The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110154   Message #2313705
Posted By: alanabit
12-Apr-08 - 11:37 AM
Thread Name: BS: Views on Mugabe Zimbabwe
Subject: RE: BS: Views on Mugabe Zimbabwe
Teribus, if you really believe that the USSR was a Socialist society, I am afraid you have a lot of reading to catch up on. Peter William Sutcliffe killed a dozen women on hearing "voices from God". By the criteria you are trying to apply, that would make him a Christian. Your determination to imply that genuine Communists and Marxists murder and persecute is simply twaddle. You seem to wish to imply that opposing political philosophies to your own are synonymous with murder. That is insulting and wilfully ignorant.
With regard to Pinochet, there are enough documented accounts of his threats to dismiss democratically elected governments. Indeed, he came to power by doing just that. He bullied the governments in his own country to escape prosecution. Had you taken the trouble to talk to a few Chilean refugees, you would know that it was not safe for them to return to their own country for years afterwards. Perhaps you feel that as lefties, they had no right to live anyway. You have still to explain why Augusto Pinochet had any right not to answer for his treason and catalogue of horrendous crimes. Perhaps, as he was not a Marxist/Communist/Socialist, you feel he deserved to be above the law.
It appears you wish to persuade me that whereas "Marxist" dictators are reprehensible murderers, the other sort of dictators are a less reprehensible bunch of thugs. I won't even start on Germany... Have you ever walked around a concentration camp and seen which political opponents of Hitler were the first to be murdered?
I am slightly ashamed of getting into this argument. The very idea that one sort of murderer is "better" than another, or that we can grade beasts by the political clothes they masquerade in, is too ridiculous for a sane man to join in. From this point on, I am going to leave you to mutter to yourself in the corner of the room.