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 during WW2, mind.
There is a difference however between asking people to go fight and maybe survive than systematically slaughtering people for the good of the state. The nazi's did the latter, so did the ussr, the chinese, pol pot, north korea, venezuela during the pinochet era etc. All come from the same trope, individuals are expendable for the good of the state whether it is to prop up a fascist state, a socialist state, a communist state, or a dictatorship
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
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 during WW2, mind.
There is a difference however between asking people to go fight and maybe survive than systematically slaughtering people for the good of the state. The nazi's did the latter, so did the ussr, the chinese, pol pot, north korea, venezuela during the pinochet era etc. All come from the same trope, individuals are expendable for the good of the state whether it is to prop up a fascist state, a socialist state, a communist state, or a dictatorship
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
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 during WW2, mind.
There is a difference however between asking people to go fight and maybe survive than systematically slaughtering people for the good of the state. The nazi's did the latter, so did the ussr, the chinese, pol pot, north korea, venezuela during the pinochet era etc. All come from the same trope, individuals are expendable for the good of the state whether it is to prop up a fascist state, a socialist state, a communist state, or a dictatorship
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
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 during WW2, mind.
There is a difference however between asking people to go fight and maybe survive than systematically slaughtering people for the good of the state. The nazi's did the latter, so did the ussr, the chinese, pol pot, north korea, venezuela during the pinochet era etc. All come from the same trope, individuals are expendable for the good of the state whether it is to prop up a fascist state, a socialist state, a communist state, or a dictatorship
There is indeed. But the belief that the collective is more important than the individual is intrinsic to it. It's hardly unusual in history. And folk weren't "asked" to fight. They were forced to by the State.
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
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?
Hannah Arendt.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."
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 during WW2, mind.
There is a difference however between asking people to go fight and maybe survive than systematically slaughtering people for the good of the state. The nazi's did the latter, so did the ussr, the chinese, pol pot, north korea, venezuela during the pinochet era etc. All come from the same trope, individuals are expendable for the good of the state whether it is to prop up a fascist state, a socialist state, a communist state, or a dictatorship
There is indeed. But the belief that the collective is more important than the individual is intrinsic to it. It's hardly unusual in history. And folk weren't "asked" to fight. They were forced to by the State.
Still different to be conscripted and have a good chance of coming back rather than a quick bullet to the back of the head and a mass grave
I feel like O'Mara's barrister was really struggling in the face of cast iron evidence of dishonesty, this is seriously weak stuff.
Mark Kelly KC, representing O'Mara, told the court his client had autism, was born with cerebral palsy and was suffering from anxiety and depression at the time of the offences.
He asked jurors to consider whether O'Mara was acting "dishonestly or incompetently" in filing the expenses claims under examination.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
That makes no sense at all, and I don't think it is remotely what Ben is saying anyway. Yes, they are different. So what? Corbyn could give anyone a run for their money in the moral bankruptcy stakes, and Campbell and Blair between them were without exaggeration mass murderers. So what is your point?
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
See, whenever I consider veering leftwards, this sort of moral superiority is exactly the sort of thing which prevents me from doing so.
Despite their fierce intellectual opposition, Fascism and Communism seem to differ very little as regards real-world material consequences. Their main disagreement of substance seems to be on which groups of people to persecute.
On Biden: I agree with earlier posts made here that he is proving, whether accidentally or by well-disguised genius, to be more competent than Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama or Trump. Reagan was good at converting questions about his old age into quips about his opponents' inexperience; perhaps Biden could take a leaf from his book in the coming campaign.
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
You have put that SO much more eloquently than I can manage.
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
Well said.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy. Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism. Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
Someone says they are a nazi you will treat them with scorn and contempt as would I,
Difference is
Someone says they are a communist you will think they are a good chap despite the millions of deaths whereas I will treat them equally with scorn and contempt and call them scum.
Nazis, Fabians, social darwinists - all were distressed at the decline of humanity. They observed what were really impacts of modernity on people's physical condition; but disastrously misdiagnosed the cause as racial/genetic inferiority. It was the fashion of the time. Following World War 2, the idea of the healthy body became deeply unfashionable for a long time, only really re-emerging in the 1980s. That has been damaging to human health, as we've focused on ways to fix ourselves when we get sick, rather than aim for health - which we're still a little suspicious of in some ways. The Nazis really poisoned that well.
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
That makes no sense at all, and I don't think it is remotely what Ben is saying anyway. Yes, they are different. So what? Corbyn could give anyone a run for their money in the moral bankruptcy stakes, and Campbell and Blair between them were without exaggeration mass murderers. So what is your point?
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
That makes no sense at all, and I don't think it is remotely what Ben is saying anyway. Yes, they are different. So what? Corbyn could give anyone a run for their money in the moral bankruptcy stakes, and Campbell and Blair between them were without exaggeration mass murderers. So what is your point?
No, I'm afraid Tyson is spot on!
Wow left wing idiot agrees with left wing idiot hold the front page
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.
I think also the character of Basil Fawlty - rather similar to Blackadder in this regard - is in many respects the source of his own misfortunes, and that is an inherently funny set-up, and so timeless.
As I recall you have a similar construction in some of the Canterbury Tales.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
On the Yank comedy side, The Good Place was just one of the best things in years. That said I think The Detectorists would give any of those mentioned a run for their money. The very best type of comedy; both funny and poignant. The same goes for Afterlife.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
I feel like O'Mara's barrister was really struggling in the face of cast iron evidence of dishonesty, this is seriously weak stuff.
Mark Kelly KC, representing O'Mara, told the court his client had autism, was born with cerebral palsy and was suffering from anxiety and depression at the time of the offences.
He asked jurors to consider whether O'Mara was acting "dishonestly or incompetently" in filing the expenses claims under examination.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
Never saw Fleabag, never heard of the Detectorists. Will have to look them up.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
I don’t think the Nazis are on there own as the most evil regime. Pol Pot is up there, as is Chairman Mao, and as I have argued Stalin.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
Curb is still going and a series I could watch and watch. There was a snippy review in the guardian a few years back at the start of a new series saying it was basically a white man flaunting his privilege. It is exactly that, unashamedly so, and it does it so well.
A show that mocks social awkwardness and social conventions. Brilliantly too.
Beeb comedy does seem to be mainly panel shows, and not very good ones either. HIGNFY has gone on far too long. It’s just a pale,shadow,of its former self. It’s hard to be original with that format.
The last decent British sitcom I can think of was probably the IT Crowd
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
See, whenever I consider veering leftwards, this sort of moral superiority is exactly the sort of thing which prevents me from doing so.
That's perverse. It's like saying 'whenever I feel like doing a good deed, fear of feeling good about it puts me off'.
Suppress your fear, veer leftwards, and bear your moral superiority with fortitude!
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
My side’s depravity is better than your side’s depravity is not a strong argument.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
How about the Romans? Prisoners raped then devoured by animals for mass entertainment? They're greatly admired by some bien pensants. One of their chief apologists became PM. What about the Assyrians. Or Aztecs?
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
Personally love Not going out, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Interestin* that it’s had three main versions - the first series with Kate, Tim’s American ex girlfriend, then with Lucy as the love interest, but not, as they say, going out, and then the time shift to married with three kids. I heard at one point Lee Mack was interested in remaking Everybody Loves Raymond, but I guess in the time shift achieved the same resulted change in setting.
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
See, whenever I consider veering leftwards, this sort of moral superiority is exactly the sort of thing which prevents me from doing so.
That's perverse. It's like saying 'whenever I feel like doing a good deed, fear of feeling good about it puts me off'.
Suppress your fear, veer leftwards, and bear your moral superiority with fortitude!
Being leftwards isnt doing good though, the history of lefty governments shows that remember it was the scandi's sterilizing people till the mid 70s for being too thick or too disabled to be allowed to breed
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
Well said. You're right. They are all evil beyond comprehension. I'll shut up.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
Never saw Fleabag, never heard of the Detectorists. Will have to look them up.
Fleabag I think is loved more by women than men. Detectorists is very gentle, almost soporific, but tremendous as a study in male friendship.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six. Million. Jews.
You don't write sentences or even sentence fragments like that, it's Six million Jews.
1.5. Million. Armenians.
Twenty. Million. Victims. Of. Stalin.
40-80. Million. Victims. Of. Mao.
2. Million. Victims. Of. Pol pot.
What's different? Let me tell you what's different, is the Nazis were local to you (and me) and their victims were middle class white Europeans you find it easy imaginatively to relate to. All there is to it.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
Well said. You're right. They are all evil beyond comprehension. I'll shut up.
Ben is a decent person, I do believe that. I like to think I am too and we disagreed on this and I admit I was annoyed because it winds me up when we make excuses for a side we are on, though I do understand the impulse. We should call out all evil regardless of who commits it and say this is wrong we dont agree. What binds us is at the end of the day we are all human.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
How about the Romans? Prisoners raped then devoured by animals for mass entertainment? They're greatly admired by some bien pensants. One of their chief apologists became PM. What about the Assyrians. Or Aztecs?
I don't know of any evidence of the Romans doing that
Anyway thank goodness Jared O'Mara was a Tory MP, if he hadn't been a couple of posters would be looking very silly.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
Well said. You're right. They are all evil beyond comprehension. I'll shut up.
Ben is a decent person, I do believe that. I like to think I am too and we disagreed on this and I admit I was annoyed because it winds me up when we make excuses for a side we are on, though I do understand the impulse. We should call out all evil regardless of who commits it and say this is wrong we dont agree. What binds us is at the end of the day we are all human.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
Well said. You're right. They are all evil beyond comprehension. I'll shut up.
"They are all evil beyond comprehension" - no, they are not.
We must comprehend them. because the same shit keeps happening.
As we type, China is methodically eliminating Tibetans and Uyghur culture.
Putin's chums in Wagner Group ( and the regular army) need no introduction.
Then there is the Rohingya genocide.
Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is shooting people in the back of the head for being the wrong something. And kicking the bodies into a ditch.
The exact epaulettes they are wearing and the ideology behind them is just for the trainspotters, really.
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
I can't find the quote now, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Revolutionary Russian leaders said something along the lines of, "The absolute freedom of the individual is the precondition for collective freedom." Probably they were one of the ones who ended up murdered by Stalin.
The problem with capitalist society is not that there is too much individual freedom, and not enough sacrifice for the collective, but that too many people in a capitalist society are not free, because they are forced by material necessity to partake of an unequal trade of their labour with the owners of capital.
Once you make the normal working person free of this coercive control, and truly free, then they will be able to form a voluntary association to co-operate with each other about how to best organise production, labour, reward and effort. It was very convenient for the Stalinist regime to invite the citizens of the USSR to make sacrifices for the benefit of the regime, but I don'[t see that as an accurate reflection of Communism as a philosophy.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
Well said. You're right. They are all evil beyond comprehension. I'll shut up.
Ben is a decent person, I do believe that. I like to think I am too and we disagreed on this and I admit I was annoyed because it winds me up when we make excuses for a side we are on, though I do understand the impulse. We should call out all evil regardless of who commits it and say this is wrong we dont agree. What binds us is at the end of the day we are all human.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
Well said. You're right. They are all evil beyond comprehension. I'll shut up.
Ben is a decent person, I do believe that. I like to think I am too and we disagreed on this and I admit I was annoyed because it winds me up when we make excuses for a side we are on, though I do understand the impulse. We should call out all evil regardless of who commits it and say this is wrong we dont agree. What binds us is at the end of the day we are all human.
Well, yes. So were pol pot and Jeffrey Dahmer, though. Didn't seem to bind them much.
» show previous quotes Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
@Casino_Royale Usual half witted rubbish from someone who knows F all about Scotland.
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
Did I say it was ? I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
Those on the right often get very tetchy when faced with the fact that the most evil regime in history was an extreme right-wing one: the Nazis.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
You what?
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
Six Million Jews.
That's closer to home, but also much fewer people than Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin etc managed to kill.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
Well said. You're right. They are all evil beyond comprehension. I'll shut up.
Kudos. Its often people on here say that someone else was right, so always worthy of respect when that happens.
Just as comedy telly was better it seems twenty years ago, so it seemed more optimistic then that we'd left the evils of authoritarianism and oppression and genocide in the early 20th century and had moved on. But fast forward and we see what's happening with Russia, with China (and there were warning signs with Tian'an'men but we ignored them) and worrying developments closer in Turkey and elsewhere too.
There is no "my side" that is right with authoritarian brutality. They're all repugnant and evil and I'm glad we could agree.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively. Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site. Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways. Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
My side’s depravity is better than your side’s depravity is not a strong argument.
Surely nothing tops the depravity of that Sam Smith video.
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
I can't find the quote now, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Revolutionary Russian leaders said something along the lines of, "The absolute freedom of the individual is the precondition for collective freedom." Probably they were one of the ones who ended up murdered by Stalin.
The problem with capitalist society is not that there is too much individual freedom, and not enough sacrifice for the collective, but that too many people in a capitalist society are not free, because they are forced by material necessity to partake of an unequal trade of their labour with the owners of capital.
Once you make the normal working person free of this coercive control, and truly free, then they will be able to form a voluntary association to co-operate with each other about how to best organise production, labour, reward and effort. It was very convenient for the Stalinist regime to invite the citizens of the USSR to make sacrifices for the benefit of the regime, but I don'[t see that as an accurate reflection of Communism as a philosophy.
I would certainly agree that many are shackled by capitalism and the need to earn a wage and I agree its not a great thing. I also agree that voluntary association is a good thing.
To take things away from left / right arguments....I think the point for me is that when the state comes before the individual and becomes the be all and end all of society is when evil comes to the fore. Doesn't matter if the state is left or right or dictatorship or whatever.
» show previous quotes Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
@Casino_Royale Usual half witted rubbish from someone who knows F all about Scotland.
Water off a duck's back, Malc.
This is just "brand" for you, now: you feel you have to perform, and do so reflexively, with hyperbolic insults for anyone who - in your eyes - knocks or disses the idea of Scottish independence.
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
I can't find the quote now, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Revolutionary Russian leaders said something along the lines of, "The absolute freedom of the individual is the precondition for collective freedom." Probably they were one of the ones who ended up murdered by Stalin.
The problem with capitalist society is not that there is too much individual freedom, and not enough sacrifice for the collective, but that too many people in a capitalist society are not free, because they are forced by material necessity to partake of an unequal trade of their labour with the owners of capital.
Once you make the normal working person free of this coercive control, and truly free, then they will be able to form a voluntary association to co-operate with each other about how to best organise production, labour, reward and effort. It was very convenient for the Stalinist regime to invite the citizens of the USSR to make sacrifices for the benefit of the regime, but I don'[t see that as an accurate reflection of Communism as a philosophy.
I would certainly agree that many are shackled by capitalism and the need to earn a wage and I agree its not a great thing. I also agree that voluntary association is a good thing.
To take things away from left / right arguments....I think the point for me is that when the state comes before the individual and becomes the be all and end all of society is when evil comes to the fore. Doesn't matter if the state is left or right or dictatorship or whatever.
The state is an institution created by people because it is of benefit to people. If it stops being a benefit to people then we should do away with it - but too often it has been seen as the end in itself, and the state has done away with the people to preserve itself.
Despite their fierce intellectual opposition, Fascism and Communism seem to differ very little as regards real-world material consequences. Their main disagreement of substance seems to be on which groups of people to persecute.
On Biden: I agree with earlier posts made here that he is proving, whether accidentally or by well-disguised genius, to be more competent than Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama or Trump. Reagan was good at converting questions about his old age into quips about his opponents' inexperience; perhaps Biden could take a leaf from his book in the coming campaign.
On which groups to persecute - a couple of my relatives (teenagers) survived the Nazi concentration camps and went home to Poland. Where they were arrested as being ruling class (dead parents owned a farm) and put in a railway cattle truck by the Soviets. Probably not heading to a Butlins. Escaped by killing a guard.
On Biden - this shouldn't surprise. He was chosen as the consensus candidate to bring the Democratic Party together. His entire political career has been building the endless series of mini-coalitions that are required to get things done in American politics.
The real (not MAGA) questions were about whether this was starting to slip with age - fuelled by a long running series of slips and gaffs he makes from time to time. Are they getting more frequent? Hard to say - may well not be.
» show previous quotes Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
@Casino_Royale Usual half witted rubbish from someone who knows F all about Scotland.
Water off a duck's back, Malc.
This is just "brand" for you, now: you feel you have to perform, and do so reflexively, with hyperbolic insults for anyone who - in your eyes - knocks or disses the idea of Scottish independence.
Brand.
I take it about as seriously as your turnips.
Does not alter the fact that you know F*** all about Scotland and it's politics given that mince. You should hope to reach the intelligence of a turnip. Typical thick Little Englander know it all.
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
I can't find the quote now, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Revolutionary Russian leaders said something along the lines of, "The absolute freedom of the individual is the precondition for collective freedom." Probably they were one of the ones who ended up murdered by Stalin.
The problem with capitalist society is not that there is too much individual freedom, and not enough sacrifice for the collective, but that too many people in a capitalist society are not free, because they are forced by material necessity to partake of an unequal trade of their labour with the owners of capital.
Once you make the normal working person free of this coercive control, and truly free, then they will be able to form a voluntary association to co-operate with each other about how to best organise production, labour, reward and effort. It was very convenient for the Stalinist regime to invite the citizens of the USSR to make sacrifices for the benefit of the regime, but I don'[t see that as an accurate reflection of Communism as a philosophy.
I would certainly agree that many are shackled by capitalism and the need to earn a wage and I agree its not a great thing. I also agree that voluntary association is a good thing.
To take things away from left / right arguments....I think the point for me is that when the state comes before the individual and becomes the be all and end all of society is when evil comes to the fore. Doesn't matter if the state is left or right or dictatorship or whatever.
The state is an institution created by people because it is of benefit to people. If it stops being a benefit to people then we should do away with it - but too often it has been seen as the end in itself, and the state has done away with the people to preserve itself.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
With all the argument* over 'who's the most evil of all', have we let this MRP slip through unremarked?
I assume it's based on current boundaries but even so, this would make 1997 look like a walk in the park.
» show previous quotes Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
@Casino_Royale Usual half witted rubbish from someone who knows F all about Scotland.
Water off a duck's back, Malc.
This is just "brand" for you, now: you feel you have to perform, and do so reflexively, with hyperbolic insults for anyone who - in your eyes - knocks or disses the idea of Scottish independence.
Brand.
I take it about as seriously as your turnips.
Does not alter the fact that you know F*** all about Scotland and it's politics given that mince. You should hope to reach the intelligence of a turnip. Typical thick Little Englander know it all.
3/10 - no lyricism at all. You can rise to far greater heights - you know it.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
» show previous quotes Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
@Casino_Royale Usual half witted rubbish from someone who knows F all about Scotland.
Water off a duck's back, Malc.
This is just "brand" for you, now: you feel you have to perform, and do so reflexively, with hyperbolic insults for anyone who - in your eyes - knocks or disses the idea of Scottish independence.
Brand.
I take it about as seriously as your turnips.
Have to feel sorry for Malc, caught between knowing that Sturgeon is f***ing things up and isn't driving the independence case forwards, while also wanting to turn his ire on anyone who says anything negative about that drive for independence.
Hence the lame insults. His hearts just not in it anymore, so he's just going through the motions. Its like being insulted by autopilot.
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
I can't find the quote now, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Revolutionary Russian leaders said something along the lines of, "The absolute freedom of the individual is the precondition for collective freedom." Probably they were one of the ones who ended up murdered by Stalin.
The problem with capitalist society is not that there is too much individual freedom, and not enough sacrifice for the collective, but that too many people in a capitalist society are not free, because they are forced by material necessity to partake of an unequal trade of their labour with the owners of capital.
Once you make the normal working person free of this coercive control, and truly free, then they will be able to form a voluntary association to co-operate with each other about how to best organise production, labour, reward and effort. It was very convenient for the Stalinist regime to invite the citizens of the USSR to make sacrifices for the benefit of the regime, but I don'[t see that as an accurate reflection of Communism as a philosophy.
I would certainly agree that many are shackled by capitalism and the need to earn a wage and I agree its not a great thing. I also agree that voluntary association is a good thing.
To take things away from left / right arguments....I think the point for me is that when the state comes before the individual and becomes the be all and end all of society is when evil comes to the fore. Doesn't matter if the state is left or right or dictatorship or whatever.
The state is an institution created by people because it is of benefit to people. If it stops being a benefit to people then we should do away with it - but too often it has been seen as the end in itself, and the state has done away with the people to preserve itself.
Precisely my point
After the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers' Union Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee Which stated that the people Had squandered the confidence of the government And could only win it back By redoubled work [quotas]. Would it not in that case Be simpler for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?
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
I can't find the quote now, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Revolutionary Russian leaders said something along the lines of, "The absolute freedom of the individual is the precondition for collective freedom." Probably they were one of the ones who ended up murdered by Stalin.
The problem with capitalist society is not that there is too much individual freedom, and not enough sacrifice for the collective, but that too many people in a capitalist society are not free, because they are forced by material necessity to partake of an unequal trade of their labour with the owners of capital.
Once you make the normal working person free of this coercive control, and truly free, then they will be able to form a voluntary association to co-operate with each other about how to best organise production, labour, reward and effort. It was very convenient for the Stalinist regime to invite the citizens of the USSR to make sacrifices for the benefit of the regime, but I don'[t see that as an accurate reflection of Communism as a philosophy.
I would certainly agree that many are shackled by capitalism and the need to earn a wage and I agree its not a great thing. I also agree that voluntary association is a good thing.
To take things away from left / right arguments....I think the point for me is that when the state comes before the individual and becomes the be all and end all of society is when evil comes to the fore. Doesn't matter if the state is left or right or dictatorship or whatever.
The state is an institution created by people because it is of benefit to people. If it stops being a benefit to people then we should do away with it - but too often it has been seen as the end in itself, and the state has done away with the people to preserve itself.
Precisely my point
After the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers' Union Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee Which stated that the people Had squandered the confidence of the government And could only win it back By redoubled work [quotas]. Would it not in that case Be simpler for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?
He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done. Leonardo da vinci
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
I think it's on Britbox, and possibly on a free service like UKTVPlay. I liked it but never got into it.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
It's like the hard and fast memorable first line in a novel rule. Certainly arresting and memorable. But War and Peace and the Harry Potter series thrived without obeying it. So it isn't really a rule.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
I think it's on Britbox, and possibly on a free service like UKTVPlay. I liked it but never got into it.
It's a BBC programme. All three series are free on iPlayer.
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
Also has RefUK on 6% but zero seats. I highly doubt they would get that much at an actual general election and if some of that vote goes back to the Tories, the Tories would be clearly the main opposition
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
It's like the hard and fast memorable first line in a novel rule. Certainly arresting and memorable. But War and Peace and the Harry Potter series thrived without obeying it. So it isn't really a rule.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a novel in possession of a memorable first line is bound to be a best seller.
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
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
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?
There are very fine people on both sides of this issue, no?
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
It's like the hard and fast memorable first line in a novel rule. Certainly arresting and memorable. But War and Peace and the Harry Potter series thrived without obeying it. So it isn't really a rule.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a novel in possession of a memorable first line is bound to be a best seller.
'Eh bien, mon prince, Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des estates, de la famille Buonaparte. '
So. Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Nothing printable. 🤬
Good for you. Chapeau. This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
All governments everywhere are amoral and it will be the same when starmer is in charge. It is the nature of governements
No it isn't . That's the counsel of despair. If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
I am exercising my right to free speech while I can if thats ok, I have ceased voting as the three main parties I could vote for a stinking carcass of a pretence at choice as they are idiots. Haven't voted now since 2010 as only parties available have been con, lab, ld and they are two cheeks of the same arse with lds' being the perineum
New MRP poll from the Telegraph. Fieldwork 27 Jan to 5 Feb
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats Lab 509 SNP 50 Con 45 LD 23 PC 4 G 1
That would be...
very funny.
If I was asked for my poll comment - which I’m quite put out I wasn’t - I would say I don’t expect a snap poll attempting to catch Labour out by surprise, any time soon.
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.
Americans still know how to do funny sitcoms, though the ones coming to mind ended in the last few years like How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang, Brooklyn 99 etc
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
The Detectorists. Fleabag.
You have to be kidding, mince and about as funny as a slap with a brick
Intellectual comedy Malc, probably a bit beyond you.
The first scene n Fleabag. The main character breaking the fourth wall while being done up the backside. Edgy stuff. I found it all a little ‘look at us, we’re being clever/edgy’
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
It's like the hard and fast memorable first line in a novel rule. Certainly arresting and memorable. But War and Peace and the Harry Potter series thrived without obeying it. So it isn't really a rule.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a novel in possession of a memorable first line is bound to be a best seller.
I'm a sucker if someone can manage to open and conclude a book with a line. Like in Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom history of Prussia opening with 'In the beginning there was only Brandenburg' and 680 pages later ending with 'In the end, there was only Brandenburg'.
A pointless conceit to do it, sure, but I still like it.
Comments
I didn’t actually say anything about communism, so your response makes no sense to me.
"The Conservatives would be relegated to Westminster’s third party behind the Scottish National Party in a snap election, new polling for the Telegraph has found. The exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people found that if there were an imminent general election the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition. The figures, from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus, report Labour winning 49 per cent of the vote and the Tories down to 23 per cent."
Seats
Lab 509
SNP 50
Con 45
LD 23
PC 4
G 1
Completely agree with your analysis regarding Nazism/Communism. Equivocation is used by the right, manipulatively.
Example...Trump and Clinton...they are two evils. I read it over and over again on this site.
Brexit...give a boot to the elites...it's all the same anyways.
Expenses...they are all in it together.
Well they are not the same. They are absolutely not. Trump was worse (much fucking worse than Clinton could ever be). Brexit was not a chance to kick the elite because this stupid decision is impoverishing our country.
And with expenses...
Tory MP's are different from Labour MP's. They just are. Sunak is different from Starmer. Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson...they are different and live in a different world to Labour MP's.
I cannot now understand how there is a single voice still supporting the Tory Party on this site. They have been just such an unbelievable shower of shyte.
very funny.
But the belief that the collective is more important than the individual is intrinsic to it. It's hardly unusual in history.
And folk weren't "asked" to fight.
They were forced to by the State.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."
For Monday's Derby at Anfield?
Get Dyche Out Now!
Mark Kelly KC, representing O'Mara, told the court his client had autism, was born with cerebral palsy and was suffering from anxiety and depression at the time of the offences.
He asked jurors to consider whether O'Mara was acting "dishonestly or incompetently" in filing the expenses claims under examination.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64512690
I can't think of any decent British ones in a long time though. The Beeb seems to have devolved "comedy" into being something "celebs" do, like Panel Shows, as opposed to funny writing and acting.
They take it too personally imo and try to lash out with 'the left is just as bad (or worse)' twaddle.
In reality, none of us wants to see regimes like the Nazis or Stalin's USSR, Mao's China etc. No one is promoting that here.
Let us then just focus on the plausible contest in this country between the moderate right and the moderate left.
(And recognise that the left has much better answers and it's time for the Tories to piss-off.)
On Biden: I agree with earlier posts made here that he is proving, whether accidentally or by well-disguised genius, to be more competent than Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama or Trump.
Reagan was good at converting questions about his old age into quips about his opponents' inexperience; perhaps Biden could take a leaf from his book in the coming campaign.
Totally agree.
Forget the fact that more evil has been done in this world in the name of communism than any other philosophy.
Forget the fact more people have been murdered in the name of communism than fascism.
Forget the fact more death camps happened under communism than fascism.
Strip away all that, and you're still left with a rotten, evil, hatefilled philosophy.
That people here excuse it, is flabbergasting.
Communism and Fascism are both unmitigatedly evil. There is nothing redeeming about either. If you want to run it purely by the numbers, communism is "worse" in that it has murdered more, but both are pure evil.
Difference is
Someone says they are a communist you will think they are a good chap despite the millions of deaths whereas I will treat them equally with scorn and contempt and call them scum.
No equivocation here, its just you equivocating
I am not remotely "on the right" but calling the nazis the most evil regime in history is simply nonsensical. How can you possibly make that judgement in a world containing just in one century pol pot, Mao, stalin and the Armenian genocide?
As I recall you have a similar construction in some of the Canterbury Tales.
I don't know why we can't just agree they're all beyond the pale rather than trying to make it some sort of twisted game of Top Trumps ranking who scores what.
https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor
A show that mocks social awkwardness and social conventions. Brilliantly too.
Beeb comedy does seem to be mainly panel shows, and not very good ones either. HIGNFY has gone on far too long. It’s just a pale,shadow,of its former self. It’s hard to be original with that format.
The last decent British sitcom I can think of was probably the IT Crowd
Suppress your fear, veer leftwards, and bear your moral superiority with fortitude!
They're greatly admired by some bien pensants. One of their chief apologists became PM.
What about the Assyrians. Or Aztecs?
1.5. Million. Armenians.
Twenty. Million. Victims. Of. Stalin.
40-80. Million. Victims. Of. Mao.
2. Million. Victims. Of. Pol pot.
What's different? Let me tell you what's different, is the Nazis were local to you (and me) and their victims were middle class white Europeans you find it easy imaginatively to relate to. All there is to it.
Anyway thank goodness Jared O'Mara was a Tory MP, if he hadn't been a couple of posters would be looking very silly.
Apologies for any over-zealous comments.
We must comprehend them. because the same shit keeps happening.
As we type, China is methodically eliminating Tibetans and Uyghur culture.
Putin's chums in Wagner Group ( and the regular army) need no introduction.
Then there is the Rohingya genocide.
Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is shooting people in the back of the head for being the wrong something. And kicking the bodies into a ditch.
The exact epaulettes they are wearing and the ideology behind them is just for the trainspotters, really.
The problem with capitalist society is not that there is too much individual freedom, and not enough sacrifice for the collective, but that too many people in a capitalist society are not free, because they are forced by material necessity to partake of an unequal trade of their labour with the owners of capital.
Once you make the normal working person free of this coercive control, and truly free, then they will be able to form a voluntary association to co-operate with each other about how to best organise production, labour, reward and effort. It was very convenient for the Stalinist regime to invite the citizens of the USSR to make sacrifices for the benefit of the regime, but I don'[t see that as an accurate reflection of Communism as a philosophy.
Casino_Royale said:
» show previous quotes
Sturgeon wanted to use Trans to create a dividing line between her and the UK government to 'strengthen the case for independence'. Rishi called her bluff, and Scots backed her not him. Independence support has taken a knock as a result.
That's a political victory for Rishi, regardless of the fact you don't like him.
@Casino_Royale Usual half witted rubbish from someone who knows F all about Scotland.
Just as comedy telly was better it seems twenty years ago, so it seemed more optimistic then that we'd left the evils of authoritarianism and oppression and genocide in the early 20th century and had moved on. But fast forward and we see what's happening with Russia, with China (and there were warning signs with Tian'an'men but we ignored them) and worrying developments closer in Turkey and elsewhere too.
There is no "my side" that is right with authoritarian brutality. They're all repugnant and evil and I'm glad we could agree.
To take things away from left / right arguments....I think the point for me is that when the state comes before the individual and becomes the be all and end all of society is when evil comes to the fore. Doesn't matter if the state is left or right or dictatorship or whatever.
This is just "brand" for you, now: you feel you have to perform, and do so reflexively, with hyperbolic insults for anyone who - in your eyes - knocks or disses the idea of Scottish independence.
Brand.
I take it about as seriously as your turnips.
On Biden - this shouldn't surprise. He was chosen as the consensus candidate to bring the Democratic Party together. His entire political career has been building the endless series of mini-coalitions that are required to get things done in American politics.
The real (not MAGA) questions were about whether this was starting to slip with age - fuelled by a long running series of slips and gaffs he makes from time to time. Are they getting more frequent? Hard to say - may well not be.
Last word. Retire for scampi in the Tony Knowles Suite.
I assume it's based on current boundaries but even so, this would make 1997 look like a walk in the park.
(*Mea cupla)
Hence the lame insults. His hearts just not in it anymore, so he's just going through the motions. Its like being insulted by autopilot.
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had squandered the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By redoubled work [quotas]. Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Nobody got a comment on our government inviting the Governor of Xinjiang?
Wonder where it's gone?
A literal shakedown.
Never seen detectorists but I like the lead actors. May try to find it.
'Mea cupla'? I'm guessing 'I'm a couple'.
Is this some new form of self-identification?
I think we should be told.
This government isn't immoral. It's amoral. That's worse.
It’s an appalling lack of judgement.
Certainly arresting and memorable.
But War and Peace and the Harry Potter series thrived without obeying it.
So it isn't really a rule.
That's the counsel of despair.
If you truly believe that why are you posting! You have no right to complain. It would be utterly pointless.
Psephologi. I’m good at this 😁
A pointless conceit to do it, sure, but I still like it.