Categories: Potter Gold

Commies not happy with anti-commie monument

This is beyond priceless. As the NCC Board worried, the leader of the Communist…

by Andrew Potter on Friday, October 9, 2009 9:52am - 37 Comments

This is beyond priceless. As the NCC Board worried, the leader of the Communist Party of Canada is NOT HAPPY about the proposed monument to the victims of totalitarian communism. Miguel Figueroa says:

“In our considered view, the monument would constitute an unjust attack on the pride Canadian Communists feel for our pioneering contributions to Canada since 1921, such as fighting fascism, organizing industrial workers into unions,initiating the movements to win unemployment insurance, public health care and other social programs, campaigning for peace and disarmament, fighting for the full national rights of Aboriginal peoples and Quebec and in defending Canada’s sovereignty.”

My column on this, which proposes an easy solution, is here.

Tags: commies, monuments, NCC

More by Andrew Potter

http://www.TennisVagabond.com Big Dave S

Hey, if they don't like it, they're free to build a time machine and move to Stalin's Russia. But they only have that freedom because this is Canada, and because the laws of physics do not preclude time travel.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Nich Nich

The Vulcan Science Academy would disagree.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Nich Nich

Communism doesn't kill people; people kill people.

http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

No, murderers kill people, cannibals kill people, fascists kill people, and communists kill people.
ken colombo

For heaven's sake, man … GET WITH THE POGROM!

http://intensedebate.com/people/robert_mccl6309 Robert McClelland

When are we going to build a monument to the billions of victims of capitalism?

Emmett

When there are billions of victims… so never.

http://intensedebate.com/people/robert_mccl6309 Robert McClelland

There are victims of capitalism every day. For instance, people around the world are dying simply because they don't have enough money to buy food, simple medicines or clean water. Capitalism's malevolent indifference is killing them every bit as much as communist regimes have killed people.

http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"For instance, people around the world are dying simply because they don't have enough money to buy food, simple medicines or clean water."

The people you have in mind, I think, don't live in capitalist countries or else those problems would not be an issue. They live in varying forms of totalitarian countries and they are 'victims' of capitalism in it's absence.

And what indifference? Western countries, through governments and charities, send billions of $$$ a year to impoverished countries to try and help. All the food, and other aid, sent to Philippines recently to help victims is coming from countries who practice capitalism.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"There are victims of capitalism every day. For instance, people around the world are dying simply because they don't have enough money to buy food, simple medicines or clean water."

The people you have in mind, I think, don't live in capitalist countries or else those problems would not be an issue. They live in varying forms of totalitarian countries and they are 'victims' of capitalism in it's absence.

And what indifference? Western countries, through governments and charities, send billions of $$$ a year to impoverished countries to try and help. All the food, and other aid, sent to Philippines recently to help victims is coming from countries who practice capitalism.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"There are victims of capitalism every day. For instance, people around the world are dying simply because they don't have enough money to buy food, simple medicines or clean water."

The people you have in mind, I think, don't live in capitalist countries or else those problems would not be an issue. They live in varying forms of totalitarian countries and they are 'victims' of capitalism only in it's absence.

And what indifference? Western countries, through governments and charities, send billions of $$$ a year to impoverished countries to try and help. All the food, and other aid, sent to Philippines recently to help victims is coming from countries who practice capitalism.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"There are victims of capitalism every day. For instance, people around the world are dying simply because they don't have enough money to buy food, simple medicines or clean water."

The people you have in mind, I think, don't live in capitalist countries or else those problems would not be an issue. They live in varying forms of totalitarian countries and they are 'victims' of capitalism only in its absence.

And what indifference? Western countries, through governments and charities, send billions of $$$ a year to impoverished countries to try and help. All the food, and other aid, sent to Philippines recently to help victims is coming from countries who practice capitalism.

Foreigner

You're being very unnuanced about capitalism. There's the market economy and then there's the financial economy (which bears little relation to what we understand as being capitalism's true genius…to harness self-interest for the common good);. The current version of capitalism has failed and has ruined many lives all over the World. And it's done it before.

If you want to save capitalism, you should stop cheering so loudly. Hubris, and all that…
http://intensedebate.com/people/robert_mccl6309 Robert McClelland

The people you have in mind, I think, don't live in capitalist countries or else those problems would not be an issue. They live in varying forms of totalitarian countries and they are 'victims' of capitalism only in its absence.

So the United States wasn't a capitalist nation when millions of people were victimized by the capitalist slave trade. So the United States isn't now a capitalist nation where nearly 50k people die as a direct result of inadequate access to the nation's capitalist health care system. Capitalism is so barbaric that it has and continues to claim lives in the socalled greatest nation on the planet.

http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"When are we going to build a monument to the billions of victims of capitalism?"

Since this is Monty Python week, I thought this slightly altered quote from Life of Brian would be appropriate.

This is what left wing types sound like: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Capitalists ever done for us?"

http://intensedebate.com/people/SisyphusThis SisyphusThis

Print that out , hold it up to a mirror, re-read it and try again.
http://intensedebate.com/people/robert_mccl6309 Robert McClelland

All of those things are a product of socialism, rube.

http://www.intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

Really? Roads, medicine, fresh water and education didn't exist before socialism? And did you ever wonder how it was all paid for?

I think you should be careful with who you call rube before you start claiming that education and fresh water didn't exist before the socialists appeared on the scene.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"All of those things are a product of socialism, rube."

Really? Roads, medicine, fresh water and education didn't exist before socialism? And did you ever wonder how it was all paid for?

I think you should be careful with who you call rube before you start claiming that, without socialists, we would not have medicine, education or fresh water.

http://intensedebate.com/people/robert_mccl6309 Robert McClelland

Really? Roads, medicine, fresh water and education didn't exist before socialism?

No, they didn't. Take roads for example. The earliest roads were built by the Roman state. In Canada, one of the earliest roads, the Cariboo Wagon Road, was built by the state. In general, the socialist state has built practically every road on the planet.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

You seem to have an incredibly loose definition of "socialism". You're seriously asserting that ancient roads built by the Roman Empire were a product of socialism?
http://intensedebate.com/people/robert_mccl6309 Robert McClelland

You seem to have an incredibly loose definition of "socialism".

True, but terms like socialism and capitalism are relatively new whereas their practice are quite ancient. Capitalism is, if I recall correctly, a 16th century term. But it existed in Ancient Greece and I'd say its true origins extend all the way back to when our cavemen ancestors first began trading with each other.

With that in mind, I think my point stands though. The state built the first roads just as the state does today. Since modern road building by the state is a product of socialism by today's standards then it's fair to say it was also a product of socialism 2,000 years ago.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"The state built the first roads just as the state does today. Since modern road building by the state is a product of socialism by today's standards then it's fair to say it was also a product of socialism 2,000 years ago."

Everyone but anarchists believes the State should be involved in infrastructure. It is not a socialist idea. The State only recently concerned itself with medicine and education, they existed well before The State got involved.

And have you ever wondered why Canada's infrastructure is a million times better than Russia's. Capitalism.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"The state built the first roads just as the state does today. Since modern road building by the state is a product of socialism by today's standards then it's fair to say it was also a product of socialism 2,000 years ago."

Everyone but anarchists believes the State should be involved in infrastructure. It is not a socialist idea. The State only recently concerned itself with medicine and education, they existed well before The State got involved.

And have you ever wondered why Canada's infrastructure is a million times better than Russia's. Capitalism.
http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

The only thing socialists have invented is socialism. And there are plenty of cases of people escaping socialism for the opportunity to invent something.
http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

I think it's more accurate to say that states have largely been resonsible – at least historically – for things like roads and water supply. Which is socialist in a sense, but not strictly. But it sure wasn't 'capitalism' in the sense of purely private and profit driven enterprises.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

I think it's more accurate to say that states have largely been responsible – at least historically – for things like roads and water supply. Which is socialist in a sense, but not strictly. But it sure wasn't 'capitalism' in the sense of purely private and profit driven enterprises.

http://intensedebate.com/people/TwoYen TwoYen

The monument is to the victims of "totalitarian communism". If they can't live with that compromise, they don't deserve to be listened to.

http://intensedebate.com/people/madeyoulook madeyoulook

What's funny is that you suggest that Canadian communists should be listened to at all…

http://intensedebate.com/people/Tridus Tridus

The real scary thing is that the NCC might actually listen to them. NCC isn't really known for taking a stand on things like this, they'll just go back and give us a wishy washy meaningless monument instead.
Foreigner

I regret Canada didn't have a wingnut government in the 90's. These people would have gotten all of the post-Cold War triumphalism out of their systems by now.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"the monument would constitute an unjust attack on the pride Canadian Communists feel for our pioneering contributions to Canada since 1921, such as fighting fascism"

This is too much. Like the Communists were so much better than the fascists. Communist leaders are responsible for way more death and misery than the fascists were so I am not sure how much 'pride' Canadian communists should feel.
http://intensedebate.com/people/SisyphusThis SisyphusThis

Isn't the cold war over ? I mean except in the Jason Kenny Collective or whenever the
Gorgeous Georgian gets a brain cramp ?
http://intensedebate.com/people/OntarioTown OntarioTown

Frankly, I think this monument is more of a vote buying political ploy of Harper.

But, just because Germans are good people, especially now, does that mean we can't remember what Hiter did?

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok SeanStok

Rounded up and killed communists?
http://intensedebate.com/people/s_c_f s_c_f

There is nothing wrong with being German. And this was true when Hitler was around. There was a lot wrong with being a Nazi.
By the same token, there is nothing wrong with being Russian. But there's plenty wrong with being a communist. A communist is a killer, waiting for the opportunity to start killing people.