Old hatreds made new

by Marion Smith, The Washington Times, August 21, 2017 - Amid the chaos of Charlottesville, two specters from the previous century’s darkest hours have re-emerged. Alongside the well-publicized Nazi symbols on full display during the “Unite the Right” rally, so too were Communist hammers and sickles brandished by the opposing anti-fascist or “Antifa” protesters. Many have rightfully condemned the neo-Nazis and their Ku Klux Klan allies leading Riefenstahl-esque, torchlit processions through our streets, but there has been virtual silence about the neo-Marxists and anarchist comrades hurling bricks and incendiary bombs, all the while refusing to acknowledge communism’s long record of totalitarianism, racism and death.

Lining up against one another in public, clubs and bats in hand, those on the far right and the far left are horrifying replications of our nation’s greatest historical foes. At their respective beginnings in the 1910s and 1930s, both the communists in Russia and the national socialists in Germany comprised tiny minority factions in their countries. But they became the loudest, the best organized and the most violent.

Indeed, 78 years ago this week, Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and Joseph Stalin’s USSR co-launched World War II by signing a nonaggression pact. Negotiated by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, their regimes agreed to conquer Europe by dividing it in half. Fascism and communism ignited a conflict that would consume millions of lives by marching shoulder-to-shoulder into battle.

Within days of signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. Over the next several months, Stalin invaded Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the other half of beleaguered Poland. For nearly two years, the Nazi SS and Soviet NKVD (predecessor to the equally-dreaded KGB) intimately collaborated. Soviet secret police, for instance, rounded up German Jews who had escaped to the Soviet Union and handed them over to the SS.

Then in 1941, Hitler broke the pact and attacked the Soviet Union. When the war ended, the Nazi regime was finished, but the Soviet empire lived on—sustained by its domination of Eastern Europe. Partisans in the Baltic forests who had fought occupying Nazi forces promptly repositioned their rifles toward the Red Army. And pro-fascist collaborators slotted seamlessly into the Eastern Bloc’s nascent state security apparatuses.

Even as late as the 1980s, most in the West expected that the Soviet Union—despite its obvious weaknesses—would persist indefinitely. However, refugees from Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and other “captive nations” began organizing protests on Aug. 23, the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, calling it “Black Ribbon Day.” They stressed to the world that Stalin—who was made over by fellow travelers in the West as “Uncle Joe”—was actually an enemy of peace in World War II. They further urged Americans to oppose the Soviet Union, which still controlled much of Central and Eastern Europe.

My Comment: This op-ed can be read in The Washington Times.

I thought President Trumps handling of the Charlottsville violence was tone deaf, insensitive, inarticulate and distracting from advancing his own agenda.  I disagree with the President. I do not think "good people" march under a Nazi flag and shoulder to shoulder with members of the Ku Klux Klan.  I think President Trump picked the wrong time to say something that needed to be said, however.  While "good people" do not march under a Nazi banner, neither do good people march under the banner of the hammer and sickle.  Those who embrace Communism have no moral authority to condemn Nazism. While there may not be moral equivalency between those marching with White nationalist in Charlottsville and those who marched in opposition, there is moral equivalency between Nazism and Communism.

Top Stories