What is worse? An overtly evil ideology, like Nazism? Or an ideology like communism or islamism, that professes to be good, but which is in fact, evil?
If communism ended up killing more people, it's worse.
"The bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline was a covert operation ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA — The Times, citing investigative journalist Seymour Hersh"
I was, of course, nearly laughed off PB as a lunatic conspiracy theorist for daring to suggest this was a possibility last year.
Reading the story I am forced to admit it does sound fairly convincing. This is a wrinkle I didn’t consider at the time: … Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”
The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”…
Had it been reported to Congress, it would have leaked within the month.
I am relieved that the UK seems to be out of the frame. If we'd done it, it would still have been a US-sanctioned act, but a deniable one that we would have been on the hook for.
Personally I think it's extremely serious and concerning that the US sees it as acceptable to destroy European infrastructure, harming Europe's economy whilst advancing America's commercial interests (perhaps both incidental to harming Russia's interests, but nonetheless real outcomes). However the US's world dominance comes to an end, I think we can rule out the sort of civilised senescence that characterised the end of Britain as a world power.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
I'm conflicted.
On the one hand, it is highly likely to be an utter disaster.
On the other, the Guardian doesn't like the idea. So I feel like I should.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
Presumably Boris's recent visit to Ukraine was part of the set up for Zelemsky's visit to the UK.
At any event, glad he is here. Britain's help for Ukraine is something to be proud about.
Is the Ukrainian leader shorter than Sunak? He certainly looks like it in the picture of them in the Graun, or is this from the PM's official photographer, who seems to have been selected specifically for his skills in this area?
They are both pretty short. Zelensky doesn't seem to care about it, though.
Z is short but stocky - the Oates in Hall & Oates template. Rishi is just very very tiny, which is harder to get yourself positive about as a man, I think. Still, it's far from his most pressing concern. That would be the ERG, I think.
Today was Johnson's day. Hats off to him if he laid the groundwork for Zelenskiy's visit. Johnson is standing loud and proud, he has with Zelenskiy's assistance overshadowed and further weakened the hapless Sunak. He's coming back, and he could contest the next election as the victorious Ukraine's Churchillian wing man.
Benny's back ... and this time for real!
You both scoff, but Churchillisn Johnson isn't my narrative, it is a narrative confected by Johnson effectively and confirmed by Zelenskiy today.
Both the BBC and LBC have focused on the Johnson aspect of the speech and repeated the line that Johnson singlehandedly (my interpretation) wrangled an unwilling EU and US into action.
Hats off to BigDog, he's played this rather cleverly. Let's hope that's where his story ends.
I support you. It can’t complete the Churchill narrative without a big comeback to power. And he is serious about seeking that isn’t he.
There’s the scenario Sunak can’t survive election defeat so someone else takes over, Boris can be LOTO, with all sorts of opposition freedom attack dog opportunity to build a lead in the polls , against a government with slim or non existent majority,
Boris has to hold Uxbridge first
Surely doing the chicken run. Henley possibly?
Is an Uxbridge First anything like an Oxbridge First?
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
You can reboot drama, but how do you reboot comedy (although Mel Brooks did it with the Producers?)
Because most comedy is so specific to it’s time and place. Comedy is usually about making fun of anxieties, and each age’s anxieties are different.
Batty old people living in shabby gentility, middle class people terrified of the trade unions, retired colonial administrators, brash Americans, existed in the Seventies, but no longer.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
The Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads.
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
You can reboot drama, but how do you reboot comedy (although Mel Brooks did it with the Producers?)
Because most comedy is so specific to it’s time and place. Comedy is usually about making fun of anxieties, and each age’s anxieties are different.
Batty old people living in shabby gentility, middle class people terrified of the trade unions, retired colonial administrators, brash Americans, existed in the Seventies, but no longer.
So that’s the key for FT2 right there - the humour won’t be of the 70’s (we hope) but will reflect an aged, but still irrascible, Basil at odds with the modern world.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
I'm conflicted.
On the one hand, it is highly likely to be an utter disaster.
On the other, the Guardian doesn't like the idea. So I feel like I should.
It seems like it will be a bit of a sad affair. The wonderful Prunella Scales won't be involved - I believe she has dementia? Andrew Sachs is dead. Connie Booth might still be able to participate, but I believe she has retired. FT was always an ensemble piece for me, not just all about Basil. It seems a vehicle for Cleese's daughter. Which I am not sure is a great basis for a show.
What is worse? An overtly evil ideology, like Nazism? Or an ideology like communism or islamism, that professes to be good, but which is in fact, evil?
If communism ended up killing more people, it's worse.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
The wisdom of ChatGPT should be the final word on the matter:
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
It is deliciously ironic that ChatGTP says you shouldn't compare the two and does exactly that.
I have a theory that behind ChatGPT is one SeanT bashing away at multiple keyboards with a team of woke moderators correcting his output in realtime.
In fact, I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this thread is too narrow to contain.
Careful - this could become Pointer's last Theorem!
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
You can reboot drama, but how do you reboot comedy (although Mel Brooks did it with the Producers?)
Because most comedy is so specific to it’s time and place. Comedy is usually about making fun of anxieties, and each age’s anxieties are different.
Batty old people living in shabby gentility, middle class people terrified of the trade unions, retired colonial administrators, brash Americans, existed in the Seventies, but no longer.
So that’s the key for FT2 right there - the humour won’t be of the 70’s (we hope) but will reflect an aged, but still irrascible, Basil at odds with the modern world.
But does John Cleese know how to be funny any more?
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
You can reboot drama, but how do you reboot comedy (although Mel Brooks did it with the Producers?)
Because most comedy is so specific to it’s time and place. Comedy is usually about making fun of anxieties, and each age’s anxieties are different.
Batty old people living in shabby gentility, middle class people terrified of the trade unions, retired colonial administrators, brash Americans, existed in the Seventies, but no longer.
So that’s the key for FT2 right there - the humour won’t be of the 70’s (we hope) but will reflect an aged, but still irrascible, Basil at odds with the modern world.
But does John Cleese know how to be funny any more?
It’s a good question. I met him a few years ago and I am not sure. Didn’t take to him, tbh.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
You can reboot drama, but how do you reboot comedy (although Mel Brooks did it with the Producers?)
Because most comedy is so specific to it’s time and place. Comedy is usually about making fun of anxieties, and each age’s anxieties are different.
Batty old people living in shabby gentility, middle class people terrified of the trade unions, retired colonial administrators, brash Americans, existed in the Seventies, but no longer.
Agreed, although I think brash Americans still do.
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
What political victory are you referring to?
Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Even amongst these scheming murderers both Stalin and his evil henchman Beria stand out. It is a brilliant film.
I loved it and watched twice but couldn't persuade my wife to get into it. Not sure why. The accents are brilliant. I love the fact Beria is a half-gentrified working class Londoner, and Kruschev is a smart-talking Jewish New Yorker straight out of Woody Allen.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Even amongst these scheming murderers both Stalin and his evil henchman Beria stand out. It is a brilliant film.
I loved it and watched twice but couldn't persuade my wife to get into it. Not sure why. The accents are brilliant. I love the fact Beria is a half-gentrified working class Londoner, and Kruschev is a smart-talking Jewish New Yorker straight out of Woody Allen.
My 14 year daughter thought it was one of the funniest things she'd ever seen.
I'm not sure the night watchman approach from King Charles III works. This, and the stamp with his head without a crown on his head both don't really work. You either do it properly or you erode the institution.
I think his problem is his confidence in inhabiting the role - he's Charles play-acting the monarch rather than really owning it and redefining himself at the moment.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
You can reboot drama, but how do you reboot comedy (although Mel Brooks did it with the Producers?)
Because most comedy is so specific to it’s time and place. Comedy is usually about making fun of anxieties, and each age’s anxieties are different.
Batty old people living in shabby gentility, middle class people terrified of the trade unions, retired colonial administrators, brash Americans, existed in the Seventies, but no longer.
I think that is closer to being right. I think there are lots of remakes and reboots that are really good, but I'd be wary of comedy reboot.
Blackadder is a tragedy as they had the right idea but for some reason changed it, before reverting.
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
What political victory are you referring to?
Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
My post wasn't mocking the idea, it was a genuine question because you did not quote or refer to anything.
Yes, Rishi stood up for common sense on this issue and has reaped the (very small) benefits.
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
He's probably as decent as they can get. He could still be lightweight and inadequate to the problems at hand.
What is worse? An overtly evil ideology, like Nazism? Or an ideology like communism or islamism, that professes to be good, but which is in fact, evil?
If communism ended up killing more people, it's worse.
European colonialism the worstest presumably?
Difference is we dont have people touting colonialism we do have people touting socialist and communist hate doctrine
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
What political victory are you referring to?
Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Soviet Union would quite likely have been defeated had it not been for US aid and the allies bombing campaign in Germany. Hard for you to admit I'm sure.
The UK would probably have survived but we'd have had to sue for peace and Nazi dominance over the whole European continent would have made our position perilous.
Phillips P O'Brien wrote about this on substack a while ago.
Long story short, the vast majority of German war production was devoted to fighting the Western allies, and not the USSR. The idea that the USSR won WWII for the West is a myth borne of a focus on numbers of soldiers lost, rather than on where most industrial production was directed, and the equipment it produced was used and lost.
Reading his book at the moment - makes a persuasive argument that traditional histories focussing on “battles” are missing the point. The war was fought - and won- in the factory. The Russians had no bauxite, so no aluminium so no aircraft - except what came by convoy.
I believe that it is called logistics. In WW2 the USA made every other nation look like amateurs. They built ships faster than the U boats could sink them, they built bombers faster than anyone could shoot them down and they supplied all their allies on the side.
And much of Germany's war strategy was actually about oil production, once they had failed to knock Britain and France out in a single blow in 1940. They were involved in North Africa (once it was apparent that the Italians couldn't hold down that front), and in the East, primarily to gain access to (routes to) oil.
The weird thing is that a small sliver of the force used on Russia could have had Rommel in charge of the Saudi oilfields. Really poor judgement by Hitler.
Part of that, I guess, was ideology trumping strategy.
But another part of it was probably the recognition that it had moved from a blitz to a war of attrition, and a fear of what the Soviets could do to them if they didn't have a sufficient force there.
Many of the German failures of WW2 can be attributed to a more precarious industrial production and manpower situation than we imagine - not least the total lack of mechanisation in the German armed forces. For all that they had better tanks and armour doctrine in 1940 than the Allies, they had insufficient mechanised infantry right to the end of the war.
The lack of trucks was a consequence of a massive misapplication of industrial resources, which can be seen in almost every decision Hitler was involved in.
He loved the grandeur of large surface battleships, so the surface fleet was prioritised over the u-boats that could have defeated Britain. He trusted Goering, so prioritised production for the Luftwaffe over the army. Masses of resources were poured into ever more complicated heavy tanks, rockets, or rocket planes, that fed Hitler's sense of the dramatic and desire for a short-cut to victory, rather than simply producing more of the equipment that in sufficient quantity would have brought that victory. Large amounts of effort were expended in 1943 on the extermination of Jews that might have tipped the balance if they had been directed to the Eastern Front.
Perhaps a competent German leader would never have been crazy enough to start the war, but I think they might have been able to win it.
The Germans did far better than they had any right to, given how Quixotic it was to fight the UK, US, and USSR simultaneously.
A further issue with German industry was that it had not properly adapted to mass production. Many German manufacturers still viewed themselves as craftsmen. They wanted to produce weapons that were perfect, rather than merely good enough.
The Germans did far better because the Wehrmacht was bloody good. Their junior officers were exceptional.
Their army fought with a level of professionalism to the end unmatched by anyone else, and the UK/USA could only defeat them with logistics and mass firepower and the USSR with sheer numbers.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
The wisdom of ChatGPT should be the final word on the matter:
It is not appropriate to compare the evil actions of historical figures in a quantitative manner. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses that caused immeasurable suffering and loss of life. Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany led to the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others considered "undesirable" by the regime. Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union was characterized by widespread purges, forced collectivization, and the establishment of the Gulag system of prison camps, causing the death of millions of people through execution, starvation, and overwork. Both leaders left a legacy of tragedy and it is important to remember the lessons of history to prevent similar atrocities from happening again in the future.
What is worse? An overtly evil ideology, like Nazism? Or an ideology like communism or islamism, that professes to be good, but which is in fact, evil?
I think you'll find that Hitler proclaimed that Nazism was - in fact - good.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. Crass to compare. That's how this one goes.
You would be more freaked most people would find them equally repugnant. Any ideology that says the state is more important than the individual which all of naziism and communisim and socialism do basically comes down to the state is more important so individuals are expendable. They are equally hateful and all proponents of each should be treated with total contempt
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Name three good people who were Communists. (not socialists - communists.)
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.
I agree with the essence of the article that a FT2 is likely to be a disaster. But this got me thinking: ...reboots of almost everything, barring perhaps the first return of Frasier, are almost always inferior to the originals.
I am not sure about Frasier (which I liked) - was that ever really rebooted - seems like a continuum to me.
But, Blackadder, now that was truly reworked, reshaped, reorientated, and rebooted in series two onwards - to tremendous effect.
Can't think of any others though.
I'm conflicted.
On the one hand, it is highly likely to be an utter disaster.
On the other, the Guardian doesn't like the idea. So I feel like I should.
It seems like it will be a bit of a sad affair. The wonderful Prunella Scales won't be involved - I believe she has dementia? Andrew Sachs is dead. Connie Booth might still be able to participate, but I believe she has retired. FT was always an ensemble piece for me, not just all about Basil. It seems a vehicle for Cleese's daughter. Which I am not sure is a great basis for a show.
Great Canal Journeys was a heartwarming series, particularly because it showed a long married and loving couple dealing with Pru’s advancing dementia. She fully retired in 2020, and is now aged 90.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
It's a naive argument if advanced as apologism for Stalin - but it's a valid input for performing a comparison of him to Hitler.
Well, not really. Because actually, it assumes Stalin wasn't a liar when he talked of his idealism while accepting Hitler was.
It doesn't assume that. Stalin could have been a non believer in Communism and that still isn't equivalent to Hitler who DID believe his shtick of master race global dominion and the enslavement of all others.
And there is perfectly encapsulated exactly what I am talking about.
No, it encapsulates what I'm talking about.
The issue being you completely miss the point. Because actually, Stalin did believe all those things too. He just phrased it differently and went about it more discreetly.
But people accept his statements, while judging Hitler more on his actions.
I don't miss that point. I'm not assuming Stalin believed or didn't believe. Either way, Hitler was worse.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
Nazism as an ideology was defeated utterly in a military conflict and therefore became societally taboo. Communism continued to exist alongside other political systems and continues to this day. So judging them on their social acceptibility isn't really 'fair'.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Even amongst these scheming murderers both Stalin and his evil henchman Beria stand out. It is a brilliant film.
I loved it and watched twice but couldn't persuade my wife to get into it. Not sure why. The accents are brilliant. I love the fact Beria is a half-gentrified working class Londoner, and Kruschev is a smart-talking Jewish New Yorker straight out of Woody Allen.
Zhukov completely stole the show for me. A wonderfully burlesque performance.
The Beggar King is in a Ford Galaxy on the M11 so pb's 101st Chairborne will be getting excited over that providing a welcome change from the trans shit and HS2 minutiae very soon.
We - and Russia to, for that matter - are a nation that survived WWII only because of US aid, so it's a bit charmless to get sniffy about someone else in a comparable situation.
So the Russian nation would have ceased to exist during WW2 had it not been for US aid? What a loony.
PS Would it be gazetted somewhere if Johnson were to receive his US citizenship back, or is it only renunciations that get publicly noted?
PPS Some Ford Galaxies from the mid-noughties had front seats that could turn round and face the back. Now that's what I call a cool car.
The Germans made it to the Moscow suburbs in WWII. It doesn't take much changes to the timeline to them making it a bit further...
For example, the US and UK provided *all* the hi octane aviation gasoline for the USSR. It was only postwar that they got their cracking plants lined up to make it.
Vast amount of machine tools - in some categories, 100% of the tools and 100% of the tooling was Lendlease supplied. Without that, Soviet production would have crawled to a halt.
And so on in many categories - the % of USSR GDP was small, but LendLease was about supplying materials and equipment they were short of. Or literally didn't have.
The fall of Moscow, or even of both Moscow and Leningrad as it then was, would not in itself have come anywhere near making the Soviet government seek to agree terms with Germany. More than 1000 large factories were shipped eastwards. The USSR would certainly have continued fighting. Sure, they could have been defeated but the fall of Moscow wouldn't have done for them.
Do you regret that the USA and Britain gave such substantial assistance to their Soviet ally during WW2/the GPW? Or is it a very different Germany now but a very similar Russia, so western policy was good then (fight with Russia against Germany) and western policy is also good now (pointing towards fighting with Germany against Russia this time round)?
Stalin was evil, but less evil than Hitler.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
So here's the thing - I am less sure of this than I used to be. Hitler evil, absolutely. He started the war that saw millions dead and initiated the holocaust.
But how many did Stalin kill? The famine in Ukraine, the gulags, the show trials, all of it. Why does Uncle Joe get a pass to be less evil than Hitler?
The main distinction I would draw would be that Stalin came to power in the USSR on a platform of "Socialism in one country" - a recognition that the attempt to spread communist revolution to the rest of the world had failed, and there was a need for the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power within their borders.
By contrast, the core of Hitler's ideology was the idea of the German need for Lebensraum, and consequently aggressive military expansion.
Bluntly, Stalin was content to kill people within his borders, while Hitler sought to kill people in the lands outside Germany's borders. The latter is more dangerous than the former.
This distinction might be more a consequence of the different levels of capability than ideology, but it's also true that the strong evil guy is more of a threat than the weak evil guy.
Also with Communism, for all the horrors enacted in its name, there was an arguably non-heinous idea at its core. This isn't the case with Hitler and the Nazis. The ideology there, the industrial scale subjugation of other people by a master race, is wholly abhorent in every sense and on every level.
Doesn't that make the Communist authoritarianism worse to some extent? It means that well-meaning people can go along with evil, "For The Greater Good," while the moral choice is a bit clearer under fascism. This might also explain why Communist dictatorships have tended to be more durable than fascist ones.
That said, having reflected, I think one can say that Hitler was a notch more evil than Stalin, because Hitler's intent with the Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish people, and while there was a programme of Russification within the USSR, and particular ethnic groups like the Crimean Tartars were particularly targeted, the single-minded and ideological pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people was, I think, on a distinctly more evil level.
Wolf more dangerous when donning the sheepskin? Yes, can be. But tbh, 'Hitler or Stalin more evil?', I don't find it that useful a question, but if forced to take it I neither find it that difficult. Hitler. There's just no shred of a redeeming factor, or anything not wholly evil, in what he believed or did in the name of it.
And there is with Stalin? Really? Do you think Stalin cared for anyone who he had murdered?
The argument made for Stalin is that though his methods were hideous, he did have a positive goal - the building of a strong economy and a socialist state.
Hitler wasn't even really trying to do that.
It is a naive argument, reliant on taking Stalin's statements at face value while interrogating Hitler's on the assumption he was a liar.
Is it untenable? Well, he did see the Soviet Union make considerable progress in heavy industry - but not, contrary to popular belief, significantly more than elsewhere. This was at a terrible cost in agriculture, light industry and service sectors.
But then - you could make a similar argument for Hitler if you only looked at the figures and didn't bother to check what they mean.
The real issue, of course, is that Hitler was demonstrated to be evil and incompetent. Stalin managed to fool people into thinking he was alright until after he was dead.
Terrify people into thinking he was alright more like, even with the genuine grief of some.
The Death of Stalin remains one the greatest movies of the last 10 years - the barmy would-be-comic-except they're-mass-murderers feel of it is pulled off brilliantly.
Even amongst these scheming murderers both Stalin and his evil henchman Beria stand out. It is a brilliant film.
I loved it and watched twice but couldn't persuade my wife to get into it. Not sure why. The accents are brilliant. I love the fact Beria is a half-gentrified working class Londoner, and Kruschev is a smart-talking Jewish New Yorker straight out of Woody Allen.
Zhukov completely stole the show for me. A wonderfully burlesque performance.
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
Also, what's less commented on is that this is a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He leads the UK government and made the call. He may also shortly have another one over the NI protocol. Both strengthen the Union.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
What political victory are you referring to?
Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
@Casino_Royale Usual half witted rubbish from someone who knows F all about Scotland.
Comments
Personally I think it's extremely serious and concerning that the US sees it as acceptable to destroy European infrastructure, harming Europe's economy whilst advancing America's commercial interests (perhaps both incidental to harming Russia's interests, but nonetheless real outcomes). However the US's world dominance comes to an end, I think we can rule out the sort of civilised senescence that characterised the end of Britain as a world power.
On the one hand, it is highly likely to be an utter disaster.
On the other, the Guardian doesn't like the idea. So I feel like I should.
Because most comedy is so specific to it’s time and place. Comedy is usually about making fun of anxieties, and each age’s anxieties are different.
Batty old people living in shabby gentility, middle class people terrified of the trade unions, retired colonial administrators, brash Americans, existed in the Seventies, but no longer.
Yes, he will probably still lose to Labour, because the wicket he's batting on couldn't be stickier, but maybe he's not quite as crap as people make him out to be?
Can't see a reboot working particularly well.
In 1851 there were 23 planets in the Solar System.
The most ever.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
I think his problem is his confidence in inhabiting the role - he's Charles play-acting the monarch rather than really owning it and redefining himself at the moment.
Blackadder is a tragedy as they had the right idea but for some reason changed it, before reverting.
Yes, Rishi stood up for common sense on this issue and has reaped the (very small) benefits.
Biden is boring, but he is the subject of the NEW THREAD
Their army fought with a level of professionalism to the end unmatched by anyone else, and the UK/USA could only defeat them with logistics and mass firepower and the USSR with sheer numbers.
To illustrate in a different way -
Imagine a son or daughter introduces their new beloved for the first time. Scenario A, the beloved is a Communist. Scenario B they're a Nazi.
You're going to be more freaked by B, aren't you? We all know this. You can be a good person and a Communist. There are many examples. You can't be a good person and a Nazi.
Hitler worse than Stalin. But crass to compare.
I would be seriously alarmed by somebody declaring their allegiance to Communism given it is (a) revolting and (b) has been a complete failure.
I think, to be truthful, in some ways it's worse than Nazism because it still finds people who do not realise just how violent and unpleasant it is. Or wilfully shut their eyes to it.