Author Topic: Why Lenin? Why Stalin? Why Hitler?  (Read 20021 times)

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Elisabeth

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Re: Why Lenin? Why Stalin? Why Hitler?
« Reply #30 on: November 23, 2009, 06:48:39 PM »
Klava, welcome to the forum! You raise so many interesting points, it's very hard to know where to begin. You're right, I was talking about democide, as opposed to genocide, in posing my initial question. It's true that democide goes back thousands, probably tens of thousands of years, if we are to trust archaeologists, who have in recent decades uncovered evidence that the inhabitants of entire villages were wiped out and buried in mass graves by other peoples, who were apparently seeking to take over their land.

I had an anthropology professor in college, actually, who used to get quite impatient with people who claimed that the Holocaust was a singular, unique historical event. She said, in so many words, that we've been killing off the evil Other for as long as we, Homo sapiens, have been on the planet.

Democide could even be our signature tune as a species (my facetious ad lib, in very bad taste).

Also, Klava, your discussion of Stalin as a gangster reminds me of the memoirs of FDR's butler, I can't recall his name but he served under many presidents well into old age. I can't remember the precise details of his story, only the stellar outstanding point, which was that that Molotov kept a gun under his pillow during his entire stay in the White House. I repeat, in the White House! As if he, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, expected assassination at any moment! But as the butler himself stated about the Soviet diplomat and his entourage, "They were all gangsters!" It's only too true, once again you've hit the nail on the head.