The iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo liked to fuck around with people. In 1932, Kahlo was 25 years old and relatively unknown. She and her husband, the celebrated painter Diego Rivera, were in Detroit, where Rivera was painting several murals.
Upon meeting Kahlo, a Detroit News reporter asked if Kahlo was also a painter. Kahlo replied, “Yes. The greatest in the world.” The reporter later visited Kahlo at home to do a cutesy story about how Rivera’s little woman is also a little painter. During the interview, Kahlo said this: “[Rivera] does pretty well for a little boy, but it is I who am the big artist.”
Frida Kahlo: Visionary artist. Fearless rocker of a unibrow. Feminist icon.
Open thread.
H/T: Vox
shelley
And a snappy dresser.
Hmmm, when were the last pup pictures?
EconWatcher
How can you tell that story without mentioning that Diego Rivera tricked the Ford family into funding revolutionary Marxist murals, depicting class struggle on the auto assembly line? That’s the best part.
Amir Khalid
Those eyebrows!That eyebrow! Frida Kahlo was a legend forthemit alone.After blaming the football fans for a quarter of a century, the cop whose fuckup led to the deaths of 96 Liverpool FC fans finally admits it was his fault all along. Justice for the 96.
WaterGirl
That’s a great conversation starter. If only had an outlet for that. :-)
Edit: if this seriously annoys you, tell me and I will stop.
Alex
Also, let’s face it, a sordid Stalinist who – with her husband – carried water for the Soviets while they were actively (and intentionally) exterminating millions of people. Can’t mention one without the other.
Amir Khalid
@WaterGirl:
Not on this topic, please.
Pogonip
Happy St. Pat’s Day!
Germy Shoemangler
Some great childhood photos of Frida:
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/baby_and_childhood_photos_of_frida_kahlo_taken_by_her_father_guillermo
Tommy
A happy story about the arts. In my little rural town we’ve voted for a few tax increases to build schools, parks, you name it. In one instance we paid local artist to paint things on the side of buildings. The largest one is a total rip off of Georgia O’Keeffe. I don’t have it in myself to tell people that isn’t a flower, it is a vagina.
TaMara (BHF)
Question. Do we have any web designers in here? I have a question about a website I designed and maintained for a company as an independent contractor. The business sold, selling both the domain name and my web design for a nice sum.
I was not compensated and that new company is still using my work. Can I make them stop? I don’t want any money, I just don’t like them and do not want my work representing them.
There was no formal contract, just paid an hourly rate over several years.
Helmut Monotreme
@Alex: Can you really call her a Stalinist when she was cheating on her husband with Leon Trotsky?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
Rivera and Kahlo were instrumental in getting asylum in Mexico for Leon Trotsky (with whom Kahlo also had an affair), so I’m not sure they were completely dedicated Stalinists:
http://www.pbs.org/weta/fridakahlo/life/people.html
Paul in KY
Mr. Rivera & Ms. Kahlo were friends & confidents of Leon Trotsky, while he was living in exile in Mexico.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@TaMara (BHF):
I think you need a lawyer, not a web designer. It may depend on who holds the copyright on the design, you or your former client.
Germy Shoemangler
I was sitting in a Unitarian service last year and it came time for people to stand up and talk about good and bad stuff in their lives. An old man (looked about 80) said he was worried about his friend from high school. Recently diagnosed with cancer. (turns out to have a happy ending, his friend recovered)
What amazes me is people who reach ripe old age and stay friends with folks they went to high school with. Out of curiosity, I snoop around the facebook and twitter pages of people I graduated with, and they’re full of disgusting anti-obama stuff.
The friends I have, I made as an adult. Maybe I’m too intolerant. I just can’t see myself being friends with someone who posts RW talking points.
Cacti
@Alex:
Maybe the most unusual choice to ever grace a US postage stamp, given that her feelings toward the United States ranged from disdain to outright hostility.
But whatevs.
Cacti
@Helmut Monotreme:
Yes, you can pretty easily call her a Stalinist, given her complete 180 on Trotsky and proverbial dancing on his grave after Stalin had him liquidated.
Tommy
@TaMara (BHF): Yeah I do that stuff for a living. You can do nothing if you don’t have a contract. I’ve fired three lawyers trying to get a contract done that protects me. It is not easy. I have a client that didn’t pay me but using my work. Active site where they are making money but failed to pay me.
TaMara (BHF)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): There’s no formal copyright which is why I was hoping a web designer could chime in. With some artistic work, it always belongs to the artist, no matter what, I didn’t know if web design defaulted to that, too.
And a good suggestion, I know we’ve got some lawyers here, so maybe they have an idea.
I’m aware I’m being petty, but I really don’t like these people. Like if I had a voodoo doll I’d use it.
ETA: And Tommy answers my question. Thank you! I’ll just let…it…go. At least I was paid for the original work. grrrrr…
beltane
@Germy Shoemangler: It really depends on who you went to high school with. The high school friends I’ve kept in touch with on FB are overwhelmingly liberal and not assholes. It’s always bothered me that most of the people I’ve met in my adult life pale in compassion to the people I grew up with. If I had know this, I would have appreciated them more at the time.
Germy Shoemangler
@EconWatcher: I’ve read stories of WPA murals being painted over or otherwise concealed by current-day republican officials. Because they depicted stuff like brotherhood and fairness and workers rights, stuff like that.
XL Snark
@Alex:
What? You know nothing of their history with anti-Stalinist Trotsky?
Germy Shoemangler
@beltane: You’re right. My wife actually has a core group of good friends she stayed in touch with. She went to a progressive school.
My high school was… how do you say? Jocktocracy?
Alex
@Helmut Monotreme:
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
If you are familiar with their history, both Rivera and Kahlo transferred their allegiance to Stalin after Trotsky was assassinated. I am perfectly happy to praise the artistic works of those whose political allegiances repulse me (see, e.g., Ezra Pound), but I don’t think it should be selectively forgotten that they were handmaidens for a genocidal regime. There were other proto-feminists and decent artists of that time who didn’t credulously toe the Soviet line (see., e.g, Mario Vargas Llosa).
TaMara (BHF)
@Tommy: Thanks, that what I needed to know.
ETA: I was a good sport and handed over the passwords, never thinking they were going to continue to use my work on the website. Who doesn’t design a new site announcing new ownership, etc? Live and learn.
Ridnik Chrome
@Cacti: “Liquidated”. There’s a euphemism you don’t hear too much anymore. Does anybody still say that since the KGB went out of business?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Cacti:
Right, but was it a political 180 or a “hooray my asshole ex-boyfriend is dead” 180? They’re not always the same thing, though it’s sometimes hard to tell once politics and sex start getting mixed.
boatboy_srq
Looks like Bibi’s worried he’s in trouble and stepping all over himself in panic:
Where have we heard that before?…
beltane
@Germy Shoemangler: You probably have a few former classmates who are worthy of keeping in touch with. Unfortunately, they themselves are unlikely to want to keep in touch with anyone they went to high school with. Some communities exist for the purpose of leaving and never looking back.
boatboy_srq
@Tommy: IANAWD, but the ones I’ve worked with didn’t see more from work w/o contract besides promotional pieces for their portfolios and entries in their CVs.
sacrablue
Rep Schock, (R- Downton Abbey) resigns!
Cacti
@boatboy_srq:
He really is the Republican Senator from Tel Aviv.
Suzanne
Kahlo also survived a most grievous injury when in a bus accident. She had quite a life.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
I’m really not comfortable retroactively declaring that a particular artist or artists were not just bad people, but bad artists based on their politics. If you can name two or three artists of the period who were better artists and had better politics, I’d be interested to hear who they were.
Sadly, a lot of great artists had really crappy politics. GK Chesterton is still an influential writer, as long as you ignore his visceral hatred of Jewish people.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Alex:
That’s a pointless criticism unless you know that she supported him AND knew these exterminations were taking place.
Tommy
@TaMara (BHF): The best way to protect yourself is to get payment upfront. I don’t touch a job, unless it is a repeat client, where I don’t get 50% upfront. Clearly that isn’t an option with you from what you said. But you just don’t own your design work unless you have a contract where that is outlined. The law is very clear on this point.
Germy Shoemangler
@beltane: Very true. And that’s what I did. Until I started peeping around online, to my disappointment.
One guy I’d been buddies with tweeted something to the effect: “Obama says you can’t start a business without the government helping you. Holy shit!”
There is no universe where I can imagine inviting him over for dinner. My wife is an outspoken liberal. It would not end well.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
This classic blog post sounds like it’s about to become relevant to this thread:
How to be a fan of problematic things
http://www.socialjusticeleague.net/2011/09/how-to-be-a-fan-of-problematic-things/
Germy Shoemangler
Another article in the NewYorkTimes that looks like it came from Jeb’s campaign staff. Headline:
“Jeb Bush, 20 Years After Conversion, Is Guided by His Catholic Faith”
The article goes on to portray Jeb as a thoughtful, pious man.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: It’s about fucking time he admitted the (rather) obvious. Cold comfort to the families. And he dares to announce “stress” or PTSD as a result. Which I don’t doubt that he has, given that he killed 96 football fans, but it’s offensive of him to mention it under the circumstances. 96 families have it far worse.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Political 180? Take a look and decide for yourself.
eldorado
@Tommy: is correct (for the usa anyway). sorry about the capitalism.
Alex
@Big Picture Pathologist: That’s not a distinction intelligent people often make with propagandists for other murderous regimes (see, again, Ezra Pound), but most informed people in the Western Hemisphere knew by the late 1940s of the Ukranian famine and the Great Terror (if not in their entire, horrific scope). I shouldn’t think either her or Rivera should get a pass merely because they were talented artists and ardent anti-imperialists.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I don’t disagree with what you say in the least, and I didn’t claim they were bad artists. But, I do think their reputations should nonetheless suffer. At the very least, their lives shouldn’t be laundered of the fact that they were such useful idiots.
I don’t rank artists, but Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, and Hannah Arendt were all committed humanitarians and (albeit non-graphic) artists of that time who were clear-eyed regarding Soviet genocide and terror.
Gin & Tonic
@Big Picture Pathologist: By 1954, at which time she painted the work I referenced above, it was impossible not to know.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@TaMara (BHF): I’d still run it by an IP attorney/one of our fine counselors. I’m allergic to IP, so I got nothing. Except that Bixby is adorable.
I will say absent some rather unique details, it’s likely a losing proposition/ not worth the expense.
beltane
@Germy Shoemangler: This is why the NYT pays the big bucks. It’s extremely difficult to write bullshit like that with a straight face.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I am not comfortable judging artists according to a political litmus test. If we start excluding the works of those with objectionable views, the range of of artists whose work can be appreciated would be quite narrow.
Bitter and Deluded Lurker
@TaMara (BHF): How much are you willing to spend? I am in no way a lawyer, but I think they could claim that it was a work for hire, and without a contract it would be hard to prove otherwise.
Maybe a good lawyer could get them to take it down, but they charge money and unless they’re actively harming you and/or their business model includes the slaughter of puppies and kittens I can’t see it being worth the time or the money.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
You are comparing apples to oranges when you compare writers and painters. Please name some people who worked in the same medium as Kahlo and Rivera who were better artists and had better politics.
I’m also not sure what your criteria are. If it’s any support for Stalin, ever, you’re going to have a very hard time finding any artist who meets your criteria.
Alex
@beltane: If you read what I wrote, I disclaimed that we should judge artists on their artistic merits based on their political allegiances. But, if one wants to valorize the life of Frida Kahlon – as Betty seems to do above – then I think one is obligated to mention that she carried water for a despicable, genocidal regime.
TaMara (BHF)
@eldorado: Luckily I believe in Karma. And it’s a small community that I’ve worked with for years.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gin & Tonic:
Interesting detail from the label of that portrait:
But, as I said above, I don’t really have a huge problem with people pointing out that artists were/are assholes in their personal and/or political lives. I only have a problem when we’re told we’re not allowed to admire an artist’s work because their politics were bad.
Tommy
@Bitter and Deluded Lurker: I didn’t say this in the past comments but it will cost you more to sue or start a legal trial then it is valued at. The handful of times I couldn’t recoup my costs from work that is what lawyers told me. I think they were accurate.
Paul in KY
@Alex: She was definitely not a ‘Stalinist’. More a Bolshevik.
Edit: At least while Trotsky was alive.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Not to Godwin the thread, but had Rivera and Kahlo venerated Hitler instead of Stalin, would that have been worthy of any mention in either the Vox article or Betty’s post?
trollhattan
If you don’t live in California you probably never heard of the Delta smelt, a small, endangered fish that affects water exports from the Delta. Well, maybe not so much anymore.
Alex
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I don’t recognize such an ironclad distinction between writers and artists, either now or during that time. Perhaps your insight into art and art history is better than mine. Are you just making a debating point, or is there something particular to visual art that predisposed individuals to support Stalin?
Alex
@Paul in KY: Your edit vitiates your point. She was a committed Stalinist for the last fifteen years of her life (coinciding largely with that of Stalin). Her diary evidences such.
TaMara (BHF)
@Bitter and Deluded Lurker: Not worth it. The reality is, this business is part of a small community that I’ve worked with for many years (long before I even worked for this business). Word gets around, karma’s a bitch and I’m not shy about expressing my opinions.
Cacti
@Alex:
The most problematic part of Kahlo’s philosophical arc is that she became a reactionary crank for the Stalin personality cult in the late 1940s/early 1950s, when the extent of his crimes against humanity were widely known.
In her defense though, her most vibrant creative period was when she was a supporter of the Trotskyite revolutionary left, and opponent of the Stalin regime. World War II seemed to change her allegiances for the worse.
Amir Khalid
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I watched the incident happen on live TV, 26 years ago next month. Many of the 96 were kids, one only ten years old. Chief Superintendent Duckenfield lied to the initial investigation, and then to the first inquiry. He ought to be in jail.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gin & Tonic:
Do people still talk about Leni Reifenstahl as a groundbreaking filmmaker? It’s not an exact comparison since Reifenstahl was working directly for Hitler while Kahlo was working in Mexico and never met Stalin (that I know of), but there are many people who are able to admire Reifenstahl’s work while recognizing it as Nazi propaganda.
This may be a weird comparison, but Kahlo seems more like, say, Peter King or the other Americans who glamorized the actions of the IRA. You can deplore them for giving support to terrorists, but are the exactly the same as the people who planted the bombs?
Alex
@Gin & Tonic: This is a perfectly appropriate point to make that is shamefully overlooked whenever people want to venerate people like Kahlo.
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Film students still study the techniques of Leni Riefenstahl, despite the use of her talents in service of a bad cause.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
I think visual artists are less likely to think their views through logically and deal far more in symbolism and abstraction than writers do. That’s why I think comparing writers and visual artists is comparing apples and oranges.
boatboy_srq
@Cacti: Indeed. Still (bitterly) chuckling here that HUD buses bring those Other People to the polls isn’t a strictly US GOTea propaganda item.
beltane
Whatever Frieda Kahlo was during her life has been greatly eclipsed by her afterlife as a kind pop culture icon. Perhaps she should be regarded as the Stalinist equivalent of Coco Chanel.
Helmut Monotreme
@Alex: OK, do you apply the same standard to fans of English capitalism in the 1940s when Churchill was deliberately starving millions in Bengal?
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): And you will never read an article about Riefenstahl written at a Vox level of readership that fails to mention the connection. In fact, it is rare that you will read an article about Richard Wagner at a Vox level that doesn’t refer to him as “Hitler’s favorite composer” — even though he died before Hitler was born.
The historical facts of Rivera and Kahlo’s life are … inconvenient .. and are widely ignored. Why is that?
Tenar Darell
@TaMara (BHF): Not a lawyer, archivist/librarian… You may be able to make them take down any of your own original images you made for the site. But I think the overall design would mostly in the category of work-for-hire. (Kinda like most old time radio scripts).
Alex
@Helmut Monotreme: I don’t recognize the equivalence of the two examples, either in quality or quantity (I don’t really believe you do, either). Western governments, including our own, have committed unspeakable atrocities for which there certainly hasn’t been adequate recognition. I would include everything ranging from your example to Dresden to Tokyo to the latest Iraq war. I concede all of that.
But, far, far too much effort was expended in the latter half of the 20th century at obfuscating and euphemizing what the Stalin regime exacted on its own citizens from 1932-1939 (at least). I think in time it will come to be acknowledged as a genuine genocide along similar lines as the Holocaust (indeed, in quantitative terms, it dwarfed the Holocaust). I suggest you read Robert Conquest’s works and, more recently, Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands if you’d like to learn more about the sheer horror.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti: I’m looking forward to a “Viva Leni” post here on B-J.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Interesting 2002 article from Washington Monthly that addresses many of the points about Kahlo’s life from all sides:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0206.mencimer.html
beltane
@Gin & Tonic: It could be due to a general dumbing down of historical knowledge. Hitler has been gradually transformed into a kind of almost generic bad guy.
Betty Cracker
@Alex: I valorized particular aspects of her life, namely, her work as an artist, her feminism and her disregard for traditional beauty standards. I didn’t endorse her politics, nor did I feel obligated to denounce her for them in a 100-word open thread post that could in no way be mistaken for a serious essay.
@Gin & Tonic: Christ on a Triscuit. Really?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gin & Tonic:
Because Kahlo was a fangirl who never met Stalin while Reifenstahl worked directly with Hitler?
For most of her career, Kahlo was best known as Diego Rivera’s wife. She had two (2) art shows in her lifetime. She only became famous outside of Mexico in the 1980s. So it’s not surprising that people concentrate more on her biography than they do on her political beliefs.
Brachiator
@Ridnik Chrome:
I don’t know if the KGB really went out of business, or are just under new management.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: I blame Cacti.
catclub
@Germy Shoemangler:
Flies, honey, vinegar.
Alex
@Betty Cracker: I didn’t mean to lambast you, necessarily, so much as to highlight an inconvenient fact in the narrative behind Kahlo. I don’t think Leni Riefenstahl is the appropriate example. But, I do think someone like Ezra Pound is. One simply can’t review the beauty of some of his poetry or his importance to early 20th century Modernism without mentioning that he propagandized on behalf of Mussolini.
Brachiator
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t know that they are either inconvenient or widely ignored.
Biographers and people who have read about their lives know all this. Many artists are fairly despicable if you know all the details of their lives and associations. Hell, Roman Polanski is a rapist who made some undeniably great films. Life is complicated.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
When Ezra Pound was propagandizing for Mussolini, he was already a world-famous poet. Reifenstahl became famous by working for Hitler. Kahlo was best known during her lifetime as Diego Rivera’s wife. He was by far the better known of the two artists … which was part of the point of the story in Betty’s post. It’s only since the 1980s that her fame has eclipsed his.
trollhattan
I think e.e. cummings wrote her a poem.
Frida be
You and me
Alex
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Can’t deny anything you said there. I don’t really believes it undercuts my core point, but I’ve said my piece.
Helmut Monotreme
@Alex:
There’s no such thing as “equivalency” when it comes to genocide. Stalin was a very bad man, in charge of a very bad regime and is responsible for very bad things on a mind boggling scale. I don’t consider Churchill specifically as an “equivalent Stalin unit of evil” but “British (and European generally) colonialism and mercantile imperialism” probably would be.
I’m just fed up with people holding up comminists as uniquely evil when there’s not a goddamn thing unique about establishing and maintaining an empire on the top of a mountain of skulls. They are strikingly unoriginal in that regard. The communist countries had the misfortune to be perpetrating their murders in an age of mass communication from across an ideological divide. That ideological divide made it easy for propagandists to say “They are butchers because they are communist” instead of “They are butchers because they are megalomaniacal tyrants”, and the second formulation is far more useful to me, because I want to emphasize that communism isn’t inherently evil, and neither is capitalism, but everyone has to make damn sure that whoever is in charge is not a megalomaniacal tyrant. Because when we focus on the “communist” part, all to often we give our own megalomanical tyrants license to commit butchery in our name and that shit has to stop.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
I think that Washington Monthly article I posted above is very relevant, because it talks about the multiple ways that Kahlo and her work have been sanitized — not just her politics, but also her manipulativeness, her affairs, her drug addiction, etc.
But I do think the biggest reason people don’t talk about Kahlo’s politics much in the US is that she became famous 30 years after she was safely dead, unlike the other artists being discussed.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
Would you also consider what Mao and Pol Pot did to be genocide? Stalin (IMO) wrote the guidebook for them to follow.
lurker dean
re copyright and web design, this describes the situation pretty well:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/who-owns-website-created-by-contractors.html
Betty Cracker
@Helmut Monotreme: Well said.
ThresherK
As an armchair Jeopardy! player, I know “Who is Diego Rivera?” will be a correct answer perhaps once a week (or so it seems).
Has Kahlo’s popularity in clues increased greatly since the biopic, or am I just imagining it?
Alex
@Helmut Monotreme: At this point, I simply will highlight where we agree and disagree. I agree that European (and American) imperialism is responsible for much mass murder that has been insufficiently explored, at least in our hemisphere. You also have a point about the influence of mass communication in amplifying such crimes in the 20th century (although Stalin and Mao were able to suppress their genocides for far too long).
Where we disagree is that I think state socialism/communism is in fact unique in its murderous record. I think it distinguishes itself by three factors: (1) the sheer rate at which its genocides were accomplished; (2) the insidious humanitarian ends for which such genocides were ostensibly committed, and (3) the contemptible credulity and gullibility by which it was justified or otherwise rationalized by otherwise decent people. To this day, people will give Stalinist partisans a pass than they would never countenance for fascist ones.
On the first point, I will make a declarative claim: state communist actors – acting in the name of state communism – intentionally killed more innocent people in a shorter period of time than other other political system in recorded history. If anything, the full scope of their genocides have not been sufficiently publicized (again, I’d recommend reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands on this front). For that reason, I would say state communism is inherently “evil,” if that term is to have any meaning at all.
I think artists like Frida Kahlo who associated with such ideologies – even after their genocidal accomplishments were known – should be held accountable.
trollhattan
@ThresherK:
Oooh-oooh, and I know the clue:
He is Dora Rivera’s brother.
Little-known cousin: Buick Riviera.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Alex:
Well, considering the anti-communist hysteria in the U.S. at the time, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume she thought it was all malarkey.
I mean seriously – even the scummiest right-wingers I can think of would have second thoughts about openly supporting a regime that was murderous to that degree.
ThresherK
@trollhattan: You saw it last night too!
But seriously, it is one of the all-time go-to clues. If it’s about painter, has a male pronoun, a Spanish-language placename or title, and is somewhere in the Western Hemispher, one could do a lot worse.
PurpleGirl
@TaMara (BHF): And now you have to research freelancer groups, i.e. EFA (Editorial Freelancers Association) or other similar groups. They keep of the various fields for trends, have advice on contracts, etc.
I learned the hard way back in the 1970s to take a down payment on dissertations I would be typing. One spring I booked 4 dissertations, turned down maybe 5 others and the 4 booked ones never came through. From that point on, I took a non-refundable booking fee. If the dissertation never materialized at least I had food money for a bit.
Helmut Monotreme
@Alex:
Well, I’ll grant that we disagree. You qualify your statement with “in a shorter period of time” and that is the only unique thing, The communists had the speed advantage of leveraging post-industrial means of war against agrarian civilians. The US and the British (and French and Dutch, etc) did it more slowly over centuries really, with single shot muskets, broken treaties and smallpox. Later they had Gatling guns and Maxim Machine guns but by then all of the serious empire building was done. If Custer and the 7th cavalry had had maxim machine guns and armored cars or tanks, they would not have hesitated to use them, and the battle of Little Bighorn would have decided quite differently. So, the way I see it is, (not to put words in your mouth) your main complaint about Soviet Communists, is that they fit a few centuries of bloodshed into a few decades?
PurpleGirl
@Ridnik Chrome: Has the KGB gone out of business?
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: a poem? with capital letters? hmmmmm?
Alex
@Helmut Monotreme: I will set aside any quantitative comparisons for the moment. I think the moral gravity of killing ten million people in five years is greater than killing ten million people over one hundred years. I also believe there is a moral distinction between killing one hundred people intentionally and killing the same number recklessly.
Elizabelle
Frida Kahlo is so iconically stylish. And I’ve liked every Diego Rivera mural it has ever been my pleasure to see.
Not going to judge artists on their politics. And particularly not these two when you consider the cruelties of relatively modern Mexico history (the revolutions, land reform).
Watch “Duck You Sucker” aka “A Fistful of Dynamite”, Sergio Leone’s violent but superb movie about early 20th century revolutions in Mexico and Ireland.
The late great TR Fehrenbach wrote a superb history of Mexico; think it’s called “Fire and Blood.”
PurpleGirl
@beltane: That’s a good comparison. Coco Chanel was a collaborator with the Nazis — not that she had governmental power or authority but she continued her fashion work and generally included Nazis in her social circles.
EconWatcher
@Alex:
Martin Amis wrote a book called “Koba the Dread” that focuses on the double standard–no one would ever joke or take lightly the fact that someone was a fan of Hitler, but among a significant part of the left it sometimes seems to have been considered an almost charming eccentricity if a Western intellectual was a supporter of revolutionary communism. The example Amis used was his friend Christopher Hitchens, who used to get laughs reffering to his Trotskyist politics as a youth. (And no, Trotskyists are no better than Stalinists–Trotsky helped set up the monstrous police state and was himself dripping with blood before he was forced on the lam.)
The double standard is real, and I have to admit that I succumbed to it in my hotblooded lefty youth. I was never a communist, but I did think there was a certain glamour from the Deutscher biographies of Trotsky. I am ashamed of that now. Communism is the bloodiest doctrine ever to afflict humanity. Nothing can come close for pure body count.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Those are Capitalist letters, Komrade!
EconWatcher
@Helmut Monotreme:
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot: You really think these are moral equivalents to Western imperialists?
Cervantes
@EconWatcher:
Worth reading, in my opinion also.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Alex:
Are we allowed to include the other three major fascist regimes — Japan, Spain, and Italy — in this calculation, or is it strictly USSR vs Nazi Germany?
BTW, the generally accepted overall body count for the Nazis is 12 million — 6 million European Jews plus an additional 6 million assorted “undesirables” like Roma (Gypsies), Slavs, Communists, LGBT, crippled and retarded people, etc. Action T4 started in 1939, well before the death camps were up and running.
Helmut Monotreme
@EconWatcher:
For what it’s worth: yes I really do. I look at Churchill deliberately starving 3 million people in Bengal in 1943 or the millions more that died in the potato famine while British landlords continued to export food from Ireland or the millions that died in the Congo under Leopold and I furiously do believe that Western imperialism is the immoral equivalent of Stalin and Pol Pot. It’s easy and tidy to sum up the “Death toll of Communism” as if that meant anything. The “Black Book of Communism” puts the number at 94 million. But it is a one sided argument. It is flawed to consider every war, pogrom, revolution and famine under communism as all one monolithic genocidal thing, and then to dismiss every war pogrom revolution and famine in non communist countries as individual unconnected tragedies.
It’s been said that the easiest way to launder wealth is to inherit it. To extend that thought, the western world is rolling in blood money earned by conquest and slaughter that was perpetrated by our ancestors. Our inherited wealth from conquest and slaughter didn’t get washed clean just because our generation wasn’t holding the knife. And we are lying to ourselves and the world at large if we claim that conquest and slaughter was qualitatively different than that perpetrated by communist countries in the 20th century.
Cervantes
@EconWatcher:
Was Hitler a Western imperialist?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Helmut Monotreme: Hear, hear.
Big Picture Pathologist
Communism as defined by Marx and Engels does not prescribe mass exterminations.
People who insist on conflating Communism with totalitarianism or Stalinism are not being accurate.
I would argue that slavery, for example, which both predates and has been far more prevalent than Communism, has historically and globally been a worse scourge on the human race.. and that’s assuming that you accept Stalinism as representative of ‘true’ Communism, which I don’t.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@EconWatcher:
I have to admit, I was never seduced by the “romance of revolution” or thought Communists had much of a point, possibly because I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s when the Soviet “revolution” has ossified into Brezhnev and the ABC’s of dead Russian leaders. Marx and Engels had some interesting economic analysis, but Communist governments were pretty obviously a disaster even once you got past the distorting mirror of anti-Communism.
One of the reasons I find Khruschev to be such a fascinating figure is that he actively participated in Stalin’s crimes and then did his best to reveal those crimes when he came into power. He failed when it came to reforming Stalin’s police state, but he tried.
Cacti
@Cervantes:
Stalin was a piker compared to the 30-60 million that died during the 15 major famines of the British Raj.
Cervantes
@Cacti:
I assume your argument was meant as a response to this comment, not to anything I said.
Anyhow, yes, there were roughly 15 major famines during the period of the Raj; and the estimate of 60 million deaths is reasonable.
As to what precisely caused those famines — and therefore whether they are comparable to what Stalin did? — these you’d have to argue also, of course.
J R in WV
The connection between Marxism and Stalinist Communism is tenuous at best.
Though many politicians and political scientists would want to conflate the two as a circle on a Venn diagram!
And Hitler didn’t invent genocide, at all. Just read about the various Mongol Hordes and their policies in regard to city-states who resisted their flow, as opposed to city-states who surrendered when ordered to do so.
My recollection of those events is that there were pyramids of heads/skulls wherever the Horde was forced to actually attack and overrun a city – they killed everyone. If the city surrendered when demanded to do so, only the rulers were killed, so that the rest of the population could become servants to the Mongol Horde. Whichever Horde it was.
Many other extinction events are recorded in history – for example the extinction of the Albigensian Cathar heresy in southern France. They forced the population of the cities into their cathedral, barricaded the doors, and set fire to the whole structure, eliminating the entire population, men, women, and children. Lest someone aware of the heresy’s actual content survive to spread the heresy yet again.
Pretty much like any other genocidal maniacal act ever…
CONGRATULATIONS!
@TaMara (BHF): You were paid. It’s work for hire They own it. You don’t.