I’d also like to say that although we focus on Hitler, there were a lot of other ppl at the top who seemingly bought into his/the far right’s ideas and enabled him to do evil things
I’m not talking about the ordinary ppl who were more or less coerced. I’m talking about his ministers and cronies who got in early and created the propaganda and terror mechanisms
To be fair to the Daily Mail (as much as a shitty, hate filled propoganda rag as it is), it’s easy to understand why you might have some sympathy for a nation going through such severe hardships and trying to regain a sense of positive national identity if all the shitty awful stuff is hidden. The Daily Mail wasn’t applauding Hitler saying “hey guys, lets kill millions of people and start the most devastating war in the history of the planet”, they were applauding the guy saying “wouldn’t it be cool if we made Germany great again and didn’t have so many people starving to death”.
Thanks for that, i’ve added it to my reading list.
I think I’ve mentioned it on here before, but one of my old bosses was in some branch of the Special Forces and ended up assisting in the cleaning up of the bodies after the mass suicide. I just think that’s crazy so I like to annoyingly bring it up when I can, haha.
The fact remains that history is often told by the winners, and collectively as nations, we respect who we are told or taught to respect. Not many people dig deeper than surface-level appearances to the masses and it’s often not as simple as good or evil. It’s a wide spectrum making it very easy for us to judge people who lived during different times, or for things we don’t agree with based on how society developed.
As people seem to be naming random people though. I remember reading a Christopher Hitchens book about how callous Mother Theresa really was. The deeper I researched, the worse she became.
The same goes for many of your favorite rockstars from the 70s and 80s. I have no idea how the music industry hasn’t had its moment like the movie industry has yet.
This sounds less like making a point about evil and more like taking an opportunity to attack the left.
That’s trippy. Interesting, too, that current Congresswoman Jackie Spier was there as part of a fact-finding mission and got shot up before the cult members offed themselves.
I’ve familiar with what Hitchens said about Mother Theresa. Did you do further research on her using sources other than Hitchens? Just curious whether others have made the same assertions.
Unfortunately Jim Jones isn’t the only person who has done evils under the disguise of being a Christian. And at one time Jones may have been a sincere person. If so, he let the lust of power take over. So many good pastors have fallen to one or more of the 3 that the devil really uses with success. Lust for sex, money or power
Unfortunately it’s just the British people who are enamored with Hitler or his methods. Use a catastrophe, control the media, suppress opponents. We call them democrats in the USA. China, North Korea, uses those tactics too.
Some in Jonestown were murdered too. Not everyone drank the Flavor-aid, some were given lethal injections for example.
Jim Jones recorded things at the end in audio. It is a disturbing thing to listen to, but you can tell from the recording that not everyone was on board with it.
You could include the children who drank it. I doubt they willingly drank poison.
Can’t you people keep politics out of at least one discussion?
My problem with Hitchens and those like him, is that they never mention the dirt on atheists. Google how many people have been murdered in the last 100 years by atheists. Mind boggling 100 - 140 MILLION. Those numbers don’t include Hitler. He didn’t claim to be atheist, rather he was involved in the cults.
I’d say that probably has to do with the acts being separate from their beliefs in deities / supernatural stuff. They did that stuff not in the name of atheism, but for other goals. Where someone like Mother Teresa did terrible things in the name of her religion. The crusades killed in the name of religion. Stalin killed to retain power, not because of his lack of belief in a god.
You’ve got that one backwards. Liking Jim Jones was a reflection of leftist ideology, until liking Jim Jones became politically inconvenient because he led his people into mass slaughter. He was even named “Humanitarian of the Year” in 1976 by the Los Angeles Herald. He was friend with the first Lady Rosalyn Carter and spoken of highly by Jerry Brown. He was an A-list progressive right up until that became inconvenient.
Even today, there are no shortage of leftists who do not lump Stalin or Mao in with Hitler, and the same people would agree vehemently with the social justice and racial justice rhetoric of Jim Jones. A major candidate who received nearly 150k votes for the mayor of Portland, OR campaigned in a Joseph Stalin skirt. She landed 41 percent off the vote in her loss to Americas most spineless mayor, Ted Wheeler.
Even today, two out of the three most deadly men of the 20th century are looked upon favorably by mainstream leftists in Western society.
Same thing, as any historically literate person would know. Hard-core socialism and communism always leads to massive death and destruction, but even today people do their best to sweep the horrible outcomes generated by their “fellow travelers” under the rug.
Even after the mass slaughter, leftist media darling Harvey Milk remarked, “Guyana was a great experiment that didn’t work. I don’t know, maybe it did.” Strangely, his affiliation with and affinity for Jim Jones wasn’t highlighted in the glowing documentary Hollywood made about Harvey Milk.
And that’s part of the great evil of leftism. Even after a hundred years of abject failures across the globe, people still cling to the ideology. Why? Because they won, unlike the Nazis. Communist lands were not occupied like Nazi lands were, and that is why communism, socialism and the American versions of the ideology are still quite strong.
Leftists don’t remember the dead, and if they do, the dead are explained away. That’s why Jim Jones is more commonly thought of as a “cult preacher”, not as a true believer communist, which defined him much more than any early cynical exploitation of Christianity he pulled off. That’s why Marxist ideology and rhetoric is alive and flourishing in America today, repackaging the class warfare with other, ever-evolving forms of oppression politics. People line up to explain all of the deaths away and continue their own belief in the ideological cult of leftism.
Jim Jones told his followers, “God is Socialism, and I am Principle Socialism, and that’s what makes me God.”
All of the People’s Temples assets were left to the Soviet government after the massacre.
The world was such a peaceful place prior to the birth of Karl Marx.
America’s Right Wing is responsible for a greater atrocity than any you have listed:
It might be time to take this current offshoot discussion over to the Political forum.
Is Naziism the only political ideology that can be highlighted as evil in this thread?
No, of course not.
But, there are several PWI regulars here who know what buttons to push to get the other side going. Let’s maybe just not do that intentionally, okay?
