*Ø* Blogmanac | The holocaust that Hollywood ignores
In the West it has always been unfashionable to mention the victims of Communism. Ask any child the name of a Nazi death camp and the names Auschwitz, Belsen and Dachau will roll off the tongue. Then ask for the name of a Soviet or Maoist death camp, where many millions more people were killed, and you will probably draw a blank, as you will if you ask most adults.
How many movies and TV shows have we seen with the swastika unfurled? Perhaps thousands? How many with the hammer and sickle? Perhaps three or four -- perhaps none? Then there are the books: stroll through a bookshop and see how many books show the flag of the USSR as a representation of evil. Every major city has a museum to the holocaust of Nazism -- as well they should -- but can we name one city in the world with a memorial to the holocaust of Communism? There is not even one in Russia. Many websites (such as this one) almost dismiss the Communist tyranny as a minor blip of history that lasted a year or two, not seven decades, and continues today.
Why is this so? The numbers of victims of communism are in the scores of millions; estimates of 75 million are not uncommon, several times the death toll of Nazism. Why is it hidden from our view, and why has it always been such a taboo topic among the intellectual, political and media elites? Nazism is dead, but one quarter of the world's population still lives in the same old Communist regimes, so isn't something fishy going on with public discourse? I'll be examining this phenomenon in an article to be announced here soon.
In the meantime, it is interesting to note that the cultural blackout on the truth of the major holocausts of the 20th Century is not only a phenomenon of Hollywood and its sub-set cultures such as America, Australia and Britain. Even in the former Soviet Union itself there is a grim wall of denial -- and government cover-up. Vladimir Putin, a former career KGB officer, is unlikely to reveal what he knows. The mighty FSB, institutional heir of the Cheka and KGB, also has vested interests in keeping the hush alive and the bones buried.
Some of the dynamics of this, the greatest lie in history, are examined in an all-too-brief documentary that I commend:
"It's estimated that around twenty million people were killed in the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin alone. And this week Russian human rights groups are commemorating those victims who died as a result of political repression in the Soviet era. Yet, despite the advent of democracy, the majority of Russians still seem to have little wish to acknowledge the scale of the crimes committed under Communism."
Listen to this program from the BBC
In the West it has always been unfashionable to mention the victims of Communism. Ask any child the name of a Nazi death camp and the names Auschwitz, Belsen and Dachau will roll off the tongue. Then ask for the name of a Soviet or Maoist death camp, where many millions more people were killed, and you will probably draw a blank, as you will if you ask most adults.
How many movies and TV shows have we seen with the swastika unfurled? Perhaps thousands? How many with the hammer and sickle? Perhaps three or four -- perhaps none? Then there are the books: stroll through a bookshop and see how many books show the flag of the USSR as a representation of evil. Every major city has a museum to the holocaust of Nazism -- as well they should -- but can we name one city in the world with a memorial to the holocaust of Communism? There is not even one in Russia. Many websites (such as this one) almost dismiss the Communist tyranny as a minor blip of history that lasted a year or two, not seven decades, and continues today.
Why is this so? The numbers of victims of communism are in the scores of millions; estimates of 75 million are not uncommon, several times the death toll of Nazism. Why is it hidden from our view, and why has it always been such a taboo topic among the intellectual, political and media elites? Nazism is dead, but one quarter of the world's population still lives in the same old Communist regimes, so isn't something fishy going on with public discourse? I'll be examining this phenomenon in an article to be announced here soon.
In the meantime, it is interesting to note that the cultural blackout on the truth of the major holocausts of the 20th Century is not only a phenomenon of Hollywood and its sub-set cultures such as America, Australia and Britain. Even in the former Soviet Union itself there is a grim wall of denial -- and government cover-up. Vladimir Putin, a former career KGB officer, is unlikely to reveal what he knows. The mighty FSB, institutional heir of the Cheka and KGB, also has vested interests in keeping the hush alive and the bones buried.
Some of the dynamics of this, the greatest lie in history, are examined in an all-too-brief documentary that I commend:
"It's estimated that around twenty million people were killed in the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin alone. And this week Russian human rights groups are commemorating those victims who died as a result of political repression in the Soviet era. Yet, despite the advent of democracy, the majority of Russians still seem to have little wish to acknowledge the scale of the crimes committed under Communism."
Listen to this program from the BBC
Pip Wilson posted item above at 5:28 AM | Permalink
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