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Victims of communism and Nazism remembered on Black Ribbon Day, 77 years after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Aug. 23.

"At a time when the fundamental values of the European Union are openly questioned by the rise of far-right movements and neo-Nazi parties across Europe, the above-mentioned initiative is very unfortunate,"Kontonis said in his letter to the organizers of the conference, which was also quoted in the Greek media.

"The initiative to organize a conference with this specific content and title sends a wrong and dangerous political message that is the result of the agreements that followed the Second World War, revives the Cold War climate that brought so much suffering to Europe, runs contrary to the values of the EU, and certainly does not reflect the view of the Greek government and the Greek people, which is that Nazism and Communism could never exist as the two parts of the same equation," the minister said.

"The horror we lived through Nazism had a single version, the one we described above," Kontonis continued. "Communism, on the contrary, gave birth to dozens of ideological trends, one of which was Euro-communism, born in a communist regime during the Prague Spring period, in order to combine socialism with democracy and freedom."

The European Parliament in 2009 declared Aug. 23 as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Communist and Nazi Regimes, 70 years after the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on that day in 1939.

Estonia has invited representatives of EU member states and Eastern Partnership countries to participate in the conference to be held in Tallinn on Wednesday.

Greek Minister of Justice Stavros Kontonis is a member of the prime minister's party Coalition of the Radical Left, popularly known by its syllabic abbreviation Syriza.

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Greek minister turns down invitation to conference on crimes of communism - ERR News

It was this promise of a creative solidarity unhindered by racial segregation that propelled Thompson, Hughes and the cast to invest their hopes in Black and White. When production the fell through, tempers flared. Some of the cast accused the Soviet Union of betraying the African-American cause to curry favor with Washington, from which the Soviet Union was hoping to receive official recognition. Hughes, perhaps the most seasoned artist of the group, attributed the failure to creative differences (too many people with opinions). Reflecting on the project years later, he wrote: O, Movies. Temperaments. Artists. Ambitions. Scenarios. Directors, producers, advisers, actors, censors, changes, revisions, conferences. Its a complicated art the cinema. Im glad I write poems.

After the production of Black and White fell apart, many members of the cast stayed in the Soviet Union, believing it was their best place for their artistic careers. The actor Wayland Rudd was hired by one of Moscows experimental theater companies. The writer Loren Miller stayed to edit a Soviet anthology of African-American poetry. Lloyd Patterson, a recent college graduate who had signed on to the project merely looking for adventure, became a designer for film sets. His son Jimmy, still a baby, appeared in a famous 1936 Soviet film Circus in which a young white American woman with a black child flees the United States for racial sanctuary in Soviet Russia. Hughes stayed for several months in Soviet Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan, reporting on Soviet reforms for various American publications, including the NAACP journal The Crisis. He was reportedly the first American poet whose work was translated into Uzbek.

Despite its demise, Black and White did not deter other black artists from taking a chance on the Soviet film industry. The singer and actor Paul Robeson arrived in Moscow in 1934 at the invitation of Sergei Eisenstein, the director behind such revolutionary classics as Battleship Potemkin, October and Strike. Inspired by the play Black Majesty, penned by C. L. R. James, an Afro-Trinidadian communist scholar and writer, Eisenstein had invited Robeson to potentially star in a film about the Haitian Revolution.

I feel like a human being for the first time, Robeson told reporters after he arrived in Russia. Of all the African-American artists and activists who traveled there, none developed as enduring a relationship with the Soviet Union as Robeson. Upon his arrival, he was received ecstatically by the Soviet theatrical establishment, which invited him to sing an aria onstage from Modest Mussorgskys opera Boris Godunov. Despite Soviet atheism, he was asked to sing Negro spirituals over the radio and at government parties. His song Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child became newly emblematic of his relationship to his home country; the Soviets had put his recording of the song over an animated short film about racism and labor exploitation in the American sugar industry.

But by the time Robeson was beginning his great romance with the Soviet project, McKay and many African-Americans (including the novelist Richard Wright) were moving away from it. McKay, like many of the Russian artists he collaborated with in Moscow, would have a falling out with communism. The instigating event, for him, was Soviet Russias failure to cease trade with Italy even after Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia, then ruled by Haile Selassie. The invasion was widely seen as an affront to the very idea of black sovereignty. McKay would turn his political disillusionment into Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem.

Wright would soon join McKay in his disillusionment. In 1944 he wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly called I Tried to Be a Communist. Frustrated by the American Communist Partys tepid response to his novel Native Son, Wright wrote to a friend that the party encourage[s] the creation of types of writing that can be used for agitprop purposes, but had a tendency to sneer at more creative attempts.

Hughess overt involvement in communism also waned by this time, but perhaps more out of necessity. He was under intense scrutiny from the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee, which accused him of being at one time or another part of 91 communist organizations. Hughes, though, like Wright, did sense that too close an affiliation with a political organization or ideology could prove to be artistically stifling. Explaining to a friend why he never officially joined the Communist Party, he said, It was based on strict discipline and the acceptance of directives that I, as a writer, did not wish to accept.

Robeson was one of the last black sojourners to see in the Soviet Union an alternative to the racist and exploitative culture of the West. Between the Nonaligned Movement and a resurgence of black nationalism, the brand of communism bred from the Global South seemed to many by the 1960s and 70s to be a sharper weapon against racism and colonialism. As the black feminist writer Audre Lorde wrote when she reflected on her 1976 trip to Moscow, Russia became a mythic representation of that socialism which does not yet exist anywhere I have been.

Russia has long served as a repository for different kinds of mythology, from the Third Rome to the Red Scare. The myth of Russia as a racial paradise was perhaps one of its best, both as a muse to black artists across the diaspora and as a strategic tool in the African-American fight for political recognition. But as an early adherent, Hughes implied that the Soviet Union was just part of a larger narrative of black creative and political revolution; as the refrain of his 1938 poem Ballad of Lenin reads:

Comrade Lenin of Russia,

High in a marble tomb,

Move over, Comrade Lenin,

And give me room.

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was a committee in the House of Representatives and a model for Senator Joseph McCarthys investigations into Communists in the government; it was not Senator McCarthys committee.

Jennifer Wilson (@jenlouisewilson) is a postdoctoral fellow in Russian literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

This is an essay in the series Red Century, about the history and legacy of Communism 100 years after the Russian Revolution.

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When the Harlem Renaissance Went to Communist Moscow - New York Times

KING 5's Lili Tan reports.

LiLi Tan, KING 12:04 AM. PDT August 21, 2017

In the Fremont neighborhood, a statue of Vladimir Lenin has sat at North 36th Street and Fremont Place North since the mid-1990s. (Photo: KING)

Art and injustice: its heated topic of debate across the United States. Seattles quirky Fremont neighborhood, which is home to a seven-ton statue of Vladimir Lenin, is now also home to controversy.

Some are demanding the statues removal, including Mayor Ed Murray.

I think hed say they've got it wrong. That maybe their intentions are good, but they're seeing it in the same terms of the confederate statues, which are used to oppress people. There's no comparison. It is apples and oranges, Fran Dodson said.

Dodson is the former wife of Lewis Carpenter, who bought and shipped the statue from Slovakia.

You might say I helped him buy it, Dodson said. If you ask Lew why he did it, he'd say, for cookies, which for him meant for fun. He thought he was going to make a killing on it.

The Issaquah man never flipped it for profit, but the couple did become good friends with artist Emil Venkov, who Dodson says was forced to forge the statue by the Communist Regime.

He was commissioned, but he wanted to do it his way. They tried to argue with him, tell him how to do it, but he did it anyway. This was his silent protest against communism because it was oppressive, Dodson said, explaining the statue has hidden messages intended by the artist to be symbols of resistance.

What it does is it shows Lenin as not a benevolent dictator, but an aggressive dictator: stepping forward in an aggressive manner whereas in other artworks he is often shown with children and abstract rifles and flames shooting up from behind him, showing he was a violent man, Dodson said.

Blood on the hands came at a later date and by someone other than Venkov.

I look at the red paint that someone's added to his hand, posters on his backside. I've seen him in a tutu. I don't think he's respected here. I think he's ridiculed, Dodson said, explaining her husband would love the protests and controversy happening today.

After all, controversy sometimes spurs capitalism, which could potentially raising the statues resale value Carpenters lifelong American Dream.

I could see that happening, Dodson said joking. I think he could also enjoy the value of how its making people think.

She hopes the statue will not be sold or moved because the family uses the statue to pay their respects to Carpenter, who died in a car crash in 1994.

Instead, Dodson hopes the smaller plaque can be placed next to the statue, explaining the artists intensions.

2017 KING-TV

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Lenin statue 'silent protest against communism,' says family member ... - KING5.com

Fighting Nazis is a good thing, but fighting Nazis doesnt necessarily make you or your cause good. By my lights this is simply an obvious fact.

The greatest Nazi-killer of the 20th century was Josef Stalin. He also killed millions of his own people and terrorized, oppressed, enslaved or brutalized tens of millions more. The fact that he killed Nazis during World War II (out of self-preservation, not principle) doesnt dilute his evil one bit.

This should settle the issue as far as Im concerned. Nazism was evil. Soviet communism was evil. Its fine to believe that Nazism was more evil than communism. That doesnt make communism good.

Alas, it doesnt settle the issue. Confusion on this point poisoned politics in America and abroad for generations.

Part of the problem is psychological. Theres a natural tendency to think that when people, or movements, hate each other, it must be because theyre opposites. This assumption overlooks the fact that many indeed, most of the great conflicts and hatreds in human history are derived from what Sigmund Freud called the narcissism of minor differences.

Most tribal hatreds are between very similar groups. The European wars of religion were between peoples who often shared the same language and culture but differed on the correct way to practice the Christian faith. The Sunni-Shia split in the Muslim world is the source of great animosity between very similar peoples.

The young communists and fascists fighting for power in the streets of 1920s Germany had far more in common with each other than they had with decent liberals or conservatives, as we understand those terms today. Thats always true of violent radicals and would-be totalitarians.

The second part of the problem wasnt innocent confusion, but sinister propaganda. As Hitler solidified power and effectively outlawed the Communist Party of Germany, The Communist International (Comintern) abandoned its position that socialist and progressive groups that were disloyal to Moscow were fascist and instead encouraged communists everywhere to build popular fronts against the common enemy of Nazism.

These alliances of convenience with social democrats and other progressives were a great propaganda victory for communists around the world because they bolstered the myth that communists were just members of the left coalition in the fight against Hitler, bigotry, fascism, etc.

This obscured the fact that whenever the communists had a chance to seize power, they did so. And often, the first people they killed, jailed or exiled were their former allies. Thats what happened in Eastern Europe, Cuba and other places where communists succeeded in taking over the government.

If you havent figured it out yet, this seemingly ancient history is relevant today because of the depressingly idiotic argument about whether its OK to equate antifa antifascist left-wing radicals with the neo-Nazi and white supremacist rabble that recently descended on Charlottesville, Va. The president wants to claim that there were very fine people on both sides of the protest and that the antifascist radicals are equally blameworthy. He borrowed from Fox News Channels Sean Hannity the bogus term alt-left to describe the antifa radicals.

The term is bogus for the simple reason that, unlike the alt-right, nobody calls themselves the alt-left. And thats too bad. One of the only nice things about the alt-right is that its leaders are honest about the fact that they want nothing to do with traditional American conservatism. Like the original Nazis, they seek to replace the traditional right with their racial hogwash.

The antifa crowd has a very similar agenda with regard to traditional American liberalism. These goons and thugs oppose free speech, celebrate violence, despise dissent and have little use for anything else in the American political tradition. But many liberals, particularly in the media, are victims of the same kind of confusion that vexed so much of American liberalism in the 20th century. Because antifa suddenly has the (alt-)right enemies, they must be the good guys. Theyre not.

And thats why this debate is so toxically stupid. Fine, antifa isnt as bad as the KKK. Who cares? Since when is being less bad than the Klan a major moral accomplishment?

In these tribal times, the impulse to support anyone who shares your enemies is powerful. But it is a morally stunted reflex. This is America. Youre free to denounce totalitarians wherever you find them even if they might hate the right people.

2017 Tribune Content Agency LLC

Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. Email: goldbergcolumn@gmail.com Twitter: @JonahNRO

Excerpt from:
'Antifa' radicals aren't good because they fight Nazis - San Francisco Chronicle

The sign caught my attention. Attached to a fence in Pastora, a Caracas neighborhood and former bastion of the Hugo Chvez revolution, it read: If not now, when? If not us, who? That was the Spanish version of the same Czech message that I saw displayed in my hometown, Prague, during the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

While covering the revolt against Venezuelan president Nicols Maduro and his government, Ive encountered many such echoes. I still vividly recall the exhilarating and scary times in the fight against Communist rule 28 years ago.

In Caracas, I witness the same propaganda as I did in Prague, where smiling officials exploited the so-called achievements of the revolution while threatening and ridiculing their opponents. Vclav Havel, who would become the first democratically elected Czech president in 40 years, endured assassination attempts on his character. On national television, the Communist regime portrayed him as a filthy scoundrel, a drifter, an imbecile.

To demonize him further, the government footage of Havel was always black-and-white, in contrast to the bright, colorful views of the socialist country under the guidance of Communist leaders. The propagandists liked to use joyful, Mozart-style violins to accompany video showing life under Communist rule, while the soundtrack to the images of Havel was of sharp, warped electronic tones.

Today in Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, the second in command of the Maduro regime, attacks his opponents on national television, his favorite target being Freddy Guevara, the former vice president of the National Assembly, which the Maduro regime eliminated just days ago. Guevara is a little bird who likes to smoke his marijuana, Cabello said some weeks ago on his regular Wednesday show Con el Mazo Dando. Maduro weighed in by calling Guevara, well, an imbecile. Cabello and Maduro often use the black-and-white propaganda technique whenever they show images of opposition figures.

Then there are the government thugs.

When I was 13 years old, walking home one day I saw a Soviet flag hanging pretty low above a door frame in Prague, prompting the childs idea of trying to reach it with one mighty jump. I made it and touched the flag! Immediately, two members of the Peoples Militia who were standing nearby in their ugly Mao-style uniforms grabbed me and slapped me around for showing disrespect to the Soviet Union.

That afternoon, the culture of fear that prevented many from criticizing the government was instilled in me. Anybody can come for you and do you harm, I thought, as my adolescent brain was consumed by panic. Today in Venezuela, that job is done by the so-called colectivos for the Maduro regime. They are a truly scary band of criminals roaming the streets of Caracas and other cities, carrying rifles, ready to unload on anybody.

Even under that oppression, the best of the human spirit often shines through in Venezuela, as it did in Prague. People here rise above their fear, standing up to tyranny and openly challenging flagrant violations of human rights. Venezuelans walk through the streets, defying the possibility that they will be hit by a rubber bullet, choked by tear-gas bombs, or killed. Ive seen protesters return to challenge Maduros troops a few seconds after a tear-gas attack clears. Mostly they confront the thugs only with their physical presence, unarmed. People from all walks of life show this bravery.

But bravery might not be enough. The resistance against the Maduro regime could fail, a soul-crushing prospect for many Venezuelans. Maduro has shown himself to be nakedly dictatorial, disregarding the division of powers, freely lying to the citizens.

Days before the so-called election on July 30 for the Constituent Assembly, an alternative legislative body stacked with Maduros allies, many who oppose his regime told me that the government would claim that the total number of votes for the assembly would be 8 million and it was. Why? That was just enough to edge out the 7.6 million votes cast in the July 16 plebiscite organized by the opposition. There, an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans rejected the Constituent Assembly. Many opponents of the government now fear that this newly created rubber-stamp Constituent Assembly will cement the Maduro dictatorship.

If their fear is realized, Venezuela might end up following the Czechoslovakia not of 1989 but of 1968. During the Prague Spring, as it was called, many of my countrymen believed that the regime was soon to fall. Their revolt was crushed, however, by overwhelming military force in the form of invading Soviet tanks.

Of course, Eastern European Communism and Maduros are different in many respects. But the hope and the vitality that are crushed are universal. Many Venezuelans and I, too, fear that Maduro will send this country to a condition resembling that of Cuba in the dark days of Fidel Castro.

Back in the 1990s, Cuba suffered a severe economic crisis following the fall of the Soviet Union. That so-called Special Period was marked by widespread starvation and the collapse of infrastructure including transportation, electricity, and water supplies.

Cubans were reduced to a life in dark, humid apartments while going hungry. Through propaganda, the state hammered away at them and threatened anyone who would dare to stand up against the Castro regime. Alina Fernndez, Fidels daughter, told me some years ago that sitting in such a desolate apartment, feeling paralyzed and depressed, is what finally moved her to flee her country.

For months now, Venezuelans have been enduring unprecedented economic hardship. They are still far from the depths of misery recently suffered by Cubans, as the water and electricity still run. And although some staples eggs, bread, milk, cooking oil can be hard to find, other foods are still available. And Maduro-regime minders are not stationed on every block, as their counterparts are in Cuba. The Cuban government collaborates closely with a network of snitches who write damaging reports on anyone who would rebel or even criticize the Castro regime.

In recent months, many Venezuelans have opted to leave the country. Others have vowed to stay and fight for freedom and democracy, which the Maduro government has been systematically dismantling. Those fighting back in Caracas and throughout Venezuela deserve better than the grayness and repression of the Communism of former Czechoslovakia, stripped of self-expression, diversity of thought, physical and mental safety, and democracy. They deserve the spirit of the Velvet Revolution and its freedom.

Eduard Freisler, a Czech reporter based in New York, writes this from Caracas.

Link:
Venezuela and the Gray Shades of Communist Czechoslovakia - National Review