Hero (according to the BBC & Guardian) or traitor?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail....-But-traitor-too.html

/// If Communism had achieved its aims, but at the cost of, say, 15 to 20 million people - as opposed to the 100million it actually killed in Russia and China - would Hobsbawm have supported it? His answer was a single word: ‘Yes’. ///

/// Just imagine what would happen if some crazed Right-winger were to appear on BBC and say that the Nazis had been justified in killing six million Jews in order to achieve their aims. We should be horrified, and consider that such a person should never be allowed to speak in public again - or at least until he retracted his repellent views and admitted that he had been culpably, basely, wrong. ///

I like this line though:

/// Britain is a country where you can more or less say or think what you like. ///

I don't think so somehow, only some apparently are allowed to say what they like, thank goodness they haven't got around to banning thoughts yet.

[dotty.]

a customer complained about me having to charge him 6p for a reusable carrier bag, he said it was bloodyridiculous and daylight robbery, if this country truly did believe in absolute free speech i could have told him not to be such a tight fisted miserable old git and remember to bring his own fekkin bag next time, alas it is't and so i just smiled my best smile and i laughed like it's going out of style.,

[Gromit]

'The Age of Extremes' is is one of the greatest books of the last 50 years.

I am guessing A N Wilson and AOG have never read it. They should.

[FredPuli43]

He didn't like Stalin much. He thought Stalin had betrayed communism , that his rule was not what Lenin envisaged. It's not unreasonable to think that civil war will cost lives; our own cost more in casualties , as a percentage of the population, than any war we ever engaged in; and he was thinking in terms of something like civil war against the 'enemies of the people', not genocide or the deaths of vast numbers of people because of some crackpot interpretation of communism, or famine.

That said, he was but one of a whole generation, many of whom thought communism was ideal, who became disillusioned when they learned what Stalin , or Mao, did. Communist parties were once strong in Europe and some eminent men here were once young communists; I believe Denis Healey was one.

[anotheoldgit]

/// The term traitor could also apply to a certain person ///

http://i.telegraph.co...79/blair_1679384c.jpg

[ichkeria]

Poor old Eric Hobsbawm can't win either way with you can he?
On the one hand you see ham as an apologist for murder in the name of Communism.
On the other hand he can't say that Britain has freedom of speech because in your opinion it doesn't.

I find both contentions dubious.

[emmie]

did he hate Britain?

[ichkeria]

Sorry the comment about Britain was not attributable to Hobsbawm.

The article by AN Wilson is in any case grossly unfair on the historian. The reference to the comment about deaths as a result of communism is particularly mischievous. I can see that someone who genuinely believed in communism might think it reasonable that to achieve its aims there might be an acceptable level of deaths. After all many people were murdered

[sandyRoe]

I wonder how many people have died at the hands of those defending democracy?

[ichkeria]

(as I was saying!) ...at Dresden and Hiroshima to defeat fascism.
What was done in the Soviet Union didn't come close to achieving the ideals of Marx and Engels, but perhaps had it done so ...

[emmie]

sandy and how many more would have died had they not.

[VictorMildew]

Never heard of the old buffer, but he was as much entitled to his as say, Nick Griffin?

[emmie]

so he was, but to support a system that seems so alien to democracy and has had it's leaders like Stalin and Mao seems the height of folly.

[humbersloop]

http://www.guardian.c...sbawm-final-book-2013

[ichkeria]

Lots of people were misled by the Soviet Union especially in the 1930s when fascism much closer to home was raging. Hobsbawm was one of the many who revised his opinion of Stalin but who, also like many, remained faithful to the principles of communism.