The Soviet Union collapsed on the finish of 1991, taking down with it the specter of worldwide communism, proper? Immediately’s visitor says no, writing that, “Removed from lifeless, Communism as a governing template appears solely to be getting began.” Sean McMeekin is a historian at Bard College and the creator of the mesmerizing guide To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. Cause‘s Nick Gillespie talks with him concerning the historical past of communism, how its deal with pressured equality is inherently violent, and the way Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and others every introduced explicit thrives and horrors to its follow.
Gillespie and McMeekin speak about why communism has enduring and resurgent enchantment within the West regardless of its historical past of violence and financial catastrophe. “We dodged a sure bullet” with the election of Trump, McMeekin says, however he argues that “no matter celebration is in energy in Washington, I believe we all the time need to jealously guard our civil liberties and we have now to simply consistently remind ourselves of what our values are and are speculated to be.”
1:41 — The enduring enchantment of communism
3:55 — The “whitewashing” of Karl Marx’s urge for food for violence
7:02 — How Vladimir Lenin modified communism
16:38 — American attitudes towards communism
23:44 — Leon Trotsky’s thought of “everlasting revolution” and Lenin’s legacy
28:35 — Violence did not deter communism’s enchantment to many
33:33 — The left’s flip-flopping on interventionism in World Warfare II
36:54 — Mao, Khmer Rouge, and communism in Asia
45:22 — Western radicals and Maoism
50:27 — Black intellectuals’ engagement with communism
57:51 — Is communism making a comeback?
1:06:20 — Does communism nonetheless enchantment to the younger?
1:11:19 — How does Donald Trump map onto all this?
1:16:43 — The politicization of the technique of communication
