Tag: Communism

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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He [Rousseau] had nothing new, but he set everything on fire. — Madame de Staël

Starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism. — Shigalev, in Dostoevsky’s The Devils

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not Karl Marx is the real father and inspiration for the theater of the absurd that is today’s Left. Rousseau’s “Man is born free, everywhere he is in chains” is the original formulation of the adolescent anarchist rally-cry, “Rage against the machine!” (more…)

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Now that we are wallowing in a major war in Ukraine and are caught in the throes of a cultural and political revolution in the United States, I recall an interesting arthouse film I discovered some years ago when I lived in Boston at one of the queens of arthouse theaters: Memorias del Subdesarrollo, or Memories of Underdevelopment, (more…)

Trotsky on his death bed.

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But there are in our country semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth Trotskyites, people who help us, not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us. — Karl Radek at the Moscow show trials, 1937 (more…)

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The second half of last weekend’s broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio was an Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson, guest co-host Pox Populi (Telegram, YouTube), and guest David Zsutty on Current Things, and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)

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Sarah Cameron
The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2018

See also: What is the Metaphysics of the Left & Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Left

Strikingly ignorant, malignantly cruel, with no concept of history, with but an elementary knowledge of social production, with little productive capacity, with no constructive ability, [Bolshevism] would be ludicrous were it not for the sentimental, weak-minded followers who, steeped in idealism and fanaticism, really believe in a Bolshevik Utopia, (more…)

Receive a free copy of Greg Johnson’s The Trial of Socrates by donating $120 or more today!

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Like all journals of dissident ideas, Counter-Currents depends on the support of our readers. So far this year, we’ve raised $71,665.56, or 24% of our $300,000 goal. I want to thank everyone who has donated so far. (Please donate here!) Today we are announcing a one-week bonus for donating $120 or more (in other words, paywall and up): Aside from all the usual paywall perks, all donors who give at least this amount or more will also receive a paperback copy of Greg Johnson’s latest book, The Trial of Socrates. And now, Stephen Paul Foster offers a few words on why Counter-Currents needs your support. (more…)

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Anne Applebaum
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine
Great Britain: Penguin Books, 2017

Robert Conquest
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine
New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1986

The [Communist] Party’s . . . rationale for everything done to the kulaks, is summarized with exceptional frankness in a novel published in Moscow in 1934: “Not one of them was guilty of anything, but they belonged to a class that was guilty of everything.” — Robert Conquest (more…)

Nikita Khrushchev and Joseph Stalin in better times (at least for Stalin).

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To be men! That is the Stalinist law! . . .
We must learn from Stalin
his sincere intensity
his concrete clarity . . . .
Stalin is the noon,
the maturity of man and the peoples.
Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride . . .
— Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Stalin” (more…)

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The recent film Oppenheimer brought a renewed interest in the history of atomic espionage. The names certainly echo throughout history: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, David Greenglass, Morton Sobell, William Perl, Harry Gold, and more. Then there are other notables, more obscure but whose activities were considerably more damaging than the above-named. One was known in the Venona decrypts — a batch of intercepted Soviet cable traffic in the 1940s — by the codenames FOGEL and PERS. It still remains a mystery who “Perseus” really was, but this might have been Oppie himself, among other possibilities. (more…)

YMMV. Courtesy of Stonetoss

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Marx 101

Here we get John Galt’s speech — albeit of a very different type — in miniature. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

The celebrated American writer Jack London is best known for stories of adventure such as White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and “To Build a Fire” — the last being a chilling tale, indeed. Some of his writings were informed by his political views, a synthesis which is quite rare nowadays. London made an early contribution to dystopian literature with The Iron Heel, a novel about the formation of the leviathan state. Written in 1907, it precedes the more famous works by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and even Yevgeny Zamyatin. Since it’s explicitly revolutionary and socialism features heavily in it, it’s hardly surprising that it is the author’s pinkest novel. Still, don’t let that deter you. (more…)

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Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite living directors. The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk are all big, eye-catching Hollywood spectacles, but with a difference. They are highly imaginative, deal with serious themes, have compelling dramatic conflicts, and are often quite moving. Nolan is not particularly politically correct, either. Granted, his last film, Tenet — with its ludicrous Affirmative Action Hero — was a major disappointment. But with Oppenheimer, he returns to form.

Oppenheimer has a highly literate script with important ideas and powerful dramatic situations, striking visuals without digital hokum, and superb performances from a vast cast. (more…)