He literally said this, guys!
...
...Literally!
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Isn't his official field of study medieval literature? Why'd he end up getting so into defending the USSR?
I believe that he was with some Hoxhaists in their own political party back in the day.
Honestly I don't get his fixation with defending Stalin specifically. Stalin wasn't the entirety of the USSR, just it's leader at a pivotal moment, and like most leaders he had flaws. If anything defending this one specific person in a leadership role of the USSR is a detriment to the reputation of the institution as a hole, the achievements of the Soviet Union weren't Stalin's alone. It really screams "I just worship a cult of personality" instead of "I'm trying to do an honest defense of a socialist project that has been smeared by most."
The point, as he makes it in his books, is that western historiography of the Soviet Union has a deeply embedded anti-Stalin paradigm. Every discussion of the USSR from 1930-1950 is nothing more than "Stalin bad", ignoring the entire actual history in favor of fabricating outright lies about one person. He specifically defends Stalin, in books that don't claim to be more than a defence of Stalin, because it's Stalin who is under attack and who is the only point on which western academia will engage with the USSR. Debunking the idea that Stalin was a lone omnipotent tyrannical figure - and the extrapolation by bourgeoise historians that communism inevitably becomes a dictatorship of such a figure - is a huge part of that. He even says he would never call himself a Stalinist, not least because Stalin wouldn't have wanted people to call themselves Stalinists!
Is the difference between furr and Losurdo that the latter is an actual historian? Haven’t read furr
Basically. There's no need for Furr, who is in fact a crank, when Losurdo exists.
He is the most slanderd one so it makes sense to defend him 95% of anti soviet propaganda is connected to Stalin no even the biggest lib gives a shit about slandering brezhnev or khrushchev
i dont see the obssesion with some weird middle ground between lib that belives everything and crazy tankie
it comes off as the dumb thing leftists do where they say "maybe there is no Uyghur genocide"but there is still some bad things going on"
These are fair points, but I would point out, I don't think Furr's tactic of ruthlessly defending Stalin in particular is actually working, whether he actually is one or not, he's pretty much considered a quack by most people, including a decent amount of MLs.
Contrast this with Parenti, who writes extensively defending socialist projects, including the USSR, but doesn't shy away from acknowledging their missteps. Parenti is respected by pretty much everyone on the left, many of whom were ex-liberals who found his work engaging. Parenti seems to be doing a much better job of doing what Furr claims to be doing.
my point wasnt that we should never criticize the point is that we not should look at blatant propganda and say "huh maybe its 80% false instead of 100" too many people think naunce is when you accept some kind of slander and both
Parenti and Furr are whould be considerd to be crazy Tankies by the average person there is no such thing as a respctable tankie
Pretty sure Furr doesnt claim that AES that perfect either
Furr doesn’t get traction because he’s writing in the Anglosphere and historiography of the USSR in English speaking nations is strictly tied to the ideological preferences of the USA and the UK.
In non-English Europe you see a lot more nuanced takes and positions that are positive or rehabilitative of Stalin have more currency, although less in the past decade with the rise of European nationalism and the neoliberal takeover.
But for example Losurdo is basically the Grover Furr of the non-English speaking European academic world and while he isn’t considered mainstream he isn’t treated like a crank the way Furr is either.
Furr being treated as a crank has more to do with the fact capitalist / neoliberal triumphalism is the dominant ideology of Anglosphere historiography than it has to do with Furr.
Losurdo isn't treated as a crank because he doesn't say crank stuff like whatever this meme is referencing, or "Stalin never committed one single crime," etc.
The full quote makes it pretty clear he’s refuting the double holocaust theory, and the context was a debate where his opponent claimed 100-150 million were killed by the communists.
The quote isn’t actually denying Stalin robbed trains in Tsarist Georgia, that the Bolsheviks shot the Romanov children, that the gulags were a pretty unpleasant place to be (although this too is greatly exaggerated), and his work fully acknowledges that the Bolsheviks were Leninists who saw violence as a tool for revolutionary political change.
You’re forming an opinion on Grove from a cherry-picked quote, taken out of context to intentionally misrepresent his actual views.
Look at his “purge” and “show trial” series for example. Grove is a serious historian and his presentation of facts is thorough and clear eyed.
https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/party-purges/
His “crank” status is based on quote mining, and even then it’s really this one quote. Selectively just one half of one quote, that is.
If he was really a crank then they would be attacking his work instead of an cuff comment taken out of context, made while being harangued by some Black Book of Communism shit.
Plucking a sentence from the middle of a a fucking accurate comment like that doesn’t make him a crank, it makes his opponents hacks.
It's not working because westoid obsession with middle ground fuck them up. People living in all encompassing, century old, anticommunist bubble can't even imagine the bubble being entirely wrong and malicious, they have to assume at least some of the middle ground reflexively. His books are well sourced and documented, and the methodology is explained.
Why is this a dumb thing? If there are actual bad things shouldn't you mention the bad things? Of course it's dumb if you just take the midpoint of western propaganda vs chinese propaganda to do a "both sides" thing but I don't see why you wouldn't mention the bad things if you know for sure they're there.
Because the Person conceding to atrocity propaganda just to look nauced and the worst psrt they arent saying it because they believe it they are saying it because they are scared that saying the latest state department narrtive is 100% bullshit makes them look crazy so they go with this 80/20 bullshit.
You should never ever concede to propaganda against countries to look respectable .