Academic

FROM THE SOVIET ARCHIVES, A HISTORY OF HIDDEN EVIL: In the world?s collective consciousness, th?

By Glenn Reynolds

FROM THE SOVIET ARCHIVES, A HISTORY OF HIDDEN EVIL:

In the world?s collective consciousness, the word ?Nazi? is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis? ideology?nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle?led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

And its willing collaborators in the West, many identified by name here. “Perhaps it doesn?t surprise you to read that prominent European politicians held these views. But why doesn?t it? It is impossible to imagine that figures who had enjoyed such close ties to the Nazi Party?or, for that matter, to the Ku Klux Klan or to South Africa?s apartheid regime?would enjoy top positions in Europe today. The rules are different, apparently, for Communist fellow travelers. . . . We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis? ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on May 13, 2010 (boomark / email).