Which is ironic, because communism requires two people or more. Presumably why facism is more popular because you only need one.
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Which is ironic, because communism requires two people or more. Presumably why facism is more popular because you only need one.
Sure.
I suppose my point was an academic one in that structurally fascism can’t work with just one person involved. A lot of those involved may have a passive involvement, and even more still will be entirely unwilling “participants” who perform the scapegoat role.
In practice, evidently yeah: different story.
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Indochine is looking distinctly an unfriendly place for an American to be.
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Well as my mother always said "if all your friends were institutiing the dictatorship of the proletariat, whould you do that too?"
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If everyone were doing it, a few people have some apologies to make to Mr Trotsky…
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Yes it is rather, isn’t it?
Fair point. Something makes me think he’d probably still want to crow about it…
Booooo! (Can't help myself really, it's an instinctive reaction to those two words at this point).
I am mildly amazed that despite all the changes stretching back decades Vietnam is still happening in broadly the same shape with the same people. With presumably broadly the same outcome. You would have thought after decades of change the CIA could have found a better stooge the Diem, his drawbacks were many and his advantages few.
It does depend. At one extreme you have the SWP who declare that nothing, ever has been 'real' communism which remains pure, perfect and un-sullied by reality. At the other extreme is the CP-GB(ML) mob who will unironically defend any dictator you care to mention and minimise or deny any crime, as long as the state in question at some point mentioned Marx. For every position in between you will find a tiny hard left party defending it, such are the ways of the left.
Communism requires three people; lead ideologue, the other ideologue to declare the first person a deviationist heretical splitter traitor (due to an argument about exactly where to put a comma), and the secret policeman to spy on everyone.
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I suppose once the US are in Asia, they have to get to Nam at some point. The difference, which remains to be seen how it will play out, is that Ho is a French protege rather than an anti-French warlord.
Variation on the CPGB (ML) are the Maoists, who will defend anyone except the latter day USSR, whom they denounce as revisionist. Then of course there are honourable mentions including the ridiculously named WIMLMZT (a shiny badge to anyone who figures that out without Google), which was literally a cult, and also the former RCP, who went on to publish Spiked and advise Boris Johnson, and are now represented in the House of Lords by Claire Fox.
Meanwhile the SWP sit around doing nothing but collecting signatures via various front organisations and calling it "organising", and the original CPGB have been a think-tank for thirty years. Which leaves us with the Labour Party, which is a vastly frightening prospect.
For someone who dislikes the revisionists, you attribute too much to the CIA.
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Now there is a challenge. Workers International Marxist-Leninist-Mao-Zedongist Trade union?
The Transatlantic Missile Crisis: Introduction, Sep 24 – Nov 3 1964
"LESSONS FROM THE CRISIS"
INTRODUCTION: SEP 24 – NOV 3 1964
FROM AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BERTRAND RUSSELL
1969
At the end of September, with the joyful proclamation of a more peaceable future in Europe sounding out across the Commonwealth from that unassuming building in Cambridge, I returned home to Penrhyndeudraeth. We would have our moratorium, and I had played my small part in taking Britain one step closer to the ultimate dream of disarmament. Although not without sadness, for I grasped at that time that in all likelihood I would not live to see a time beyond the nuclear age, I could be content, in my final years, with having worked to the last in the service of that cause to which I had devoted my labours for over a decade.
Thus retired to my home at Plas Penrhyn, I had little idea that I would be called upon again, moved by the tragic sequence of events across the globe with which we are now so regrettably familiar, to add my voice to the choir demanding an end to the nuclear folly. I arrived back in Gwynedd on September 27th, three days after the Cambridge declaration. The news was greeted by triumphant announcements from London, Moscow and Lyon. Chairman Bevan spoke on CBC television of a new course in European history, and pledged that Britain would put her knowledge of the atom to peaceful use. Mr Khrushchev said that the peaceful ambitions of Socialism had been made plain for all the world to see, in what was undoubtedly a thinly-veiled rejoinder at Washington’s imperialistic policy in Europe. Chairman Faure of the European Syndicate lauded the Soviet–Syndicalist agreement as an “historic commitment” between the fraternal Socialist nations. Hope was the operative emotion of the day.
The following week, secretive reports emerged in the press concerning the German threat to the new East–West partnership for peace in Europe. An editorial in Pravda, dated Thursday, October 1st, claimed that the Soviet government held indisputable evidence that the United States was arming its German ally with nuclear weapons. From sources within the Reich, and also in the other countries of the ECZ, the Kremlin had learnt of the existence of Thor-class intermediate-range ballistic missiles, along with fuelling tents and other nuclear paraphernalia, stationed in German Pomerania. From this position, the United States had the ability to hit targets in Europe almost indiscriminately, from the Atlantic coast to the Ural Mountains. Never before had our life come under such sharp threat from the whims of Washington.
With the installation of missiles in Germany, the Americans had near complete coverage of European targets.
Immediately, the optimistic mood that had greeted the coming of autumn vanished. A continent, and the world beyond, turned with fearful eyes to Moscow, and to Washington, paralysed in anticipation of each power’s next move. In London, the Daily Herald gave a measured assessment of the situation, which nevertheless captured the gravity of our predicament: ‘Soviets Report Offensive Missile Sites in Germany; Khrushchev Ready for Washington Showdown’, ran the headline. In America, the presses were in general ambivalent; Khrushchev was, to them, an erratic old fool – a paper tiger. On the campaign trail during the final month of that year’s presidential election, Kennedy remained his usual self, his youthful charm underpinned by a steely determination to protect the interests of America and its allies abroad. He criticised the alarmist language of his Soviet counterpart, but did not seem to take it at face value. As is still common, the Soviet pronouncements were subject to assumptions of propagandising across the Atlantic. Kennedy presented an iron demeanour and prepared to call Khrushchev’s bluff.
The following morning, some explanation for this even-tempered American response emerged. The New York Times ran with a headline revealing that the US government had proof of Soviet missile installations in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Once more, the national conversation turned to the necessary crusade against Communism, and Kremlin observers continued to downplay the statements coming out of Moscow on the German situation as propaganda. With the retaliatory revelations about Cuba, the hypocrisy of the Russians was clear to see. President Kennedy warned publicly that any Soviet acts of aggression against the United States’ allies in Germany would be met by equal action against Cuba, hoping to beat Khrushchev into a retreat from his stern words about American imperialism.
Soviet missile installations in Cuba gave the USSR equal coverage of the North American continent.
Throughout October, the world population adjusted to a new character of life under the threat of nuclear war. Pessimists prophesied the imminent annihilation of all life, declaring that there was no way back from the brink, and that the human race was stood on the precipice of oblivion. Yet there was little in material terms, except the now public knowledge of the existence of the weapons in Germany and Cuba, that could be invoked to support the adoption of so fatalistic a view. While tensions crept higher than they had been in some time (of this there is little doubt) daily life at that time took on an eerie calmness. In the Baltic Sea, Khrushchev had increased the Soviet naval presence, particularly in areas close to German shipping lanes, and without doubt both parties were preparing themselves for a renewed campaign of brinkmanship. But after the initial panic that followed the revelations at the start of the month, neither side seemed willing enough to make the next move – that which, almost certainly, would send us closer than ever to nuclear war.
As a race, we were helped to some degree by fortuitous timing on the part of Mr Khrushchev. His declaration had been calculated, I imagine, to coincide with the happier announcement from Cambridge, thus giving moral and political weight to the Soviets’ new efforts for peace in Europe. Equally, the disclosure came only four weeks before the voters of America went to the polls to elect their next president, and droll though it may sound, there is likely more than a little truth in the idea that Kennedy was reluctant to annihilate his constituency before they had been given their chance to vote him into office. Thus the crisis gained a fresh urgency on November 4th, the morning after polling day, when John F. Kennedy was confirmed in his position as President of the United States. …
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Oh shit. Because he wasn't bluffing OTL, and the Russians already have loads of nukes in Cuba TTL.
Either both sides back down and take the nukes out of respective countries (which is a much greater pain for Germany and the US than it is for Cuba and Russia) or the world goes boom. Or, the crisis goes on for months/years, and then one of the two things above happens.
I'm thinking this leads to the collapse of Kennedy's presidency either way...
Either both sides back down and take the nukes out of respective countries (which is a much greater pain for Germany and the US than it is for Cuba and Russia) or the world goes boom. Or, the crisis goes on for months/years, and then one of the two things above happens.
I'm thinking this leads to the collapse of Kennedy's presidency either way...
TBC getting over-excited again. At this point the US and Soviets will have ICBMs (that's just how the technology goes) and are entirely capable of nuking each other, and everyone else, even if Germany and Cuba are de-nuked. On a grand MAD/Balance of Terror scale this does not change a lot, at least in military and political circles.
A mutually agreed pull out probably happens after a bit of a chat, with some careful staging so no-one is seen to 'lose' (because neither need to or want to back down first, though I'm not ruling out Kruschev ballsing it up as per OTL). If there is a mutual pull out it will be followed shortly by the German Luftwaffe getting a load of dual-key nukes, so Germany will still get the safety of a nuclear deterrent but a bit less dramatically. The Soviets could do the same in Cuba I suppose, but fundamentally I doubt Castro would want them. He was very reluctant to take the missiles in OTL and the bomber option would be even more obviously 'Soviet Puppet' (Soviet aircraft, soviet pilots and Soviet political officers with all the nuke keys, because no-way are actual Cubans being trusted with them).
A mutually agreed pull out probably happens after a bit of a chat, with some careful staging so no-one is seen to 'lose' (because neither need to or want to back down first, though I'm not ruling out Kruschev ballsing it up as per OTL). If there is a mutual pull out it will be followed shortly by the German Luftwaffe getting a load of dual-key nukes, so Germany will still get the safety of a nuclear deterrent but a bit less dramatically. The Soviets could do the same in Cuba I suppose, but fundamentally I doubt Castro would want them. He was very reluctant to take the missiles in OTL and the bomber option would be even more obviously 'Soviet Puppet' (Soviet aircraft, soviet pilots and Soviet political officers with all the nuke keys, because no-way are actual Cubans being trusted with them).