JayMan • March 18, 2016 • 3,200 Words
In the preceding part (The Donald Trump Phenomenon: Part 1: The American Nations), I talked about the geographic (and hence ethnic) variation in support for the various 2016 U.S. presidential candidates. In this part, I will focus on the turmoil in this particular election cycle, and what it means for our society and acceptance of...
Read More"Dalton Trumbo was a socialist, but he loved being rich." So says Bryan Cranston, who stars in "Trumbo," out this week, and plays the screenwriter who went to prison with the Hollywood Ten in the time of Harry Truman. Actually, Trumbo was not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Trumbo was a Stalinist, a...
Read MoreJayMan • July 7, 2015 • 2,000 Words
What does it take to make a nation great? What makes a country a great place to live, a healthy society, and a bastion of stability? Various theories and ideas have been put forward, and I think they are all pretty much bunk. I think we can apply a little reductionism here, and conclude that...
Read MoreApril the 15th marked Holocaust Memorial Day. Nearly everyone knows about the industrial killing of 6 million Jews, for no other reason than that they were Jews. "Serious historiography" of the subject has ensured that The Shoah, Holocaust in Hebrew, is "consigned to posterity"; its lessons remembered and commemorated throughout the civilized world. Although shefailedto...
Read MoreRaise the scarlet banner high!
I was reading one of the angrier conservative bloggers the other day when I came to a sentence where he referred to President Obama as a “communist.” It stopped my eye. I am no fan of Obama, and I have a high tolerance for vituperation. (I like the late Auberon Waugh’s definition of opinion journalism...
Read MoreA remarkable historian has died -- but does it matter that he was a Stalinist?
The death of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm at the age of 95 two days ago set me down memory lane. The one time I met this illustrious historian was when Gene Genovese (who predeceased Hobsbawm by just a few days) introduced him to me at a meeting of the American Historical Association in Boston in...
Read MoreReview of Revolution from above, Manufacturing Dissent in the New World Order, by Kerry Bolton, 250 pages. Arktos 2011, UK
The Left – including Communist Left – is manipulated by the super-rich in their own interests. These super-rich conspire to destroy tradition and create a collectivist world order of despotism under their own guidance, and the Left are “useful idiots” of these greedy for power and money people. This is main thesis of a new...
Read MoreJayMan • April 28, 2012 • 3,100 Words
Edit, 3/13/14 8/24/13: Post updated. See below! This started as an e-mail I wrote to a friend to sum up the important events of the Middle Ages for Europe and the Near East. Then I decided that this was blog post worthy, so here it is: a nice, fairly concise summary of the events of...
Read MoreRodong Sinmun building, Pyongyang. Source In my last post, I discussed how South Korea has “gone global.” Its business community has emancipated itself from the nation state and is now outsourcing employment to lower-wage countries and “insourcing” lower-wage labor. The eventual result? A downward leveling of incomes. And a profound ethnic and cultural transformation. South...
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Having just seen the film Julie and Julia, based on a book by Julie Powell and a screen play by Nora Ephron, I’ve certain unanswered questions about some of the historical details that went into the plot. Of the two main characters, the more interesting by far is the longtime interpreter of French cuisine for...
Read MoreIn the study of communist terror different methods from different fields have been applied, ranging from the fields of political science, historiography, philosophy, to international justice. An impressive number of books about communist crimes have enabled observers to grasp this unique phenomenon of the twentieth century, which inevitably brings about a large and emotional outcry,...
Read MoreToronto — Canada will soon make an important contribution to the cause of historical accuracy, human rights, and justice. To coincide with last week's visit to Ottawa of Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, the Canadian government announced it planned to recognize the mostly forgotten 1932—1933 genocide in Ukraine. Ottawa's decision was motivated as much by ethnic...
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Orlando Figes and The Whisperers
Orlando Figes' The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia is in its most literal sense an act of collective memory, and the only quibble I have with the author's tremendous achievement is that homage to those he rightly calls "the heroes" of his book comes not at the beginning but at the end in "Afterword...
Read MoreA debate in the French weekly Courrier International (December 21, 2006) held between Polish political scientist Marek Cichocki and Claus Leggewie, a widely respected German professor at the University of Giessen, points to two diverging paths into the European future. Both commentators explain how their views about the end of the Second World War have...
Read More“We lived in a communist paradise and weren’t aware of it.” I have heard this sentence from many ex-citizens of the ex-USSR, from Russians and Tajiks, Ukrainians and Balts, and I agreed with them wholeheartedly: Soviet Russia was a land of spiritual and educated men who loved their work, were proud of their country, despised...
Read MoreDo not take my polemics with Alan Woods for a learned discussion of the Russian Revolution; the argument is not about Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin (let their souls rest in peace in the bosom of Marx in the Communist paradise) but about extremely relevant issues of our day, though presented in historical perspective. Woods...
Read MoreThe year now coming to its end has marked the centenary of three fine British anti-Communist writers: Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, and Malcolm Muggeridge. Each tried his hand at different kinds of writing, but I do not think it seriously unfair to tag them by the work they are best known for — as, respectively,...
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The Recent Confirmation of Soviet Espionage in America
In an apparent effort to illustrate political simple-mindedness, Carroll Quigley derisively wrote in his noted (at least by the John Birch Society) Tragedy and Hope, that the “same groups who were howling about Soviet espionage in 1948-1955 were also claiming that President Roosevelt expected and wanted Pearl Harbor.”[1] In a previous contribution to The Occidental...
Read MoreEric Alterman Cheapens Holocaust
On the last Nation cruise I was on a panel about nuclear proliferation. (Yes, even afloat off Baja California, the liberal conscience is always on guard duty.) Trying to juice up the panel a bit, I remarked that there was one bit of proliferation that seemed to me indisputably okay, which was when the Soviet...
Read MoreThe sequence of capitalist expansion, destruction of traditional bonds andglobal integration was, according to Marx, the process of creating a unified working class, conscious of its class interests and linked across national boundaries. His chain of reasoning lacks a clear understanding of the importance traditions and social bonds preceding capitalism played in creating social solidarity...
Read MoreFast-forwarding George Orwell's story of Communist totalitarianism.
Recently sifting through the archives of George Orwell I came across a long letter apparently written by one of the late writer's friends. The letter purports to be a follow-up to the events, which took place on Animal Farm, that unique experiment in animal self-rule: Dear George, My research brought me to the Farm in...
Read MoreOf Myth and Reality
For over three decades Joseph R. McCarthy has been a central figure in liberal demonology. His name has become part of common parlance to mean the practice of making baseless accusations and engaging in the character assassination of innocent victims. According to the liberal McCarthy myth, his alleged witch hunts for Communists ruined the lives...
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