penmachine.comments (all fields optional!)
There was a photoshop theme on Fark, or a photoshop phriday on Something Awful a few years ago that had old propaganda posters with new sayings on them... I saved a few of them because they were side splittingly funny.
The most memorable one was a Chinese Propaganda one for some sort of vaccination. The subject had just received his shot, but the photoshop edit put a tattoo on his arm that said I LOVE COCK and the slogan was "It's a tattoo of those cool new western characters. Chicks are gonna love it" :)
There's a brilliant one-liner from Slavoj Zizek (who, like me, comes down on the other side of this debate as you): "You can make Goodbye Lenin!, but Goodbye Hitler! is unthinkable."
Zizek's article was a response to the equation of the swastika to the hammer and sickle in a European parliamentary debate. It's a nice short piece and makes the important point that you have to take sides, because if you don't you almost inevitably end up apologizing for fascism as a "response" to Soviet Communism.
I have a couple of Soviet-era propaganda posters I bought in a back-alley market a few years ago. I think part of the attraction is their overall positive outlook - "see how good we are" - vs the negative aspects of the Nazi posters - "see how bad they are". Maybe I am attempting to justify my fascination with the aesthetics of the Soviet and Maoist posters, but you have caused me to pay closer attention to it. Thank you.
I've certainly always been fascinated with Soviet Realist art, as an art form. The industrialism/productivity as beauty aspect. I'm certainly guilty of appropriating it - I use realist art on my site. I don't know if it makes it better, but I at one time considered myself a communist. As I've gotten older my views have mellowed somewhat, but I still lean left. Myself, and many others I know are quick to distinguish between Stalinsim, Maoism and "communism", in its pure, theoretical form. And I've certainly had to defend my use of it - I've even lost an American client who found my homepage, and refused to have a "communist sympathizer" work for him.
As to why Soviet art seems ok, and Nazi art doesn't, I think that as a lot to do with the political legacies of each: Nazis were never "our friends". They were always the enemy, then they were defeated and were gone, only ever having been bad. Additionally, Nazism only ever had one leader - so all we know of it is Hitler's form. But from the moment Kruschev took over in the USSR, things started to change. And with near-misses like the Cuban Missile Crisis, Western leaders and Russian leaders were forced to relate to each other, and not have a simple-minded approach to each other. The same is true of communist China - we started a dialogue with them. Anyone who you can have a long dialogue with becomes much harder to view as "pure evil", like we can with Hitler/Nazi Germany. This allowed to slowly, gradually, find some of the positives in the opposing world view, and allow both sides to relegate the extremes as abberations, rather than the norm.
(On a total aside, nice to find another Vancouverite's site!)
Imagery of all three, as well as Rebel flag imagery, should inspire the same level of revulsion in civilized society. Why they don't is simply a matter of marketing.
In America, we've all been taught that WWII was kicked off by Hitler to eliminate the Jews. Dozens, if not hundreds of movies have been made about that aspect of the war. Who knows how many television references and printed articles/books replicate that view. The point is, society has, correctly or incorrectly (and I say correctly) been taught that the abuse and elimination of Jewish people at the hands of Hitler was wrong.
On the other hand, how many times have we heard about similar crimes against other classes of people by Russia and China? Comparatively, I'd guess the ratio is probably 10,000 to 1, meaning that for every 10,000 times we hear something negative about WWII Germany, we hear something similar about Stalin's rule. If you add in the disparate coverage of the Israel/Palestinian conflict compared to other injustices currently going on in the world, we have a heightened sense of sensitivity to injustices committed against the Jewish population.
Therefore, we (civilized society) has an automatic repulsion to anything that approaches an affinity to Hitler's Germany, but a much lesser repulsion, if any at all, regarding Stalin or Mao. And with the ongoing debate regarding calling rebel imagery "Southern heritage", many people don't have a negative opinion about that at all.
Again, I'm not saying we "should" feel more revulsion for one over the other. I feel all should be considered equally repulsive. But the fact that society doesn't proves society as a whole doesn't agree.
I don't know, but maybe because the US went to war with Nazi Germany but not with Stalinist Russia? I know we were at "war" with the People's Republic in the early 50's, but that was during the generally-forgotten Korean War.
Why Soviet propaganda artwork seems OK to Americans and Western Europeans while similar Nazi art is a taboo?
Because the atrocities carried out by the Soviets were never fully shown to the Western peoples in any meaningful way - and the German ones were shown and discussed perhaps too many times.
And, perhaps, because the Germans picked the wrong guys to mess with when deciding to target the Jews - while Soviets knew better, and actually enlisted a certain number of Jews to help exterminate other nationalities in the countries occupied by Soviet Russia. That's a sad part of history that nobody wants to remember.
Lithuania, my home country, lost over 780,000 people during the 1940-1954 part of the Soviet occupation alone (of some 2.9m residents - that is nearly 25%). It is estimated that between 150,000 and 300,000 of that number (or up to 12% of the total Lithuanian population) were killed or deported to Siberia, which meant quick death 'for natural reasons' for many.
It is also a sad truth that the Nazis, with assistance from quite some Lithuanians, killed some 190,000 Jews in Lithuania alone.
Every week one can read reports in the international press about Nazi hunters uncovering yet another German or even Lithuanian criminal charged with participating in killing Jews on behalf of the Nazi regime.
How many times have you read reports about a Russian (or even a Jew) charged with killing or deporting Lithuanians (or Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, etc.) on behalf of the Soviet regime?
Thought so. That's my point.
And yeah, I reserve the right to bloody the nose of every person sporting a red t-shirt with a hammer and sickle emblem - in the memory of all the nations crippled by Soviet Russia - just as the Westerners are keen to do the same to anyone wearing a shirt with Nazi symbols. Not that I have any patience with Nazis - but Soviets and Nazis were the same breed in terms of damage done to peoples of the world.
That's true, K Welch. I think that may partially explain why the anti-Hitler marketing machine is stronger than the anti-communist machine. But I think there's more to it than just that.
For instance, you can open any newspaper in any American city every day and see at least one article that discusses the Israel-Palestine situation. However, there are other, more violent, more deadly situations in the world that get scant coverage. Let's take the war in the African Congo, where over 4,000,000 people have been killed in the past few years. That's many times the number killed than in the entire decades-long history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, yet the news coverage is less. I feel that sort of heightened coverage leads to a heightened sensitivity in society at large to anti-Jewish imagery.
That's why a Stalin t-shirt can be sold as a quaint reminder of something many people don't know much about, but a swastika t-shirt would be viewed as a symbol of hate and oppression.
Here's my theory: Socialism and Communism, even the despicable Stalinist and Maoist varieties, are associated with objectives with which most people broadly agree with like economic equality, peace justice, etc. Of course, they never came close to achieving any of that, and probably were never even meant to, but in the iconic representations (Che t-shirts, socialist realist art) they have the aura of good intentions.
The things that Hitler and Nazism, on the other hand, sought to achieve are seen as (and in fact are) fundamentally evil - racism, genocide, oppression. So instead of the aura of good intentions gone bad, there's just bad intentions, and no one wants that on their t-shirt.
Which on re-read is pretty much what Charles Taylor said in the Amis review.
I think the point is being missed a bit. Hitler's goal was to unify Germany and make it a great country. Removing the Jewish population was his unfortunate, ill-fated means to a goal, not the goal itself.
Think of it like this: the primary goal of American slave owners was to be prosperous, not subject Africans to a life of systemic violence, torture, and oppression. It just so happened that having a pool of free labor was their idea of becoming prosperous. Similarly, Hitler used anti-Jewish rhetoric to unify Germany.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/c...pa/
posters2.htm
Here is a link of Nazi propaganda posters. Some of them are very similar to the poster displayed beside Derek's post. Many of the posters don't include a swastika.
The Nazi regime was a terrible period, but let's not kid ourselves that it was any more terrible for those it oppressed than Stalin's or Mao's regimes.
This a great conversation. Thank you, everyone. I've learned a lot, and I'm glad I asked the question, even if none of us seems to know just what the answers really are.
I don't think that Hitler's goal was solely to rid the world of Jews. After all, National Socialism was a form of socialism, perhaps we could call it "communist lite."
Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for all of Germany's problems while Stalin used capitalists and the ruling class. The similarities between the two demonized groups are very strong.
I suspect the real reason here is the photographic imagery and stories we have of Nazi Germany. If we had a clear picture of what happened in Russia or China it might be different. We certainly have a good picture of what Pol Pot did in Cambodia, and I must say it sure stands right next to Hitler in my mind.
I want to make a couple of disparate points. From an ex-communist citizen.
1. Sry, I will be revisionist and say that Nazism`s theory from 30s makes quite alot of sense. Once I read a couple of articles and found that I quite like it (sry). Note that the anti-jewish perversion came somewhat later and is not necesarily part of "pure" nazism just as Stalin`s repressions are not part of "pure" communism. In fact in the early speeches on racism, there was no hint on races being unequal, there was however strong emphasis that they are different and they should stay so and not mix, each one elaborating on its qualities (obviously this could later easily shift to claiming supremacy for arian race). Nazi theory will still be unacceptable to the liberal today because it is heavily based on evolutionist ideas and conscious "survival of the fittest". The aim is to build a society of "best" or "heroes" - quite an appealing ideal in a historical moment with suitable mmm, Zeitgeist.
So I think good theory/bad practice is inconsistent argument about Nazism/Communism. (also people so often wonder why Germans voted Hitler in 30s, were they evil or stupid, etc. I hope this explains a bit. I probably would have voted for him too.)
2. I was recently to Ukraine and there Nazi marches were on sale on cd stalls. Also throughout Eastern Europe including my own country Bulgaria (i cannot remember about Poland & Czech, but for me these countries are Central Europe anyway) books about the war from german generals and also Mein Kampf are freely published and sold everywhere (and that is the countries, which unlike USA most suffered from Nazi occupation). In Ukraine I also saw people kissing with veneration the Soviet flag, and of course everywhere there are many (older) who talk with nostalgia about socialist times. But also note there are many differences between countries depending on their individual histories. For example Poland, Czech and Baltics are on average not only ultra-anti-soviet but also anti-russian. Other nations are much more divided.
3. When I came to UK first time I also felt bad (and surprised) when I saw people wearing CCCP and sickle`n`hammer t-shirts. Mind you I do not have any negative feelings to the old system such as the lithuanian poster above. However, I felt that these morons were joyfully wearing symbols of a world they have completely no idea about. In this way they were simultaneously disrespectful to millions of people who put their highest ideals, hopes, sweat and bones in creating one better world, to the millions of people who became victims of its terror, and other millions of people like me and most east-europeans living today whose fate wasnt so dramatic but who grew up with this world.
If I was of more aggressive disposition I`d join the lithuanian user in bloodying noses despite our differing attitudes toward Soviet Russia. :)
If one comes from ex-communist country (and is not too young
[hmm it cut my post in half?]
If one comes from ex-communist country (and is not too young) I`d allow him to wear such t-shirts be it to ridicule USSR or to claim his loyalty to it. In any case I feel he has as a sense about some part of an associated tragedy. But not an american!
3. However because people from Eastern bloc are still alive and around today they can as well as protest againt t-shirts also disperse the black&white image about their past. Soviet life was not Stalin, it was all of us. Only for that reason it cannot be all bad.
Nazism was defeated quickly and severely. Had it not been put down so radically its survivors could have made "Good bye, Hitler!". They would be quiet about the jews issue of course.
gosh, i wrote so much i forgot what was more in my list, lol :)
sry for long post
Nikola of Bulgaria (temporarily UK)
Of course the eugenics arguments used to support Nazi racial difference also reflect fundamental misunderstandings of the mechanisms of evolution too.
Even if they were correct, arguments that "it works that way in nature" don't follow through to moral or political issues in human societies anyway.
viva españaaaaaa
"Myself, and many others I know are quick to distinguish between Stalinsim, Maoism and "communism", in its pure, theoretical form"
But communism in its pure, theoretical form is inevitably oppressive and brutal, far beyond facism. Facism aims to control everyone politically, while communism's goal is complete control over all economic as well as political activity.
There's no logical way to have a communist system that doesn't deteriorate into bloodshed, repression, and of course poverty. The threat of bloodshed can be used to reduce the inherent free rider problem and thus slow the drift into poverty, but not by much.
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