Berlin Wall Season: Victims and Victors

The end of World War 2 was meant to be a victory of liberation from the hellfire of war on the European continent, and from the militaristic and genocidal tyranny of the Nazis and their allies in Italy, Croatia and elsewhere. For half of Europe it meant peace but only between states, not within. The United States initially took a fairly benign view of the Soviet Union and the Red Army’s presence across the east, Winston Churchill’s famous warning of an iron curtain being draped across Europe went largely unheeded, until the blockade of west Berlin made Stalin’s intentions too obvious to miss.

From then until 1988-1990, it was thought that the Cold War would go on forever, dictatorships always seem like that. So brutal and violent are the means to maintain control, it seems difficult to believe any could fall from that, but they did. There had been several attempts, most notably in East Germany in 1953, Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, to break from the cold bloody brutal reality of “really existing socialism”, all suppressed by the Red Army with the imperial cruelty from the dark ages.

However, once the USSR had opened up, Gorbachev had relented and let the rotten system be exposed for what it was, let people criticise and change, it became clear that none of the regimes in the east could cling to anything other than the lies and fear that were the currency of their trade. The loss in lives was not high compared to the mass murder of the Soviet Union, China or the Khmer Rouge, but the loss in life is incalculable. The lives stunted by socialism, the fear, the subterfuge, the destruction of ambition, and the corruption of talent. The talented either had to sell out to a system that wanted them to be slaves, fear for their very lives or flee. The broad masses need do little other than shut up, be obedient, and be grateful for having bread, a home and a job, for they were being constantly told how things were worse in the west, yet could hear and see for themselves a different story on illegally received TV and radio broadcasts.

The hypocritical vacuous United Nations which would speak endlessly about colonialism, be criticism South Africa for apartheid, and hounding Israel about the Palestinians, was compliant and tolerant of the evil empire’s tentacles directly controlling half of Europe. An empire that claimed it would economically and technically bury the west. A claim that is so laughable today it staggers to think of those who believed it could be true, right through the 1970s.

It was an experiment that failed every test it put forward for itself. Not only were the economies a failure, and totalitarianism placing the entire population in fear of the state, but it did not deliver the socialist goal of equality. For in every single state that claimed to be socialist, it delivered an elite living in luxury, enjoying large homes, security, overseas travel, goods and most of all, knowledge of the outside world. A vile repulsive grouping of supreme mediocrities, who lived the lives of the rich and wealthy, happily ready to gun down those who may threaten their “really existing socialism”.

The profit motive had been abandoned, commercialism almost completely extinguished, people working for the common good, and everyone in fear, whilst those in charge were corrupt and willing to spill blood to preserve what they had. One wonder why those who damn capitalism today don’t look to see that efforts to enforce a collectivist mindset become fertile fields for authoritarianism and corruption.

So today I begin a series on all of the countries stunted and corrupted by Marxism-Leninism in Europe. I do so in the order of those liberated. In that I will briefly describe how the regime came about, the perhaps most notable points in its history and how it all folded. It is history that children should all learn. For what the lesson should be is how entire countries became beholden to systems that made so many compliant, and willing to go along with it all. For as we all now, all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

Berlin Wall season

As the existence of the Berlin Wall had a significant impact on how I thought of freedom, as a child, this week I will be writing of the Wall, the countries behind the Iron Curtain and the events of 1989 and beyond that have changed Europe and the world for the better.

To start, here is Christopher Hitchens in Slate about what to learn. Take this piece, which may ring a distant bell in our ears:

This 20th anniversary has seen yet another crop of boring articles about how so many people, especially in former East Germany, are supposedly "nostalgic" for the security of the old Stalinist system. Such sentimental piffle—which got a good airing in that irritating movie Good Bye Lenin!—would not long survive a reading of another new book: Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, by Victor Sebestyen. Making effective use of archives opened since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Sebestyen describes the day in late October 1989 when the head of State Planning in the German Democratic Republic, Gerhard Schürer, presented the party leadership with the unvarnished economic news. "Nearly 60 per cent of East Germany's entire economic base could be written off as scrap, and productivity in mines and factories was nearly 50 per cent behind the West." Even more appalling was the 12-fold increase in the GDR's national debt—a situation so grotesque that it had been classified as a state secret lest loans from Western creditors dry up. "Just to avoid further indebtedness," wrote Schürer, "would mean a lowering next year of living standards by 25 to 30 per cent, and make the GDR ungovernable." So the wall came down just before the hermetic state that it enclosed would have imploded. I doubt that there would have been much "nostalgia" for that.

or how about this wonderful quote:

they wanted the unexciting objective of "normality"—a life not unlike that of Western Europe, where it was possible to express everyday criticism, register a vote, scrutinize a free press, and become a consumer as well as a producer. These unexciting demands were nonetheless revolutionary in their way, which gives you an idea of the utter failure and bankruptcy of the regimes that could not meet them. In 1988, in a public debate with a hack official of the Polish Communist Party, Lech Walesa won over the audience with his simple statement that "Europe moves by car, and we are trying to catch up with them by bike."

The waste of humanity for this 50 years of fear, sacrifice and oppression, the fact half of Europe was freed from one tyranny by another tyranny, and the so easily collapsed system once those with guns got consciences. It is a reason to never forget, and never forget those who so readily apologised for the prison states that are long confined to the slag heap of history.

Scum of the week

Teenage girls try to mug a mother, so attack the woman's two year old daughter in London.

Images of the oxygen thieves are here. They are still at large.

I need say nothing more.

Berlin - before and after 1989

14 images in the Daily Telegraph

The bleakness is almost invisible today.

The sideshows

So politicians like to take advantage of their salary and perks that come with it, some within the rules, some outside the rules.

Like you should be surprised. Of course it isn't quite on the grand scale of rorts that the British House of Commons has been, but still it demonstrates self seeking that people bizarrely think shouldn't occur from people meant to represent you.

Are you surprised the MSM spends so much attention on it? You shouldn't be. You see it has two characteristics that work so well for the modern reporter:

1. It's a scandal that people are interested in. It is something people can relate to.
2. It's incredibly easy to get the concept across. MP, gets paid a lot (well, to the average punter), gets overseas holidays, flying business class. It is an outrage.

However, as much as it gives sound reason to be a little cynical about them all, it is chicken feed in the scheme of things. It doesn't require much analysis, as a binary deal, it fits in with television especially, where TV news in essence likes to boil things down to an All Black test. Good vs bad. Right vs wrong. Simple.

You wont get any real debate about whether education should continue to be a compulsorily funded state system, or not. You wont get any real debate about whether the war on drugs is really the right response to the problems with P. You wont get any real debate about whether it makes sense for the state to own three power companies and a coal company. You wont get any real debate about whether spending half a billion dollars on electrifying Auckland's train system is good value for money. You wont get any real debate about climate change, whether New Zealand should sign up to something that far richer and larger CO2 emitters per capita are having little to do with.

In other words, debate about policy.

Too many in the MSM pander to a tabloid sensationalist view of politicians. However, do any ever ask "why should you trust these people to buy your health care" or "retirement income" or "accident insurance" or "kids' education" or "transport system" etc? Is it because you don't actually care, but just care about personalities? You're that vapid?

For you see, both Mr Hide and Mr Harawira are in part responsible for the current government and passing supply bills to do all of those things. If you get annoyed at these antics, and antics of past politicians of all colours, why do you keep thinking putting your trust in them is going to get better?