Three items caught the attention recently because of the manner in which they reveal a certain double standard afflicting historical interpretation:
ā¢ A new admiring biography by Richard Evans of the historian Eric Hobsbawm, who remained loyal to communism all the way to his death in 2012, 20 years after the dismal end of the Soviet "experiment."
ā¢ A movie, "Red Joan," which presents a vaguely sympathetic portrayal of a real-life British citizen, also unrepentant, who passed along secrets to the Soviets that allowed Stalin to get the atomic bomb sooner than he otherwise would have.
ā¢ An article by Sebastian Smee from The Washington Post on Frida Kahlo that notes only in passing roughly two-thirds of the way through that she and her artist husband Diego Rivera "were members of the Communist Party," conveniently leaving out that the Mexican Communist Party was thoroughly controlled by and existed to serve the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
What the three items taken together illustrate is the way in which historians and pundits tend to take a remarkably forgiving view of communists and communism, at least when compared to Nazis and Nazism.
To have dedicated one's life to the communist cause, as Hobsbawm and Kahlo did, seems to often provoke more praise than criticism, with those questioning the morality of such loyalties dismissed as "redbaiters." Apostates, former communists who had turned against the secular religion like Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham and Sidney Hook, actually get it worse from historians than those who stayed true through the show trials, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, etc.
By sharp contrast, having had Nazi associations at any point, let alone having led an entire life dedicated to Herr Hitler and his ugly vision, is almost certainly the kiss of death in terms of social acceptance or historical reputation. To be too ardent in one's anti-Communist actually became something of a faux pas in polite company (hence anti-anti-communism) in a way it is difficult to imagine anti-fascism ever becoming.
To capture this distinction in treatment one need only play the always useful word replacement game, wherein the term "Nazi" or the name Hitler are substituted for the word "communist" or the name Stalin.
Along these lines, would Hobsbawm have ever been admitted to even the lower ranks of British academe, let alone feted from its heights, if he had been committed to Nazism rather than communism?
Would we see sympathetic portrayals of "Red Joan" featuring prominent actors (Judi Dench, in the title role) if Joan had passed along atomic secrets to Der Fuhrer's minions rather than Stalin's?
And would Kahlo's political leanings be of only passing interest, or even depicted as reflective of idealism, if her coffin had been draped with a flag featuring a swastika rather than a hammer and sickle?
The answer to each question is, of course, "no"-- unless the focus of scholarly efforts to identify a psychological pattern causing moral rot, Hobsbawm would have been a forgotten man rather than "possibly the best-known English-language historian in the world" (in the words of Adam Kirsch), a "Nazi" Joan would have inspired only contempt rather than sympathy, and Kahlo and Rivera would have been dropped into the art community's version of the memory hole regardless of their artistic virtues.
But they weren't Nazis; they fare better in our retroactive assessments because they were something presumably better, even good, communists.
When we look back at communists we see only naive souls whose idealism was exploited by evil tyrants (like Stalin); when we look back at Nazis we see only evil.
In David Pryce-Jones words, "Nazis are seen as criminals of evil intent while Communist crime, though greater in the number of victims, is only idealism gone astray."
On the specific subject of Kahlo, Philip Terzian argues that "If Kahlo had been an Italian Fascist and not a Mexican Communist, or an admirer of National Socialism, or anything else on the radical-right spectrum, it's impossible to imagine that such a pertinent detail would be politely dismissed, or casually overlooked, or briefly mentioned in the neutral terms invariably applied to Kahlo's politics."
The point in highlighting such differential treatment isn't to suggest that Nazis should be treated any more kindly than they have been; to the contrary, it is simply to encourage some reflection as to why communists get off so easily despite having killed tens of millions more people over the past century.
Part of the answer can almost certainly be found in the old leftist slogan that there are "no enemies to the left," suggesting that communists were simply liberals who went too far. It is also true that the left, with its dominance among our chattering classes and within academe, generally gets to write the history.
But there is undoubtedly more to it than that -- although both National Socialism and Marxism-Leninism were "totalitarian" in precepts and consequences, as well as their capacity to inspire hatred of designated enemies (whether class or racial/ethnic) as a justification for genocide, only communism retained the capacity to turn Western intellectuals into "useful idiots."
And to then inspire still other useful idiots to issue apologies on their behalf up to the present day.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 06/24/2019