[PEN-L:7522] RE: DeLong Compares Mao to Hitler

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Who is this ultra-rightist idiot Delong? First of all, the use of the
disingenuous Kirkpatrickian term "Totalitarian" versus "Authoritarian" is
the first give away. If you have a society of despots and death squads that
is anti-communist, monopoly or dependent monopoly capitalist and a
whore/toady of US imperialism, it is "Authoritarian"; if it is nominally
socialist, even more advanced in respect for basic human rights, it is
"Totalitarian."

Next, let's explore the logic. Jews of the Warsaw ghetto employed violence
to resist genocide and the nazis employed violence to conduct genocide
therefore Jews = Nazis because they both employed "violence"? Or Mao
"killed" over 30 million Chinese (assumption to be summarily
asserted/accepted) and Hitler "killed" over 20 million "therefore" Evil of
Mao > Evil of Hitler?

This is a good example of why the Cultural Revolution in China, depsite its
excesses and crimes, was fundamentally a sound idea--send hacks, toadies,
sycophants and ideologues/scholar despots like this Delong to the
countryside to slop hogs; get some of the scholar despot/whore profs off
their asses to do a decent days work. Since the poor have to work hard and
produce surpluses for the Philosopher Kings, it is legitimate to ask what of
value the Philosopher Kings and Scholar Despots are producing.

And what makes this Delong worth even reading? Why does a long CV
automatically qualify someone (quantity versus quality) as an "established
scholar" or "notable scholar" without any reference to the quality of the
work or the experiencial-as well as theoretical--basis for any purported
quality or work.

A Cold Warrior without an enemy is like a hooker without a motel or space to
sell his/her wares. And the sad part is that the universities are full of
these petiti-bourgeois self-appointed "scholars" and "experts" who turn out
even worse shit than this Delong is apparently turning out.

As they say in Kerala: "In the land of the people with no nose, the one with
half a nose is king".

Jim Craven