[ExI] Upon pondering your freedoms: _The Soviet Story_documentary

[Lee Corbin]

Spike writes concerning Amara's great post to all "freedom-loving folks"
that she wrote on Friday, July 04, 2008 10:09 AM:

>> http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4217790/The.Soviet.Story%5BDivX.20
>> 08.Eng%5D
> ...
>> Amara
> 
> Thanks for the link Amara!

Well, yes, that too.  But Amara's original essay is the thing to take
especial note of! 

Please pardon me for committing the solecism of quoting almost Amara's
entire post:

    For some years I have used F.A. Hayek's 1930's _Road to Serfdom_ as a
    kind of map with guideposts to demonstrate how particular actions and
    propaganda by an unnamed large modern nation's federal government was
    building, piece-by-piece, the Total State. Just as those same actions
    and words 70 years ago at a faster pace, and more brutally, built
    Fascist States and Communist States. Hayek explained in exquisite
    philosophical detail that the two, Fascism and Communism, were, in fact,
    just two sides of the same coin.

    Such a correspondence was easy for me to see, when my family
    historically experienced both systems, over the same piece of land, with
    the same results. We were split, half was sent in a cattle car to
    Siberia and survived but barred behind the Iron Curtain, the other half
    escaped as a refuge and then started over with a new life in a new
    country. Still, for me, as a child of a Baltic refugee, the horror of
    the Communist and Nazi experiments was mostly abstract.

    Then, last night, upon my distant, abstract, philosophical landscape,
    the documentary called _The Soviet Story_ landed. This two hour
    documentary made by mostly Latvians is making some waves in the Baltic
    countries and in the EU Parliament now. It is not just a simple
    historical film of all of the nasty things that Stalin did. It makes
    glaringly convincing connections of the collusion of activities between
    Hitler and Stalin to build a 'new world' and a 'new man' before and
    during WWII and by Stalin after WWII

    It has been some decades since I've seen film footage resembling what I
    saw last night. When I was about eight, living in Honolulu, my parents
    brought my sisters and I to a small gathering of a few dozen people
    meeting in a small, dark, windowless room, to view a film of WWII, as it
    was experienced by the Baltic people. I remember seeing scenes of
    torture and seeing mass graves and I remember my father telling me that
    one could identify who was in that mass grave by just their clothes; the
    Latvian men owned one good suit. One might think that a 1.5 hour event
    seen almost forty years ago as an eight year old would be quickly
    forgotten, but those images have remained with me. I predict that the
    scenes from _The Soviet Story_ will stay with you. It's rare for the
    world to see actual film footage of the atrocities committed by Stalin,
    but the film-maker had access to archives, that were never viewed by
    a wide audience. And if you didn't get the message seeing that scene
    once, then the film-maker made sure that you would get the message when
    that scene was repeated in front of your screaming conscious mind a few
    more times. This is a hard-hitting film.

    And thought provoking. And a graphic application of the philosophical
    principles involved when building a Total State, such as the
    extermination of races and classes, which included principles to build a
    'new man' and a 'new society'. Of the latter points, I think that the
    transhumanists would benefit from viewing the documentary, to understand
    the criticism one occasionally hears when they talk about becoming
    better humans. The difference is that transhumanists want to be 'better'
    humans by their personal free choices and their diversity. The Nazi and
    Communist experiments were as far from individual choices as life and
    death.

    The new aspect for me in this film was not only the remarkably identical
    propaganda tools and brutal actions of the two systems, but also of the
    many close agreements and meetings between Hitler and Stalin and their
    colleagues. The famous Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement that split Europe
    between the Soviets and the Nazis was not an isolated agreement, there
    were many others that planned strategies for who was to get what, where,
    how and when. Moreover, the Soviets were experts at mass extermination
    before Stalin and Hitler met, and they continued to be experts at mass
    extermination after Hitler was gone. They were performing experiments on
    humans before, during, and after WWII and used the same experiment and
    death chamber facilities as the Nazis used after Hitler was gone too. So
    why is it that out of World War II, the only war crimes that were put on
    trial were committed by the Germans? Why was/is it a European policy
    that a WWII crime _must_ have been committed by a German?

There are two reasons, let's be blunt.  The first one was as someone
mentioned: the victors hold the trials and write the history. But truth
be told, the second reason is that making hay about WWII crimes
not committed by Germans would not advance the cause of Jewish
solidarity, and tend (illogically, of course) to diminish by contrast
their own enormous and catastrophic sufferings inflicted upon them
by the Nazis.

(There is one subsidiary reason:  during the cold war, and even after
when it would serve no realpolitik purpose to offend an existing
powerful nation, criticism of Russian and Soviet and Japanese
transgressions can only be undertaken by purists of the Ronald Reagan
caliber, who often don't mind denouncing evil no matter how strong
it is and who it offends (though many would retort "not often enough")).

    Many of those Soviets responsible for the mass exterminations are
    still alive, protected by Putin today.

And so to the Japanese. (And what about North Vietnamese atrocities
in the war, and the incredible Mao Zedong holocausts of 1959 and
1967?  Who criticizes those still alive who participated?)

Though I have to confess that I am of a forgiving disposition. Do we
really need to *prosecute* anyone for crimes that took place over
sixty years ago in a completely different world from ours today? 
But that  ABSOLUTELY  should not prevent us or anyone from
loudly and frequently reminding the world of those crimes.

    <snip>

    So on this day of pondering your freedoms, I offer this perspective
    of where humans have been, where humans might be going, and what truths
    can humans accept today, in order to help you place the value of your
    freedoms.

    Amara

Lee