Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

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Tag: Atrocity

  • Communist Manifesto vs Mein Kampf

    Communist Manifesto vs Mein Kampf

    In today’s Guardian, some dear lady says that she gives the Communist Manifesto out as a gift.  Presumably to young nieces and nephews, to educate them in the ways of righteousness.

    In the comments section I suggested she may just as well as hand out copies of Mein Kampf.

    Unsurprisingly (we are talking the Guardian after all!) my comment created an uproar for and against and ended up by getting deleted.

    The Communist Manifesto calls for “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”.  The ideas of Engels and Marx have brought more death and misery on the world than any other barbarity in history. Communism with a small c was advocated by the historical Jesus but it may be noted by the more canny amongst us that poor old JC did not suggest armed revolt or the brutal death of untold millions.

    I am all for a better and fairer society, achieved slowly and using democratic and peaceable means.  The communist manifesto ushered in a dystopia of gargantuan and horrific proportions, dwarfing the evil works of Hitler, another 20th Century madman, in terms of eventual body count.

    The communist manifesto promotes the slaughter of the wealthy, the capitalists and the bourgeois – and didn’t they do well? From Stalin and the Kulaks, to Mao and the intellectuals. From Pol Pot to the despots of Eastern Europe. Mass slaughter in the name of communism, which equated not to a better world for all, but a life of luxury and power for a political class who committed every evil known to man and were the equal of every awful tyrant humanity has ever known.

    And we are still suffering from the aftermath, with Mr Putin and his cronies carrying on the great example of his forebears.

    No excuse can be made for Hitler and Mein Kampf. A hideous, barbaric book and a hideous, twisted, vile, evil human being.

    But I consider the Communist Manifesto of a work of evil as shocking as that of Mein Kampf.  To promote revolution and death is an atrocity. Hitler both promoted and carried out atrocity. Marx and Engels may not themselves have committed atrocity but they were certainly responsible for it.

  • Why are we forgetting the deaths of 100 million in the Spanish Flu outbreak?

    Why are we forgetting the deaths of 100 million in the Spanish Flu outbreak?

    The death of 100 million people in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 was a tragic event but I would argue we are right in remembering deaths from human atrocities in preference to natural disaster.

    Martin Kettle writes a good article and I understand where he is coming from.  I just feel that if we are to improve as a species we must concentrate on our own behaviour because we are slowly managing to combat natural disasters through science.

    We are making no such progress on combating the atrocities perpetrated by our evolutionary instincts.  Yes, I care that 100 million people died in the 1918 flu pandemic and yes perhaps it is curious that less has been written on it than the Black Death which presumably killed rather fewer. But at least natural disaster is no one’s fault. Human bestiality is.

    The Black Death was sad. So was the Irish Potato Famine. So was the great flu epidemic. But those are issues we are addressing through science, thankfully. War, brutality, greed is not being addressed nearly so well. Without improvement in behaviour Pol Pot and his like will continue through eternity.  That is why I argue we should give prominence in attention to human created evil over natural disaster. We need to improve ourselves if we want to prevent “killing fields”. Scientific progress is wonderful but unless we reflect on our behaviour it will be of little avail to us.

    I guess my view is also that while any sort of premature death is horrible, I would rather die from natural causes than at the hands of human hatred and stupidity. I can live with the godless hell of an uncaring universe but I find human evil somewhat harder to stomach than blind and dumb evolution such as the flu virus.

    It is the “intent” of a Pol Pot and the lack of any “intent” in a flu epidemic which interests me. As Martin Kettle rightly points out, 100m deaths from flu is a terrible thing. But somehow I find the fact that no one intended it, no one caused it makes it less of a cause for note. But perhaps his point is right: after all much has been written on the black death, rather less on Spanish flu which caused a far greater death toll. Mere musing on my part as ever. The struggle to grapple for meaning in chaos.