On Aug 18, 2011, at 11:03 AM, SA wrote:
>
> For what it's worth, here's Archie Brown:
>
>> The Cold War almost certainly did more to keep Communist systems
>> going than to bring them down. The ever-present threat of an
>> external enemy was used as a justification for highly authoritarian
>> (at times totalitarian) rule. Political dissent was portrayed as a
>> betrayal of the 'socialist motherland' and the external threat was
>> used to justify censorship and restrictions on foreign travel.
And for which, of the various repressive and corrupt authoritarian measures instituted in the "Free World" (from the Truman "loyalty/ security" program with its subversives list to Operation Gladio to Reagan's Starwars) to secure the powers of that section of the global capitalist class located on the "Free" side of the Curtain, was that phony Cold War *not* "used as a justification?" What more powerful ideological weapon did capitalism have to neutralize potential workingclass socialist revolution than the brutal truth about stalinist totalitarian state capitalism (alias, to the greater joy of the capitalists, "really existing socialism")?
Of course. once the Cold War farce had to lower its curtain, a substitute was needed--and immediately found in the shape of Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, and the Islamist Threat.
Shane Mage
"scientific discovery is basically recognition of obvious realities that self-interest or ideology have kept everybody from paying attention to"