Post by NFA on Oct 15, 2021 19:33:15 GMT 8
[ this is a long-ish but good read ]
Dissecting the Monsters of Modern Revolutions
An excerpt from Revolutionary Monsters: Five Men Who Turned Liberation into Tyranny (Regnery History, 320 pages, $29.99).
Many young people today are infatuated with revolution, but for those who fled communist dictatorships, revolution is a serious matter. People who have experienced the chaos and terror that comes with political upheaval often ask such things as: “Why aren’t young people better informed?”; “What’s happening in our schools that students are learning this?”; or “Why aren’t our youth being taught about the nature of these oppressive regimes?”
My book, Revolutionary Monsters, provides a warning to those beguiled by the siren call of revolution. The lessons of the tragic revolutions in the 20th century are all too apparent in the failures of the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Iran. A myriad of books can be found on each of these failures. Exceptionally diligent scholars have detailed them. Memoirs by those who suffered under these regimes offer heartbreaking, terrifying accounts of human suffering and the deaths of millions.
The account of these failed revolutions is a grim one. The book asks an apparently simple question: What motivated leaders such as Lenin, Mao, Castro, Mugabe, and Khomeini— revolutionaries who transformed their societies—to create such monstrous, brutal, and oppressive regimes? Each of these men in his own way called for creating the “New Man.” They were convinced that a new age in history—one of equality and social perfection—was about to begin with the overthrow of the existing government.
Revolutionary Monsters recounts the tragedy of dictatorship in our age of alleged “enlightenment.” The book is short, and written for those who know little about the human tragedy of history. The assumption behind Revolutionary Monsters is that facts can replace vacuous rhetoric about “liberation,” “equality,” and “freedom.” These words should impart a deeper meaning to those cautious ones who realize the imperfections of the world and human nature, even while understanding that progress, albeit often uneven, should be sought. To speak of “imperfections of the world and human nature,” however, hardly captures the tragedy of revolution (and war) in the 20th century. Revolutionary Monsters presents the dialectic of revolution as liberation transformed into oppression, freedom into tyranny, and idealism into tragedy. Individual men and women, not nameless social forces, drive history. With little knowledge of history, the young are easily persuaded by the romance of revolution and the acceptance of destruction as a path to human perfection.
My book, Revolutionary Monsters, provides a warning to those beguiled by the siren call of revolution. The lessons of the tragic revolutions in the 20th century are all too apparent in the failures of the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Iran. A myriad of books can be found on each of these failures. Exceptionally diligent scholars have detailed them. Memoirs by those who suffered under these regimes offer heartbreaking, terrifying accounts of human suffering and the deaths of millions.
The account of these failed revolutions is a grim one. The book asks an apparently simple question: What motivated leaders such as Lenin, Mao, Castro, Mugabe, and Khomeini— revolutionaries who transformed their societies—to create such monstrous, brutal, and oppressive regimes? Each of these men in his own way called for creating the “New Man.” They were convinced that a new age in history—one of equality and social perfection—was about to begin with the overthrow of the existing government.
Revolutionary Monsters recounts the tragedy of dictatorship in our age of alleged “enlightenment.” The book is short, and written for those who know little about the human tragedy of history. The assumption behind Revolutionary Monsters is that facts can replace vacuous rhetoric about “liberation,” “equality,” and “freedom.” These words should impart a deeper meaning to those cautious ones who realize the imperfections of the world and human nature, even while understanding that progress, albeit often uneven, should be sought. To speak of “imperfections of the world and human nature,” however, hardly captures the tragedy of revolution (and war) in the 20th century. Revolutionary Monsters presents the dialectic of revolution as liberation transformed into oppression, freedom into tyranny, and idealism into tragedy. Individual men and women, not nameless social forces, drive history. With little knowledge of history, the young are easily persuaded by the romance of revolution and the acceptance of destruction as a path to human perfection.
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