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Biden moves to betting favourite to win WH2024 – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited February 2023 in General
Biden moves to betting favourite to win WH2024 – politicalbetting.com

Possibly the single best moment of any State of the Union ever. Absolutely masterful. pic.twitter.com/AFoeY73NzS

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    edited February 2023
    :) First like Starmer
  • Things are really slowing down around here...
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Things are really slowing down around here...

    Stop hogging the new threads…
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    FPT...
    dixiedean said:

    TIL.
    In 1851 there were 23 planets in the Solar System.
    The most ever.

    Was that once they started finding asteroids but before deciding they don't count?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,841
    edited February 2023
    FPT.
    There were 23 planets in the Solar System in 1851.
    That's when they decided to call the numerous newly discovered ones between Mars and Jupiter "asteroids" instead.

    As @Driver astutely worked out.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,164
    Dark Brandon ownz the magas
  • Is @Jonathan biding his time again before he says again he's been Biden his time?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,769

    Is @Jonathan biding his time again before he says again he's been Biden his time?

    Are you suggesting he ought to promote the president, or in other words, Joe King?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,719
    Yes my long shot prediction is 2024 will be 1984 in reverse with Biden as Reagan and the incumbent President facing the VP from the last administration he beat, with Pence in the Mondale role
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,769
    HYUFD said:

    Yes my long shot prediction is 2024 will be 1984 in reverse with Biden as Reagan and the incumbent President facing the VP from the last administration he beat, with Pence in the Mondale role

    Pence wouldn't laugh at any of Biden's jokes though.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    edited February 2023
    BTW - has anyone watched the Biden video yet?

    Do we still have him down as a doddering old fool?
  • Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,769

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Duck Soup hasn't aged.
  • I've been gently building my Biden position in the dip.

    The 'he lost his papers, the silly old fool' moves the market much more than it should and people are betting to UK rules not US ones.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961
    Does anyone have a list of things Nichola Sturgeon can remember?

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23302114.sturgeon-cant-recall-knew-husband-loaned-snp-107-000/

    My double-incontinent dementia-addled mother had better recall.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,769

    BTW - has anyone watched the Biden video yet?

    Do we still have him down as a doddering old fool?

    It is quite possible to be a doddering old fool and still run rings round the current Republican Party.

    For what it's worth, I think his dodderiness is exaggerated. His folly, well, so far he hasn't committed quite so many gaffes as was expected.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,599

    Does anyone have a list of things Nichola Sturgeon can remember?

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23302114.sturgeon-cant-recall-knew-husband-loaned-snp-107-000/

    My double-incontinent dementia-addled mother had better recall.

    How to spell Nicola?
  • ydoethur said:

    BTW - has anyone watched the Biden video yet?

    Do we still have him down as a doddering old fool?

    It is quite possible to be a doddering old fool and still run rings round the current Republican Party.

    For what it's worth, I think his dodderiness is exaggerated. His folly, well, so far he hasn't committed quite so many gaffes as was expected.
    Indeed. He does seem to get a lot done for somebody who is supposedly in decline. Or else he has a super-efficient staff.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    FPT:
    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,769

    Does anyone have a list of things Nichola Sturgeon can remember?

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23302114.sturgeon-cant-recall-knew-husband-loaned-snp-107-000/

    My double-incontinent dementia-addled mother had better recall.

    How to spell Nicola?
    How do you know? When did you last see her write it?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    Does anyone have a list of things Nichola Sturgeon can remember?

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23302114.sturgeon-cant-recall-knew-husband-loaned-snp-107-000/

    My double-incontinent dementia-addled mother had better recall.

    How to spell Nicola?
    Aren't they usually asked 'who is the prime minister?' ?

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,776

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,599
    geoffw said:

    Does anyone have a list of things Nichola Sturgeon can remember?

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23302114.sturgeon-cant-recall-knew-husband-loaned-snp-107-000/

    My double-incontinent dementia-addled mother had better recall.

    How to spell Nicola?
    Aren't they usually asked 'who is the prime minister?' ?

    An obsolete question as a measurement of cogency in 2022.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    ydoethur said:

    dixiedean said:

    FPT.
    There were 23 planets in the Solar System in 1851.
    That's when they decided to call the numerous newly discovered ones between Mars and Jupiter "asteroids" instead.

    As @Driver astutely worked out.

    So they found a Ceres of new planets that were not proper planets?
    Juno, they did just that.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,776
    geoffw said:

    Does anyone have a list of things Nichola Sturgeon can remember?

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23302114.sturgeon-cant-recall-knew-husband-loaned-snp-107-000/

    My double-incontinent dementia-addled mother had better recall.

    How to spell Nicola?
    Aren't they usually asked 'who is the prime minister?' ?

    I thought they now used that to see how long people had been in comas. "Ah, he was in a coma for just one PM", etc.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,769

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Paul Robeson would be eaten alive by #MeToo. I don't know enough about the other two to comment, but anyone who joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927 must have been at least happy at the idea of people being brutally murdered.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,871
    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    On topic: Yay for the 80s cohort

    Still reeling from Volodomir's performance. Yay for the Ukies
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,724
    ydoethur said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Paul Robeson would be eaten alive by #MeToo. I don't know enough about the other two to comment, but anyone who joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927 must have been at least happy at the idea of people being brutally murdered.
    A not unusual situation in Latin America by parties of right, left and centre, as I understand it!
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    No mention of Airplane? Shirley you can't be serious?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    ydoethur said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Paul Robeson would be eaten alive by #MeToo. I don't know enough about the other two to comment, but anyone who joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927 must have been at least happy at the idea of people being brutally murdered.
    A not unusual situation in Latin America by parties of right, left and centre, as I understand it!
    Probably more to do with most of Latin america being run by organised crime more or less for decades. Much like putin's russia these days.
  • Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is a bit curious. My recollection was that it was edgy, progressive satire. But on more recent watchings, some of the sketches wouldn't be out of place on the Benny Hill Show.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    No mention of Airplane? Shirley you can't be serious?
    Monty Python and the Holy Grail....

    then Life of Brian.

    Both brilliant - and still top drawer humour.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,082
    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    Evening all :)

    Biden's still a class act - yes, he's no spring chicken but he's miles ahead of the heckling, whiny, abrasive Republicans like Marjorie Taylor-Greene who presumably loses the GOP votes every time she opens her mouth.

    Were Biden to hand out a second and bigger beating to Trump in 2024 (perhaps with the added bonus of the Democrats recapturing the House and holding the Senate), it'll be the turn of the Republicans to do some serious thinking.

    I've just seen the latest idea to finally do away with catering on trains. It's a long way from London to Penzance without coffee (or tea or water). Perhaps the idea is, as in India, to have vendors on the platforms at Exeter and Plymouth woh can provide a quick snack and drink in the 3-5 minute window the train is at the station (perhaps a pot noodle).

    SWR ended catering during the pandemic and it now seems the other long-distance operators want to do the same.

    Here's a revolutionary thought - don't run train services to make a profit, run train services to provide an enjoyable travelling experience. Everyone should pay 5p more in income tax so I can have a coffee on the way from London to Guildford - seems inherently reasonable.

    Zelenskyy cuts an impressive figure - he was of course a proper entertainer before he became a politician. He must know he can ask for hardware and he can get his pilots and soldiers trained outside the Ukraine but he must also know no NATO soldier can or must set foot on Ukrainian soil (officially). He's no idiot - there are lines he knows the West won't cross.

    I'd also like to think we will be in the forefront of the economic reconstruction of the Ukraine once the fighting has ended.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
  • Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    Is that where Churchill picked it up from? Didn’t see him as the type to hang about with lefties.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
  • Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    “He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.”
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
    If we're not careful this becomes self-fulfilling. Schindler was a member of the Nazi party but did (some) good works so not a 'real' Nazi.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,841

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
    You could make the same argument for Communists though too.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
  • Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    "I've been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love."
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    Is that where Churchill picked it up from? Didn’t see him as the type to hang about with lefties.
    Churchill hung out with whoever would get him elected, he has a lot in common with johnson. Doesn't excuse him holding those views in any way
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
    You could make the same argument for Communists though too.
    Definitely. I think the question of finding ‘good’ Nazis or communists is really about true believers.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,626

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
    He was acting a spy, pre-war, so he bought into and worked towards the Nazi conquest of Czechoslovakia.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,082
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Attitudes were different in past decades. Regarding other peoples as inferior on grounds of race or colour was a completely mainstream view a century ago. Conquering other countries to take their lands and populate with your own people too.

    Mostly the Nazis were using modern industrial techniques to do what other countries had been doing for over a century. It is part of the reason that so many in our establishment were quite OK with the Nazis, at least until it all became a bit too much.



  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Attitudes were different in past decades. Regarding other peoples as inferior on grounds of race or colour was a completely mainstream view a century ago. Conquering other countries to take their lands and populate with your own people too.

    Mostly the Nazis were using modern industrial techniques to do what other countries had been doing for over a century. It is part of the reason that so many in our establishment were quite OK with the Nazis, at least until it all became a bit too much.



    Communists and socialists and nazi's today still believe the state is more important than the individual. It is time we treated all three the same as the morally repugnant scum they are
  • rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    And Last of the Summer Wine was probably the gentlest comedy of the lot and seemed to last forever. Whereas, whatever you can say about John Cleese's comedic talents, they're not gentle.
  • Stocky said:

    Selebian said:

    Stocky said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.

    With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.

    With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.

    Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.

    Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.

    That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
    Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
    Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
    Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.

    I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
    there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
    Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
    Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
    You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?

    Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
    Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
    So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
    Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before.
    The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
    I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.

    "Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"

    Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?

    If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
    When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.

    Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
    That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
    Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.

    I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
    My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
    Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
    Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
    Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?

    (I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
    Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.

    Best is lid up, ring bit down
    Second is lid up, ring bit up

    Have a word.
    If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.

    Your choice...
    I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDIIhzc-FWg
    That's a pressurised commercial toilet, not remotely the same as a domestic one.

    That's without even considering the fact that overanalysing stuff ignores that this sort of stuff is found everywhere. Any cash in your pocket? Test it and you'll find you have somebodies faecal matter there too, or cocaine, or more likely both.

    It doesn't help anyone to become a hypochondriac afraid of all germs. I'd rather have the lid up and be able to see if there's any mess that hasn't flushed so I can clean it and leave it clean for the next person than hyperventilate about microscopic droplets.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,871
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    Is that where Churchill picked it up from? Didn’t see him as the type to hang about with lefties.
    Churchill hung out with whoever would get him elected, he has a lot in common with johnson. Doesn't excuse him holding those views in any way
    Would Johnson have made a good war leader?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    Biden's still a class act - yes, he's no spring chicken but he's miles ahead of the heckling, whiny, abrasive Republicans like Marjorie Taylor-Greene who presumably loses the GOP votes every time she opens her mouth.

    Were Biden to hand out a second and bigger beating to Trump in 2024 (perhaps with the added bonus of the Democrats recapturing the House and holding the Senate), it'll be the turn of the Republicans to do some serious thinking.

    I've just seen the latest idea to finally do away with catering on trains. It's a long way from London to Penzance without coffee (or tea or water). Perhaps the idea is, as in India, to have vendors on the platforms at Exeter and Plymouth woh can provide a quick snack and drink in the 3-5 minute window the train is at the station (perhaps a pot noodle).

    SWR ended catering during the pandemic and it now seems the other long-distance operators want to do the same.

    Here's a revolutionary thought - don't run train services to make a profit, run train services to provide an enjoyable travelling experience. Everyone should pay 5p more in income tax so I can have a coffee on the way from London to Guildford - seems inherently reasonable.

    Zelenskyy cuts an impressive figure - he was of course a proper entertainer before he became a politician. He must know he can ask for hardware and he can get his pilots and soldiers trained outside the Ukraine but he must also know no NATO soldier can or must set foot on Ukrainian soil (officially). He's no idiot - there are lines he knows the West won't cross.

    I'd also like to think we will be in the forefront of the economic reconstruction of the Ukraine once the fighting has ended.

    I don’t think they will ask us to rebuild their railways, though.
    They might think twice about the Spanish too. It'll have to be the Eisenbahn.

  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    Is that where Churchill picked it up from? Didn’t see him as the type to hang about with lefties.
    Churchill hung out with whoever would get him elected, he has a lot in common with johnson. Doesn't excuse him holding those views in any way
    Would Johnson have made a good war leader?
    You can't tell till there is a war, who knows maybe, maybe not. Shrugs we didn't have a uk involved war while he was pm so one to leave to people with far too much time on their hands to debate and thats not me as I don't really care as its irrelevant
  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 4,922

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    I think the best comic characters are subalterns. They have some little power and responsibility, but are keenly aware of their ultimate powerlessness. It’s what unites disparate figures such as Bilko, Father Ted, Reggie Perrin, Basil Fawlty and the two you mention.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257

    Stocky said:

    Selebian said:

    Stocky said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.

    With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.

    With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.

    Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.

    Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.

    That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
    Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
    Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
    Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.

    I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
    there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
    Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
    Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
    You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?

    Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
    Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
    So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
    Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before.
    The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
    I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.

    "Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"

    Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?

    If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
    When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.

    Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
    That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
    Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.

    I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
    My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
    Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
    Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
    Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?

    (I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
    Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.

    Best is lid up, ring bit down
    Second is lid up, ring bit up

    Have a word.
    If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.

    Your choice...
    I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDIIhzc-FWg
    That's a pressurised commercial toilet, not remotely the same as a domestic one.

    That's without even considering the fact that overanalysing stuff ignores that this sort of stuff is found everywhere. Any cash in your pocket? Test it and you'll find you have somebodies faecal matter there too, or cocaine, or more likely both.

    It doesn't help anyone to become a hypochondriac afraid of all germs. I'd rather have the lid up and be able to see if there's any mess that hasn't flushed so I can clean it and leave it clean for the next person than hyperventilate about microscopic droplets.
    Hyperventilating certainly seems the wrong thing to do in the presence of microscopic droplets of shit :open_mouth:
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,871
    geoffw said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    Biden's still a class act - yes, he's no spring chicken but he's miles ahead of the heckling, whiny, abrasive Republicans like Marjorie Taylor-Greene who presumably loses the GOP votes every time she opens her mouth.

    Were Biden to hand out a second and bigger beating to Trump in 2024 (perhaps with the added bonus of the Democrats recapturing the House and holding the Senate), it'll be the turn of the Republicans to do some serious thinking.

    I've just seen the latest idea to finally do away with catering on trains. It's a long way from London to Penzance without coffee (or tea or water). Perhaps the idea is, as in India, to have vendors on the platforms at Exeter and Plymouth woh can provide a quick snack and drink in the 3-5 minute window the train is at the station (perhaps a pot noodle).

    SWR ended catering during the pandemic and it now seems the other long-distance operators want to do the same.

    Here's a revolutionary thought - don't run train services to make a profit, run train services to provide an enjoyable travelling experience. Everyone should pay 5p more in income tax so I can have a coffee on the way from London to Guildford - seems inherently reasonable.

    Zelenskyy cuts an impressive figure - he was of course a proper entertainer before he became a politician. He must know he can ask for hardware and he can get his pilots and soldiers trained outside the Ukraine but he must also know no NATO soldier can or must set foot on Ukrainian soil (officially). He's no idiot - there are lines he knows the West won't cross.

    I'd also like to think we will be in the forefront of the economic reconstruction of the Ukraine once the fighting has ended.

    I don’t think they will ask us to rebuild their railways, though.
    They might think twice about the Spanish too. It'll have to be the Eisenbahn.

    And hopefully they won’t need new ferries.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,841

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
    You could make the same argument for Communists though too.
    Definitely. I think the question of finding ‘good’ Nazis or communists is really about true believers.
    Yes. In the case of Schindler, he was a Sudeten German. The Nazis were strongly implying they would strive to re unite the Sudetenland with Germany. It wasn't entirely unreasonable for him to have sympathy with that cause. Whilst making more money and not delving into the details of exactly how.
    Woody Guthrie wanted Americans to be paid decent wages, at liberty to join a Union, and be free to wander about empty landscapes.
    The Communist Party was one of the few outlets to share these not outrageous goals. Again. He didn't become a fanatical adherent obsessed by the precise mechanics.
    Neither wanted to enslave, persecute or murder anyone.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    I think the best comic characters are subalterns. They have some little power and responsibility, but are keenly aware of their ultimate powerlessness. It’s what unites disparate figures such as Bilko, Father Ted, Reggie Perrin, Basil Fawlty and the two you mention.
    See also Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army and HYUFD in that long-running sitcom PB.com.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,160
    edited February 2023

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    The humour in Blackadder is never cruel?

    Mocking Baldric, and Edmund and everyone else dying a brutal death every six episodes has more than a hint of cruelty* to it - but we're all in on the cruelty and its not cruel against anyone or any class of people being "othered".

    * Apart from Goes Forth obviously which is a completely poignant tragedy rather than cruelty.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    I think the best comic characters are subalterns. They have some little power and responsibility, but are keenly aware of their ultimate powerlessness. It’s what unites disparate figures such as Bilko, Father Ted, Reggie Perrin, Basil Fawlty and the two you mention.
    It's why 'Allo 'Allo was able to make the Nazi characters funny and sort-of loveable. Apart from Herr Flick, they were about as powerless as everyone else.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    edited February 2023
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to murder all the Jews in Europe.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    BTW - has anyone watched the Biden video yet?

    Do we still have him down as a doddering old fool?

    Even if so, there are worse things to be. That's at least managable.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.

    Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.

    I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.

    You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,841
    edited February 2023
    On the subject of genocidal mass murderers.
    The Tory government's welcoming one to the UK for talks next week.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/08/cross-party-mps-shocked-by-foreign-office-talks-with-xinjiang-governor
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    kle4 said:

    BTW - has anyone watched the Biden video yet?

    Do we still have him down as a doddering old fool?

    Even if so, there are worse things to be. That's at least managable.
    Missing Beibheiri's point I think. That is: he's no doddering fool.
  • dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
    You could make the same argument for Communists though too.
    Definitely. I think the question of finding ‘good’ Nazis or communists is really about true believers.
    And with Brexit, you get the True Be-Leavers.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,841
    edited February 2023
    Taz said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.

    Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.

    I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.

    You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
    Richard Beckinsale was an understated genius.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    edited February 2023
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/from-the-archive-blog/2019/may/01/eugenics-founding-fathers-british-socialism-archive-1997
    quote "But the great founding fathers of British socialism, reports Jonathan Freedland, had dreams almost as vile as those of the Nazis"
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
  • Taz said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.

    Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.

    I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.

    You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
    Its interesting looking at comedies that are still funny though at how you can date them.

    Take Friends, from the 90s it in many ways still feels modern and its still funny today but it would never be made the same way today as it was then. It was quite modern at the time with discussing homosexuality etc but can be rather homophobic by today's standards, especially the way Chandler's dad is mocked/the butt of jokes for being a transvestite. And the cast being all-white also dates it as being from the 20th century too, you wouldn't get that in a prime time comedy series nowadays.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
    see above
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,405

    Stocky said:

    Selebian said:

    Stocky said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    Strange that Sturgeon - very able as she is - should stumble over a couple of things much less gifted people would avoid.

    With GRR all you have to do to avoid trouble is to shadow what England and Wales is doing (don't ask, no idea), take any credit and blame any problems on Westminster. Standard stuff.

    With GE as 'proxy referendum' you cannot win. If you poll 50%+ everyone else says tough, we never recognised this. If you don't poll 50%+ you have lost on your own terms, and your enemies as well as other parties will be quick to point it out.

    Since the Brexit 52/48 vote, pressing for a referendum except when support for the change is so strong it's irresistible is a bit out of fashion.

    Why is this gifted (though wrong) politician not doing gritty everyday campaigning to get support for independence up to 60-65%, from which position she could actually get what she says she wants? Since Brexit she is not exactly short of material to work with.

    That’s the point Salmond was making on WATO yesterday - why pick a fight with Westminster over this, rather than, for example, something Europe related which could be tied in with the economy/cost of living?
    Why are we ruling out that she wants to deliver a longstanding commitment that she also believes in?
    Comes under an increasing reluctance to assume ANY good faith in the motives of one's opponents.
    Which you both clearly demonstrate yourselves.

    I mean the reason the move was opposed was not because people might be concerned about say convicted male rapists being allowed into women's prisons but because such people wanted to create a culture war, have a wedge issue, play dirty politics.
    there is more of that on the anti (GRR) side than the pro.
    Which of the concerns about the GRR Bill raised by its critics (and dismissed by Sturgeon as “not valid”) have proved not to be?
    Well the bill hasn't passed so one can't really say. We need to look at what's happened in countries - Ireland being the closest to home - where similar HAS been done. What we certainly do seem to have in Scotland is an issue with risk assessment for prisons. Are you claiming that this specific recent case shows that all the fears raised - no more single sex spaces, women's rights destroyed, floodgates opened for predatory men to gain GRCs for nefarious purposes, end of sex as a biological concept etc etc - are rational and justified? If you are I think that's a stretch.
    You claimed that critics were more driving the issue as a “wedge issue” but have no evidence - so now retreat behind “the bill hasn’t passed”. I ask again, where is the evidence that critics were driven by trying to create a wedge, or were their concerns “not valid” to quote Sturgeon?

    Claiming it’s a “wedge issue” is another tactic to delegitimise your opponents views - which is why they weren’t listened to, which is why it’s in the mess it’s in. If you really were interested in trans rights you’d have listened.
    Good to know that Alistair McConnachie of UK A Force For Good, Joseph Finnie ex BNP and Fox regular Andy Ngo supported the Let Women Speak rally on Sunday to show their concerns rather than use it as a wedge issue.
    So mandatory fox hunting and animal cruelty? Mustn't support a cause that the Hugo Boss fashionistas like....
    Yeah, you’ve tried that lumbering zinger before.
    The point attempting to be made was that this was not being used as a wedge issue in a culture war. I’ll add you to the list of credulous folk who think that.
    I am rather taken aback by the resistance we are encountering on this one.

    "Ok, listen up peeps, how can we use this Transgender thing to peel away votes from the other side?"

    Can there seriously be any doubt that the above is playing out far more in Tory brainstorming sessions than in those of LAB/LD/SNP?

    If we can't win this argument on here we might as well give up and put the kettle on.
    When you and @Theuniondivvie are of the opinion that the only people who are on the other side are the "BNP", "Trump", "InfoWars" and assorted other troglodytes then yes its certainly possible and there certainly is doubt.

    Of course it shouldn't be playing out in any such sessions for any party and instead the legitimate concerns of both sides should be listened to, but the two of you in particular are never in any mood for that, hence the desire to mock everyone who disagrees as being a "wedge" or "InfoWars" instead of listening to their very valid concerns.
    That's what people like you do, characterise a pointing out of dubious fellow travellers as saying they are 'the only people who are on the other side', which is lying, which makes you a...?
    Whilst people like you refuse to ever admit that there is ever anything awry. Nothing to apologise for.

    I have lived with a Scot for 30 years. It would seem "sorry" is not a word north of the border. Instead, there is a third person in our marriage, myself, my wife - and the mysterious damage fairy, who has to take responsibility for all unexplained incidents that might otherwise point to the Good Lady Wife.
    My wife never apologises for anything either (and why should she as she is infallible). And yet she isn't Scottish while I am. Go figure!
    Does that mean that if I self ID as female, I will no longer need to apologise for anything?
    Yes, that's right. And you will always put the toilet lid down.
    Surely a true gentleman always does that anyway?

    (I was persuaded on this point by by now-wife, who argued that - when we were a household of two - that there was a higher probability the next user would want the toilet seat down than up. I'm a sucker for - even postulative - statistical argument.)
    Nah, that only works if she is referring to the middle ring bit. Putting the lid down conveniences no-one.

    Best is lid up, ring bit down
    Second is lid up, ring bit up

    Have a word.
    If you flush with the lid up you spread germs, and in some cases shit, all round the bathroom.

    Your choice...
    I have never in my life seen fecal matter or any other matter spread around the room when I flush.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDIIhzc-FWg
    That's a pressurised commercial toilet, not remotely the same as a domestic one.

    That's without even considering the fact that overanalysing stuff ignores that this sort of stuff is found everywhere. Any cash in your pocket? Test it and you'll find you have somebodies faecal matter there too, or cocaine, or more likely both.

    It doesn't help anyone to become a hypochondriac afraid of all germs. I'd rather have the lid up and be able to see if there's any mess that hasn't flushed so I can clean it and leave it clean for the next person than hyperventilate about microscopic droplets.
    Close
    Flush
    Lift & inspect

    Simples
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    John Rabe is an example of a good Nazi:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23,during the massacre that ensued.
    Oskar Schindler too, of course.
    Was Schindler a Nazi? I know he joined the party, but so did an awful lot of Germans who wanted to get on. Not unlike people who cozy up to incoming governments (Labour will be getting lots of contact from business right now).
    How many Nazis actually wanted to exterminate people, rather than just right the wrongs of Versailles?
    You could make the same argument for Communists though too.
    Definitely. I think the question of finding ‘good’ Nazis or communists is really about true believers.
    And with Brexit, you get the True Be-Leavers.
    The old songs are the best songs, eh Sunil?

  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
    see above
    There's no evidence above that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
    And the ussr didn't murder anyone, nor the chinese under mao nor pol pot nor any of the other socialiast or communist states, most of them murdered on a scale the nazi's could only dream of once you adjust for population.

    I am not saying nazi's good, they were total shits, so were the left wing countries that went socialist or communist is the point. However while I am not defending the nazi's you are defending the socialist and communist and even in moderate left wing scandanavia forced sterilisations of the "wrong types" only ceased in the 70's
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    dixiedean said:

    Taz said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.

    Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.

    I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.

    You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
    Richard Beckinsale was an understated genius.
    It’s sad to wonder what work he could have done. In rising damp, his co-star is still churning out Death in Paradise, 50 years on.
  • Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
    And the ussr didn't murder anyone, nor the chinese under mao nor pol pot nor any of the other socialiast or communist states, most of them murdered on a scale the nazi's could only dream of once you adjust for population.

    I am not saying nazi's good, they were total shits, so were the left wing countries that went socialist or communist is the point. However while I am not defending the nazi's you are defending the socialist and communist and even in moderate left wing scandanavia forced sterilisations of the "wrong types" only ceased in the 70's
    Exactly, two cheeks of the same arse.

    Communists are every bit as unmitigatedly evil as Nazis, there is no middle ground or shades of grey here. The only difference is, we didn't fight against one in WWII, but when it comes to pure evil - they're both evil.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    dixiedean said:

    Taz said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.

    Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.

    I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.

    You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
    Richard Beckinsale was an understated genius.
    It’s sad to wonder what work he could have done. In rising damp, his co-star is still churning out Death in Paradise, 50 years on.
    And all the other co-stars are dead in Paradise … we hope.

  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704
    dixiedean said:

    Taz said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.

    Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.

    I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.

    You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
    Richard Beckinsale was an understated genius.
    Absolutely and taken far too young.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,587

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    Nigelb said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
    Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    geoffw said:

    kle4 said:

    BTW - has anyone watched the Biden video yet?

    Do we still have him down as a doddering old fool?

    Even if so, there are worse things to be. That's at least managable.
    Missing Beibheiri's point I think. That is: he's no doddering fool.
    I didn't miss the point. That's why I said 'even if' he was, not that he was.
  • Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
    see above
    There's no evidence above that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.
    Although her husband was a founder, was Virginia Woolf herself a Fabian? Anyway, here's a quotation from her:

    we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. the first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one realised that everyone in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,405
    While my support for The Toon has waned, it is reassuring to see that I still take delight in Sunderland getting beaten.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704

    Taz said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Actually, whilst I think about it, not all comedy ages.

    Not the Nine O'clock News is still bloody funny now, despite being made in 1980-81, as is Blackadder, and the basis for Yes Minister works just as much today.

    I expect the reason Fawlty Towers - which is still popular- works is because class and petty pomposity is very much still a thing, even if the casual homophobia/anti-Irishness/racism is not.

    Most comedy ages very poorly.

    Blackadder and Fawlty Towers are very rare exceptions.
    I would add The Good Life to that list, although now Tom Good would probably WFH.
    The Two Ronnie's best sketches are gold. There are American people on Youtube who react to old British comedy videos as a side hustle. They still marvel and guffaw at the Mastermind sketch despite having little idea who Bernard Manning or the Right Reverend Robert Runcie are.
    Tbf Dad's Army and Porridge have aged well too.
    We can list any number of old comedy that has aged well. What’s more interesting is to analyse why they have done so. You can argue that Fletcher in Porridge and Edmund in Blackadder are similar. Stuck in position in a hierarchy, subject to powers above, annoyed by companions they probably wouldn’t really choose. Generally they come out on top after all the scrapes.
    The humour in both series is never cruel.
    A lot of comedy features people who are, essentially, trapped, or stuck, in a situation and the humour comes from it and those around them.

    Transplant Fletcher from Slade Prison in Going Straight and it sank like the Titanic, for example.

    I think comedy that ages well tends to be less contemporary and has a few series to develop the characters and the relationships.

    You Rang My Lord and Ever Decreasing Circles are two of my absolute favourite comedies. They work so well and the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Both had perfect endings too.
    Its interesting looking at comedies that are still funny though at how you can date them.

    Take Friends, from the 90s it in many ways still feels modern and its still funny today but it would never be made the same way today as it was then. It was quite modern at the time with discussing homosexuality etc but can be rather homophobic by today's standards, especially the way Chandler's dad is mocked/the butt of jokes for being a transvestite. And the cast being all-white also dates it as being from the 20th century too, you wouldn't get that in a prime time comedy series nowadays.
    No you wouldn’t but then you don’t get too many prime time comedies these days anyway. It’s a dying art. Ghosts. Not Going Out (about to be retired) and the Beeb will sometimes try a new one which flops. ITV is a sitcom desert these days, the channel that gave us some great comedies too.

    Panel,shows still survive but the sketch show is a dying art too.

    Friends has been called out for all of the above and one of the writers got into a bit of a pickle over it.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/friends-apology-marta-kauffman-lack-diversity-b2112597.html
  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 4,922

    While my support for The Toon has waned, it is reassuring to see that I still take delight in Sunderland getting beaten.

    And dirty Leeds winning at Man U?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    kle4 said:

    geoffw said:

    kle4 said:

    BTW - has anyone watched the Biden video yet?

    Do we still have him down as a doddering old fool?

    Even if so, there are worse things to be. That's at least managable.
    Missing Beibheiri's point I think. That is: he's no doddering fool.
    I didn't miss the point. That's why I said 'even if' he was, not that he was.
    If you say so. … You said 'even if so'.

  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 4,922

    While my support for The Toon has waned, it is reassuring to see that I still take delight in Sunderland getting beaten.

    And dirty Leeds winning at Man U?
    Whoops. Just pulled one back.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
    see above
    There's no evidence above that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.
    Although her husband was a founder, was Virginia Woolf herself a Fabian? Anyway, here's a quotation from her:

    we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. the first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one realised that everyone in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.
    There are two parts to peoples lives, what they do and what they believe.

    If someone does nothing but good but believes in an ideology of hatred are they good or bad?

    Conversely if people do evil shit but believe in an ideology that is universally proclaimed good are they good or bad?

    Seems to me that if you do nothing but good but are a nazi you will get shat on for your beliefs, do nothing but good but believe in communism you get a pass even though to my mind I see no difference of the poison endemic in the beliefs
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,841
    edited February 2023
    Pagan2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Not even “could be”; the basis of Hitler’s mad philosophy was the fundamental imperative to wage exterminatory race war.
    Disagree, the core of communism is the collective is more important than the individual. That makes the individual expendable for the good of the collective. Hardly a "good" philosophy
    Useful for our national survival during WW2, mind.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,289
    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    ydoethur said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    DJ41a said:

    DJ41a said:

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Oh lordy - trains and trans day on PB...

    Later peeps!

    (Does not bother removing hat or coat)

    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.
    Frida Kahlo, Woody Guthie, Paul Robeson.
    Would you consider those people good if they described themselves as nazi's? I doubt it. People can do good and still follow poisonous ideologies. Communism and Nazi ideology are equally repugnant. Let us not forget that nazi's didnt invent eugenics they borrowed it from the fabians
    I respect your view but...

    To me Nazism is a fundamentally evil philosophy, based as it is on a belief that some people are sub-humans who can be exploited or exterminated to further the interests of the 'master race'.

    Communism at its heart has a belief in equality, community and sharing. Of course, it has never been implemented successfully and in my opinion is never likely to be, mainly because greed is too basic a human vice.

    Communism: good intent subverted by evil; Nazism: evil intent made worse by evil.
    Communism is a belief that the state is all important and comes above individuals and like the insect hive which ideology it resembles it believes the state comes first and if that means individuals get sacrificed for the public good then so be it. This is why left wing bien pensants advocated eugenics long before hitler. Lets not let the thick and disabled breed to improve the human race. Describe to me how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please.
    Where to begin. How about: the Fabians didn't feel the need to wipe out all the Jews in Europe.
    Merely the disabled, the homosexuals, the stupid and the differently normal in the cause of breeding a better human.
    Well no. Please provide the evidence that the Fabians were promoting the murder of any of those groups.

    While I remind you that the Nazis not only promoted the murder of all of those groups but carried it out.
    And the ussr didn't murder anyone, nor the chinese under mao nor pol pot nor any of the other socialiast or communist states, most of them murdered on a scale the nazi's could only dream of once you adjust for population.

    I am not saying nazi's good, they were total shits, so were the left wing countries that went socialist or communist is the point. However while I am not defending the nazi's you are defending the socialist and communist and even in moderate left wing scandanavia forced sterilisations of the "wrong types" only ceased in the 70's
    Goalpost moving there Pagan. You asked me to describe "how the fabians and the nazi's differ in ideology please".

    I gave you a fundamental example. You've ignored that.

    Do I defend Stalin or Mao or the USSR or the PRC? No, not at all. They are evidence that Communism is unimplementable in my opinion; it has been corrupted every time it was tried.
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