Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, November 29, 2009 4:42:55 PM
In an
otherwise unobjectionable post, Ken Blackwell makes a slip. It is not a significant point, but it is one which caught my eye, and one which I could not allow to pass without offering a correction.
Here is the comment:
Communists have committed countless crimes against humanity, but racism is not one of them.
I think many Ukranians, Jews, Falun Gong, Tibetans, Chinese Christians, Uighurs* and a few others would be interested to learn that. Admittedly, some of those are cultures or religions, not races, but as US usage normally uses "racism" to describe any cultural or ethnic bigotry, I think in this case I am right in saying that "racism" is a crime of which communists are as guilty as any other system of government.
Now, granted, racism is not an explicit part of communist philosophy, but it does not have to be an explicit part to be an inevitable outcome. The problem is, communism is a totalitarian philosophy, one which will accept no loyalty other than to the state, and, as race, culture or religion can often create strong alliances, communists are often quite intolerant of those groups.
Of course some communist bigotry is nothing but the survival of pre-communist biases. The Soviet dislike of Jews and Ukranians are likely the survival of old Russian biases, rather than communist innovations. Then again, as Ukranians retained a strong national identity, and Jews always had a strong allegiance to their religion independent of the state, they would have been hated by the communists even without a preceding antipathy.
I will agree that communism, on paper, is accepting of all races, but I also have to add that so are many groups which have been guilty of racism. And, while communism may not explicitly say that members of a specific race are inferior, I have to point out that, in practice, communism is no less guilty of bigotry of various sorts than any other philosophy, and, by crafting an omnipotent state, have given those holding such biases much more scope to act on their biases than other systems of governance.
All of which makes me reluctant to grant even the minimal exculpatory statement Blackwell made. Communism might not be explicitly racist, but so what? Neither is the US constitution, but no one is exonerating the US on charges of racism. So why this forgiving of communism? Better to say nothing than give the mistaken impression that communism is unique in being free of racism, an impression which history shows to be entirely untrue.
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* Since the US has become involved in conflict with militant Islam, China has been portraying the Uighur conflict as their struggle with Islamic militants. I addressed this in my post "
Islamic Terrorism and Ethical Confusion", as it is something of a mistake to see it entirely in those terms.
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DISCLOSURE: The author is both a Jew and of Ukranian descent. I was also involved in bringing over relatives form Poland prior to the collapse of communism. None of this has anything to do with my dislike of communism (in fact I spent some time in my teen years as a true believer in Bakunin and Saint Simon [at least in his utopian socialist aspects], among others.) But I thought I should reveal these facts lest someone find mention in past posts and allege a bias.
POSTSCRIPT
I can't believe I forgot to mention it, but many African communist movements, just like African nationalist movements
ARE explicitly racist. Just because their racism targets whites rather than blacks does not make it any less racist. Nor does the fact that it is described as "anti-colonialism" rather than racism. Nor can "anti-colonialism" explain many of the ethnic and tribal antipathies than persist under communism. For that matter, Yugoslavia was hardly free of ethnic tensions under communism either, though the leadership kept them to a minimum to provide few excuses for foreign (mainly Soviet) interference. The point being, racism, ethnic bigotry, religious persecution and the rest are hardly absent from communist states.