https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=eLjnj-aqDxM
On the subject of totalitarianism, I wanted to do something very quickly. So I’m guessing that even though most people in the room have negative views of both men, they have a more intensely negative view of Hitler than of Stalin. I’m guessing almost everyone in the room has a far more negative visceral reaction to the swastika than to the hammer and sickle. Some of the protesters at your event at McMaster University stood behind a banner with a hammer and sickle. You’ve said that a hammer and sickle is no funnier than a swastika, that, quote, the reprehensible ideologies that are based in fundamental Marxism killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century, unquote. I’ve discussed this proposition with numerous people in recent months, and almost no one seems to buy it. No one disputes the body count under socialist regimes. Few dispute that Stalin was a vicious murderer, roughly on par with Hitler in moral terms. Most think that communism should not be tried again. In other words, they share your critique of the argument that previous communist experiments did not represent proper communism and that proper communism should be tried. Nevertheless, they still disagree with you that we should react as negatively to the hammer and sickle as we do to the swastika. Why? Because they say the two ideologies are not morally comparable. National socialism is much worse morally than Marxism or Marxism-Leninism. So what do you say to this? Well, I would say the first thing is that it’s highly probable that you were talking to intellectuals. Students. Well, we’ll call them budding intellectuals. It is a mystery, you know. It is a mystery, because it is the case that there is something about the Nazi doctrine that seems to have a visceral impact that the communist doctrine doesn’t have. And I said when I opened my remarks tonight that it might be the issue of racial superiority. It’s something single that you can put your finger on. Whereas what’s happening on the left that’s horrifying is murky. It might even be multi-dimensional. Maybe there isn’t a single radical leftist idea that’s murderous like the racial superiority doctrine. Maybe it’s a combination of three, or maybe it’s some set of four out of 10. Who knows? And because of that, it doesn’t seem as repugnant. And there was also a universalizing tendency among the communists that seemed to be less morally reprehensible than the ethno-nationalism of the Nazis. So you think, if you go back to 1914, it’s complicated. But if you go back to, say, 1918, at the time of the Russian Revolution, it’s not like the communists knew that their attempts to bring about the socialist utopia would be doomed to absolute murderous catastrophe. They were working in ignorance. Now, it’s not that simple. Because by that time, Dostoevsky had already written The Devils, The Possessed. And he outlined very, very clearly what he thought would happen if people like that got the reins of power. And Nietzsche had done the same thing in his writings. So people knew that there was something toxic, let’s say, and deadly about the doctrine. But it hadn’t been played out on the world stage. But now, it’s like, well, this is why I said what I said at the beginning. Fine. Now, if I don’t know exactly how to make the moral distinction, but it’s a distinction that has to be made. I think that people who apologize, who say something, I think that it’s virtually, I don’t know if it’s as reprehensible, to say that a given ethnic group should be consigned to the fire and to say that wasn’t real communism. But they’re damn close. And when I hear someone say that wasn’t real communism, I know what they mean. What they mean was, if I was the dictator in Stalin’s shoes, I personally would have brought in the utopia. That’s what that statement means. Or it means an ignorance of history that’s so utterly appalling that any political statement made on behalf of that person whatsoever should immediately be followed by a paroxysm of extreme embarrassment. May I say one? I just want to be clear that these students were conceding that they don’t agree. They share your critique of the… They don’t share it enough. OK, fair enough. I just wanted to make that clear. So they would more or less agree with what you just said, I think, about it’s not OK to say those regimes weren’t proper communism and the proper communism should be tried. They still dispute, though, that socialism as an ideology is on par with Nazism. So I just wanted to make that clear. Well, we could say communism, let’s say. We could say radical leftist ideology. As I said already, there are reasons for the left and the right wing. The right wing stands for hierarchy, and the left wing stands for those who are displaced by hierarchy. An endless problem. But that doesn’t mean… that still leaves it in the camp of the people speaking on behalf of egalitarianism to figure out just what the hell went wrong and to take some responsibility for it. It’s no joke. And we see these things play out continually. Still, look at what happened to Venezuela. Here’s a fun story. Do you know that it is now illegal for physicians to list starvation as the cause of death for a Venezuelan child in a hospital? That’s how they’re dealing with the fact of starvation. You just make it illegal to have that diagnosed as your cause of death. That’ll solve the problem. It’s like, we have a group of well-meaning socialists in Canada who just produced something called the Leap Manifesto a couple of years ago. And it’s a pretty radical document. They’re trying to move our socialist party, the NDP, New Democratic Party, towards the acceptance of this Leap Manifesto, which doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. But they were all radical promoters of the Venezuelan government before everything went badly sideways. I think the average Venezuelan now has lost 17 pounds. And that’s not because they were put on a voluntary dieting program. It’s not good. And so if you’re tilting towards the left and you’re temperamentally inclined that way and half the population is, then you have an ethical problem on your hands, which is, how do you segregate yourself from the radical policies that produced the catastrophes of the 20th century? And you can’t just say, well, that’s not my problem. It’s like, well, OK. If it’s not your problem now, it certainly might become your problem in the future. So and I would say it’s actually everybody’s problem. In the aftermath of the 20th century, it’s everybody’s problem. It’s complicated. There is a genuine desire. I worked for a socialist party for quite a while when I was a kid. And I saw both sides of it. I saw some very, very admirable people. I was privy for a variety of chance reasons to the leadership of the Socialist Party in Canada at the provincial and the national level. I met the people who ran the provinces, some of the provinces, and who ran the party. And a lot of them were really admirable people. They’d spent their whole life, I would say, working on behalf of the working class. So they were genuine labor leaders. And there was also a lot done in Canada on the left that looks like it was actually pretty good. Standard work week, the establishment of pensions, the introduction of our health care system, which I would say probably overall works better than the American system, although not at the upper end. And they were working hard on behalf of people who had working class lives. But then I also encountered the sort of low level activist types. And I didn’t have any respect for them at all. I just thought they were peevish and resentful and irritable. And those two things exist in a very uneasy coalition on the West. There’s care for the poor and hatred for the successful. And those two things aren’t the same at all. And it looks to me like one of the things that really happened when the communist doctrines were brought into play. Also, by the way, we did the multinational experiment. It doesn’t matter where you put these policies into play. The same bloody outcome occurred. Didn’t matter whether it was Russia or China or Cambodia or Vietnam or to pick a random African country or Cuba or Venezuela for that matter. It was an unmitigated catastrophe. And so to me, that’s experiment plus replication. Enough. Enough.