By: Daniel Nardini
I am not a diehard rightwing loonie who believes that the earth is flat and that former U.S. President George W. Bush was one of America’s greatest presidents (anyone who has read my previous articles know what my opinion on Bush is). I do not believe that America is just a “Christian nation” (we are a nation of many religions, and a wonderful country for the freedom of worship), and I do not believe that people should be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance (although I will say it wherever I can. I LOVE this country). I believe in the freedoms and protections in the U.S. Constitution, and I believe that people have a right to their views even if their views are totally wacky.
This brings me to something I am finding disturbing—Communist chic. It is a kind of “fashion” where young people might wear t-shirts of, for example, Ernesto Che Guevara, or wear a red shirt with the hammer and sickle which represents Communism. Strangely enough, there are also t-shirts of Vladimir Lenin—the founder of the modern Communist system. Such shirts are being sold in many places, and seem to be a fashion craze for many young people (especially university students, some of whom have no political views at all). Lenin was responsible for the slaughter of an estimated six million people, and Che Guevara signed orders for the execution of 2,000 people without trial. Are these the kind of people we should be paying tribute to? How would many people feel if some individuals wore t-shirts of Adolf Hitler and swastikas emblazoned on their outerwear?
Just as disturbing are some individuals who actually deny that Communist crimes actually took place. One example is a Professor Grover Furr at Montclair State University in New Jersey. After watching a televised debate with Professor Furr, I felt rather ill. He stated that former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had not committed any crimes, and that a lot of Soviet and Russian history has been falsified in America by the “political right.” I cannot fathom how those who call themselves professors can say this. It would be like saying that the Holocaust never took place, and that Adolf Hitler was not guilty of mass murder. One professor who did write a book denying that Hitler had slaughtered the Jews is Arthur Butz of Northwestern University in Evanston. Butz’s book and his views have been totally condemned, and he is just being allowed to teach at Northwestern because he is a tenured professor and as long as he does not express his views in class. Professor Furr is very much allowed to express in class and public, and this is especially disturbing given that he could whitewash many facts and the sufferings of so many tens of millions of people into the minds of so many American young people.
These type of people may seem like they are on the fringes of mainstream society, but they are not entirely. Unlike the Nazi regime in Germany, Communism is far from dead. I would have hoped that the world outside the Communist states would have learned what the modern Communist system means by now. I had hoped that the number of survivors, the documentary evidence, the photographic evidence of how many people the Communists had slaughtered, and sheer physical destruction visited upon country after country by the Communists would have had a significant impact by now on the minds of our young people. Apparently, not enough. There is still much we as a nation have to teach our younger generation about the evils of a system that killed over 100 million people and that is still killing today.
Communist Chic?
By: Daniel Nardini
This brings me to something I am finding disturbing—Communist chic. It is a kind of “fashion” where young people might wear t-shirts of, for example, Ernesto Che Guevara, or wear a red shirt with the hammer and sickle which represents Communism. Strangely enough, there are also t-shirts of Vladimir Lenin—the founder of the modern Communist system. Such shirts are being sold in many places, and seem to be a fashion craze for many young people (especially university students, some of whom have no political views at all). Lenin was responsible for the slaughter of an estimated six million people, and Che Guevara signed orders for the execution of 2,000 people without trial. Are these the kind of people we should be paying tribute to? How would many people feel if some individuals wore t-shirts of Adolf Hitler and swastikas emblazoned on their outerwear?
Just as disturbing are some individuals who actually deny that Communist crimes actually took place. One example is a Professor Grover Furr at Montclair State University in New Jersey. After watching a televised debate with Professor Furr, I felt rather ill. He stated that former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had not committed any crimes, and that a lot of Soviet and Russian history has been falsified in America by the “political right.” I cannot fathom how those who call themselves professors can say this. It would be like saying that the Holocaust never took place, and that Adolf Hitler was not guilty of mass murder. One professor who did write a book denying that Hitler had slaughtered the Jews is Arthur Butz of Northwestern University in Evanston. Butz’s book and his views have been totally condemned, and he is just being allowed to teach at Northwestern because he is a tenured professor and as long as he does not express his views in class. Professor Furr is very much allowed to express in class and public, and this is especially disturbing given that he could whitewash many facts and the sufferings of so many tens of millions of people into the minds of so many American young people.
These type of people may seem like they are on the fringes of mainstream society, but they are not entirely. Unlike the Nazi regime in Germany, Communism is far from dead. I would have hoped that the world outside the Communist states would have learned what the modern Communist system means by now. I had hoped that the number of survivors, the documentary evidence, the photographic evidence of how many people the Communists had slaughtered, and sheer physical destruction visited upon country after country by the Communists would have had a significant impact by now on the minds of our young people. Apparently, not enough. There is still much we as a nation have to teach our younger generation about the evils of a system that killed over 100 million people and that is still killing today.