Communism - Making dystopian science fiction a reality since 1917.

That quip is usually a critique of some real-world excess that Communism/Socialism is creating in the real world that happens to rival the imagination of science fiction, e.g., the generational concentration camps of North Korea.

This article notices that the quip works in reverse - dystopian science fiction is a critique of the fascist, dystopian left wing project, where the extremes of utopian communalism are unmasked for the soul-crushing reality they really are.

Egalitarianism and Mass Murder

Somehow, perhaps because of the constant finger-pointing by the side that commits mass murder, we forget the connection.

This is a 1994 cry of the heart by Marxist historian Eugene Genovese, who realized that all of his lying, disinformation, dissembling and hypocrisy as a Communist fellow-traveler had been meaningless in the long run.

//Our whole project of "human liberation" has rested on a series of gigantic illusions. The catastrophic consequences of our failure during this century—not merely the body count but the monotonous recurrence of despotism and wanton cruelty—cannot be dismissed as aberrations.Slimmed down to a technologically
appropriate scale, they have followed in the wake of victories by radical egalitarian movements throughout history. We have yet to
answer our right-wing critics' claims, which are regrettably well documented, that throughout history, from ancient times to the peasant wars of the sixteenth century to the Reign of Terror and beyond, social movements that have espoused radical egalitarianism and participatory democracy have begun with mass murder and ended in despotism.

Let us grant, arguendo, that the ruling classes have done worse. Whatever solace that thought may give us, our own problem remains: what kind of society could we build on a worldview marred by flagrant irrationalities paraded as self-evident truths, even if reinforced by sandbox cries of "You're another"?

The allegedly high ideals we placed at the center of our ideology and politics are precisely what need to be reexamined, but they can no longer even be made a subject for discussion in the mass media and our universities, to say nothing of the left itself. They are givens: an unattainable equality of condition; a radical democracy that has always ended in the tyranny it is supposed to overcome; a celebration of human goodness or malleability, accompanied by the daily announcement of newly discovered "inalienable rights" to personal self-expression; destruction of all hierarchy and elites, as if ideological repudiation has ever prevented or ever could prevent the formation and reformation of hierarchies and elites; condemnation of "illegitimate" authority in the absence of any notion of what might constitute legitimate authority; and, at the root of all, a thorough secularization of society, bolstered by the monstrous lie that the constitutional separation of church and state was meant to separate religion from society. And we have yet to reassess the anti-Americanism—the self-hatred implicit in the attitude we have generally affected toward our country—that has led us into countless stupidities and worse. Let us give ourselves some credit: through it all we have preserved a rich sense of humor. The destruction of hierarchies, elites, and authority is to be effected through the concentration of power in a Leviathan state miraculously free of all such reactionary encumbrances.//

But isn't that the way of any movement that stakes its legitimacy on the building of a paradise in this world through human action?

The Adventure of Atheistic Humanism - Making Science Fiction Dystopias a Reality since 1917!

North Korea murdering/experimenting on the disabled 

//North Korea is systematically "cleansing" its population by making those with mental or physical disabilities disappear, a defector has claimed.

Ji Seong-ho, 32, who escaped from North Korea after losing his left leg above the knee and his left hand at the wrist, said the disabled are considered a stain on North Korea's image and a "humiliation" to the ruling regime.

Mr Ji, who is researching a book on the plight of North Korea's disabled, said babies with disabilities are taken away by hospital staff, never to be seen again. He added that children with developmental difficulties are neglected until they die.

"The regime proclaims: 'There are no people with disabilities under the Kims' rule' and 'everyone is equal and living well'," he said. "And while that propaganda is going on disabled children are being taken away, suffering indescribable things and dying."

He said two other defectors had told him of a village in the remote and inhospitable mountains of Ryanggang Province where anyone with dwarfism was sent.

"They were forbidden to leave and left entirely to their own devices, without any outside help," he said. "The men were castrated so they would become extinct. There's no-one left there by now."

A United Nations commission said in February that it had heard allegations that medical experiments are performed in "closed hospitals" on "persons with disabilities". But it added that it had not managed to confirm the claims.

In a separate study, conducted in 2013 by the Citizens' Alliance on North Korean Human Rights, some 40 per cent of defectors said they believed that infants with disabilities are killed or abandoned and 43 per cent claimed to know of "an island" on which the disabled are forced to live.
One of the defectors told of a hospital where disabled people are sent "for medical tests, such as dissection of body parts, as well as tests of biological and chemical weapons."

A former officer in North Korea's special forces, who defected in the 1990s after watching chemical and biological weapons tests on disabled children and adults, told The Telegraph about the programme.

"The regime wants to do this 'legally' so they offer to buy disabled children from their parents and they say they will take care of them," said Im Cheon-yong.//

Communists being...

...Communists.

They never change:

Government authorities from a district in the Central Highlands last week compelled ethnic villagers to remove Catholic pictures and items from their chapel and replaced them with images of Ho Chi Minh last weekend.

“After local Catholics finished prayers in the chapel on Sunday morning, local government authorities came and asked them to remove a cross and a Marian picture from the chapel,” a Church source said.

The source added that authorities from Kon Thuc hamlet, led by two security officials from Mang Yang district in Gia Lai province, threatened that if villagers did not remove the items from the chapel, their lay leader “would be put in prison.”

Villagers had to carry the cross, Marian picture, altar and tabernacle to the lay leader’s house, the source said.

Authorities then put two pictures of Ho Chi Minh in the places where the cross and Marian picture were.

On the following day, authorities dismantled the bell of the chapel after local Catholics refused to do it. The bell was also taken to the lay leader’s house.

A lay leader said authorities told parishioners that the building was to be used “for village activities, not for worship.”

They walk among us.

Communists, that is.

And sometimes they are union presidents and Occupy organizers:

Former Amalgamated Transit Union local 689 president Mike Golash, now an “Occupy” movement organizer, was caught on tape Sunday revealing his political goals: overthrowing capitalism in the United States and instituting a communist government.

“Progressive labor is a revolutionary communist organization,” Golash said during an Occupy DC “People’s Assembly” on August 19.

“Its objective,” he added, “is to make revolution in the United States, overthrow the capitalist system and build communism.”

Golash said he and his comrades are “trying to learn something from the historical revolutions of the past: the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution, the revolutions in Cuba and Eastern Europe.”

I guess that the real question is how does an unhinged loon like this become a union president?

One way to solve teen unemployment.

Close down the colleges and put the students in heavy labor.

North Korea closes down colleges for ten months because of anti-government graffiti.

Close watchers of North Korean affairs were caught on the hop last week by reports that universities in the hermit kingdom would be closed from 27 June for up to 10 months while students are sent to work on farms, in factories and in construction.

And:
 

Analysts in Japan and South Korea suggested there could be other reasons behind the decision to disperse the students across the country, including the possibility of demonstrations at campuses inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings, which began at universities.


They noted that North Korea had purchased anti-riot equipment from China in recent months, including tear gas and batons, while there has been an increased police presence at key points in Pyongyang in recent weeks.

Foster-Carter said North Korea watchers have been closely monitoring for signs of unrest since the spring, but there had not been any.

"The amount of information from the Middle East reaching the ordinary citizen is very, very limited and there has been nothing at all in the official media," Armstrong said. "There has been no student unrest that we know of for the last 50 years."

According to North Korea analysts, party controls are in place to prevent student uprisings, including political indoctrination and strong surveillance. Some analysts said surveillance on campuses had relaxed in recent years because many party officials had not been paid.

Communism - Hell's version of a practical joke.