Amerika

Most people today have no idea both of the great spectacle of the fall of the Soviet Union and, prior to a few years before that fall, how terrifying the Communism presence was to those of us threatened by their nuclear missiles and tanks.

They also tend to forget that the Communists stated their goal to be “equality,” and that they envisioned a Utopia for workers where ownership and power by the people would lead to universal happiness. Instead they produced a totalitarian nightmare.

As is always the case with egalitarian societies, the idea of “equality” became a meme or virus and quickly expanded to include diversity under Communism:

‘Workers from all countries and oppressed colonies raise the banner of Lenin!”; “All hail the world October revolution!” extol the slogans. But what makes these 1930s Soviet propaganda posters different is the inclusion of African people, marching arm-in-arm with other races towards a Marxist utopia.

The Soviet Union made great capital out of US racism at the time, regularly bringing up the issue on the international stage. One poster in the exhibition juxtaposes a shackled, bloodied black man beneath the Statue of Liberty with an image of a cheery rainbow nation. The respective captions read “Under capitalism” and “Under socialism”. Undoubtedly, this contributed to the civil rights movement. The American Communist party was the first fully racially integrated political party in the US.

The Soviets in fact adopted policies which will be familiar to Westerners, like mandatory integration, assimilation, and affirmative action:

Terry Martin, a Harvard historian, called the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) the “world’s first Affirmative Action Empire.” With the exception of India, no other multi-cultural state before or after the USSR, Martin writes, took action of equivalent scope in support of the cultural and political rights of ethnic minorities. The architects of the Soviet Union envisioned it as a state based on the principle of self-determination of all nations. The new state was diverse: the first census in 1926 accounted for close to 200 distinct cultural communities composing the USSR. Lenin theorized self-determination primarily as political autonomy: the arrangement of the new state would offer oppressed peoples a unique chance to liberate themselves by taking control over their political destinies.

In fact the Soviets envisioned a grey race as necessary for the success of Communism:

Soviet theoretical writings on intermarriage and assimilation were based on the Communist Party’s ideological requirement that scholars promote the drawing together and eventual merger of Soviet ethnic groups. Statements to this effect are found in just about every Soviet publication on inter-ethnic marriage (Gantskaya and Terent’yeva, 1977). Soviet scholars argued that Soviet socialism promoted internationalization by eliminating ethnic discrimination. This internationalization was in large part responsible for the rapid increase in inter-ethnic marriages after the 1917 revolution, and especially after World War II (Ponomarev, 1983).

If you wonder where the inhuman idea that all people need to be blended together, molded with the “correct” ideology, and forced into mass mobilization to achieve the symbolic goals of ideology in order to create Utopia, it comes from the same vein of thought found in Communism.

Then again, this is merely human solipsism turned outward. If the whole world were made into a single identical person, then it could be told what to do, and the human thinking this always imagines that he is doing the telling and therefore, would feel better about his own problems since he would have power.

Egalitarian always emerges from such selfishness because it is a sales job. Take something people think is good, like altruism and compassion, and rationalize your product — that is, argue that it is by selectively applying the data — as being that good thing.

“It’s not for me, but for all of us!” is the death knell for human endeavors. Sensible individuals disregard both themselves and the group, focus on a transcendental goal, and then achieve it with realistic methods, growing both out of themselves and coming to see who they really are.

Hemingway had his hunts, Evola his mountains, and Nietzsche his amor fati. Life becomes meaningful only when the individual challenges himself, achieves something eventually, and can see that what was achieved is good in the way that reality is good. Anything else is life living in hiding, shying away from the moral and spiritual challenge that reality presents to us.

The Soviets are just one of the many parties who have tried to avoid this by making everyone equal. Next time someone bleats out the official endorsement of conformity “diversity is our strength,” remind them that they are regurgitating Communist propaganda.

Tags: communism, diversity, soviet union