The Russian proclivity toward strongman leaders is well documented. However, a recent poll shows that this historical preference not only continues but has led many to long for one of the most blood-soaked and homicidal figures in history: Josef Stalin. A shocking 70 recent of polled Russians now view the man who killed millions as an “outstanding leader.”
Staln has been regaining popularity and this poll shows a historic high for the dictator. His popularity level was at 54 percent ion 2016. Only 19 percent hold a disfavorable view of a man who regularly murdered rivals, entered into a pact with Hitler, destroyed the Soviet military and economy, and shipped off millions to die in camps and relocation areas. Fifty one percent of people even respect Stalin as a person despite being a person who regularly flew into lethal drunken rages and once said “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
From the Katyn Massacre to the shooting of intellectuals to the massive prison camps, Stalin remains one of the most vile figures of history. What is astonishing is that his brutal reign cost millions of lives unnecessarily. Thus, he entered a secret pact with Hitler to conquer parts of Europe only to be betrayed by his fellow dictator. He gutted the Russian military of experienced officers shortly before the Germans invaded. His “five year plans” were moronic efforts that led to widespread starvation. He was in other words more only a maniac but a moron.
Vladimir Putin himself appears partially responsible as he fights to bring back Soviet images — as well as a Soviet appetite for expansion.
What is even more distressing is that earlier polls show that over half of polled young people were entirely unaware of Stalin’s alleged crimes.
Which made what USA leaders also rans? Wilson, FDR, Truman, LBJ? All Socialists and their right wing of the left RINOs… All Progressive Socialists and all Anti Constitutionalists.
What else do they have in common? As staunch Socialists they all hide behind a pretense of being democratic in a non existent Democracy. But can never explain why the founders rejected that system nine times.
Instead they come up with buzz words to describe those who disagree such as conservative and themselves as liberals.
It’s Constitutionalists vs Socialists and their center is not OUR center which in a guaranteed representative Constitutional Republic IS The Constitution.
You can vote for one or the other and membership in a party is not required at the national level… only at the State and local level. And voting requires No money to register or to vote. What it requires is participating Citizens.
As for the uneducated youth it’s exactly what happens to those who ensure we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. What ever happen to the ban the draft movement of post Vietnam Days? It’s still in force and still legaliy valid. But that’s YOUR generation. My generaton learned their lesson and this time youths can pull themselves out the hole they are so cheerfully digging,
I would go back to the initial comment I made about Stalin having supporters in this country. I gave two examples of this, and there are many more.
That is in fact part of our history and I think history is “relevant”. Outside of sqawking things like “80 years ago ( a slight exaggeration “To my Beloved Comrade”, Paul Robeson’s love letter about Stalin, was written c. 65 years ago) and whining about one publication’s criticism of the NY Times obituary, Peter has not found anything to dispute in what I said.
The column was about Stalin’s purported “favorable” ratings in Russia. I thought it was relevant to point out that even on America, there were Stalinists.
One takeaway from the JT column is that because Stalin died over 65 years ago, most Russians alive today never really experienced Stalinism. It is, in a sense, a “pre-historic” period of Soviet history.
So given that mindset, people like Hollywood Hill can also doubt the “relevance’ of Tinseltown’s “fashionable” support of Communism.
Brushing aside “old news”….history……can help people like Hollywood Hill take a giant eraser. If they chose, they can dismiss “old news” like the pro- Nazi American Bunde, etc.
I think it was Peter who mentioned taking a writing course. If it was a course taught in Tinseltown/ Fairytale Land, I think Peter probably did well in it.
Tom, here is a list of Hollywood’s most profitable attractions in 1953, the year Stalin died. Show me documentation that these stars where sympathetic to Stalin.
1) Burt Lancaster
2) Marylyn Monroe
3) Alan Ladd
4) Ava Gardner
5) Lewis & Martin
6) John Wayne
7) Robert Taylor
8) Rita Hayworth
9) Clark Gable
10) Gregory Peck
Two names here that really stand-out are John Wayne and Robert Taylor; both were arch conservatives!
Tom, your narrative that Hollywood sympathized with Stalin is essentially a “Loose Change” conspiracy-like theory. “Loose Change” was that infamous internet film that started with the premise that 9 / 11 was really a devious inside plot (by Bush & Cheney).
“Loose Change” started with that narrative, then attempted to use ‘loose change’ to tie it all together. And that’s what you’re basically doing with this narrative that Hollywood was sympathetic to Stalin.
Tom, your narrative reflects a now classic Republican mindset that Hollywood is run by a ‘liberal elite’ that conspires to ‘undermine traditional values’. That narrative presumes that Hollywood is run a singular power structure that perseveres year after year. That narrative was crafted by people with no connection to Hollywood.
The power structure that runs Hollywood is constantly en flux. It’s a never-ending game of musical chairs shifting with public tastes. The most powerful people in any particular year could be out of power within three years. Only ‘4’ of the names listed above were still on that list in 1956. That alone gives you an idea of how power is always shifting in Hollywood. No elite cabal is calling all the shots.
Whether rightfully or wrongfully communists ended up being blacklisted. That prevented them from gaining power at the time but our lefties in Congress soon saw to it that Hollywood became leftist sympathizers. I don’t like such blacklists but today the left and people Peter supports are using blacklisting techniques all the time and even the Obama administration weoponized the IRS to do essentially the same thing, stop those with diverse opinions. The difference is that the communists were supporting our enemies and in some cases broke our laws to do so.
Here are some names that were sympathetic to the communists and likely Stalin.
Dalton Trumbo
Maurice Rapf
Lester Cole
Howard Koch
Harold Buchman
John Wexley, Ring Lardner Jr.
Harold Salemson
Henry Meyers
Theodore Strauss
John Howard Lawson
Herbert Biberman
Albert Maltz
Alvah Bessie
Samuel Ornitz
Edward Dmytryk
Adrian Scott
There are many more names though I picked these out for my own reasons. Show documentation these people weren’t sympathetic to Stalin or at least communism.
Above from Allan
Thanks, Allan. I never made a claim that it was exclusively actors, or box office stars who where Communists, or supported them.
Peter just pull out one of the stupidest, most obvious straw man argument I’ve ever seen.
At least that puts an end to the question of “how dumb is this guy, any?”.
Alan, what are you babbling about..???? This marks a new low point in stupidity for Jonathan Turley’s comment threads. You’re pulling names from 70 years ago while arbitrarily claiming these figures are still relevant. And you thereby claim Hollywood is guilty of some cover-up because ‘the industry never accounted for these people’.
One could compile of long list of names from the recent financial crisis. Names of people who still work in Financial Services. People who profited mightily from practices that led to The Great Recession. And with such a list one could charge that Wall Street never owed-up to the Financial Crisis.
Such a list would have great relevance in the year 2019. When Trump-appointed agencies are undermining regulations implemented to prevent the next financial crisis. Such a list would read, in fact, like a roster of ‘who’ benefitted from Trump’s irresponsible tax cut.
But Alan and Tom Nash want a Special Counsel Probe, or whatever, to investigate long-dead communists who wrote screenplays 70 years ago.
The Western classic “High Noon” was written by a ‘communist sympathizer’. Carl Foreman also wrote “Bridge On The River Kwai”. Should these movies be forever banned because Foreman never took responsibility for Josef Stalin???? That’s how dumb it gets!!!!!
“You’re pulling names from 70 years ago”
Peter, the babbling is on your part. I was responding to a list of names in a similar time frame and manner to the one you provided. You ask questions and what I do is repeat what you asked in the same tone though with a slight variation. You then call that stupid but it is parroting what you said earlier. That makes you stupid not me.
I didn’t make any claim of a Hollywood cover up, banning movies, or a desire for a “Special Counsel Probe” though you accused me of the things and more. You seem to have poor comprehension skills and again you went off topic something you accuse everyone else of. You have to look at yourself in a mirror. You are not very smart so you are not going to win an argument based on intellectual capabilities. You are going to have to win such an argument based on facts that are real and are not manipulated.
Yep. Allan and P. Hill: two babblers
Add yourself brainless one that is afraid of identifying as an alias but has to use a group icon so that others can take part of the fall for your stupidity.
More babbling by Allan the clueless one.
How’s this…In future comments that St. Peter might read, we don’t bring up anything like Nazis, Jim Crow laws, The American Bund, the 1918 Flu Epidemic, WWI or WWII, slavery, the Holocaust, Civil War, lynchings, Pearl Harbor, internment of Japanese-Americans, Hitler, etc.
This was all soooh long ago that Hollywood Hill will question the “relevance'”;; then he’ll demand evidence of who was killed in the wars, produce a list of who returned alive (as though they were they only ones involved in combat), demand that he be that he be given names of the KIAs that were actually killed) where Americans etc.
Or he’ll need to see the names of slaves to prove that there actually was slavery.
So any history is OUT in any discussion that might set of that Clown from Hollywood.
Plain and simple, don’t bring up history to Peter Shill for he likes to make the same mistakes over and over again.
No doubt which type of regressive socialism you support.
Revisionist history, too.
There is one word that freaks out the Left more than any. It isn’t reference to King or else they would have never tolerated HRH HRC as their Queen or Obama as their King
—-
The Mayflower Compact
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, France and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc. having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and equall laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good of the Colonie unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape-Codd the 11. of November, in the year of the raigne of our sovereigne lord, King James, of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fiftie-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.
John Carver
William Bradford
Edward Winslow
William Brewster
Issac Allerton
Myles Standish
John Alden
Samuel Fuller
Christopher Martin
William Mullins
William White
Richard Warren
John Howland
Stephen Hopkins
Edward Tilley
John Tilley
Francis Cooke
Thomas Rogers
Thomas Tinker
John Rigdale
Edward Fuller
John Turner
Francis Eaton
James Chilton
John Crackston
John Billington
Moses Fletcher
John Goodman
Degory Priest
Thomas Williams
Gilbert Winslow
Edmund Margeson
Peter Browne
Richard Britteridge
George Soule
Richard Clarke
Richard Gardiner
John Allerton
Thomas English
Edward Dotey
“This is the book we’ve been waiting for! The true story of the much mythologized ‘Hollywood Ten’ by a scion of Hollywood royalty. As the son of Marx Brothers screenwriter Morrie Ryskind—who testified against the Hollywood Ten back when there were still patriotic Hollywood power brokers—author Allan Ryskind grew up having to shush Groucho Marx practicing his jokes at Hollywood Stars baseball games. He went on to become a massively influential writer—particularly on Ronald Reagan, who religiously read Allan’s front-page editorials in Human Events (his favorite publication) and even called Allan to the White House to confront the big spenders in his own cabinet. Now, Allan gives us the truth about the Hollywood Ten.”
—Ann Coulter, author of ten New York Times bestsellers, including Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
“Allan Ryskind opens up a forgotten part of postwar history, Hollywood, and the Cold War—and we discover that most of what Americans thought about that period wasn’t true. Whether it is the Hollywood Ten, the Blacklist, or just how influential Soviet penetration of the U.S. entertainment industry was during and after World War II, Ryskind spells it out with complete documentation. The influence of this period on such noted Americans as Ronald Reagan and actor Robert Taylor is also explained. Coming from one who has not only studied the postwar period in Hollywood but actually lived in it, Hollywood Traitors offers a rare perspective that is sure to prompt discussion and re-examination of the time when Stalin drew higher praise in some U.S. motion pictures than he did in Russian films.”
—John Gizzi, White House correspondent and chief political columnist, Newsmax
“A real-life thriller about the movies, exploding the fifty-year myth that the Hollywood Ten were innocent victims of a witch hunt. Ryskind shows that they, as well as numerous other screenwriters, were in fact hard-core Stalinists bent on subverting U.S. society and culture. Must reading for students of Cold War history.”
—M. Stanton Evans, author of Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies
From the Inside Flap
There’s a myth about the Hollywood blacklist— and perhaps even you have fallen for it.
According to the legend, noble Hollywood figures—creative screenwriters, brilliant directors, and beloved actors—were dragged before the dreaded House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and grilled on their personal beliefs and associations, in flagrant violation of the First Amendment. Only by “taking the Fifth” could they escape turning informant against their innocent friends and colleagues. The brave and conscientious “Hollywood Ten” were the heroes of the hour. They refused to “name names” of Communists in Hollywood (most of whom were simply slightly misguided liberals, according to the legend) and were jailed for contempt of Congress. And then, in what was a terrible loss for the cinematic art, they were completely shut out of working in Hollywood.
Now, however, you can learn the real story from an authoritative source: longtime Human Events editor Allan Ryskind, who, as the son of Marx Brothers screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, grew up in Hollywood and knew many of the key players in this real-life Hollywood drama.
In Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters—Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler, Ryskind reveals how the alleged “victims” of the Hollywood blacklist were actually ideological thugs: enthusiastic Stalinists committed to bringing about a socialist utopia in America—by violent revolution, if necessary. These screenwriters prostituted their talent in the service of Communist propaganda, which included pro-Nazi propaganda during the Hitler-Stalin Pact.
https://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Traitors-Blacklisted-Screenwriters-Agents/dp/1621572064
https://www.creators.com/read/pat-buchanan/11/15/dalton-trumbo-had-it-coming
For anyone who saw the movie “Trumbo” ( or didn’t see it), this might be of interest .
There are numerous examples of thr cluster of Stalinists in the U S., and Trumbo’s story is just one example.
The historical evidence of this is well-documented, and it’s like arguing with a Holocaust denier when that evidence is presented.
Trumbo had a LOT of support from people in Hollywood; he was brought back and treated as though he were some sort of noble martyr.
Given that the linked article was written by a conservative and that it goes into events decades ago, this material may not be suitable for certain people.
Tom you’re getting buried beneath Estovir’s many posts. That’s what happens, dude. Everyone gets lost; including conservatives. So I posted at the top.
Good for you, HH. I think history “as you see it” deserves and needs top billing over actual historical facts.
Stalin and Hillary have been worshipped by their followers because these people swapped one Creed for another.
America became a great nation because the Founders had a very basic notion of right vs wrong, principles and a belief in a God. While the nation rightly rejected the adoption of a church per se, in a rebuke to the British, the Founding Father never intended to found a nation that rejected Faith in God. Russia fell because the people adopted a faithless, godless, crop of leaders. The USA has followed their path with a religion of politics, and the gods of left vs the gods of right….both utterly bankrupt
It is only a question of time when the USA, like the Roman Empire and all great empires in history, collapses….unless if people get reacquainted with the roots of this nation
Happy Passover and Happy Easter
———-
WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-jesus-celebrated-passover-11555685683
When Jesus Celebrated Passover
Easter and Passover, like Christianity and Judaism, are linked by a history that began in ancient Jerusalem.
Paula Fredriksen
April 19, 2019 10:54 a.m. ET
Passover and Easter always arrive at the same season—this year, just days apart—and that is no accident. In fact, some of Christianity’s core ideas, images and theological convictions can be traced back to the ancient Jewish holiday. Passover in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem is the historical anchor of the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Freedom from slavery and from oppression, in Jewish tradition; freedom from sin and from death, in Christian tradition: All of these ideas come together around the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is because Jesus himself kept Passover.
Imagine that you are at a boarding gate for a flight to Israel, several days before Passover, as passengers gather to travel to Jerusalem in time for the holiday. Men and women are jammed together; children are crying or laughing or temporarily vanishing. Now imagine that more than 250,000 families have assembled. And that each family unit is accompanied by one living sheep. And that everyone has to camp out for a week in the terminal before finally boarding the plane.
You are now beginning to have a picture of what Jerusalem would have been like at Passover in the time of Jesus. Josephus, a Jewish historian contemporary with the Gospels’ authors, writes that on Passover, the population of Jerusalem swelled to more than two million as Jews made pilgrimages to the Temple for the annual celebration of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. Ancient pilgrims had to be in the city no later than seven days before the beginning of the feast.
In Gospel traditions about Jesus’ “triumphal entry,” we catch an echo of the excitement and high spirits of the holiday throng. The Passover meal, according to biblical law, had to be eaten in a state of purity. Pilgrims—Jesus among them—streamed into the city to undergo a week-long ritual of purification. Only once that was completed could preparations for the sacred meal begin. The Feast of Unleavened Bread (matzo) would then continue for another week; only thereafter would the city begin to empty once the holiday came to a close.
Lots of Jews. Lots of sheep. Lots of unstructured time, punctuated by bouts of ritual purification, before the holiday actually began. And, in Jesus’ period, one more social ingredient went into the mix: lots of Roman soldiers.
The Galilee, Jesus’ native corner of the Jewish homeland, was an independent Jewish state for all of his lifetime. But Judea, with its capital city of Jerusalem, lay under Roman jurisdiction. Rome didn’t rule from Jerusalem. The “prefect” or governor—in our story, Pilate—was garrisoned with some 3,000 soldiers in the beautiful harbor city of Caesarea. Three times a year, during the Jewish pilgrimage holidays, the prefect and his troops marched up to the capital to help manage the holiday crowds.
Jews at prayer near the Western Wall in Jerusalem during Passover in 2016. Photo: MENAHEM KAHANA/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Roman troops were in Jerusalem to see and to be seen. They maintained order and kept things moving. And they ensured that no protests erupted, especially on the Temple Mount—for it was during these holidays, wrote Josephus, that “sedition is most likely to break out.” It was in this bustling, bursting space, the beating heart of the city during the great festivals, that Jesus taught about the “kingdom of God” in the week before the feast. Rome’s soldiers, alert to any sign of trouble, would have gazed down at Jesus and his listeners from their stations on the perimeter wall that surrounded the Temple precincts’ sacred space.
The fact that Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover—and, according to John’s gospel, to observe many other high holidays as well—means that he was actively engaged in worship at the Temple. This can come as a surprise to some readers of the Gospels, because of the scene where Jesus turns over the tables of the money-changers in the Temple’s Court of the Nations, disrupting the sale of sacrificial birds. Some readers have assumed that, in so doing, Jesus was repudiating the very idea of sacrifice.
But other gospel details point in the opposite direction, depicting a Jesus comfortably at home in the traditions and practices of his people. Jesus wore “fringes” (in Hebrew, tzitzit), the ritual garment meant to remind the wearer of God’s commandments; in one gospel story, a sick woman is cured of her illness by touching them. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus describes for his followers how they should make offerings at the Temple altar. Jesus also affirms the traditional Jewish belief that the Temple was the place where God dwells. And in all three synoptic gospels, Jesus celebrates the Seder, the ritual Passover meal, with his closest followers. The centerpiece of this meal, the Passover sacrifice, was the lamb itself. There was only one place in town to get one: the Temple.
For first-century Jews, the idea of God’s kingdom implied sweeping hopes for a glorious end to history.
Finally, one last, nice detail: Mark’s gospel closes off the Seder scene by commenting that the group all “sang hymns.” If you’ve been to a Seder, you know: These first-century Jews finished celebrating the Passover meal by singing the psalms of praise and thanksgiving that today bring to a close the traditional text for the meal.
So far, we might have described any Passover when Jesus and his followers were in Jerusalem for the holiday. What made this particular one his last? Think back to the crowds of pilgrims entering no later than the week before the feast. Think back to the Roman soldiers. And consider the effects of Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God.
For first-century Jews, the idea of God’s kingdom implied sweeping hopes for a glorious end to history. God himself—or, in other traditions, the messiah, a ruler who would be a descendant of King David—would defeat the forces of evil and establish a universal reign of justice and peace. War and disease would cease. Pagans would bury their idols and turn to worship Israel’s God. The Temple would be miraculously enlarged, since, in the words of Isaiah, “many nations” would flow to it. All 12 tribes of Israel would reassemble. And the dead, too, rising to join with the living, would enter into the Kingdom.
While Jesus and his immediate followers might have meant “kingdom” as an end-time event, inaugurated by God, it might have been heard differently from a middle distance. Enthusiastic pilgrims, unacquainted with the nonviolent nature of Jesus’ teachings—turn the other cheek; go the extra mile; forgive, in order to be forgiven—may have heard in it a summons to political action. Roman agents, always wary of sedition, would be keenly conscious of such an effect.
All of the gospels recount Jesus’ growing popularity as he taught on the Temple Mount. The crowds’ enthusiasms waxed as the holiday approached. The priests and Pilate together were responsible for keeping the peace. John’s gospel tells of a mixed contingent of Roman soldiers and Temple police arresting Jesus offstage, away from the public eye, at night, precisely because he was so popular. By the following day, Jesus was executed as “King of the Jews”—a political charge that coheres with enthusiasms for a “kingdom.”
A fresco by an unknown artist depicting Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, ca. 1446.
Jesus died on a cross, a fact that implies that Pilate thought he was an insurrectionist. (Crucifixion was particularly reserved for rebels and was a visually grisly form of deterrence.) But none of Jesus’ followers was rounded up and killed with him, a fact that implies that Pilate knew perfectly well that Jesus wasn’t politically dangerous. What’s more, very shortly after Jesus’ execution, his original followers settled permanently in Jerusalem, without any anxieties about Pilate or any interference from him. This implies that they knew that Pilate knew that they were not dangerous. So why, then, did Jesus die by crucifixion?
The answer, I think, lies with the enthused pilgrim crowds. That is the audience whom Pilate actually addresses when he puts Jesus on his cross. Crucifixion was the public performance of the coercive power of the Roman state. It was, in short, a form of crowd control. (After a rebellion broke out in the year 6, for instance, 2,000 men were crucified outside of the walls of Jerusalem.)
Pilate and the priests, according to John’s gospel, had many opportunities to observe Jesus in Jerusalem, where he “always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together.” They knew by now that he posed no political threat. But the restive crowd was a different matter. What better way to disabuse them, to quiet their noisy hopes, than to display their messiah on a cross?
For centuries after Jesus’ death, Christians continued to celebrate Easter according to the date of Passover.
In the short run, Pilate was right. The rest of the holiday evidently passed without incident. But in the long run, of course, Pilate was wrong. Thanks to the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, the movement that Pilate had sought to quell would eventually grow to become the sole legitimate religious culture of the Empire.
What propelled the new movement was the conviction of Jesus’ earliest followers that he had been raised from the dead—the origin of the Christian celebration of Easter. (As the Gospels relate the story, the short gap between Good Friday and Easter Sunday allowed Jesus’ Jewish followers to keep the Sabbath before going to his grave.) Already within the lifetime of that first generation, we know from Paul’s letters, pagans began to renounce their native gods and, through baptism into the new messianic movement, to make an exclusive commitment to Israel’s God.
Over time, these people tipped the movement’s demographic balance, and the various Christian churches became dominated by gentiles. Developing their new religious identity, some of these Christians began to express their theological convictions by sharply and polemically contrasting themselves with Jews and Judaism. And when Rome destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70, following another Judean rebellion, the Temple could no longer serve as a site of common piety. By the second century, Christianity and Judaism were beginning to go their separate ways.
Despite a long and often unhappy history, the story of Jews and of Christians remains intertwined.
But lively connections between the two communities persisted. Church sources reveal that, for generations, gentile Christians frequented Jewish synagogue services, had rabbis bless their fields, participated in the celebration of Jewish fasts and feasts, took oaths in front of Torah scrolls and kept the Sabbath as a day of rest. When synagogues held fundraisers, gentiles contributed as well.
And for centuries after Jesus’ death, Christians continued to celebrate Easter according to the date of Passover. The Emperor Constantine demanded, ineffectively, that this practice stop. Imperial insistence on the unity of theology and practice—sometimes expressed, again, through the coercive power of the Roman state—eventually led to the active persecution of other Christians, as well as of pagans and Jews. Fissures among these different Christian communities—Catholics; Greek Orthodox; the Coptic, Syrian and Nestorian churches—led to their adopting different dates for the holiday. Today in Jerusalem, Easter falls out over a zone of time, not on one particular date.
Despite a long and often unhappy history, the story of Jews and of Christians remains intertwined. The bridge between the two is the historical figure of Jesus. This year, whether you celebrate Passover on April 19 or Easter on April 21, think back to Roman Jerusalem, in the days of its beautiful Temple—the crowds, the excitement, the mounting joy, the holiday-forged kinship. The trajectory that began there, in the Temple’s courts, still carries us forward, in our own communities, in our own time.
Dr. Fredriksen is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University. Her many books include, most recently, “When Christians Were Jews,” about the earliest community of Jesus’
Estovir, this isn’t a religious blog! You have to take the ‘room temperature’. Does this seem like a space for lengthy Bible studies?
Peter, you have been arguing on this blog for a long time pushing an ideology that is closer to a faith based religion than to a history book or any accurate diary of what has passed in recent days. What makes you think your faith based religion of leftism is any better than Estovir’s? His facts (under discussion) are documented in the Bible, something tangible, that one can debate for or against. Your facts mostly aren’t credible and change on a daily basis to meet your religious dogma. Who is wasting the space on this blog?
Fine, Alan, let’s all post whatever we want to post.
If L D 4 wants to talk about her cats, she has every right to. If Anon wants to indulge his interest in wolves, that should be alright. If Karen wants to write about her garden, then hey, ‘why not’? If Tabby wants to post the ‘greatest hits’ from his research papers, bring it on. No one should be constrained by what Professor Turley has written or even news of the day.
You are such a shill
“let’s all post whatever we want to post.”
Peter, you choose to post nonsense with phony headlines in capitals. There is no discussion afterwards when there is significant disgreement. That makes you posting worthless as this is a discussion group dealing with the law. and you act as a news feed. Estovir provides some insight into Biblical law and if you think a bit the discussions that Turley creates deal with the culture and the law of the United States. For the most part that culture and law are based on the ancient Greek civilization, the Judeo Christian religions and British law and the philosophy of some great British thinkers. There are other influences on our culture and law but they are of a lesser extent and I am trying to point out how Estovir is far more pertinent to a discussion group than you are.
I do not agree with what was said on either side for the most part but I have and will continue to defend your right to do so. Besides. It encourages the exposure of ‘targets of opportunity’ by their own admission.
70%?? That’s the wadka talkin’.
And Santa Claus would make a great King!
The problem for the delusional demanding parasites in the United States, who are in search of “free stuff,” is the originally intended restricted vote and the Constitution.
The Greeks created democracy by citizens “entitled” to vote. The Romans perpetuated the Greek’s democracy with restrictions on the vote. The “poor” et al. were never intended to vote by any historical society. American states set the vote criteria and originally they were: Male, European, Age 21, 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres.
In the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress merely the power to tax for “…general Welfare…” and precludes any power by Congress to tax for the purposes of redistribution of wealth or individual welfare. The Constitution precludes any regulation beyond that of exchange, trade or “…Commerce among the several States.”
Private property rights preclude any interference by government in the exercise by individuals of the power to possess and dispose of private property with the sole, singular and only exception of Eminent Domain.
_______________________________________________________________________
“The true reason (says Blackstone) of requiring any qualification, with regard to property in voters, is to exclude such persons, as are in so mean a situation, that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.”
“If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.”
– Alexander Hamilton – The Farmer Refuted, 1775
_______________________________________
“the people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
-Alexander Hamilton
________________
Private property is “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
I . Bob,
You mean Uncle Joe Biden?
I wonder if the democrats hold uncle Joe in the same high esteem as the Russian people do.
This illustrates why we should be so concerned about our own media and public education misleading prospective voters, and shaping elections. It is very diffficult to overcome lifelong brainwashing.
A majority of our own millennials wouldn’t believe Socialism was grand if they were properly educated on the paradigm and its consequences.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2017/12/20/this-is-how-propaganda-works-a-look-inside-a-soviet-childhood/#1a3289e3566c
FROM ATTACHED MOSCOW TIMES LINK:
A record 70 percent of Russians approve of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s role in Russian history, according to a poll published by the independent Levada Center pollster on Tuesday.
Stalin’s image has been gradually rehabilitated in the 2000s from that of a bloody autocrat to an “outstanding leader.” President Vladimir Putin has revived the Soviet anthem, Soviet-style military parades and a Soviet-era medal for labor during his presidency.
Seventy percent of Russian respondents told the Levada Center in 2019 that Stalin played a positive role for Russia. Stalin’s previous record approval rating stood at 54 percent in 2016.
A record low of 19 percent viewed Stalin’s role negatively, down from 32 percent in 2016.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
One could reason that Stalin’s bump in popularity is being orchestrated by Vladimir Putin whose dream is reviving the Soviet Empire. Putin knows such a dream could be problematic if the Russian public accurately perceives Stalin as worse than even Hitler.
But Stalin’s newfound popularity should be a wake-up call to supporters of Donald Trump. It illustrates that Trump’s admiration for Putin is woefully shortsighted. Any president in tune with the real world could easily guess that Putin is a Stalin-to-be.
Peter, you aren’t accustomed to a President that doesn’t bow to his enemies and let them advance their armies at will.
Peter Shills for left wing organization, Media Matters, led by David Brock. I often think he might be DB.
——
David Brock’s Attack-Dog Empire
Brock’s ability to fundraise for his left-wing muckraking project took a hit after the inglorious defeat of his long-time mentor, Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. The big funders on the left appeared to be disheartened, and were not receptive to Brock’s plan to return to power. A January 26, 2017 story in the left-leaning Daily Beast titled “Dems to David Brock: Stop Helping, You Are Killing Us” was typical of the push back. The story stated:
As David Brock attempts to position himself as a leader in rebuilding a demoralized Democratic Party in the age of Trump, many leading Democratic organizers and operatives are wishing the man would simply disappear.
Many in the party—Clinton loyalists, Obama veterans, and Bernie supporters alike—talk about the man not as a sought-after ally in the fight against Trumpism, but as a nuisance and a hanger-on, overseeing a colossal waste of cash. And former employees say that he has hurt the cause.
Nonetheless Brock persisted in trying to gain funding for a leftist recovery. Another piece in the Inquisitr, a left-leaning British publication, showed that his efforts were failing. From a February 7, 2017 article titled, “David Brock’s ‘Breitbart of the Left’ Propaganda Venture Is Not Doing Very Well”:
According to Heatstreet, Brock’s efforts are not off to a great start. In January, Brock announced plans to raise millions of dollars to create an anti-Trump “war room” as part of his political research organization, American Bridge. The new organization was tentatively named True Blue Media. Brock tapped investigative journalist, David Sirota, to lead the effort. Sirota announced today that he would be dropping out, seemingly due to funding roadblocks.
“True Blue Media does not right now have in hand the resources for the kind of independent, nonpartisan journalism I want to continue to do and that is needed to execute on the ambitious editorial strategy that we agreed on,” Sirota said.
http://leftexposed.org/2017/02/david-brock/
If P. Shill were David Brock, his posts would be more disingenuous. Kind of like Anon’s.
Correct the Record had it’s HQ in DC with Brock’s other sorosphere outfits. A White Pages search has it that David Brock has relocated to a Dallas suburb. His sister has lived in and around Dallas for more than 25 years. It appears his mother lives down there as well. His father died in 1999.
IIRC, his tangles with Grover Norquist and others erupted after his book on HRC bombed. (If you check the Amazon reviews on that book, you’ll notice that they’re all written by Democrats). He didn’t begin issuing anathemas contra Republicans until papa shuffled off.
One thing we learned from Wikileaks is that John Podesta thinks him somewhere on the spectrum running from sick to evil to just plain crazy. Imagine you were one of his relatives.
I have no idea where DB lives or where he HQ his troll farms. DC is the main hub, according to their websites,
https://www.mediamatters.org/jobs
but working remotely from anywhere in the US is a possibility for many jobs, why not trolling? None of us can be certain of anything on these forums as to authorship, other than tracking IP addresses, but Peter Shill satisfies the image of a left wing paid troll…pure agitprop. David Brock fits the bill. I understood that Correct The Record disbanded in late 2016, at least its website did.
The tactics by Anon, L4D, PH, et al run a current theme: obscure if not change the facts, call up down, call black white, call lies truth and scream like the dickens. Saul Alinsky comes to mind and his Rules for Radicals
Either way they provide entertainment while giving us an opportunity to research current events. None of this is to be taken seriously
It would be interesting though to find David Brock’s home location, just for academic purposes of course
Estovir,
You’ll never get that location out of Peter Hollywood Hill; he’s sworn to secrecy and is very loyal to his boss.
P Hill – Stalin was a Leftist. Socialism is Left. It requires the erosion of individual rights in order to create an all powerful Leftist government, which will rule by decree.
Your comparison with Trump does not hold.
It is the American Left who seek to erode individual rights – namely the First and Second Amendments. They use social media to censor conservatives. The mainstream media is little more than a Leftist propaganda machine. Various government agencies have become weaponized against conservatives. Conservative students are harassed on campus and forced to write Leftist papers to get a good grade. It is also the Left who seeks to create a very powerful government at the expense of individual rights.
What Stalin could have done with the Green New Deal…
If you fear a Stalin mass murderer, then be wary of the Left.
Conservatives support the constitution and individual freedom. We support free speech, even that with which we do not agree. If the Left doesn’t agree with you, they try to silence you, get you fired, run you out of school, form a violent mob, attack you for wearing unapproved political speech clothing…
Learn history. The threat is from the far Left. That is what the conservatives are fighting. While we are named Fascists and racists, in reality, we are fighting Leftist Fascism and racist identity politics. We fight for the right of free speech, including the right to form our own opinion about biological gender.
In essence, Professor Turley warned of the rising popularity of a Socialist mass murderer, and your response was to ignore Democratic Socialists, and go after conservatives, which fight against such monstrosities. You are attacking the defenders and enabling the enemy who actually would install our own Stalin. This is unwise.
Karen, as usual your comment is coming through a filter that reads like a lecture from some frumpy old bitty.
Remember that actress who played Larry Mondello’s mother on “Leave It To Beaver”? Her name was Madge Black. She also played Aunt Harriet on TV’s “Batman”.
Well Karen, every time I read your comments, I visualize Madge Blake at a computer and I hear her voice narrating your text.
Madge Blake died in 1969. Peter runs on about what the young want as if it mattered, then gives us pop-cult references that anyone not yet Medicare eligible would have to look up.
Yeah, the young don’t matter Tabby. That’s why I mentioned Ms Blake.
P. Hill……….Wrong.
If Karen were a TV character she would be Alex Dunphy, except with a pleasant personality..
Alex is the middle child of Claire and Phil on Modern Fsmily. She is extremely bright, and definitely mensa material.
Prior to Stalin they had a Czar. England still has a Queen.
Had Peter Shill and L4B had their way, we would have had one as well.
Hillary would have made a faux Queen of the Amazons.
🔪
“The Amazons were a tribe of violent, ruthless man-haters. They cut off their breasts so they could better use their bow and arrows and killed all of their male infant children”
“[They], who themselves, likewise, were not unacquainted with the region in question, say that the right breasts of all [Amazons] are seared when they are infants, so that they can easily use their right arm for every needed purpose, and especially that of throwing the javelin…”
https://www.thoughtco.com/who-were-the-amazons-112918
Estovir, I can rest assured your comments are nutty enough to be self-evident. Which saves us liberals the labor of having to even comment.
Go with that last sentence, Schill, and spare yourself and everyone else the “labor of your comments”.
How many Americans approve of Woodrow Wilson. He segregated the armed forces and the government. How many Americans know when he was in office? What state did Truman hail from? How many of Americans know that one? Who desegregated the armed forces?
Regarding Stalin: He was a killer and a tyrant. He did help defeat Hitler. He was our ally. There is a phrase about humans who do not know itShay from Shinola. They are not educated or well intentioned and may have bad gal on their side. Wonder where we would be today if Stalin’s wall did not come down.
Liberty, Stalin was easily worse than Hitler. What’s your point here????
The most heinous atrocities have always been committed by national leaders.
“What is even more distressing is that earlier polls show that over half of polled young people were entirely unaware of Stalin’s alleged crimes.”
That should make it less distressing, not more. It should be more distressing if people approved of Stalin while knowing what he did. These earlier polls suggest and provide some evidence that a significant portion of the 70% who approve of Stalin do not know about the crimes he committed. So, there is a real sense in which it is not the case they approve of the real Stalin. Rather, they approve of a strongman who did much less evil things than Stalin. That is not good, but is surely less bad than the alternative .
For that matter, how many Chinese approve of Mao?
It’s hard to tell given the way China restricts polling, but it’s a safe bet that it’s a very large percentage. However, one should not think they approve of the real Mao, but rather, they approve of the propaganda Mao they believe in. Their lack of knowledge about history is a problem for a number of reasons, but not as big as approval with knowledge would be.
That said, it seems among the general population, knowledge about his crimes is much more prevalent. This suggests that while the lack of knowledge of Stalin on the part of young people should make Stalin’s approval less disturbing, that might not be by a big margin, given approval among others.
Then again, the article does not explain how they assess knowledge of the period among the general population, and knowing what Stalin was accused of doing is not the same as knowing that he did do it. In particular, when people are exposed to pervasive propaganda, often people do not buy the charges even if they know about them. So, in short, we would need more information, but it’s clear that this is pretty bad. However, any lack of knowledge of Stalin’s crimes makes approval of his regime less bad than it would otherwise be.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/235160/death-communist-paul-kengor
Stalin had his admirers in the U.S. as well. Pete Seeger, a.k.a. ”Stalin’s Songbird”, was another devoted fan of Stalin.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-death-of-stalins-songbird
Tom, that ‘Front Page Magazine” article is seriously far-right. It falsely claims “The New York Times” tried to play down Robeson’s communist sentiments in their 1976 obituary. That got me curious so I googled said obituary. Here are paragraphs 5 and 6:
“One of the most influential performers and political figures to emerge from black America, Mr. Robeson was under a cloud in his native land during the cold war as a political dissenter and an outspoken admirer of the Soviet Union.
These circumstances, as well as the award in 1952 of a Stalin Peace Prize, combined to close many minds to his artistic merits as a singer and actor”.
Almost half the obituary deals with Robeson’s journey as a communist. It also notes that Robeson spent so much time abroad that he was not that connected to Black activists back in the U.S. Said obituary also tells us that Robeson’s father had been a runaway slave. That may have shaped his politics! Though the article notes that Robeson was not that political until he met British playwright George Bernard Shaw.
Tom, that “Front Page” article is also strange in the sense that it demonizes Robeson while glossing over the many abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In fact, “Front Page” suggests that McCarthy was a patriotic hero of some kind. ..What a joke..!
Now we know, Tom, that your viewpoints are shaped by far-right publications. Which shows that you are probably ‘not’ the establishment Republican I had previously imagined.
From what Peter wrote, the New York Times obituary comfirms what others have written.
Since I haven’t read the obituary, I don’t know if the characterization of the NY Times “glossing over” Robeson’s love affair with Stalin.
If the New York times obituary confirms what the other publication said, then there seems to be no discrepancy between the tone of both articles.
If Peter’s complaint is that the “far right” publication distorted the NY Times obituary, that doesn’t change the recognition by both that Robeson was s big fan of Stalin.
As far as the “defect” of not mentioning McCarthyism”, there is plenty that has been written on that topic.
I wouldn’t implicate McCartyism as the basis for the realization that Robeson was a Stalinist.
As far as the repeated claims by Peter and others that conservative views spring from “right wing publication” or Fox News, that bogus claim is reflexively used to suggest that conservatives became conservatives because of the hyponotic power of the “right wing” media.
It may be that Peter was indoctrinated by his employers, and the writings and policies David Brock and George Soros, but it does not follow that everyone is gullible enough to be swayed by one category of publications.
On that issue, aside from the tired “right wing media bubble and Fox News” that surfaces in lieu of anything substsntial, I have quoted from or posted links from a variety of publications.
When I quoted from the NY Times, Peter said “he didn’t know that ‘Trumpers’ read or believed that publication.
He did not contest the substance of the article I posted; his “response” was that he was surprized a so-called Trumper would use a that publication as a source.
That ties in with the lazy habit of trying to discredit others based on what they read, or Peter’s very own perception of what he claims they read.
I recently quoted from the LA Times, and Peter’s response was a criticism of that newspaper.
This is a way of “covering all the bases” with his stupid accusations and baseless conclusions.
If a story comes from “the right wing media”, it should be dismissed. If it comes from other sources, there’s some complaint about that, too. I don’t
That would seem to limit the “acceptable” sources of news that Peter finds credible to left wing publications, since he seems to object to using all other sources when he finds it expedient.
Peter forgot to tell us why ‘The Daily Beast” article that I linked is another one of “the right wing media” publications that he doesn’t like.
Or that for some reason,”Trumpers” shouldn’t use it.
If criticising Robeson for his love of Stalin is “demonizing” him, as Peter stated, them most publications are guilty of “demonizing” him.
There is a strong consensus across the media spectrum that Robeson had a “man crush” on Stalin.
I don’t see how that can be spun into something positive.
Tom, who said it had to spun into anything positive??? Where does it say that liberals have to defend Paul Robeson or Pete Seeger??
Robseon was a very talented actor. But as the N Y Times obituary notes Robeson was largely forgotten by the time of his death. But again, it’s ridiculous to expect the son of a slave to be a conservative ‘patriot’.
Regardless of heritage, it’s difficult to be an apologist for a die-hard Stalin apologist. Your primary complaint seems to be that the Front Page article unfairly accuses the NY Times of going too easy on Robeson.
Maybe you disagree with the unfavorable characterization of Robeson as a dedicated Stalinist, but his leanings and activities as a Stalinist are pretty difficult to view in other than contempable terms.
I wasn’t writing about the NY Times obituary of Robeson, which is what you made an issue of. I was pointing out that Stalin had support in some quarters in the U.S.
Tom, you’re putting words in my mouth. All that right-wing! I have no more investment in Paul Robeson than I have in Peter Seeger. But according to ‘you’, I’m somehow obliged to furiously defend them!
I missed the part where I said that Hollywood Hill had to defend these clowns. Now I could break down and review what was said and what was not said in this exchange, and explaine it, but there is no point in doing so with Hollywood Hill.
It’ll just devolve into another series of deflections about the “right wing media” or Fox News, and we’d be back at square one.
That’s the problem anytime a committed and evasive propagandist like Hollywood Hill “debates” an issue.
he gets paid by the keystroke.
He should support the Democrats that enslaved his father?
No. Anonymous. A political system that enslaves an entire population is far better. There must have been an “exchange program in the Robsone/ Stalin era, where Soviet dissidents were free to express their appreciation for democracy when they were allowed to travel to the U.S.
Robeson seemed to be very free to come and go as he pleased to extoll the virtues of Stalinism…..no doubt, Stalin returned the favor to any dissidents in his country who were not executed or shipped off to Siberia.
Tom, I don’t even know what “Daily Beast” story you posted. You’re sounding more and more like Alan; presuming I remember every post of your’s.
Read again your “Front Page” article, then google “The N Y Times” obituary. You’ll see “The Front Page” completely mischaracterized the obit. The obit was actually very balanced and dealt extensively with Robeson’s communist leanings.
The Daily Beast link is right below the link from the Front Page link.
Pete Seeger was a communist?? ..Say it ain’t so..!! I always thought Seeger was an advocate for free market solutions!
Seriously, Tom, ‘who’ cares if Seeger was a communist?? I wasn’t invested in Seeger’s career. You think because I’m a liberal, I have to defend Pete Seeger?? That’s how dumb it gets! That’s what right-wing media does to its followers; they think think liberals are obliged to defend every leftist in history!
By the time Seeger died, scarcely anyone born after 1950 knew who he was. Even in the Woodstock era, Seeger was already relegated to the role of ‘aging’ spokesperson for the radical left.
Peter Shill gets paid by the character to troll these forums by his employer David Brock.
____
Suprising no one, David Brock whines to Politico
Here online, to this day, we all swim in the petri dish of zombie undead trolls created by David Brock himself, who the 2016 Clinton campaign paid millions upon millions to erect a Maginot Line (just as effective) of fake narrative against Bernie Sanders. All of it constantly backfired in favor of Bernie Sanders, and still does. Deliciously, Politico’s above the fold splash featured headline reads “Clinton camp stews over Sanders 2020 campaign“. Ya don’t say!
Ever the oblivious mercenary on the hunt for his next paycheck, Brock today uses Politico to pitch himself to the rest of the 2020 field, which of course, yet again, will help Bernie Sanders.
“I would say — and for all I know, the Sanders people might take this as a compliment — among a lot of the major donors in the party, there’s concern that he could emerge (!!!),” said David Brock, a longtime Clinton ally who founded a pro-Clinton super PAC in the 2016 campaign and later authored a public apology to Sanders for some of his bare-knuckled criticisms during the primary. “There are some very dyed-in-the-wool Democrats that wouldn’t at all be enthusiastic about supporting him in a general election.”
For the discerning connoisseur of vintage Clinton sour grapes, there is of course, a delectable Neera Tanden quote, the obligatory cork stain of an Adam Parkhomenko #RUSSIA smear, a lovely bouquet of La #ResistAHNCE from 2016 Clinton “rapid response” director (cue spit take), Zac Petkanas…it’s like a private tour of the wine cellar at Lloyd Blankfein’s in the Hamptons! Of course, the tastiest herbaceous floral tannin is from Brock, who is so brain dead, to this day, he doesn’t realize every word out of his mouth results in more fundraising for Bernie.
“Brock said the major party donors were concerned about Sanders for two reasons: “electability” and a difference in ideology. “As a self-described democratic socialist, that’s just a step too far for a lot of people,” adding they “worry that he would end up losing to Trump.”
Who in fact DID lose to Donald Trump? Why, that would be David Brock’s 2016 client, of course! President Her, who knew precisely the snake she was paying to infect online political discourse with a poison we still must deal with, every single day, its metastasized remnants already being cloned into new troll ops by every single Democrat in the 2020 primary not named Bernie Sanders. In fact, it is highly likely the Russian troll op, which Parkhamenko invokes constantly to smear Bernie as some Manchurian candidate, took copious notes from Brock’s operation for the GRU Russian op run out of St. Petersburg.
I do so love 2020 already. Every delicious second of it.
http://www.timrusso.org/2019/03/suprising-no-one-david-brock-whines-to-politico/
Again, Estovir, you just embarrass yourself every time you comment. It’s always something dumb! Something that only a deluded Culture Commando could possibly think of.
I take it Estovir stuffed you in a locker and stole your lunch money.
Absurd,
I can understand why that happened, but Estovir went too far in blocking the vents in the locker That oxygen deprivation cased severe mental disabilities that exist to this day, as evidenced in Hollywood Hill’s robotic comments here.
Again, I was pointing out that Stalin had some real fans here in the ,U.S.. I used Robeson and Seeger as examples. I didn’t ask you to defend them; it’s odd that you:d even read that into what I wrote, but I don’t expect you or any other scatterbrain to stick to the point.
Yeah, Tom, those Stalin fans were people who came of age during the Great Depression when it seemed that capitalism had reached the end of its days. Luckily that didn’t happen. But in the early 1930’s things were looking pretty grim. And that had a traumatic effect on millions of people.
Here’s an interesting fact: During W W II the U.S. Military had to reject a certain number of would-be soldiers because they had suffered rickets as children during the Great Depression and it affected their potential as soldiers.
Yeah, Tom, those Stalin fans were people who came of age during the Great Depression when it seemed that capitalism had reached the end of its days.
Actually, Earl Browder, Eugene Dennis, and Harry Bridges were older than that and Howard Zinn younger.
If FDR had an area of the U.S. for starvation like Stalin did, he might have had better luck in meeting the nutritional n needs of the rest of the U.S.
So of course Stalinism had an appeal to some during the Great Depression.
By the time Seeger died, scarcely anyone born after 1950 knew who he was.
Actually, he cut albums of folk music marketed to children. He also appeared on Sesame Street. His last album was produced in 2012.
Tabby, that’s interesting. But how many copies did Pete Seeger’s last album sell? I mean, did it really chart on “Billboard’s Top 200”?
An obituary very brief sums up a person’s life….in Seeger/ Stalin Songbird’s case, a very long life. Whether a person was a lifelong, or nearly lifelong, admirer of Hitler or Stalin, that is in fact relevant to wrapping up that person’s life in an obituary.
Living in Hollywood, you may not understand that. If a well-known entertainer who was a Hitler fan was in the news, I think that would likely dominate coverage of that person.
If they backed “the right” mass murderer, like Stalin, it would likely rate a “so what” in Hollywood.
Tom, first of all, neither Robeson nor Seeger were Hollywood people. Robeson was primarily a stage actor who frequently worked and traveled abroad. His N Y Times Obit emphasized how much time Robeson spent outside the country.
Pete Seeger famously lived most of his life in Greenwich Village and a farm further upstate. Seeger might not have fit among Hollywood circles. Marxist sentiments don’t really fly in Beverly Hills! Locals of B H are pretty keen on money.
And Tom it’s the same in Bel Air, Brentwood and even liberal Santa Monica. Santa Monica, you should know, has block after block of gorgeous homes. It’s takes respect for money to purchase those homes. They’re off limits to Marxist losers.
You should see Bel Air: Mansions the size of hotels! The average American cannot picture homes that size. Here in Hollywood there’s a mountain named for a Greek god. Homes on top are stunning yet totally unknown to locals below. Only recently did ‘I’ discover them.
So this idea that Hollywood has Marxist-Communist sympathies is a myth most popular with folks who never step foot in L.A.
But Tom I appreciate you’re putting me on to Robeson’s obituary. That’s an interesting read.
Paul Robeson’s film credits exceed in number his Broadway credits.
I would suggest that anyone not familiar with the history of Communism in Hollywood, and in the entertainment industry in general, read up on the subject.
Reagan was a New Deal Democrat until he contended with the Communist element of the Screen Actors Guild, and those sympathetic with the Communists. His presidency of that union was probably his initial exposure to a political life.
Tabby, you’re not good at analyzing the careers of performers. Robeson’s movie career was only sporadic and not that many major films.
But as a live per performer, in plays and musical reviews, Robeson worked on a fairly steady basis from the 20’s thru the 50’s. A lot his work was based in Europe though, as opposed to Broadway.
A part of American history is the extremism related to the support of history’s words tyrants. There were in fact American Communists and American Nazis.
If it seems to people like Peter that they are “,demonized”, I would suggest that there is a reason for that. It’s too bad if some feel that the accounts of hard core Stalinists ate not “balanced”.
https://youtu.be/ca5K87VCxYo
For those unaware of the history of Communism in Hollywood, or in denial about it, or simply too lazy to read up on it, here’s a video from C-Span featuring an author who covers that topic.
Tom, this video is pretty vacuous in terms of actual substance. Not only that, but you’re reaching back 80 years and claiming current relevance.
As I noted before, the communists circles that once existed in Hollywood were people who came of age during the Great Depression when communism was stylish. And, as this author notes, a lot of those communists were New York-born Jews.
Those New York-born Jews were generally the offspring of immigrants who came in the early 1900’s. Those immigrants may have worked in sweatshops when 12 hour workdays were normal and work conditions were dangerous. Those factors bred a certain resentment towards free-market capitalism.
During the Depression years, there was a highly influential theatre company in New York called The Group Theatre. The Group Theatre produced several plays with leftist themes during the darkest days of The Depression. “Waiting For Lefty” was one of their best known works.
By the late 30’s The Group Theatre had mostly scattered but several members went on to great prominence as Acting Coaches, Writers, Directors and Actors. Elia Kazan, John Garfield and Clifford Oats were among the best-known.
Because The Group Theatre produced so many great Acting Coaches, their influence was felt well into the post-war era. Almost every great star of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s had studied with one of those coaches. Therefore everyone in Hollywood had some relation to the Group Theatre long after that company broke up.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone in Hollywood was keen on Josef Stalin. In fact, Ronald Reagan, as Screen Actors Guild President in the 50’s, made a concerted effort to root out all the communists. He was assisted by the likes of John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Cecile B DeMille among others. So there was a conservative counter-movement in Hollywood during the early postwar years.
Actually Peter is playing by the rules to the letter
Read the Confidential David Brock Memo Outlining Plans to Attack Trump
https://www.scribd.com/document/337535680/Full-David-Brock-Confidential-Memo-On-Fighting-Trump#from_embed
David Brock, the seasoned liberal operative and Clinton loyalist who founded Media Matters, huddled with more than 100 donors last weekend at the swanky Turnberry Isle Resort in Aventura, Fla. to map out how Democrats will “kick Donald Trump’s ass.”
The Washington Free Beacon attended the retreat and obtained David Brock’s private and confidential memorandum from the meeting. The memo, “Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action,” outlines Brock’s four-year agenda to attack Trump and Republicans using Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Shareblue.
The memo contains plans for defeating Trump through impeachment, expanding Media Matters’ mission to combat “government misinformation,” ensuring Democratic control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, monetizing political advocacy, using a “digital attacker” to delegitimize Trump’s presidency and damage Republicans, and partnering with Facebook to combat “fake news.”
Brock sought to raise $40 million in 2017 for his organizations, and hoped the retreat would lead to the creation of a liberal donor network to rival the network of the conservative Koch brothers.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/david-brock-memo-attack-trump/
Yes, Hollywood was a real bastion against Communism.😒. But that was just a “free speech” issue, and I’m sure that Hollywood would have been equally strong on supporting the rights of American Nazis.
Right.
People like Robeson and Seeger need not have lived in Hollywood to benefit from those in the Hollywood crowd who stood up for them.
Peter’s “that happened 80 years ago” is an attempt to dismiss the “relevance” of history. So we disagree on that point.
This exchange started after I commented that Stalin had his supporters here, and I cited two well-known examples of pro-Stalinist Americans.
It wouldn’t be difficult to provide many more examples, and there was in fact a core of Communists and their supporters based in Hollywood.
As Peter concedes, it was “fashionable” in Hollywood. It differed from the “fashionable” clothing trends or hair styles of the day in that Communist/ Stalinists and their supporters were True Believers and supporters of a mass murderer and a system….dictatorship …..that perpetuated human rights violations for 70 years.
The “justification” for these atrocities was that some atrocities we’re acceptable in some phony pursuit of a “workers’ paradise”.
I don’t see that anything I said in my initial comment was refuted by Peter, whose main gripe seems to be that one article I cited was unfair in it’s characterization of the New York Times obituary on Paul Robeson. That has nothing to do with the fact that Robeson was a hard-core, committed Stalinist.
Whether a New York Times obituary gave a “balanced” account of Robeson’s life on their obituary is beside the point.
Tom, your hostility here shouldn’t surprise me but it does. Once again it’s manufactured outrage on your part. An aggressive effort to spin the discussion with me endorsing Stalin’s genocide.
Stalin died 65 years ago. Hollywood never mourned his death. No one here is part of Stalin’s cult. They’re too busy making money, as I pointed out. But that doesn’t fit Tom Nash’s narrative.
So Tom Nash pulls this power play and just pins Stalin on Peter Shill and Hollywood. Somehow we’re endorsing Gulags and massacres. By ‘promoting communist thought’, I guess.
It’s back to the 50’s with Tom Nash. Once again there’s a red scare. And Hollywood is secretly enamored with Josef Stalin. Never mind that the year is 2019. And Stalin ain’t comin up in normal conversation. In Tom Nash’s head that doesn’t matter.
This discussion is typical of the Trump era. No truth is even needed. You can just assert the other person owns something. Then howl with outrage like a Fox viewer. Just rashly repeat a falsehood while howling ever louder. The idea is to make a big ugly scene.
There’s nothing ‘manufactured’ about the irksome and boring reaction to one of our resident propagandists, Peter “Hollywood” Hill.
The silver lining is the unintentional humor 😀😄provided😂🤣 by a far- left loon like St. Peter, so “outrage” is not correct either.
But hey, if it helps Hollywood Hill to believe he’s the target of “manufactured outrage” rather that howls of laughter, I think he shoud go with that.
And yet you converse with these idiots, there is no honest debate with gnash and his ilk.
It’s the Emojis. They’re so adorably demented. Who could possibly resist [provoking] them?
I give YNOT due credit…..she can waste a lot of time in such a short space saying nothing. You have a couple of other anonymous and profound pundits like SNOT who rarely, if ever, have anything to say about issues/ pollicied.
But if she’s going for high marks in sheer bitchiness and nothing else, I’d say she’s accomplished her goal.
As I mentioned a bit earlier, the nuisance of having our two prolific propagandists here is largely offset by the unintentional humor they provide.
When the time comes to consider L4B’s release from the funny farm, she should present her plans to the Hollywood area. She’d fit right in with the other lunatics there, and pass for “normal” there.
YNOT would not know “an honest debate” if it bit her on the ***. Anyone who doubts that can look at the “depth” of her occasional sniping here.
( To save time, there’s no need really to review her previous petty remarks….they all have pretty much the same level of “substance” you see in her most recent comment
“there is no honest debate with gnash and his ilk.”
YNOT, that is because you are dishonest and never intended to have honest debate.
” with me endorsing Stalin’s genocide.”
Peter, I don’t think you endorsed genocide but I believe you would have enabled the policies that permitted Stalin to commit mass murder and the funny thing is had you been a Russian at that time with some ideological power you probably would have eventually ended up dead despite the fact that you were on the same ideological train moving leftwards. That is what you seem to miss in this debate and the debate on the fascists having communist roots. The leftist train is full of people travelling further leftwards while killing each other at the same time.
“over the many abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In fact, “Front Page” suggests that McCarthy was a patriotic hero of some kind. ..What a joke..!”
I don’t think anyone here thinks Senator McCarthy was the nicest man around. But do you know what he did and what he said?
I don’t think so. Tell me specifically what significant things did Senator McCarthy do that were so terrible?
“over the many abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In fact, “Front Page” suggests that McCarthy was a patriotic hero of some kind. ..What a joke..!”
Instead of Estovir being a waste of time it is Peter Hill who makes comments that he cannot and will not back up. I’ll ask again:
“Tell me specifically what significant things did Senator McCarthy do that were so terrible?”
Just like the other questions asked and left unanswered down the road this discussion will come up again and low and behold Peter will say he responded completely to it. Not true but what in Peter’s writings are true and defendable by Peter? Very little.
when you practice an ideology that offers utopia as its goal, how can you go wrong? Especially when you are preaching to the barely aware. America has a vast job ahead trying to re-educate a mass of young who are entirely unaware of their own ignorance,
America has a vast job ahead trying to re-educate a mass of young who are entirely unaware of their own ignorance
Natural selection works all too well. Fighting it is folly and consumes limited resources.
“All life on Earth is connected and related to each other,” and this diversity of life is a product of “modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in and environment over others,”
“Our Ignorance of Socialism Is Dangerous”
Walter E. Williams
A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter.
Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favorably. Lenin was the first premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Half of millennials have never heard of communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1959 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people.
The number of people who died at the hands of Josef Stalin may be as high as 62 million. However, almost one-third of millennials think former President George W. Bush is responsible for more killings than Stalin.
By the way, Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was responsible for the deaths of about 20 million people. The Nazis come in as a poor third in terms of history’s most prolific mass murderers. According to professor Rudolph Rummel’s research, the 20th century, mankind’s most brutal century, saw 262 million people’s lives destroyed at the hands of their own governments.
Young people who weren’t alive during World War II and its Cold War aftermath might be forgiven for not knowing the horrors of socialism. Some of their beliefs represent their having been indoctrinated by their K-12 teachers and college professors.
There was such leftist hate for Bush that it’s not out of the question that those 32 percent of millennials were taught by their teachers and professors that Bush murdered more people than Stalin.
America’s communists, socialists, and Marxists have little knowledge of socialist history. Bradley Birzer, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, explains this in an article for The American Conservative titled “Socialists and Fascists Have Always Been Kissing Cousins.”
Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1925, “It would be better for us to end our existence under Bolshevism than to endure slavery under capitalism.” This Nazi sentiment might be shared by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his comrade Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Goebbels added, “I think it is terrible that we and the communists are bashing in each other’s heads.”
When the tragedies of socialist regimes—such as those in Venezuela, the USSR, China, Cuba, and many others—are pointed out to America’s leftists, they hold up Sweden as their socialist role model. But they are absolutely wrong about Sweden.
Johan Norberg points this out in his documentary “Sweden: Lessons for America?” Americans might be surprised to learn that Sweden’s experiment with socialism was a relatively brief flirtation, lasting about 20 years and ending in disillusionment and reform.
Reason magazine reports:
Sweden began rolling back government in the early 1990s, recapturing the entrepreneurial spirit that made it a wealthy country to begin with. High taxation and a generous array of government benefits are still around. But now it’s also a nation of school vouchers, free trade, open immigration, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws.
School vouchers, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws are practices deeply offensive to America’s leftists.
Our young people are not the first Americans to admire tyrants and cutthroats. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.”
There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as “a very remarkable man, a very able man.” President Franklin Roosevelt called Mussolini “admirable,” and he was “deeply impressed by what he [had] accomplished.”
In 1972, John Kenneth Galbraith visited communist China and praised Mao and the Chinese economic system. His Harvard University colleague John K. Fairbank believed that America could learn much from the Cultural Revolution, saying, “Americans may find in China’s collective life today an ingredient of personal moral concern for one’s neighbor that has a lesson for us all.”
Are Americans who admire the world’s most brutal regimes miseducated or stupid? Or do they have some kind of devious agenda?
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/12/05/our-ignorance-of-socialism-is-dangerous/
“Socialists and Fascists Have Always Been Kissing Cousins”
Estovir, I have been trying to get this point accross for quite awhile but it seems intellectual curiosity is missing on the left.
Alan, the vast majority of Germans killed or captured in World War II were on the Eastern front. It defies all logic that you would refer to socialists and fascists as “kissing cousins”. The Spanish Civil War comes to mind as another episode that greatly contradicts your narrative. It appears your are an aggressive proponent of Trump era revisionist history.
I can’t help it if you don’t recognize that even kissing cousins fight over trivial matters such as power and who is going to lead. Look at how the movements started and the people involved. Socialist / communist to the core. In the end these despots fight for unbridled power just like the Democrats are doing today. All of the aforementioned move in essentially the same direction.
Look at your history and take note how the powers of Europe were always fighting with one another even though the Kings were frequently related.
Alan, Nazis and Communists were fighting in Germany’s streets long before Hitler took over. In fact, many leaders of the former East Germany had been imprisoned by the Nazis. To call them “kissing cousins” is Trump era revisionist history. We never heard this crap before 2016.
David Brock, is that you?
_______
Paranoia and Guns
A 2012 series of articles on Brock and Media Matters in the Daily Caller reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness. The Daily Caller reported Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from perceived threats. Brock even hired an illegally armed bodyguard to provide personal security.
According to a one-time aide named Haydn Price-Morris, who worked for MMfA from early 2009 through late 2010, he carried a concealed Glock handgun when accompanying Brock to events in the nation’s capital, which until recently had arguably the strictest gun control laws in America. The aide had no concealed-carry permit for his gun in the District of Columbia.
In addition, multiple firearms were purchased to protect Brock, with his blessing, and apparently with MMfA’s money – despite the group’s strident advocacy for gun control that reached a fever pitch following the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. According to the Daily Caller:
Brock “had more security than a Third World dictator,” one Media Matters employee said, adding that Brock’s bodyguards rarely left him alone. “What movement leader has a detail?”
http://leftexposed.org/2017/02/david-brock/
The smart money says it was cosplay by Brock’s catamites.
Dahyum! The things one learns on JT’s blog.Touché!
Henceforth Peter Shill will be called “David Brock’s Catamite”
cat·a·mite (kăt′ə-mīt′)
n.
A boy who has a sexual relationship with a man.
[Latin catamītus, from Catamītus, Ganymede, from Etruscan Catmite, from Greek Ganumēdēs.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
catamite (ˈkætəˌmaɪt)
n
a boy kept for homosexual purposes
[C16: from Latin Catamītus, variant of Ganymēdēs Ganymede1]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
cat•a•mite (ˈkæt əˌmaɪt)
n.
a boy or youth having a sexual relationship with a man.
[1585–95; < Latin Catamītus < Etruscan Catmite < Greek Ganymḗdēs Ganymede]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
Peter, learn your history. you must be talking about the predecessors of the Nazi Party “Pan-German nationalist” and the “German Workers’ Party” later named the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”. Their member ship came from the Social Democrats and communists. Take note THEIR MEMBERSHIP CAME FROM THE LEFT.
Alan, we never heard that crap until 2016.
“we never heard that crap until 2016.”
That is because you are ignorant Peter. The history is in the history books. We know the people that influenced the movements and they came from the left.
By the way, I knew about all this decades ago.
Alan, here’s a passage from the Wikipedia bio on Walter Ulbricbht, a principal founder of East Germany:
“At an event arranged by the Nazi Party in January 1931, Ulbricht was allowed by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s Gauleiter of Berlin and Brandenburg, to give a speech. Subsequently, Goebbels delivered his own speech. The attempt at a friendly discussion turned hostile and became a debate.[5][6] A struggle between Nazis and Communists began: police officers divided them. Both sides had tried to use this event for their election propaganda.[7] The brawl took two hours to disperse and over a hundred were injured in the melee.[6]
The Nazi Party attained power in Germany in January 1933, and very quickly began a purge of Communist and Social Democrat leaders in Germany. Following the arrest of the KPD’s leader, Ernst Thälmann, Ulbricht campaigned to be Thälmann’s replacement as head of the Party”.
You can also look up the bio of Eric Honecker, the last leader of East Germany. It details how he was imprisoned under the Nazis and at one point ran afoul of other communist inmates by seeming too cozy with his guards.
Peter you are reading tid bits of history that satisfy your narrative. Go back further to the original parties with the original names. Look at who dominated and then trace these names to the Nazi Party; Socialists and Communists. Every person has a different degree of adherence to each ideological position. When that difference is too great there is a split and fighting but that doesn’t make one Communist/ Socialist and the other not. That is a power struggle. The fascists were born from the Communists.
https://youtu.be/OBZsTf6oLfY
It’s not surprising that George Bernard Jackass had a positive view of “efficient” killing machines like Stalin and Hitler.
It would be agreeable if Russians gave their allegiance to their literature, their visual arts, the Orthodox Church, their history of village self-government, and the forests and fields and towns they occupy.
Tabby, the Russian Orthodox Church? The same church that was blindly loyal to Romanov’s??
Had that church been a truly credible institution, the Russian Revolution may not have occurred. But said church was seen as enabling a grossly indifferent monarchy. In that regard it was not unlike the Catholic Church in Latin America during the Spanish empire’s zenith.
Thanks for the witless reductionism. It’s been an education.
Diane joins that 54% in praise of Stalin and I don’t hold much hope out for the other vocal leftists.
Vladimir Putin himself appears partially responsible as he fights to bring back Soviet images — as well as a Soviet appetite for expansion.
1. The Crimea is largely populated by Great Russians and was transferred to the Ukraine only in 1954. South Ossetia has a population of about 55,000. The vast majority of ethnic Ossetes were living north of the border in Russia already in their own dedicated province (where they form 65% of the province).
2. The ethnic cleansing of Abkhazia was undertaken during his predecessor’s time, as was the bulk of the bloodletting in Chechenya.
3. The ongoing harassment of the Ukraine is disgusting, but its significance is a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than Soviet tanks rolling into Eastern Europe in 1944.
earlier polls show that over half of polled young people were entirely unaware of Stalin’s alleged crimes.
“Young people’ refers to those age 18-24. IOW, the demographic segment who don’t make a habit of taking their noses away from their “smart phones”. Screw ’em.
As do at least 50% of the sitting U.S. Senators from Massachusetts and Vermont, and 100% of the Congressional Representatives from the Bronx.