[lbo-talk] Re: Worker's Paradise (was: Gulag query)

[David Mandl]

I'm not sure I follow you, Curtiss.  I was replying to the claim that 
"the crushing of the Hungarian uprising and the invasion of 
Afghanistan were both supported by the bulk of the Soviet 
population."  By that logic, popular support in the U.S. for an 
invasion of Iraq makes that defensible (and I don't think it is, just 
for the record).  Whether you have unanimity in a dictatorship 
through intimidation or in a "democracy" through more subtle means 
(corporate-controlled media, advertising, etc.), "popular opinion" 
has to be taken with a big grain of salt.  And even if the Soviet 
population was really, truly in favor of the '56 and '68 invasions, 
surely that didn't make it right to send the tanks in?

    --Dave.


>From: "H. Curtiss Leung" <hncl at panix.com>
>
>Would you say the same thing about Nicholas Daniloff, the US News/World Report
>correspondent accused of being a US spy?  "Make no mistake--there is a consent
>of the governed here."
>
>Curtiss
>
>>  Holy cow...an actual Soviet apologist/revisionist.
>>
>>  The bulk of the American population supports the invasion of Iraq--I
>>  guess that's OK, then.  And I didn't realize that it's OK to put
>>  people with non-mainstream views (even less representative than
>>  Chomsky's!) in mental hospitals.  It's like an old cartoon in the
>>  situationist zine "Spectacular Times": Some stuffy old British
>>  banker-type in a suit sniffs, "I don't know what these protestors are
>>  grumbling about--I've lived in this country for 63 years, and I have
>  > never ONCE been beaten up by the police."

-- 
Dave Mandl
dmandl at panix.com
davem at wfmu.org
http://www.wfmu.org/~davem