One more place racist garbage is no longer welcome

Bah, the statement regarding the Commie flag isn't that it is racist. It's that it's offensive as it honors an abhorrent creed that has caused and continues to cause more suffering and death than anything in history.

I do like the idea of Lenin holding up your antennae. At least that's one useful thing he did.

As to the causes of the Civil War, like all wars, it started for a multitude of reasons. The issue of slavery was one. The ever increasing over reaching power of a federal government was another. The notion that every person was a seething racist and only fought for wealth and power is ridiculous. There was idealism in the reasons why the North went to war. Not the only reason but one of them.

My distinguished family lineage of scrub farmers in the backwoods of Connecticut leads me to believe that my illustrious ancestor Otis did not join the 21st Conn. Infantry to win economic dominion over Ken B's ancestors.

As for a book, I really like Shelby Foote's 3 volume history of the Civil War. Not a super dry account but fascinating. And a hell of a lot more informative than any high school/college history class. (Do they even still have those?)

repoman wrote: Bah, the statement regarding the Commie flag isn't that it is racist. It's that it's offensive as it honors an abhorrent creed that has caused and continues to cause more suffering and death than anything in history.

Horribly abhorrent to attempt to change the flow of history by making a fairer society. Just because the Russian experiment failed does not mean the analysis is incorrect. That's like saying capitalism is correct in all circumstances for all societies and state control needs to be removed in all situations just because the USA likes the idea and won a few wars.

I also disagree with the statement that it continues to cause more suffering than anything in history. Plain bollocks. BTW not everyone (like my mother in law for example) agrees with the implied analysis that everything in Russia is far better, now that communism has gone. She was far happier when the communists were in power and pensions actually got paid as opposed to the rich mafiosi being in charge with the apparent creed of 'Fuck you if you don't have money'.

Bah, the statement regarding the Commie flag isn't that it is racist. It's that it's offensive as it honors an abhorrent creed that has caused and continues to cause more suffering and death than anything in history.

Thanks Repo, that is of course. what I meant. The hammer and sickle as a symbol, like it or not, is offensive, most to those who suffered under it, including former 'political' prisoners who were sent to labour camps or uranium mines, whose families were ripped apart, who were forbidden from studying at university, to democrats who were found guilty of subverting the glorious effing revolution in show trials and sentenced to death.

I don't give a rat's ass about the theory in connection with the symbol: whatever the intentions were, and however honorable they might have been in the begnning (which is itself debatable), the symbol was corrupted and represents wrongs committed against countless people.

The EU should have enacted a Europe-wide ban on the symbol as some countries suggested. The hammer and sickle, because of its hisotrical connotations, IS banned in some of them.

EDIT: That said, just to be clear, I can understand why people might want to use it as their microbadge in idealistic sense, I can live with it and it's not the same as the swastika ... just find it hard to understand why someone would happily take up the symbol considering how much misery it represents.

I thought it was a Dukes Of Hazard fan badge. I used to love watching that show. My bad!

I feel the same way about the Stars and Stripes

Sure, nothing is black & white, I know what you mean.

But I guess you're not referring to the stars and stripes that liberated Europe, right, referred to as the greatest generation? Would that they been able to go further; instead, satellite states got to spend a wonderful 40 years under communism , ten of which at least were the worst kind of Stalinist oppression, which was enough to make anyone on the 'wrong side of history' hate the symbol of the hammer & sickle completely and with good reason.

Which circles around to my original post in this thread...

Everybody can claim some form of grievance/offense in regards to something. To ban the symbol doesn't change how people feels it only enforces silence and encourages obfuscation.

Pete's earlier point that preventing the use of the Confederate Flag is akin to not be allowed to yell "fire" in a crowded theater is flawed. The fire/theater rule is to prevent harm to people physically. The banning of a symbol is to prevent harm to people's sensibilities. The two are hardly equal.

(The reason Andy is offended by the Stars and Stripes is because he's still sore about the ass kicking his beloved England got in the 1783 at the hands of not only Americans but also *gasp* the French)

I don't know that it enforces silence... there must be plenty of serious leftist thinkers who wouldn't use the hammer and sickle because they know full well it has been discredited. I think it's more that some things just aren't acceptable or shouldn't be: the original 'sanskrit' swastika is forever stained because of history ie. you have to be a real piece of work to sport that on a T-shirt or worse as a tattoo, either an outlaw biker or a white suppremist or skinhead would be my guess.

The hammer and sickle, yeah, countless university students love wearing it when they first read Marx or whatever just like they wear Che Guevara t-shirts. But I'd venture at least some of them don't know jack-shit about what the symbol really represents, just like plenty of people are unaware of what the confederate flag represents. The Che silkscreen is just another fashionable logo anyway... Trendy weekend socialists then go home to their parents at the weekend to do their laundry and raid the fridge and would never for a second consider giving up their many comforts in capitalist society in pursuit of the pipe dream that was communism.

repoman wrote:
(The reason Andy is offended by the Stars and Stripes is because he's still sore about the ass kicking his beloved England got in the 1783 at the hands of not only Americans but also *gasp* the French)

Not even in my mind. Don't really know much about colonial England and know even less about the settling of America.

Like I say, don't believe ALL the propaganda. Not everyone in the satellite states supported 'capitalist' revolutions. I know a fair few folk who did not want to see US values introduced at all into society and some who eventually regretted the Velvet revolution (Czechoslovakia) and a lot who regretted the, so called, Orange revolution (Ukraine) admittedly much later on. Dubcek did not have overall popular support in the Prague spring and was not a revolutionist but a communist reformer as shown when he took the stage with Vaclav Havel and, rather embarrassingly, supported a reformed communist party instead of the Velvet revolution.

Sometimes, I think the US simply sees one side of the struggle, perhaps because fleeing counter revolutionists, like the hated Kerensky, end up in the US and so they hear that side of the fight. In Europe, the struggle was never black and white between communism and capitalism, it was simply presented that way for US consumption. There were many more shades of gray than that. However, I am certain I'm speaking to people who know that already.

Remember, at one stage the hated East Germans were the heroes of the resistance against Hitler. Funny how perceptions can change so fast when they were no longer of use to the West.

I also found out by talking to people how different the satellite states actually were to the West's perception of them (basically just states of the USSR under the jackboot). Nothing could be further from the truth. Russians would enjoy going abroad to Lithuania (for example) for the liberal atmosphere and luxury goods they could get. There was much legal trade between border states and the West which was fully accepted by the USSR. Yes, the Soviet army had bases there but they certainly were not patrolling the streets, Gestapo style during the Cold War. More like US bases in the UK or West Germany.

The hammer & sickle is different to the rebel flag and swastika in that - although all were flown by horrible regimes - the latter two outright denigrate the rights of certain people based on their race. So they're not only offensive to people who suffered under that symbol in history, but also to people today who just happen to be members of such a race.