Thursday, January 13, 2005
COMMIES DERIDED, DEFENDED
Australian playwright Louis Nowra:
Last year I went to a museum in Budapest called The House of Terror. It is in a building used by fascists in World War II for interrogation and torture. After the war, the communist secret police appropriated it and proved themselves even more murderous and cruel. Every dismal room is testimony to the bloody brutality of communism. I recommend a visit to those who think of communism and its practitioners as benign, funny and hip.
And, in rebuttal, former communist David McKnight:
Marxism, now largely defunct, was very unlike fascism. Marxism was very much part of the Enlightenment heritage of the West. It was an ideology based on rationalism, science and progress. As such it influenced social science and the humanities. Its critique of economic power has become part of the common sense of our era.
Hilariously, McKnight - now a university lecturer - describes free-marketeers as “amoral”.