"As Heine said, "where books are burnt, men also will be burnt"."
I don't remember any Communist books being burned - I remember the (right wing) Nazis actually burning book
On the other hand, restricting access to certain books has been a feature of all societies of all political hues - even the Catholic Church in "Holy Ireland" had (and still has) its somewhat arbitrarily chosen "Index of forbidden books"
"You mentioned being in Czechoslovakia when the Soviets were invading. "
Muy point is exactly what it has been all along - you need to distinguish between the objectives of any system and any anomalies that occur while those objectives are being pursued.
Yes - rightly the Czechs didn't want their 'socialism' imposed on them from outside, but they still wished to continue on that road.
Stalin was the anomaly who went a long way to destroying that objective just as (dare I mention it) various Israeli administrations have destroyed the dream of Israel.
The Soviet Union adopted exactly the same policies as the west is doing and has always done - if the policies of those you have influence over doesn't suit you it has to be controlled,
They interfered in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, we are up tpo our arses in interfering in the policies of countries that don't suit us.... Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan...... (not mentioning the clandestine interference that is very much a part of the foreign policy of the west)
We also interfere by proxy by supporting, financing and arming some of the world's most oppressive dictators.
How is this in any way different to what the Soviet Union was doing?
Let's look at what happened top what happened to Czechoslovakia after communism, and all the other newly "free" states.
Chechoslovakia divided peacefully and is now ties into European capitalism, which has allowed it to avoid many of the excesses of a declining system
Yugoslavia entered into a bloody ethnic cleansing war between the separate constituent groups which will remain in our memories for some time to come
Tito did much to keep those groups apart for the whole o his leadership
When I was in Yugoslavia there was no sign of what was to come.
Hungary and Rumania have swung, or are in the process of swinging to the extreme right - European fascism is on the march again.
Need one mention Putin?
China is interesting in that it still clings to aspects of the old system while adopting many of the traits of capitalism - and doing quite well out of it.
Nobody can claim that what has replaced the old system in many of these countries has improved the lot of the people as a whole - Rumania and Poland have become nations of migrants dependent on working abroad, life in Russia is as controlled as it ever was and it's leaders have become a threat to world security.
Prague has become the place to go for child sex.
When I visited these countries I left with a feeling that the people I met believed they were working for a brighter future - now I am left with the impression that the future is totally beyond their control
I bet the people of today's Russia wouldn't refer to a war todat as 'The Patriotic War' as they did in the sixties.
You talk of the Nazis and Soviets in the one sentence as if they were comparable - they are not
Nazism was a built in objective - what happened there was decreed to happen
What happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin, happened despite the objectives of communism, not because of them
Nazism was a natural development of Capitalism in crisis and was fully supported and financed by the German industrial Capitalism in the form of Krupps, Essen and Volksagen, who used the Jewish People as slave labour and sent them to their deaths when they were no longer fit to work
"sounds classy but I don't have a clue as to what it means"
Simples - my wife gets to correct my errors - you, a stranger, don't
Drawing attention to typos is all too often a way of avoiding awkward bits of argument on this forum
Teribus
We really have been over this ad nauseum
The fact of the Irish Famine is that there was enough food available to feed the Irish people four times over yet a million people starved and immigration was forced on millions of others - all this was adopted as a deliberate policy to solve a political problem.
I have no intention of taking this any further with you - you have proved yourself ignorant and intransigent as far as Irish history is concerned and racist in your attitude to the Irish people as a whole.
Four "Carrolls" and a "Jom" is indicative enough that you intend to continue with your defensive loutishness - so why should anybody be arsed with someone who tries to overcome their ignorance by talking down and bullying
Go and get some manners and learn to behave like an adult and we might just have something to say to each other
Jim Carroll