Sunday 19 September 2010

Jonathan Freedland In Lithuania

Observe the following, non-caveated header to this article by Jonathan Freedland nicked from the Guardian and reprinted in today's Taipei Times:
"The dishonest equating of Nazi and Soviet crimes must stop."
Then consider the following line:
"Even if the authorities were rigorous in maintaining a balance, and telling both stories honestly, I would still reject this “double genocide,” because the symmetry here is false."
Yet just how "false" do you suppose the symmetry of that "double genocide" was elsewhere Freedland?

Measured over more than simply a single location, isn't the immoral equivalence of the Nazi and Soviet regimes obvious? Both were gigantically Statist and it is no exaggeration or misuse of the adjective to say that both were, again in gigantic proportions, evil.

Two questions: why did Freedland write that column apparently about Lithuania, and why has it been reprinted in the Taipei Times?
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous19 September 2010 at 20:23

    Well, Freedland is a Jewish surname, and Freedland is presumably Jewish. May Jews were willing collaborators with the Soviet régime when it invaded Lithuania in 1940. They worked for the KGB rounding up Lithuanians and deporting them to Siberia (were most of them died) or killing them on the spot if they resisted. Jews not like to be reminded about their role in the Soviet occupation (which resumed again from 1944 to 1991). That is way they hate it when Lithuanians remind the world that Communism was no better than Nazism. In addition, they want to be "Victim No. 1", and they want the Holocaust to have 'centrality' – as they call it – over all other atrocities from now until the human race becomes extinct.

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  2. Mike Fagan20 September 2010 at 09:12

    "May Jews were willing collaborators with the Soviet régime when it invaded Lithuania in 1940."

    Forgive my ignorance, but can you point me to a source for that claim?

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  3. Anonymous20 September 2010 at 16:55

    "Jews were willing collaborators with the Soviet régime when it invaded Lithuania in 1940" is exactly the type of ignorant anti-semitism tyoical for Eastern Europe that is being addressed in Freedland's article.

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  4. Mike Fagan20 September 2010 at 18:15

    Perhaps it is ignorant anti-semitism. It strikes me as the sort of claim that would be difficult to support with historical evidence - I did ask for a source, but so far no response.

    At any rate, I am much more interested in why Freedland would want to defend the Soviets *at all* - as I said, the immoral equivalence of the Soviet and the Nazi States is obvious.

    ReplyDelete

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