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Useful Idiots

  • 05-09-2010 09:18PM
    #1
    joebucks
    Closed Accounts Posts: 728 ✭✭✭


    Some may find this two part documentary on the BBC world service quite interesting.


    http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2010/07/100624_doc_useful_idiots_lenin.shtml

    The phrase 'useful idiots', supposedly Lenin’s, refers to Westerners duped into saying good things about bad regimes.

    In political jargon it was used to describe Soviet sympathisers in Western countries and the attitude of the Soviet government towards them.

    Useful idiots, in a broader sense, refers to Western journalists, travellers and intellectuals who gave their blessing – often with evangelistic fervour – to tyrannies and tyrants, thereby convincing politicians and public that utopias rather than Belsens thrived.

    In part one John Sweeney looks at Stalin's Western apologists.

    In part two he explores how present day stories of human rights abuses across the world are still rewritten.


    Both parts are approx. 22 mins each. George Bernard Shaw fans beware.


«1

Comments

  • #2
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    They haven't gone away you know.

    The successors of apologists for Stalin et al, protested against the overthrow of Saddam, protest against fighting the Taliban, campaign for the rights of Al-Qaeda terrorists rather than innocent people who do not want to be blown up, who defend Palestinian 'resistance' (suicide bombings, indiscriminate rocket fire, stonings and beheadings etc) and vilify Israel (a progressive secular democracy) at every turn while never protesting against odious regimes in Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, North Korea, Tibet, Burma, Congo and any number of other hellholes.
    These useful idiots claim to be democratic, secular, feminist, egalitarian, progressive, pacifist and socialist yet they defend regimes and societies that are totalitarian, bigotedly sectarian, misogynist, rigidly conservative, backward, violent, reactionary, genocidal, imperialistic and murderously homophobic.


  • #3
    joebucks
    Closed Accounts Posts: 728 ✭✭✭joebucks


    princeofparma wrote: »
    They haven't gone away you know.

    The successors of apologists for Stalin et al, protested against the overthrow of Saddam, protest against fighting the Taliban, campaign for the rights of Al-Qaeda terrorists rather than innocent people who do not want to be blown up, who defend Palestinian 'resistance' (suicide bombings, indiscriminate rocket fire, stonings and beheadings etc) and vilify Israel (a progressive secular democracy) at every turn while never protesting against odious regimes in Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, North Korea, Tibet, Burma, Congo and any number of other hellholes.
    These useful idiots claim to be democratic, secular, feminist, egalitarian, progressive, pacifist and socialist yet they defend regimes and societies that are totalitarian, bigotedly sectarian, misogynist, rigidly conservative, backward, violent, reactionary, genocidal, imperialistic and murderously homophobic.

    Yes I agree, but I don't think useful idiots are unique to the left.


  • #4
    Overheal
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 86,683 ✭✭✭✭Overheal


    joebucks wrote: »
    Yes I agree, but I don't think useful idiots are unique to the left.
    Im not following. care to explain?


  • #5
    OhNoYouDidn't
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,934 ✭✭✭OhNoYouDidn't


    Prince has spectacularly missed the point that HE is the type of useful idiot referred to in part two. Defending murder, torture, imperial aggression and exactly the states he criticises because they are onside with the empire he has aligned himself with.


  • #6
    OhNoYouDidn't
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,934 ✭✭✭OhNoYouDidn't


    Overheal wrote: »
    Im not following. care to explain?

    How many people defend racist, apartheid and barbaric Israel for ideological reasons, despite the fact that if they moved there, they would not be granted basic human rights?

    The right are the worst at the useful idiot game. Defending dispicible dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan because they are aligned with Oceania this week.


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  • #7
    Rabble Rabble
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,367 ✭✭✭Rabble Rabble


    OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »
    How many people defend racist, apartheid and barbaric Israel for ideological reasons, despite the fact that if they moved there, they would not be granted basic human rights?

    The right are the worst at the useful idiot game. Defending dispicible dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan because they are aligned with Oceania this week.

    Nobody on the right defends these regimes. At best they admit to real-politic to having to do deals with them. Find anybody with a good word to say about Saudi Arabia, as a model for humanity.

    Thats what the useful idiots of the left did. the Soviet Union was fetished as the next best thing, even by non-Stalinists. The show trials were ignored, or compared to McCarthy. This went on until the end of the Cold War, then the love went to anti-Western and anti-American regimes.


  • #8
    OhNoYouDidn't
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,934 ✭✭✭OhNoYouDidn't


    Rabble Rabble wrote: »
    Nobody on the right defends these regimes. At best they admit to real-politic to having to do deals with them. Find anybody with a good word to say about Saudi Arabia, as a model for humanity.

    Thats what the useful idiots of the left did. the Soviet Union was fetished as the next best thing, even by non-Stalinists. The show trials were ignored, or compared to McCarthy. This went on until the end of the Cold War, then the love went to anti-Western and anti-American regimes.

    I understand how it started and who indulged. But to say that support for Palestine or opposition to the Iraq war is the same thing is fundamentally incorrect.

    If anything blindly supporting an empire, which is what posters like Parma are doing is the modern day inheritor of the mantle.


  • #9
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    princeofparma wrote: »
    They haven't gone away you know.

    The successors of apologists for Stalin et al, protested against the overthrow of Saddam, protest against fighting the Taliban, campaign for the rights of Al-Qaeda terrorists rather than innocent people who do not want to be blown up, who defend Palestinian 'resistance' (suicide bombings, indiscriminate rocket fire, stonings and beheadings etc) and vilify Israel (a progressive secular democracy) at every turn while never protesting against odious regimes in Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, North Korea, Tibet, Burma, Congo and any number of other hellholes.
    These useful idiots claim to be democratic, secular, feminist, egalitarian, progressive, pacifist and socialist yet they defend regimes and societies that are totalitarian, bigotedly sectarian, misogynist, rigidly conservative, backward, violent, reactionary, genocidal, imperialistic and murderously homophobic.

    Hmm..what about the apologists for war criminals like George Bush (both of them), Tony Blair, etc.? Oh that's right, only the ones who lose the war can be called war criminals. The victor is always the hero.

    I wonder how many of the countries you listed had dictators installed by some corrupt western government or another? I'll hazard a guess and say the vast majority.


  • #10
    OhNoYouDidn't
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,934 ✭✭✭OhNoYouDidn't


    demonspawn wrote: »
    Hmm..what about the apologists for war criminals like George Bush (both of them), Tony Blair, etc.? Oh that's right, only the ones who lose the war can be called war criminals. The victor is always the hero.

    I wonder how many of the countries you listed had dictators installed by some corrupt western government or another? I'll hazard a guess and say the vast majority.

    Which is my point. The pendulum has swung 180 degrees.


  • #11
    joebucks
    Closed Accounts Posts: 728 ✭✭✭joebucks


    Overheal wrote: »
    Im not following. care to explain?

    Have you listened to the documentary?

    I think that western governments also use 'useful idiots' to write good things about them and promote what they are doing.


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  • #12
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    demonspawn wrote: »
    Hmm..what about the apologists for war criminals like George Bush (both of them), Tony Blair, etc.? Oh that's right, only the ones who lose the war can be called war criminals. The victor is always the hero.

    I wonder how many of the countries you listed had dictators installed by some corrupt western government or another? I'll hazard a guess and say the vast majority.

    Since when is overthrow a sadistic psychopathic dictator in Iraq a war crime?
    What kind of upside universe do you live in?
    You post merely proves my point.

    You hate America so much even though you have the freedoms you only enjoy because the umbrella of American military might allows you to live in your hermetically sealed left wing bubble.


  • #13
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    princeofparma wrote: »
    Since when is overthrow a sadistic psychopathic dictator in Iraq a war crime?
    What kind of upside universe do you live in?
    You post merely proves my point.

    And who installed Saddam Hussein and supplied him with all those weapons? You don't really have to answer that by the way.
    You hate America so much even though you have the freedoms you only enjoy because the umbrella of American military might allows you to live in your hermetically sealed left wing bubble.

    First of all, I love the U.S. and consider it my true home although I was born in Ireland. Second, I guess it's a good thing I don't live in Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran because your argument would just fall to pieces. And finally, I'm not left wing. I'm not anything. Now please try to calm down, this is a forum for discussion and debate. Oh, and your fantastical vision of America: World Police is humorous to say the least. The U.S. military has done more harm than good for the last sixty years or so.


  • #14
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »
    How many people defend racist, apartheid and barbaric Israel for ideological reasons, despite the fact that if they moved there, they would not be granted basic human rights?

    The right are the worst at the useful idiot game. Defending dispicible dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan because they are aligned with Oceania this week.

    Israel is not racist, barbaric nor an apartheid state - Muslim Arabs participate in Israel society as full citizens of Israel. There is no racial or religious discrimination in Israel whatsoever.

    Israel is at war with Muslim theocrats and fascists who want to destroy the democratic state of Israel and murder all the Jews.

    The blockade of Gaza and the stern security measures Israel must take against the Palestinians would cease overnight if Palestinians recognised the state of Israel, stopped terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli men women and child, abandoned their extremism and embraced reality and modern world.

    Obviously understanding basic concepts like that are beyond many who live in the West and do not live under the threat of suicide bombing, rocket, mortar and sniper fire from Palestinian terrorists as Israelis do on a daily basis.


  • #15
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    princeofparma wrote: »
    who defend Palestinian 'resistance' (suicide bombings, indiscriminate rocket fire, stonings and beheadings etc)
    .

    I'd like an example of a case of beheading and a case of stoning, please.
    princeofparma wrote: »
    and vilify Israel (a progressive secular democracy)
    .

    Thats been illegaly occupying and colonising certain areas for 43 years....
    princeofparma wrote: »
    Tibet
    .

    I obviously dreamed all that drama over the olympic torch and the attending protests....

    Aren't most of the other regimes you mentioned under international sanctions?
    princeofparma wrote: »
    Congo and any number of other hellholes. .

    The congo is essentially in a state of anarchy


  • #16
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    princeofparma wrote: »
    Israel is not racist, barbaric nor an apartheid state - Muslim Arabs participate in Israel society as full citizens of Israel. There is no racial or religious discrimination in Israel whatsoever.

    Israel is at war with Muslim theocrats and fascists who want to destroy the democratic state of Israel and murder all the Jews.

    The blockade of Gaza and the stern security measures Israel must take against the Palestinians would cease overnight if Palestinians recognised the state of Israel, stopped terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli men women and child, abandoned their extremism and embraced reality and modern world.

    Obviously understanding basic concepts like that are beyond many who live in the West and do not live under the threat of suicide bombing, rocket, mortar and sniper fire from Palestinian terrorists as Israelis do on a daily basis.

    You're an Israeli I presume? You live in Israel? I'm not going to take cheap shots at you because of where you're from, I'm just curious.


  • #17
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    demonspawn wrote: »
    And who installed Saddam Hussein and supplied him with all those weapons? You don't really have to answer that by the way.



    First of all, I love the U.S. and consider it my true home although I was born in Ireland. Second, I guess it's a good thing I don't live in Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran because your argument would just fall to pieces. And finally, I'm not left wing. I'm not anything. Now please try to calm down, this is a forum for discussion and debate.

    You are answering a question with a question.

    Once again explain to me how Bush and Blair were war criminals for overthrowing a genocidal tyrant like Saddam.


  • #18
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    princeofparma wrote: »
    You are answering a question with a question.

    Once again explain to me how Bush and Blair were war criminals for overthrowing a genocidal tyrant like Saddam.

    And if you'd be good enough to get back to me on
    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=67860279&postcount=15
    t'would be appreciated


  • #19
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    princeofparma wrote: »
    You are answering a question with a question.

    Once again explain to me how Bush and Blair were war criminals for overthrowing a genocidal tyrant like Saddam.

    Because it was an illegal war based on complete lies? Did you miss that particular news story? And the atrocities carried out by U.S. soldiers in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq lay squarely on the shoulders of the commander in chief.

    Now care to answer my question? How did Saddam get into power and stay there for so long?


  • #20
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    demonspawn wrote: »
    You're an Israeli I presume? You live in Israel? I'm not going to take cheap shots at you because of where you're from, I'm just curious.

    You are really accusing me of being a 'jew' when you ask if I am an 'Israeli'.
    Of course you are asking me that because you assume that the 'jew' is everywhere controlling the world. Anti-semitism is not dead. It is alive and well I see.


  • #21
    karma_
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,797 ✭✭✭karma_


    princeofparma wrote: »
    You are really accusing me of being a 'jew' when you ask if I am an 'Israeli'.
    Of course you are asking me that because you assume that the 'jew' is everywhere controlling the world. Anti-semitism is not dead. It is alive and well I see.

    Play the card early, play it often eh!


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  • #22
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    Nodin wrote: »
    And if you'd be good enough to get back to me on
    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=67860279&postcount=15
    t'would be appreciated

    I'll ask you again.

    Explain how overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a war crime.


  • #23
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    princeofparma wrote: »
    You are really accusing me of being a 'jew' when you ask if I am an 'Israeli'.
    Of course you are asking me that because you assume that the 'jew' is everywhere controlling the world. Anti-semitism is not dead. It is alive and well I see.

    So you're quite obviously an Israeli, thanks for answering my question. :rolleyes:


  • #24
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    karma_ wrote: »
    Play the card early, play it often eh!

    The card was played by a previous post where the question of whether I was an Israeli - read that as 'jew' - was brought up.


  • #25
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    karma_ wrote: »
    Play the card early, play it often eh!

    Yeah, this is definitely one poster that will end up on my ignore list very soon. I just discovered the ignore function and it's pretty awesome. :D


  • #26
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    princeofparma wrote: »
    The card was played by a previous post where the question of whether I was an Israeli - read that as 'jew' - was brought up.

    I don't consider Israelis to be Jews in the true sense of the word so don't worry. I'll happily hate you simply as an Israeli without letting religion (or your lack thereof) get in the way. How's that sound?


  • #27
    princeofparma
    Closed Accounts Posts: 67 ✭✭princeofparma


    demonspawn wrote: »
    So you're quite obviously an Israeli, thanks for answering my question. :rolleyes:

    I am Irish and a non-jew if you must know.
    The 'jew' is not everywhere. Sorry to shatter that illusion.


  • #28
    karma_
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,797 ✭✭✭karma_


    princeofparma wrote: »
    I am Irish and a non-jew if you must know.
    The 'jew' is not everywhere. Sorry to shatter that illusion.

    I guess all countries have their 'useful idiots' in that case :D


  • #29
    demonspawn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,460 ✭✭✭demonspawn


    princeofparma wrote: »
    I am Irish and a non-jew if you must know.
    The 'jew' is not everywhere. Sorry to shatter that illusion.

    Damn, cuz I sure could do with a loan right about now. :rolleyes:

    Well, you've definitely proven yourself to be worthy of my ignore list. Enjoy your stay and please come again.


  • #30
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    princeofparma wrote: »
    I'll ask you again.........

    You didn't ask me a first time, I'm responding to your post No 2 on this thread, as it raised a few questions for me. I've not mentioned Iraq, but will gladly discuss the matter once we've clarified the issues raised in your post.

    Now - would you care to answer me?


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  • #31
    baalthor
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,243 ✭✭✭baalthor


    princeofparma wrote: »
    Israel is not racist, barbaric nor an apartheid state - Muslim Arabs participate in Israel society as full citizens of Israel. There is no racial or religious discrimination in Israel whatsoever.
    When can we expect the first Arab or Muslim Prime Minister or President of Israel?
    How many Israeli government ministers (full ministers)are Arab/Muslim?
    How many members of the security cabinet are Arab/Muslim?
    What percentage of IDF generals are Arab/Muslim?


This discussion has been closed.
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