thousand people.
 
Pineapple Hunter said:
Lenin can be portayed as a man of good intentions: his leadership brought social reforms such as the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion and he was vehemently against anti-semitism. But can't we all agree that spilling blood is spilling blood? I'm making this point so we don't absolve Lenin as being a champion of good in his time.

However, there is a scale for these things. I'm not sure what goes through the mind of a man who kills one person, but I am certain that it is completely different to the man who kills a thousand people.
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Until we are leaders of a country we can't really know what we would have to do, spilling blood or not, to get the job done. There is not a single politician that comes out clean, no matter how much "good" they ended up doing.
 
Until we are leaders of a country we can't really know what we would have to do, spilling blood or not, to get the job done. There is not a single politician that comes out clean, no matter how much "good" they ended up doing.
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Well, we all have our bad days, Onhell. :bigsmile:

I agree though. No leader is pure and every leader has blood on their hands. Modern leadership is marked by the ability for a modern leader to be able to drag the option for war off of a shelf. Not to mention the ability to order someone's death.
 
What do you mean, modern?  People die on the order of our leaders every day.  Maybe not my leader directly, but someone's leader.  Some president or prime minister somewhere, today, had someone killed, directly or indirectly.  It's part of what leading is: people will die.

The difference is that some leaders treated death as a solution carelessly.  As Iosef Stalin said: "Death solves everything.  No man, no problem." or something to that effect.
 
Well, we've all got wood and nails, right?

I guess I meant modern in the sense that it's now as easy as pressing a button or whispering a general's ear. But in hindsight, trying to think of a leader throughout all history that hasn't been involved in murder on some scale is making my head hurt.

The difference is definitely moral absolutes. It's the hesitation before pulling the trigger. It's the difference between death as defence or death for gains.
 
Yes, I would say so.  But even ancient leaders weren't often battlefield leaders, you know?  And it does come down to the question....why do these people die?  Is it because we had no choice, or is it because we are trying to get something we want and that person is an obstacle.  Or worse; because killing the person is easier than finding a way to do what we want and keep them alive.
 
Pineapple Hunter said:
Is "relativate" similar to juxtapose or compare? I'm not familiar with the word.

To build on Foro's point here, although the extent of Stalin's brutality far far outweighs Lenin's, Lenin was still responsible for the "Red Terror" and the murders carried out by the Cheka.

Lenin can be portayed as a man of good intentions: his leadership brought social reforms such as the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion and he was vehemently against anti-semitism. But can't we all agree that spilling blood is spilling blood? I'm making this point so we don't absolve Lenin as being a champion of good in his time.

However, there is a scale for these things. I'm not sure what goes through the mind of a man who kills one person, but I am certain that it is completely different to the man who kills a thousand people.
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What I mean is that I find it wrong to mention the good things more often than the bad things. This is what I mean with "looking away". Like this we relativize (that's the word, I guess) all the attrocities.

To use a scale in order to defend a man, saying he wasn't as bad as Stalin brings the risk along to take his masskillings for granted.
 
Okay, my previous post was a bit undiplomatic. I don't have the time to craft a fancy post right now, so here's what I'm trying to say:

I am out of this discussion because the H-bomb was dropped. There are many things that could have been brought up in reply to my post that could have been more articulate, more polite, more thought-provoking and less hurting.
I know about Red Terror and I never meant to talk it down or pretend it doesn't exist. As you people might be aware, I studied history for four years.
What I intended was to provoke a discussion about things like intentions and actions, about necessity and corruption and so on. To a certain degree, I was also playing the devil's advocate. But it was taken personally straight away, and I lost every interest in this.

Anyway, I'm not going to write more right now because there's nothing more to say, and I don't have time. I won't be online until Saturday evening anyway, so starting a discussion here and now is futile. Just take my words for what they are, and accept that I'm a bit offended here, but probably won't be anymore this evening.

And if you thought I locked this thread, you've got another thing coming.
 
The provoking part surely worked... But I'm afraid I failed to see well enough that you played the devil's advocate, to a certain degree (at least: I didn't have a clue to which degree exactly). I know you've studied history, I know you know about the Red Terror. Perhaps that's even why I reacted like that. The relativizing, the theorizing, the philosophing, it provokes me. I find that it contrasts too much with what happened.

Now my provoking (and failing) input: The word Hitler. What happened?

Let me quote cornfedhick:

cornfedhick said:
:lol:
That's funny, though to be fair to Forostar, this whole thread is about oppressive regimes.  Tough NOT to compare communism to fascism in this context, or Stalin to Hitler. 

(EDIT:  For those who didn't get the joke, Godwin's Rule says that, whenever you have an online discussion, the longer it runs, the more certain that someone will bring up a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.) 
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+

cornfedhick said:
Mike Godwin is an attorney specializing in internet law.  He's not at all noteworthy except for establishing Godwin's Law.  From the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an informal adage coined by Mike Godwin in 1990. The adage states: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."
...
For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress. This principle itself is frequently referred to as Godwin's Law.  (I guess SMX was invoking this corollary.)

The wiki also supports my defense of Forostar's reference to Hitler here:  "The corrolaries of the law would presumably not apply to discussions covering genocide, propaganda, or other mainstays of the Nazi Germany, or – more debatably – to discussion of other totalitarian regimes."
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I assume you disagree with the above? Maybe it's a good idea to explain this when you return, screaming with vengeance. ;)
 
Might I get back at the comunist thing?

The reason why it will not work in my opinion is that it takes away the willingness to do something. If all jobs are paid the same wage, there will be many people picking up the trash but no doctors. Why would you put effort in school if you can earn the same by doing nothing at school (picking up trash is very important work, but no education is needed). And doctors might have to work at odd hours as well.

Another thing is progression (if all progression is a good thing is another discussion). Why would you improve something if your co-worker does a sloppy job and get the same wage. Why work harder if it does nothing for you?
 
What no one has mentioned though is that the date of 4 June is not just a day of infamy.  The same day, the first free elections for decades in Eastern Europe were held in Poland.  One oppressive* regime tightened its rule, and another was overthrown.

*Using the term oppressive because at least that is something we can all agree on. ;)
 
I think you're completely wrong on that account.  We're intelligent people here; we know that while some people may not have numerically committed as much murder as someone like Stalin, we aren't going to come out and say that they were entirely good people either.  Indeed, if murder is the worst thing someone can do, then isn't doing *more* of it worse?

Nobody is understating the bad done by bad people; simply saying that other people did more bad things doesn't do that.  Foro, sometimes I think you worry that unless we talk in a certain way, we are going to forget or marginalize history.  Perhaps if we were talking to a class of young children, that would be true, but we're smart here, and that means we sometimes play fast and loose with language, knowing others get what we mean.
 
Warhurst said:
Might I get back at the comunist thing?

The reason why it will not work in my opinion is that it takes away the willingness to do something. If all jobs are paid the same wage, there will be many people picking up the trash but no doctors. Why would you put effort in school if you can earn the same by doing nothing at school (picking up trash is very important work, but no education is needed). And doctors might have to work at odd hours as well.

Another thing is progression (if all progression is a good thing is another discussion). Why would you improve something if your co-worker does a sloppy job and get the same wage. Why work harder if it does nothing for you?
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You need to read up on Communism before you comment on it, since it is obvious you have no clue what you are talking about.
 
Don't worry Warhurst, I think your post isn't that wrong.

I have been in a couple of countries which were ruled by Communism. What to me was very visible, is that people who found it difficult to change were not polite, and sometimes plain rude. Why be polite if you can't see perspective? Why be polite if you're not happy? I noticed this in restaurants and kiosks, several years ago.

But, thank God, every year it's getting better, and tourism is growing in Eastern Europe. More and more Western people go to those countries. Krakow and Prague are immensely popular cities to go to.

-------

More new photos 'Beyond Tiananmen Square'. Previously unseen pictures obtained by the Guardian show how the violence centred on Tiananmen Square played out in surrounding areas, as civilians faced off with the military, erecting blockades and setting fire to tanks.
 
Onhell said:
You need to read up on Communism before you comment on it, since it is obvious you have no clue what you are talking about.
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Care to give a brief explanation then?

Foro: Do you have a particular country in mind, or in general (about the rudeness thing)?  I've only been to East Berlin, Estonia, and Russia (as well as Estonians and Russians in Finland) and from my experience most Russians I have met both in and outside Russia are very rude, but I haven't noticed this with Estonians or Germans (though Germany is obviously not fully "eastern Europe" in the historical perspective).  Then again, I've only been to Tallinn, which is full of Finnish visitors every summer (everyone in southern Finland goes to Tallinn, sometimes several times in a summer), and I guess that affects the Estonians' manners/attitude.  I haven't been elsewhere in the former Eastern Bloc, though, so I don't know what the case is for other countries; though I would love to visit Prague and Warsaw (among others) to be honest.

I also noticed when I went to St Petersburg that servers in restaurants there had, by traditional Western Europe standards, rather bad manners and little grasp of even basic restaurant etiquette: basically trying to follow etiquette, but doing some very amateurish mistakes.  Have you noticed this?
 
Invader said:
Care to give a brief explanation then?
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Thought you would never ask :D

One thing to keep in mind is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and the impact it created. One of the most important observations by Smith was the division of labor and its ability to ease and increase production with the added bonus of specialization (the more you do something the better you get at it). However what Marx saw in the now industrialized world was that through division of labor the worker was being alienated from the product he was helping make and thus devoid of meaning.

Creativity, Marx argued, is essential to the human being, but by being alienated he becomes a wage-slave, going to work just to get paid and make it to the weekend to blow off your pay on booze and women (he was a bit more articulate about it of course). So, by lacking creativity and meaning in their job and doing it just for the pay he argued we weren't exercising our humanity and it made us no different from a trained monkey.

Take my current job, I answer phones and stupid questions all day at the local community college, I don't mind it, but it is far from fufilling. I literally do it just because it pays my bills. I'm not staying here forever, but that's not the point.

He also pointed out that industrialized nations encroached on developing nations exploiting them for their resources and labor and in a way forced them to emulate them (his terms were civilized vs. barbarian). A great example of this is Wal-Mart in Latin America, Coca Cola in Laos and the like.

Also, a misconception about communism is the abolition of private property. Marx NEVER championed taking away rich people's homes to give it to lazy homeless bums. What he did argue for was the public ownership of the MEANS OF PRODUCTION. He NEVER argued for equal wages regardless of what you did or lack of incentives (actually he argued each according to their abilities and needs which allows for growth and rewards.), rather he argued that whether you are a carpenter or a doctor you are still a proletariat working for "the man."

Essentially he wanted to wake the proletariat up and make them realized that they weren't in competition with each other and that they shouldn't fight amongst each other when the rich capitalist pigs were abusing and using them.

Trotsky wrote about communism as a great unifiying force. In fact he considered himself not a communist, a Russian or a Jew, but a UNIVERSALIST. In several of his writings he espouses how great communism is because of its unifying power, it overrode nationalities and religions making everybody brothers.

Nowhere do they say that doctors should make the same as gardners, that there shouldn't be any incentives, that people shouldn't own their own homes, etc. That is bullshit, baseless propaganda by paranoid ignorants.

If there was no incentives under communism for people to become doctors can someone explain to me how is it that puny little Cuba has some of if not THE best doctors in the world? or How Mexico, an authoritiarian, very socialist country has better social medical services than the all mighty United States?

I Suggest people Pick up The Marx-Engels Reader, a wonderful little book with Marx's and Engel's most essential writings. Also The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi and Others (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback). I do not remember Trotsky's writings off hand, but I can gladly look them up. It will take a while as I am in the process of moving, however.

EDIT: Max Webers The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions) is also a good read along with Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society.
 
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