Ilana Mercer
April the 15th marked Holocaust Memorial Day. Nearly everyone knows about the industrial killing of 6 million Jews, for no other reason than that they were Jews. “Serious historiography” of the subject has ensured that The Shoah, Holocaust in Hebrew, is “consigned to posterity”; its lessons remembered and commemorated throughout the civilized world.
Although she failed to dignify the Armenian genocide of 1915, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour certainly covered the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia, northern Iraq, Rwanda and Darfur, for a 2008 documentary about genocide. In the interest of pacifying its Turkish allies, American officialdom has generally aped Amanpour, refusing to implicate the Ottomans in the mass murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians, 100 years ago.
This month, Kim Kardashian and Pope Francis, in order of importance, remedied the Armenian “omission.” The Pontiff called the massacre “the first genocide of the 20th century.” The Armenian-American reality TV star, her posterior and the rest of her entourage, visited the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia, to pay their respects.
There is no philosopher of Hannah Arendt’s caliber, today, to give dignity to the victims of the Stalinist, systematic starvation of the Boers by the British, during the Second Boer War. Fifteen percent of the Afrikaner population was rounded up, interned and starved to death–27,000 women and children. The image of young Lizzie van Zyl, who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp, ought to be engraved in popular memory. It is not! When she died, Lizzie looked like the Jewish bags of bones who perished in the Nazi death and concentration camps.
Mention of Hannah Arendt is a must since this remarkable Jewish philosopher illustrated the similarities between “our century’s two totalitarianisms,” the Nazis and the Soviets. Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism” spoke to a truth unmentioned until the publication of “The Black Book of Communism”: Both “systems massacred their victims not for what they did (such as resisting the regime) but for who they were, whether Jews or kulaks.”
If anything, “The Black Book” treads too lightly when it comes to qualitative comparisons between the Nazi and “Marxist-Leninist phenomenon.” On the quantitative front, “Nazism, at an estimated 25 million,” turned out to be distinctly less murderous than Communism, whose “grand total of victims [is] variously estimated at between 85 million and 100 million murdered. … the most colossal case of political carnage in history.”
Qualitatively, the “‘class genocide’ of Communism” is certainly comparable to the “‘race genocide’ of Nazism.” In its reach and methods, moreover, nothing compares to Communism’s continual, ongoing invention of new classes of “enemies of the people” to liquidate. “Mass violence against the population was a deliberate policy of the new revolutionary order; and its scope and inhumanity far exceeded anything in the national past.”
The fact that socialists and communists are still voted into power—with swagger in Greece—demonstrates that communists, despite their murderous past, “belong to the camp of democratic progress,” whereas the Right is forever open to suspicions of unforgiven fascist and Nazi sympathies.
The Jewish people have carried out “the solemn obligation to keep the memory of its martyrs alive in the conscience of the world.” The civilized world has internalized the methods and meaning of the Final Solution. As “The Black Book” observes approvingly, “Hitler and Nazism are now a constant presence in Western print and on Western television.”
Alas, although “their practices were comparable,” the “moral auras” of Nazism and Communism are still “antithetical.” “The Communist project” is permitted to claim “a commitment to universalistic and egalitarian goals, whereas the Nazi project” is said to offer only “unabashed national egoism.” The liberal world has refused to similarly stigmatize Communism. “The status of ex-Communist carries with it no stigma, even when unaccompanied by any expression of regret.”
Even more skewed is the situation in the East. No Gulag camps have been turned into museums to commemorate their inmates; all were bulldozed into the ground during Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization. The only memorial to Stalin’s victims is a modest stone brought to Moscow from the Arctic camp of Solovki and placed in Lubyanka Square (though well off to the side), where the KGB’s former headquarters still stands. Nor are there any regular visitors to this lonely slab (one must cross a stream of traffic to reach it) and no more than an occasional wilted bouquet. By contrast, Lenin’s statue still dominates most city centers, and his mummy reposes honorably in its Mausoleum. Throughout the former Communist world, moreover, virtually none of its responsible officials has been put on trial or punished. Indeed, everywhere Communist parties, though usually under new names, compete in politics.
The regime that was launched “in Sarajevo in 1914 and ended in Moscow in 1991” turned “mass crime into a full-blown system of government.” “Crime [was] the defining characteristic of the Communist system throughout its existence.”
“Islamo-Nazies” is how rightists have taken to dubbing the ISIS Islamists. But nothing beat the communists when it came to the execution by “firing squads, hanging, drowning, battering, [even gassing and beheading], poisoning; the destruction of the population by starvation, through man-made famine, the withholding of food, or both; deportation, through which death can occur in transit (either through physical exhaustion or through confinement in an enclosed space), at one’s place of residence, or through forced labor (exhaustion, illness, hunger, cold),” all meticulously planned and documented by the central authorities.
Perpetuated by the Left and acquiesced to by a perpetually frightened Right, the double standard adopted toward Communism is “scandalously out of line with the century’s real balance sheet of political crime.”
It must end!
On the week in which we commemorate the Holocaust, let us remember the forgotten victims of Communism who, too, were exterminated for who they were:
U.S.S.R.: 20 million dead
China: 65 million dead
Vietnam: 1 million dead
North Korea: 2 million dead
Cambodia: 2 million dead
Eastern Europe: 1 million dead
Latin America: 150,000 dead
Africa: 1.7 million dead
Afghanistan: 1.5 million dead
The international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: about 10,000 dead
As suggested by Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy, a “Victims of Communism Day” is long overdue.
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ILANA Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the United States. She pens WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, “Return to Reason.” She is a contributor to the preeminent libertarian site Economic Policy Journal and to Junge Freiheit, a German weekly of excellence. Ilana is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an award-winning, independent, non-profit, free-market economic policy think tank. Ilana’s latest book is “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Her website is www.IlanaMercer.com. She blogs at www.barelyablog.com.
It is said that the British in South Africa invented Concentration Camps; that is to say; enclosed locations in which could be kept securely enemy-combatants or probable-enemy-combatants and/or their sympathisers and relations, likely to form pockets of resistance behind battle lines.
Yes we had those camps. We did. It is known.
My suspicion is that they are actually a mainland-European idea, possibly used by Prussia (I will have to do research here) in an attempt to not be seen applying standard Prussian military doctrines about occupation of or entry into enemy territory. This is to say: in which you slaughter an entire village in return for one transgression resulting in the death of one Prussian soldier.
I do not know if 27,000 non-combatant Boers, women, children or others, died like bags of bones in these camps. For _the avoidance of doubt_, I will do research on this very matter. But I do know that the Boer population of Southern Africa was very much higher in about 1900 than six times 27,000. So the figures make me smell a rat automatically.
For _the avoidance of even more doubt_ ….
…. I would also point out…
…that the settlement offered to the Dutch South Africans by Britain at the end of the Boer Wars was, by any standards of the time, outstandingly generous. No other European nation – not least the Dutch even then if positions had been reversed and it was British “outlanders” rebelling against Imperial Holland – would have done the same.
That said, the general principle of Ilana’s article is sound.
As historians, such as Andrew Roberts, have long pointed out – the railways taking food to the camps were blown up by the Boers (not the British). As for not putting enemy civilians into camps at all – then they would have carried on aiding Boer forces in the war (which had become a guerrilla war by this time). There was no deliberate (“systematic”) starving of civilians to death by the British in the Boer War or after it.
Robert E. Lee faced a similar choice at the end of the American Civil War – when it became clear that the forces of the Slave Power (the Confederacy) were defeated in conventional war, it was suggested to him that the war be carried on a guerrilla basis – General Lee, to his credit, rejected this suggestion utterly. He knew that a guerrilla war would inevitably bring even more terrible suffering on the civilian population of the South, and would end in the same result as the conventional war (defeat – total and absolute).
Of course the same logic should have led to General Lee to accept the command of the United States army at the start of the war (which was offered to him) – had he done so the war would have been quickly over, all his tactical victories “achieved” were to prolong the war and turn it into a nightmare of over half a million dead (they did not, could not, change who was going to win the war). However, in 1861 General Lee had not come to the level of understanding he had come to by 1865. As for the claim that the war was not about slavery (that the South was “fighting for freedom”) if that was true – then the very first action of the Confederacy, in 1861, would have been to free all slaves (to show that United States “propaganda” was false).
Leaving aside the fundamental error concerning the Boer War the rest of the post is good.
The forces of Islam slaughtered vast numbers of Christian civilians over the years – defenders of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries (or in any century) are in great error. The mass slaughter of Armenians and Assyrians by the forces of Islam was seen as a religious act by the murderers (the fact that many of the “Young Turk” leadership were cynical about Islam, in private, does not alter this).
As for the nightmare of Marxist socialism.
No one wishes to minimise the evil of National Socialism – members of my own family were murdered by the National Socialists.
The evil ravings of so many German (and other) thinkers, going all the way back to Martin Luther and going through Fichte and so on, were turned into deeds (not just words) by the National Socialists – there had been slaughter of the Jews before (many times), but not the systematic effort at extermination, which is what National Socialist policy was.
However, the numbers are plain.
The Marxist socialists (in the Soviet Union, China and so on) murdered vastly more people than the National Socialists did.
This is not to say that the followers of the Black Flag are not even because the followers of the Red Flag (whether they be followers of Pol Pot in Cambodia or terrorists in Chicago) are evil – both are evil. But the brutal historical fact is that the Marxist socialists murdered more people than the National Socialists did.
There should indeed be a day to remember the victims of Marxist Socialism in all countries. The more than one hundred million people murdered by the Marxist Socialists – and the people they are murdering today (for the horror continues – around the world).
And it should be a day to condemn all the “Critical Theory” Marxists (and their Black Flag allies – as Bill Ayers said “I am as much an anarchist as a Marxist”, he meant a collectivist “anti capitalist” “anarchist”) who have such a terrible influence in the education system and the media, and seek to murder or enslave the population of the Western world.
Term concentration camps was quite respectable back then-used to describe POW camps in 1916 Magnet Christmas issue. Those in Boer War more like protected villages-President Truman recalled his mother’s family had been interned in Yankee camps in the Civil War.South’s defeat not inevitable.
It is vitally important to distinguish between Concrentration Camps and Extermination Camps.
Correct Lost Leonardo.
Once it was proved that Boer civilians were helping their guerrilla fighters (the decision to turn the war into a guerrilla war was a terrible blunder itself – one that an honourable man such as Robert E. Lee would never have made) there were two choices.
Should the civilians be killed – as the Romans and most powers in history would have done? Or should the civilians be put in guarded places, till the war was over, where they could not help the fighters?
The British choose the second alternative – and should be praised, not condemned, for choosing NOT to kill the civilians. As for the destruction of the railway lines that led to food not getting to the camps – again it was not the British who destroyed the railway lines, it was the Boer fighters who did that.
Mark.
The cause of the Slave Power was doomed from the start – because it was based upon a lie.
They claimed to be fighting for freedom – but, in fact, were fighting for slavery.
It this is not so, they could have refuted the United States “propaganda” – by freeing the slaves in 1861. They did not do so.
You mention Missouri (the home State of Harry Truman) – where is the evidence that a majority of the white people (let alone the black people) in Missouri wished to secede?
In reality people like the “James boys” and Younger “family” were no more fighting for democracy (when was the vote for secession?) than they were fighting for liberty.
In reality they were vicious criminals – made into hero figures by endless stupid Hollywood films.
I repeat – Robert E. Lee’s tactical victories just prolonged the war and massively increased casualties (on all sides).
General Lee should have done the same as General George Thomas (also a Virginian) did – and remained true to the oath he had voluntarily taken.
His oath of loyalty, as an officer of the army of the United States of America.
An honourable man such as General Lee should have realised (in 1861 not 1865) that it is not right to spend one’s life (voluntarily spend one’s life) in an army raising to the highest rank – and they, literally, “change ones coat” (in this case from blue to grey) and fight against the army, the country, one had sworn loyalty to.
The argument that the Federal government had swollen to something vastly beyond what the Founders had wanted is just NOT TRUE.
The Federal government made up about 2% of the economy (two per cent) in 1860.
The secession attempt was nothing to do with freedom – it was about slavery.
Even as late as 1928 the Federal government made up 3% (three per cent) of the economy of the United States.
The past is a foreign country – just because today (now) the Federal government is a bloated unconstitutional monstrosity does not mean it was in the past. Or even that the Civil War permanently transformed the Federal government – after all the Federal government in 1880 was much the same as it had been in 1860 (or in 1820).
I didn’t say anything about Missourians’ desire to secede-just a fact as stated by President Truman.The CSA should have been allowed to depart in peace-I must admit to being pro-Confederate myself.
[…] By Ilana Mercer […]
Does anyone know the total number of people slaughtered as Islam has murdered its way across the world? I have seen estimates ranging up to 200 million. Even though it has taken 1400 years, this must rank as the worst crime against humanity
Who cares? It should be a “Victims of Government Day” – commies, nazis, socialists, liberals, they’re all collectivists.
Andrew Roberts, as Robert Stove has pointed out, is a court “historian” of the worst kind: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/54671
I know Andrew Roberts slightly,enjoy his books,and have written in correcting his errors. Just read the article Ilana cites-I have little time for FDR but nothing wrong with his love life.Who’d have wanted to sleep with Eleanor?