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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
@ Ted Belman: Ted, in my post that went astray, I went on to ask you why do yu think that so many Jews were attracted to the Marxist left, including many contributors to this site, or their parents, grandparents, or other relatives. This includes my own parents in their youth, as well as some relatives (grandparents?) of yours. This baffles me, because I can’t figure out why any Jew would be attracted to this creed. Our religion is humane and emphasizes individual human rights and the rule of law, while Marxism rejects both principles. We have always been a nation of merchants, but Marxism not only rejects commerce but advocates putting merchants to death, or at least denying them citizenship. Marxism rejects Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, even though it supports numerous other alleged national liberation movements. How can we explain this strange identification with an alien, hostile ideology on the part of so many of us? Please share your thoughts with us. This is a genuine and sincere question, not a rhetorical one. I am baffled by this Jewish mindset and think that a wide-ranging sharing of opinions might shed some light on it. Thanks.
@ Ted Belman: Thanks for clarifying this matter, Ted. I guess I must have somehow failed to press the send button or something. Sorry about my last Post’s critical tone. I assumed you might have removed the Post because you found the personal nature of my question embarrassing.
I also sent a copy of my last Post to you by email, thinking that you might be more comfortable replying to me privately. Did my email ever reach you? I have been having some problems with my email accounts, too. It would help me to sort out that problem if you could tell me if you ever received my email, which I think that I sent you yesterday.
Thanks and best wishes, John.
@ adamdalgliesh:
I never saw your question much less, removed it. Sorry. Why would I do that?
I only know of the 1917 revolution.
@ Ted Belman:Ted, why did you remove from the Comments section my question to you about which “revolution”
@ Sebastien Zorn: Sebastien, your experience as a leftist in the U.S. in the 1980s is not necessarily the same experience as that of Russians who supported the Bolsheviks in 1917-18. It has long been known, even before the publication of this new book, that the German government provided that Bolsheviks with massive financial aid. Someone must have got that money and benefited from it. Was it pro-Bolshevik workers? Pro-Bolshevik soldiers? Or, as seems most likely, the Bolshevik leaders, organizers and recruiters? I don’t know. But some people got that money, and some people used it to advance their political agenda.
@ Ted Belman:
Your point? I was responding to the video. Moreover, I said, the video did too, that the Bolsheviks initially advocated “Bread, Peace, and Land” as the unifying mass slogan. It was all salami tactics. In State and Revolution he sounds ultrademocratic but he quickly disavowed all of that. It’s hard to know if he would have behaved much differently from Stalin, or Trotsky, for that matter, however briefly, if he had lived. It was a brutal crowd, with a democratic mask. There were a few idealists who went and came back disillusioned and wrote about it, like Emma Goldman. And a few second thoughters who left and wrote about it. But Communists have always advocated abolishing the state and applying direct democracy ultimately, and have usually meant it in the beginning. In this they were the same as the left Anarchists. I am a veteran of both groups and I was sincere, too. For all that it matters. The genius of the American system is that it doesn’t require people to become better individuals to work. No new man.
@ AryehbnBaruch:
And they sold oil to Germany. There was a famous story of an American oil man who became a spy by pretending to become a Nazi gradually and winning their trust. He got to visit all of their underground refineries and report their exact coordinates to the Allies. Nobody had a clue until he was decorated by the U.S. after the war. Can’t remember his name. There was a book about it.@ Ted Belman:
I didn’t say the Bolsheviks were open about their ultimate aims. Their initial slogans, as the video points out, were bread, peace, and land. I mentioned this.
Even their approach to Communists was deceptive. State and Revolution sounds very ultra-democratic. Lenin disavowed it not long after. It was all salami tactics, and Stalin took after Lenin. We don’t know what Lenin would have done if he had lived. I have heard recorded speeches of Lenin advocating wiping out the kulaks.
@ AryehbnBaruch:
And they sold oil to Germany. There was a famous story of an American oil man who became a spy by pretending to become a Nazi gradually and winning their trust. He got to visit all of their underground refineries and report their exact coordinates to the Allies. Nobody had a clue until he was decorated by the U.S. after the war. Can’t remember his name. There was a book about it.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Whilst Sweden remained officially neutral and took in Danish and Norwegian Jews saving them from the exterminating camps, they were very much pro-Nazi. Jews were fired from their jobs merely for being Jews. The Nazis were supplied with many raw and manufactured materiels that were needed for their war effort. Zyklon B gas was produced in Sweden. And Sweden laundered the gold that the Nazis confiscated from Jews and other foreign citizens.Their king and major industrialists should have been tried for war crimes and executed. And this includes many in the Wallenburg family.
Thank you for your overview of history. I agree,. Aiding revolutions is part of the game. Obama gave $900 million to Morsi after he put him in power, Boltan is advocating it when calling for regime change in Iran and I am advocating that Trump and S Arabia support regime change in Jordan.
That’s the way to get things done.
But you missed my point. My family was active in Poland to advance the revolution believing they were supporting a very noble cause, a democratic one at that. They were not supporting a dictatorship. When Stalin took over they made excuses for him believing that the ultimate goal was worthy enough to support the temporary relinquishment of democracy.
correction: should read, “after the Czar was assassinated.”
The fact is, in Russia, soldiers were being sent into battle in winter without boots or bullets and the Bolsheviks promised to take Russia out of the War, and also land reform, which Kerensky, who was bankrolled by the U.S. and left the country under American protection, we had a base even at Archangelsk, opposed, the countryside, which was most of the country even though Russia had the largest industrial proletariat in the world was still largely feudal, despite serfdom having been abolished 60 years before — Lenin’s older brother was executed as part of the pro-peasant movement of the time, after the Czar was executed, that was Lenin’s motivation — as well as taking Russia out of the war. The Bolsheviks didn’t need to pay people.
The one new thing in the video is that he says this new book claims, based on newly opened archives, that the Kaiser continued to subsidize the Bolsheviks, even beyond the initial train load, and that the Bolsheviks handed out money in the streets and paid people to demonstrate, which is more of the same if true, but I’m a wee bit skeptical. I remember conservative office co-workers, in the 80s when I was a leftist, saying that the demonstrations we were all volunteering to put together after our dayjobs were over, were paid like that. Uh huh.
It’s as if somebody said that all the fools who joined the Women’s March were paid.
Ironically, Germany is eager to apologize for the past, but not to stop collborating with today’s antisemtic threat, so that just won’t cut it.
Ironically, indigenous European antisemitism is much more of a problem in some of the currently existing nations (the Ukraine wasn’t a country yet and the Baltic states weren’t independent, never were for very long) that Nazi German occupied, like Poland, the Baltic states, and the Ukraine, as well as Sweden, which remained neutral during the war.
And then the Soviet Union, in turn, returned the favor with a new quid-pro-quo arrangement, making Hitler’s rise possible. The Versaille Treaty strictly limited the size of Germany’s armed forces and if Germany had tested it early on it would have been re-occupied. So, the Generals secretly concluded a pact that enabled Germany, under the Weimar Republic, to train forces it wasn’t supposed to have on Soviet soil and in exchange, they, in turn, would train Soviet forces, which is no doubt why Soviet soldiers goose-stepped.
It was also during this period that the German generals oversaw and collaborated with the genocide of the Armenians by Turkey.
However, despite a vocal minority of neo-nazis, and some residual anti-semitism, this is past history for the Germans. The problem is that out of misplaced liberal guilt over colonialism, they have invited the Muslim Trojan horse in and are now inundated.
Most successful revolutions rely on foreign aid at some critical point. America relied on the France of Louis XVI. Ho Chi Minh got aid from the U.S. during World War 2 and the Soviet Union later. Mao and Kim il Sung got aid from Stalin. Castro got aid from both the U.S. and the Soviet Union at various points. The Warsaw Pact Bloc was installed by Soviet occupation forces. Lenin promised the Kaiser to take Russia out of the War and the Kaiser sent him back in a sealed train full of gold. Lenin kept his word at the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in which the new Soviet republic ceded much local territory which it later took back when it defeated the combined allied — including German forces — that invaded immediately after calling WWI to a halt with an armistice.
Tito and Enver Hoja may be the exceptions.
So what? Is this news? Is this relevant? Can we blame it on Merkel? If so, I’m for itl