Acceptable totalitarianism

Arthur Chrenkoff on the Prince Harry fiasco:

Imagine if prince Harry came dressed up in a fur coat with a hammer and sickle armband. No one would bat an eyelid, a few people might chuckle and comment how cute he looks, and the only reason why the story would make it into the media would be if PETA protested the prince wearing fur. Imagine for that matter if Harry wore a Che Guevara or a Mao t-shirt. As John Lennon said, it's easy if you try.

In our twisted moral universe, wearing the insignia of one mass-murdering political system is (rightly) considered a taboo, while wearing the insignia of another mass-murdering political system is considered quite cool...Why this totalitarian dichotomy? Because our popular culture and public discourse is shaped to such a large extent by people who were wrong on (or at best, indifferent to) the most important political and moral question of the twentieth century and it would kill them to admit they were wrong. Plus, if you admit that Soviet (or Chinese) communism was evil, what does it say about your own loathing of the West, capitalism and your own society?

Hence we live in the world where we all know that Nazism was evil, but we also "know" that communism (or better still, Stalinism, because we wouldn't want to admit that the system was murderous both before and after Uncle Joe was in power) was merely misguided, an essentially good and decent idea whose implementation was marred by inevitable errors and excesses.

In every part of the world except one, it's impossible to imagine Hitler and Nazism being defended in a major newspaper. But the Sydney Morning Herald couldn't bear to run an anti-communist article without a pro-Marxist "response" the next day. In 2005.

Update: David Janes' "revisionist" history of Nazi Germany is meant to be satire, but I'm sure there's a small, expensive liberal-arts college in New England where this is actually being taught.

Posted by damian at January 15, 2005 07:55 PM