I don’t normally consider people that use anti-communist pejoratives like “tankie” to be genuine in their leftism. Especially those that try to pretend works of fiction are genuine evidence against socialism.
When someone claims to be a leftist but starts attacking socialism with literal works of fiction, and calls those that point that out anti-communist pejoratives like “tankie,” I doubt their sincerity. The meme is true in this instance, in the sense that I as a communist don’t really see what’s “left” about anti-communism.
Sure, by giving a work of fiction as evidence, and calling us “tankies” for providing evidence of that fact along with actual historical texts like Russian Justice. When you wilfully replicate Red Scare propaganda even in the face of evidence to the contrary, you are doing the work of anti-communists, hence why any personal feelings you may have towards leftism are secondary to your willful participation in demonizing socialism.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was an anti-semitic Nazi sympathizer, and was arrested as such. His fiction is based on the folklore of the gulag system, and archival evidence and historical texts paint a much clearer picture of the soviet prison system. He’s essentially Yeonmi Park but for the USSR.
From an excellent thread going over his many ideological failings:
In his 2003 book, Two Hundred Years Together, he wrote that “from 20 ministers in the first Soviet government one was Russian, one Georgian, one Armenian and 17 Jews”. In reality, there were 15 Commissars in the first Soviet government, not 20: 11 Russians, 2 Ukrainians, 1 Pole, and only 1 Jew. He stated: “I had to bury many comrades at the front, but not once did I have to bury a Jew”. He also stated that according to his personal experience, Jews had a much easier life in the Gulag camps that he was interned in.
According to the Northwestern University historian Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern: Solzhenitsyn used unreliable and manipulated figures and ignored both evidence unfavorable to his own point of view and numerous publications of reputable authors in Jewish history. He claimed that Jews promoted alcoholism among the peasantry, flooded the retail trade with contraband, and “strangled” the Russian merchant class in Moscow. He called Jews non-producing people (“непроизводительный народ”) who refused to engage in factory labor. He said they were averse to agriculture and unwilling to till the land either in Russia, in Argentina, or in Palestine, and he blamed the Jews’ own behavior for pogroms. He also claimed that Jews used Kabbalah to tempt Russians into heresy, seduced Russians with rationalism and fashion, provoked sectarianism and weakened the financial system, committed murders on the orders of qahal authorities, and exerted undue influence on the prerevolutionary government. Petrovsky-Shtern concludes that, “200 Years Together is destined to take a place of honor in the canon of russophone antisemitica.”
His ex-wife outright called it fictional, he was a known liar and conspiracy theorist, and archival evidence of the soviet prison system contradicts his personal accounts. Do you agree with him about his anti-semitic conspiracy theories, or do you think that he’s a selectively honest person with a reliable account of socialism, but completely opposite adherance to the truth otherwise? I’m not sure how much more evidence you need beyond knowing that one anti-semitic Nazi-sympathizer’s personal account, whose own wife at the time of writing claimed is fictional, is more trustworthy than historical evidence.
I don’t normally consider people that use anti-communist pejoratives like “tankie” to be genuine in their leftism. Especially those that try to pretend works of fiction are genuine evidence against socialism.
Lol, you’re confirming the meme.
When someone claims to be a leftist but starts attacking socialism with literal works of fiction, and calls those that point that out anti-communist pejoratives like “tankie,” I doubt their sincerity. The meme is true in this instance, in the sense that I as a communist don’t really see what’s “left” about anti-communism.
I started by saying that not all victims of communism were Nazis.
Nobody ever said that they‘re all Nazis, not even the meme.
Also, you started by citing fiction to make a point using whataboutism.
You are not a sincere person.
OPs meme conceals all the suffering of the other victims.
Sure, by giving a work of fiction as evidence, and calling us “tankies” for providing evidence of that fact along with actual historical texts like Russian Justice. When you wilfully replicate Red Scare propaganda even in the face of evidence to the contrary, you are doing the work of anti-communists, hence why any personal feelings you may have towards leftism are secondary to your willful participation in demonizing socialism.
What sources are there that the book is fictional, other than his ex-wife?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was an anti-semitic Nazi sympathizer, and was arrested as such. His fiction is based on the folklore of the gulag system, and archival evidence and historical texts paint a much clearer picture of the soviet prison system. He’s essentially Yeonmi Park but for the USSR.
Here’s a real quote:
>The German army could have liberated the Soviet Union from Communism but Hit1er was stupid and did not use this weapon.
From an excellent thread going over his many ideological failings:
I asked for sources that the Gulag book is fiction.
His ex-wife outright called it fictional, he was a known liar and conspiracy theorist, and archival evidence of the soviet prison system contradicts his personal accounts. Do you agree with him about his anti-semitic conspiracy theories, or do you think that he’s a selectively honest person with a reliable account of socialism, but completely opposite adherance to the truth otherwise? I’m not sure how much more evidence you need beyond knowing that one anti-semitic Nazi-sympathizer’s personal account, whose own wife at the time of writing claimed is fictional, is more trustworthy than historical evidence.