No room for you in me

Gary Saul Morson is at it again, elucidating the peculiar evil that is Leninism. In a new essay, he notes that terrorist totalitarianism were not necessary evils to Lenin but laudable goals in their own right. He often punished underlings for coming up short in the article of ruthlessness. He held that all morals qualms must be eliminated in favor of effective force in aid of universal compliance. Though his soviet empire was toppled, the habit of thought endures:
The same logic applied to rights. On paper, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed more rights than any other state in the world. I recall a Soviet citizen telling me that people in the ussr had absolute freedom of speech—so long as they did not lie. I recalled this curious concept of freedom when a student defended complete freedom of speech except for hate speech—and hate speech included anything he disagreed with. Whatever did not seem hateful was actually a “dog-whistle.”
I'm proofing a collection of arguments between Roger Williams and Cotton Mather from the early 17th century. Williams asserts that it's wrong to force a man's conscience. Mather replies serenely that he agrees, unless the erring citizen persists in error after repeated expostulations, at which point he is sinning against his own conscience and is fair game for torture and murder.

The eternal task of civilization is to find a way to honor other people's freedom without signing one's own death warrant. Lenin wasn't interested in any of that. As Maxim Gorky quipped, "Lenin 'in general' loved people but . . . his love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred." He much preferred dead people to free ones, not just because they were safer but because they weren't entirely under his thumb:  because they were not himself. It's as if he were literally Milton's Satan. And he, of course, is what lies ahead for us whenever we can't bear making room in the world for anything but ourselves.
Recently Attorney General William Barr asked how his critics would have reacted had the FBI secretly interfered with the Obama campaign: “What if the shoe were on the other foot?” From a Leninist perspective, this question demonstrates befuddlement. In his book Terrorism and Communism, Trotsky imagines “the high priests of liberalism” asking how Bolshevik use of arbitrary power differs from tsarist practices. Trotsky sneers:
You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain it to you. The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. . . . Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals . . . . Do you grasp this—distinction? For us Communists it is quite sufficient.
What is reprehensible for them is proper for us, and that’s all there is to it. For a Leninist, the shoe is never on the other foot because he has no other foot.

4 comments:

  1. I guess we run on the same path- I just got done reading his essay. Ties in perfectly with this- https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/9/how-the-great-truth-dawned
    There is a clue there why it seems impossible to reason with a leftist, even those who do not openly avow a Marxist-leninist
    view- and another clue as to why even the smallest deviation from the dogma is grounds for expulsion. A commenter on Chicago boyz remarked on his test- to ask a leftist to offer some small difference to his comrades, and see how the resulting treatment altered his view of them, and himself. Apparently none took up his advice. It is not what is done, it is whether it is the flavor of the day, and who does it. Who, whom.

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  2. raven1:20 AM

    The comment on Chicago boyz, referred to above, was by
    Assistant Village Idiot.

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  3. ymarsakar10:55 PM

    It's as if he were literally Milton's Satan.

    No, but they serve the same master: the Ego self.

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  4. ymarsakar11:02 PM

    https://tarbaby.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/

    This is still the best deep research into the Bolshevism issue, using primary Russian sources that probably were only "translated" into English by American Russian "researchers" who were mostly Marxist as well.

    Even if you read all the articles there, it won't make much sense. There's a Western block, due to public indoctrination.

    What it basically spells out is that Satan doesn't care who you think you are, he has access to every single human and thus every single human organization. And the point is not to build up kingdoms, but to make humanity suffer. Take their loves away and fill it with fear and hatred.

    That's it. No more is needed, for Satan's job is to test you, as in Job. Love and high wisdom is all nice and good, when you well fed and safe, mortal. Let us see how you will behave when things turn otherwise. But that's not why humans keep perpetuating evil. They do so thinking it is a good thing, heh.

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