From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.soviet,soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Robert Conquest's _The Great Terror_
Date: 26 Jan 93 07:06:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1993Jan26.020636.19798
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <kosinov.727990521@ceg.uiuc.edu> 
kosinov@ceg.uiuc.edu (Greg Kosinovsky) writes:

>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <kosinov.727641619@ceg.uiuc.edu> 
>>kosinov@ceg.uiuc.edu (Greg Kosinovsky) writes:

>>>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

GK:
>>> My point , obvious to any intellegent person, is that there is no reason
>>>to argue about horrors of War Communism with someone who doesn't believe
>>>that political terror "necessarily abrogates human RIGHTS".

MZ:
>>Mr Kosinovsky, I have no idea as to what might have led you to conclude
>>that I had any interest whatsoever to argue about the horrors of War
>>Communism... 

GK:
> Mr.Zeleny, it may be hard for you to comprehend, but claiming, as you did,
>that practice and rational of War Communism was very similar to that of death
>penalty in the United States is a very queer way of avoiding argument on this
>issue.

Very well, Mr Kosinovsky, if you wish an argument, you may have it.  I
hereby assert that the practice and the rationale of War Communism is
exactly parallel to the practice and the rationale of the death penalty,
as inflicted by the government of the United States upon several hundred
thousand Iraqi civilians during the Gulf War, modulo the substitution of
foreign enemies of the New World Order for the domestic allies of the
old regime.

MZ:
>>The regime of Nikita Khruschev fell in October of 1964.  Before that,
>>the regime of Stalin and his heirs fell in June of 1957.  I refer you
>>to the text by Carl A. Linden, _Khruschev and the Soviet Leadership_,
>>should these dates fall too far outside of the circle of your
>>historical expertise.  Now, what was that idiocy about authoritarian
>>regimes being distinguished from the totalitarian ones by their
>>tendency to fall?

GK:
> Mr.Zeleny, apperantly, doesn't know the difference between a fall of the
>regime and either succession or a turnover at the top of an established regime.
>Stalin's death marked a transition to a more stable form of Communist
>totalitarianism, which was still more oppressive and intrusive than someone
>like Samosa or Pinochet at their worst. The demise of Mr.Khruschev was a non-event
>as far as both Soviet foreign and domestic policy are concerned.
> Neither event threatened the hegemony of the Communist power.

Mr Kosinovsky, you have no idea whereof you speak.  Go read the Linden
book, and ask your elders about things that happened before your own
tome.  Just one hint: the fall of Khruschev was caused by the Cuban
missile fiasco, which had lasting effects on the foreign policy of his
successors; as for the differences in domestic policy, I suggest that
you ask some keener compatriot of yours the meaning of the term
`zastoy'.

MZ:
>>A couple of observations are in order.  Ms Kirkpatrick, who, like
>>William Bennett, Jean-Fran\c{c}ois Revel, and Paul Johnson, -- and quite
>>unlike Raymond Aron, and, to a lesser extent, Richard Pipes, -- is *not*
>>regarded as a reputable scholar, blithely asserted in her famous
>>_Commentary_ essay, that the right-wing "authoritarian" regimes allied
>>with the West, were distinct from, and to be preferred to, left-wing
>>"totalitarian" regimes, mainly because of their alleged propensity for
>>incremental democratization.  Not surprisingly, the main piece of
>>evidence adduced in favor of this disposition, was the (definitionally
>>true) enmity of the former to (definitionally "totalitarian") communist
>>influence of the latter.  (Can you say _petitio principii_?) 

GK:
> Clearly, Zeleny is unable to follow direct logic.
> In the Commentary article he refers to above, Kirkpatrik makes a fundamental 
>distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes based on the two
>principals I mentioned before (the relative non-intrusiveness and the relative 
>instability of the authoritarian regimes relative to the totalitarian ones).
>As a matter of relevant US policy, she also brought up the "enimy of my enimy is 
>my friend" point. However, that was just an obvious statement from Real Politik 101.
>It was clearly not used as evidence of authoritarian regimes' "alleged propensity
>for incremental democratization".

Read the article, Mr K.  And go find me three political scientists, as
distinguished from political functionaries, who are able to sustain the
said distinction with a straight face.  You might try looking in the
same nefarious slime pits of scholarship that produced the fabled
"trickle-down" economic theory.

MZ:
>>Upon becoming a prominent mouthpiece for the unlamented Reagan
>>administration, Mrs. Kirkpatrick, along with her colleagues, and in
>>accordance with her 1979 credo, resolutely abandoned the use of the term
>>`totalitarian' to characterize the tyrannical political allies of the
>>U.S. (which unsurprisingly tended to belong to the rightist variety of
>>totalitarianism, as defined by Karl Popper and Hannah Arendt), and at
>>the same time extended it to cover the "communist totalitarian state" of
>>Nicaragua.

GK:
>1)Could Mr.Zeleny specify which "tyranical political allies of the U.S." was Mrs.
>Kirkpatrick guilty of whitewashing?

Why limit yourself to the misdeeds of Ms K?  Try, in order: El Salvador,
Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and so on.

GK:
>2)The example of Nicaragua which, according to Mr.Zeleny was unfairly branded a
>"communist totalitarian state" is instructive indeed.
> "Samosa the third", who ruled until 1979 Revolution, was your basic third world
>dictator, who stole everything in sight, but tended to leave everyone who didn't cross
>his path alone. And it was fairly easy not to cross his path, considering that all
>military, border patrol, and police functions in Nicaragua were exercised by approximately
>8000 National Guardsmen.
> What's more, a large degree of dissent was allowed, as the nation's largest daily,
>La Prensa, and its patrician Chamorro family continually blasted the regime. The
>(still unresolved) murder of their head, Pedro Juaquine Chamorro Cardenal, was attributed
>to Samosa, and triggered a catachism. Majority of educated people turned revolutionary
>and most decided to join forces with heretofor obscure communist rebellion, whose
>leaders appropriated the name of a known anti-communist, Augusto Cesar Sandino.
> With critical help from Carter Administration, Samosa was toppled in about a year.
>What followed is a most classic contemporary example of how a communist clique usurps 
>power from within a broad revolutionary coalition. By 1981 it was obvious that Sandinistas
>were in full control.
> By 1982 Orwellian Neighbourhood Citizens' Committees were fully in place. They were
>responsible for monitoring the daily lives of every individual. Food ration cards were
>instituted solely for control purpose, and were distributed by the above mentioned
>Committees upon certification of "good citizenship". There was no shortage of food
>in the country, but controlling the distribution of food was undersood to be the surest
>means of Total Control.
> The Minister of Interior Tomas Borge (one of the original Sandinista founders) and his
>chief of Police, appropriately named Lenin Cerna, ran the terror apparatus that could have
>put Dzerzhinsky to shame. One telling indicator is that by 1983 the number of prisoners
>increased by more than an order of magnitude from Samosa's high of around 1000.
>
> That Jean Kirkpatrick, how dare she slander the Sandinistas !!!

Spare Aunt Sally, Mr K.  Ms K stands charged with gratuitously
distinguishing one pack of tyrannical arseholes from another, based on a
ludicrous distinction between right-wing, or benignly "authoritarian"
dictatorship, from a left wing, or noxiously "totalitarian" one, with an
express purpose of aiding and abetting the former, and obliterating the
latter.  Like in the above example of the Gulf War and War Communism,
the only reason for so doing is the _Raison d'Etat_; everything else is
a pack of lies.

MZ:
>>>>>>... To be sure, your mention of Raymond
>>>>>>Aron appears rather incongruous in this squalid and venal confederacy
>>>>>>of brain-dead dufuses; but then it could be conjecturally discounted
>>>>>>on the basis of your misspelling of his name, and plausibly attributed
>>>>>>to your pillaging of the "intellectual" authority list of some
>>>>>>outdated GOP "cultural elite" denunciation, complete with the
>>>>>>incongruous token Jew, included to anticipate the well-justified
>>>>>>charges of code-worded antisemitism.

GK:
>>>>> The reason I misspelled Aron's name, is that it's been quite a while since
>>>>>I read In Defence of The Decadent Europe. However, you must not have 
>>>>>read it at all, for this book is a ringing indictment of socialist (and even
>>>>>liberal) intellectuals.

MZ:
>>>>Mr Kosinovsky, I hereby direct your attention to the trivial fact of
>>>>intellectual communication, that one may hold the ideas of his
>>>>interlocutor in high esteem, whilst disagreeing with every single one
>>>>of his conclusions.

GK:
>>>  This is beautiful!!! You say that you hold in high esteem a person who you
>>>ADMIT has ideas very similar to the ones for which you derided Pipes, and 
>>>accused him of all evils, including antisemitism.
>>> Mr.Zeleny, you have consistency of Chekhov's Chameleon.

MZ:
>>The salient difference, which I certainly do not expect you to
>>appreciate or even understand, consists in the fact that Mr Pipes'
>>hidden and unargued agenda is articulated and defended by Raymond Aron.

GK:
> What a lame attempt to justify your inconsistent rambling, Mr.Zeleny! As anyone who
>has seen the writings of Pipes an Aron knows, Pipes' writings are historical, while
>Aron's are philosophical in nature. Your own grudging admission above that their
>writings are complementary is an argument in my favor.

Mr K, the sort of explanation practiced by Mr Pipes in the relevant part
of his latest book, is based on the same methodologocal principles,
ultimately dating back to Emile Durkheim, as the work of Raymond Aron.
Thus the distinction between history and philosophy is inapplicable,
insofar as the claims of Mr Pipes are offensive to reason, precisely to
the extent that they purport to transcend the specific circumstances of
his study, and deduce an alleged universal moral truth concerning the
grave evils inherent in the political activities of left-wing
intellectuals.  Of course, Aron says nothing of the sort.  Furthermore,
any complementarity between the two of them is undermined by the fact
that, unlike Mr Pipes, Raymond Aron is politically allied with
liberalism.

GK:
>>>>> As for "the charges of antisemitism", I challenge
>>>>>you to come up with even one (documented) charge of antisemitism levied 
>>>>>against any of the people I sighted by even a single respected public figure.
>>>>>The only charge ever levied against those people was that of "Zionism". If
>>>>>anything, Aron is the least "pro-Semitic" of the lot.

MZ:
>>>>Mr Kosinovsky, a reader unencumbered by your bizarre interpretive
>>>>disability, would hardly need further elucidation in order to
>>>>understand that my charge of antisemitism was specifically levied
>>>>against the GOP promoters of "family values" and denouncers of the
>>>>"cultural elite".  Substantiation of these charges is left as a
>>>>trivial exercise for the reader.

GK:
>>> Mr.Zeleny, you originally clamed that I used a "Jewish name" of Aron
>>>in order to diffuse "deserved charges of antisemitism" for sighting
>>>a group that, in addition to Aron, included Johnson, Revel, Bennet, and
>>>Kirkpatrick. I understand that it was an idiotic statement, but the proper
>>>thing to do was to refrain from making it in the first place, not to deny it now.

MZ:
>>Mr Kosinovsky, I originally claimed that your GOP masterminds, such as
>>they may be, were probably responsible for your little roster, insofar
>>as you obviously are far too too stupid to be capable of any subterfuge,
>>just as you are evidently unable to appreciate irony.  If you feel that
>>I am misrepresenting my words, feel free to offer quotations.

GK:
> You want a quote? Here is a good one reprinted straight from above, with all referrals:
> "

MZ:
>>>>>>... To be sure, your mention of Raymond
>>>>>>Aron appears rather incongruous in this squalid and venal confederacy
>>>>>>of brain-dead dufuses; but then it could be conjecturally discounted
>>>>>>on the basis of your misspelling of his name, and plausibly attributed
>>>>>>to your pillaging of the "intellectual" authority list of some
>>>>>>outdated GOP "cultural elite" denunciation, complete with the
>>>>>>incongruous token Jew, included to anticipate the well-justified
>>>>>>charges of code-worded antisemitism. 

>						 "

So?  Where in the above passage did I claim that *you* used the "Jewish
name" of Aron "in order to diffuse "deserved charges of antisemitism" "?
You stand charged with cribbing a GOP PR memorandum, and being far too
stupid to realize that in doing so, you automatically adopt the noxious
code-worded variety of antisemitism, characteristic of Jim Baker and his
ilk.  Learn to read, Mr K.

GK:
>>> Now that that's clear, can you make any rational argument for your new charge
>>>that promotion of "family values" and denounciation of "cultural elite" are acts
>>>of anticemitism? (For that matter, are you capable of rational arguments?)

MZ:
>>I direct you to Lewis Lapham's editorial, dedicated to the above
>>questions, in last year's _Harper's_ magazine.  The quotation from
>>official GOP press releases, contained therein, should suffice to
>>substantiate my charges.

GK:
> Considering that I'm not about to look through a full year of Harpers' editorials,
>I'll take your word that there are other idiots, in addition to yourself, who are
>capable of making such ludicrous arguments. I can imagine, however,  how convoluted
>they must be, if you're incapable of summerizing a few of them here.

Make it "not interested", Mr K.  Recall, however, the GOP convention
rhetoric of the "family values", characteristic of a "Christian nation",
being insidiously undermined by "cultural elite".  Sapienti sat.

GK:
>>>>> It is so amusing for me to find out that I and Pipes support Jim Baker,
>>>>>whom Zeleny anonymously quoted above. I hate the man, both ideologically and
>>>>>personally, and I happen to know that so does Pipes.

MZ:
>>>>And yet, Mr Pipes does, and you appear to support the Grand Old Party
>>>>of the selfsame Mr Baker.  How poignantly, predictably odd.

GK:
>>> The Grand Old Party represents millions of Americans, and people like Pipes
>>>(and miself) are now trying to purge it of temporary heavy infiltration by
>>>the likes of Baker and Bush. This however, is only a side point. What's more
>>>important, is yet another example of Zeleny's logic, according to which an 
>>>anti-jewish statement by Jim Baker tarnishes even his OPPONENTS within the party.
>>>By the same logic, everyone who voted for Democrat Clinton is an anti-Semite,
>>>because Jesse Jackson is a Democrat.

MZ:
>>Unlike Mr Baker, Jesse Jackson has no official position in his party.
>>This, however, is only a side point. What's more important, is yet
>>another example of your Stalinist logic, evidenced in your trenchant
>>allusion to the attempted GOP purge.  More moral ammunition for Hannah
>>Arendt et Cie.

GK:
> Jesse Jackson is a much more important figure in the Democratic Party
>(especially its liberal wing) than Baker is in GOP. Baker's only tie to GOP
>elite is his personal friendship with Bush. Jackson's influence is a lot
>more fundamental.

Observe that my assertion is about a verifiable matter of official
position, not about unofficial, and largely imaginary, influence.

GK:
> As for the "purging", I would like to allay your obvious concerns for the
>personal safety of Messrs Baker and Bush. What I and many others object to is coming
>to power of people who have no philosophy of governance, and whose sole stimulus for
>power is personal ambition.
> I am a Republican because I am conservative, not the other way around.
>George W. Bush became President because he was a "second in command" of a very successful
>and popular President, who put him in that position because he was afraid of loosing
>the Liberal wing of the party to Anderson in '80 elections. The party and the country
>have since paid for this mistake of Reagan (by far his biggest), and many of us are
>determined to put an end to the damage stemming from it.
> I promise you Mr.Zeleny that througout much of your life (and beyond) this country will
>be governed by allies and later deciples of Reagan.

Yeah, sure.  It's not over till the fat lady sings.  Just one question,
Mr K: what makes you think that I give a diddly fuck whether this
country is ruled by the left, or the right wing of the Property Party?

> Greg K.

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:26460 alt.president.clinton:1853