Such distant secondhand accounts are not enough, Dr Fanta concludes. To be deterred from placing themselves back in danger, people have to hear disaster tales from eye witnesses who can convey the visceral emotion of having lived through them. The group’s findings thus suggest that one way of teaching history more effectively might be to bring eye witnesses into the classroom. That approach will not work for ever, of course. Over time, witnesses’ own memories fade, and then the witnesses themselves expire.
This is from “Public policy: Memories of disaster fade fast,” The Economist, April 17, 2019. It’s mainly about natural disasters and how, about 25 years or so after the disaster, people forget about it and fail to remember the lessons, or even to learn them in the first place.
As soon as I started reading it, I had an ah-hah moment. I wondered how so many young people could say that they’re attracted to socialism. It was a disaster that, in its Communist version, killed, arguably, about 100 million people in total. Most of the deaths were in China and the Soviet Union, but there were also many deaths in Cambodia and a number of other communist countries. But if people are not hearing disaster tales from those who experienced it, they will not know. It’s worse than that. People aren’t reading disaster tales about socialism and they aren’t hearing them even from people who didn’t experience them. The disasters were common; the tales are not, except for sub-groups.
The writer at The Economist had a similar thought near the end of the piece. He or she wrote:
The forgetting that Dr Fanta sees with respect to historical floods might also explain the recent rise of vaccine hesitancy and right-wing extremism, he suggests, as the survivors of now-preventable infectious diseases and Hitler, respectively, die of old age. Having not experienced those realities, or heard about them first-hand, many people alive today have quite simply forgotten the horror.
Do you notice something missing? I do. Yes, it helps explain the rise of right-wing extremism, but it also helps explain an even bigger phenomenon that has infected the Democratic Party, much of academia, and much of the mainstream media: the rise of left-wing extremism.
HT2 Tom Nagle, who reads The Economist avidly.
READER COMMENTS
Benjamin Cole
Apr 21 2019 at 8:29pm
Great post.
But there are also clear and present dangers today, such as the fact that the Communist Party of China and President X have completely suppressed any type of human freedom and control nearly every aspect of Sino life. Beijing is militarizing and has been imperialistic in the South China Sea and in western China (where evidently 1 million Uyghurs are in education camps).
It is not only pointy-headed left-wingers that appear to give a pass to the present Communist Party of China but establishment right-wingers as well.
Dylan
Apr 21 2019 at 9:19pm
I was in Berlin recently and met two women from Dresden who were in their mid-20s during the fall of the Wall and took part in the protests. We ended up talking for hours one night and one of the things they talked about was how many people their age, and particularly those a little older, were really nostalgic for the communist times, and glossed over all the bad parts. I’ve heard similar stories when traveling through other Eastern Block countries, that it was primarily the older people who had trouble adapting to capitalism that were the biggest proponents of both communism and authoritarian-type leaders.
David Henderson
Apr 22 2019 at 10:44am
Interesting. Thanks, Dylan. So the story does look a little more complex.
Phil H
Apr 21 2019 at 10:17pm
Well there’s a masterclass in “I don’t know what words mean”! Much of the mainstream American media is communist, is it?
Still, on the bright side, I can very happily agree with Henderson on this one: if we talked more about communism, what it actually was and was not, that would indeed be beneficial. We can help avoid repeating its horrors, and avoid falling into errors like confusing contemporary academia with communism.
Mark Z
Apr 22 2019 at 2:48am
First of all, I don’t think he even implied much of the mainstram media is communist. I think it’s definitely the case that many in the media, being on the left, tend to view communism through rose-tinted glasses, viewing it as merely ‘going too far in the right direction, ‘ or quixotic. I think the recent movie Trumbo is a good example of how the American media/entertainment industry view communism. Dalton Trumbo – who supported and defended the Soviet Union after its worst atrocities were well-known – ought to be regarded the same way we regard Nazi-sympathizers or Holocaust deniers. They certainly have rights, but should not merely be thought of as people who are well-meaning but a trifle too extreme, as the film suggests.
Also, I don’t know how one who pays attention to academia can seriously doubt that a large contingent of academia is openly sympathetic with communist regimes. Many prominent academics are openly Marxist; some of the most influential historians and social scientists of recent times – e.g., Eric Hobsbawm, E.H. Carr, and Louis Althusser – were all unabashed apologists for the Soviet Union well after its atrocities were known. Slavoj Zizek – one of the most popular philosophers alive – is openly a Stalinist, and he’s a celebrity in academia. The social science and humanities departments of my own university – which is not a famous bastion of leftwing politics like Berkeley or Oberlin – have plenty of students and some faculty who like to say nice things about not only Castro or Maduro (unfortunately among the least troublesome extreme leftist regimes) but Mao or Stalin.
If you are under the impression that the socialism that pervades academia is merely ‘nice,’ ‘democratic socialism,’ you are simply incorrect. In a typical humanities social science department at a big university, being a softcore, Sandersesque democratic socialist is actually a fairly moderate position. A sizable minority (one which almost certainly outnumber Republicans or Libertarians) identify as communist or Marxist and are willing to defend the legacies of regimes like the Soviet Union or Maoist China. It may only be anecdotal, but in the academic subculture in which I live, saying you like Stalin is less controversial than saying you like Paul Ryan (that’s not a hyberbole). And even the putatively nicer democratic socialists – Sanders, Ocascio-Cortez, Omar, etc. – find themselves defending regimes like the Castro or Maduro regimes, so when someone identifies as a socialist, I doubt there’s much more reason to, prima facie, give them the benefit of the doubt of assuming they must be qualitatively different from their ideological forebears than one would give someone who identifies as a fascist, in my opinion.
Nick Ronalds
Apr 22 2019 at 10:35am
Mark Z,
Your comment is excellent. The sympathy of so many academics for left-wing regimes and ideologies of various stripes may be of long-standing, but remains shocking. It’s also sad that the Economist, which used to be an articulate advocate of capitalism, has succumbed to the same biases that infect so much of the media and culture at large.
David Henderson
Apr 22 2019 at 10:46am
Excellent comment. And you nicely handled Phil H’s absurd reading of my post.
The Paul Ryan/Joseph Stalin thing is amazing. One guy they disagree with a lot versus a guy who murdered millions of people. Tough call.
Phil H
Apr 22 2019 at 1:51pm
Thanks, David. As I think I suggested on a previous post, you can always avoid “absurd misreadings” by actually writing what you mean, rather than just leaving shadowy insinuations.
You spend most of the post writing about the disasters of communism. You then state that “left wing extremism” has “infected the Democratic Party, much of academia, and much of the mainstream media.”
“Left wing extremism” is a term that definitely includes communism. It’s a fairly natural reading to assume that you meant these two terms to refer to the same thing in this post. If you didn’t, a simple sentence of clarification would solve the problem. Perhaps you’d like to do that now? What exactly did you mean by “left wing extremism”?
David Henderson
Apr 22 2019 at 4:31pm
You write:
I thought my meaning was clear, but you caused me to reread my words and I now see how you could have got that impression. My apology. By “left-wing extremism,” I’m including everyone from those who want heavy new regulation of the economy and Medicare for All, all the way to those who want socialism and communism.
Phil H
Apr 22 2019 at 8:28pm
Thanks for the clarification, David.
But at this point, your argument falls apart quite badly. What you describe as “left wing extremism” clearly includes a very wide range of views, basically anything from the center leftwards (from a European perspective), some of which are communist, but most of which are not.
I don’t think this is a sensible type of rhetoric to be getting into. Just as you don’t like it if you express a vaguely conservative view and someone cuts in with a, “What, are you some kind of fascist?!” If someone expresses a view in favour of a national health services, and your response is, “Don’t you remember what a disaster communism is?!” you’re just going to get get a bemused shrug in response. Simply labeling as “extremist” anyone to the left of you/the current center/some other arbitrary position doesn’t make it so.
Phil H
Apr 22 2019 at 2:39pm
Hi, Mark.
Obviously I can’t win an argument with you on what goes on within your own particular circle. If you have that experience, OK.
But I am troubled by the fact that you seem to be incorrect in some of the other facts you assert. Zizek is a Stalinist? I don’t read Zizek, so I googled, and I found “the Stalinist purges were in a way more ‘irrational’ than the Fascist violence…Stalinism was a case of an authentic revolution perverted…Under Stalin in the late 1930s, on the other hand, nobody was safe…” So, he really doesn’t seem to be.
I don’t watch that much mainstream American TV, but I think I watch enough that I would have noticed if there was real enthusiasm for communist regimes on there. There isn’t.
So I’m left feeling very unconvinced about your claims about your professional circle, and what politicians think. As with Henderson, if you want to claim that X is a communist sympathiser, I’m going to request verifiable quotes. If it’s really as common as you say, that shouldn’t be hard, right?
Funnily enough, I agree with Henderson on the point in his OP. American popular culture doesn’t make villains out of the communists that much these days (during the cold war, there were plenty of films with Russian aggressors). It’s an interesting observation, worth following up. It’s not worth conflating with hysterical claims that the media is overrun by “extremist left wingers”.
Mark Z
Apr 22 2019 at 7:29pm
Zizek has written favorably of Stalin and his purges. In his book “In Defense of Lost Causes” for example he praises the idealism of Stalinism. I’d recommend in particular the chapters: “How Stalin Saved the Humanity of Man” and “Give the Dictatorship of the Proletariat a Chance!”
Now, people often point out that Zizek likes to joke around or is being ironic; he is definitely pathologically obscurantist, but I dislike the ‘I’m only being ironic’ excuse for saying terrible things. We wouldn’t tolerate it for someone trying to suggest the legacy of Hitler or Ted Bundy was merely ‘problematic.’ When someone proudl refuses to say what he actually means, while giving hints of favorable opinions of terrible regimes, it doesn’t incline toward a charitable interpretation.
With Hobsbawm, he openly described himself as a communist, and infamously said that he believed Stalin’s crimes would be worth it if they led to a genuinely communist society (in a 1994 interview with Michael Ignatief).
Here’s EH Carr on Stalin (in 1979): “He revived and outdid the worst brutalities of the earlier Tsars; and his record excited revulsion in later generations of historians. Yet his achievement in borrowing from the West, in forcing on primitive Russia the material foundations of modern civilisation, and in giving Russia a place among the European powers, obliged them to concede, however reluctantly his title to greatness. Stalin was the most ruthless despot Russia had known since Peter, and also a great westerniser.” Carr believed that overall Stalin was a force for good in the Soviet Union.
Genuine, self-described communists are not a rarity in academia, and again, even non-communists socialists more often than not seem to have a soft for communist regimes. I could dig up particular quotes from Noam Chomsky later (a self-imagined libertarian socialist), but he devoted much of his work to running interference for communist regimes. He tried to minimize and deny the atrocities in Cambodia while they were happening. Ed Herman, his co-author of Manufacturing Consent (widely read in academia), actually write a book trying to argue that the Tutsis were the true ‘oppressor class’ in Rwanda, while the genocide was on-going. His reasons were pretty Marxist in character. I’m referring to his book, “Enduring Lies” in particular. He was a distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Their joint work The Politics of Genocide contains some other troublesome words that should by right put both of these men in the same plane as David Irving in terms of academic credibility.
And here’s a link to a study finding that almost 20% of academic social scientists self-identify as Marxists: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.147.6141&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
Phil H
Apr 22 2019 at 8:15pm
Thanks, Mark.
The paper you linked to looks decent, not so sure about the rest. Hobsbawm is dead, Chomsky is a frankly silly controversy about one issue (on which my reading suggests that he was indeed wrong, but it was a very long time ago now), and Zizek… I mean, the clue is in the title of the book! In that same book, note that he also attempts to revive Heidegger, widely despised for his links to the Nazis. None of these feel like solid claims about “what American academia is like today”.
The Gross and Simmons paper seems much more substantial, and I will agree that 18% Marxist is a striking statistic. Contempt for Paul Ryan, though, is merely a sign of intelligence.
So I have two feelings.
(1) Every claim I’ve ever dug into about how the left wing have taken over the media/academia/students/Twitter/whatever has proved to be paranoid rubbish. If you’re saying that academica tilts left, then sure. If you’re saying it’s all a cabal of extremists, then not so much.
(2) It’s not clear what having a leftie academy has to do with communism. Is there a slippery slope argument here? If a segment of the population stands slightly to the left of Reagan/Obama/Bernie, does that mean the country is doomed to turn into a communist hell?
It’s interesting to look at the political leanings of various groups. But does that actually connect to the horrors of communism that Henderson was talking about in his OP? And if so, how?
Jackson Mejia
Apr 22 2019 at 8:14am
Experience is probably more important than abstraction for most people. This article reminds me of what Milton Friedman said on Econtalk in 2006:
Funnily enough, Friedman was a little too optimistic about the price controls–already, rent controls are on their way in–but I think his general point is correct and corresponds well with yours. Bad ideas are appealing unless and until their advocates have to live through them.
Ben
Apr 22 2019 at 9:04am
“Do you notice something missing? I do. Yes, it helps explain the rise of right-wing extremism, but it also helps explain an even bigger phenomenon that has infected the Democratic Party, much of academia, and much of the mainstream media: the rise of left-wing extremism.”
Who’s currently President? Which types of parties are doing much better in Europe, far-right ones or far-left ones? Which one poses the much realer threat to our democratic institutions and global order?
I worry you almost dismiss the objectively bigger and more popular threat of right-wing extremism simply because of your place on the political compass.
Alan Goldhammer
Apr 22 2019 at 10:07am
This was the post I was going to write but Ben beat me to it. It’s a false proposition to see a confluence between right and left wing extremism. American history has amply shown the difference between the two.
Weir
Apr 22 2019 at 7:15pm
American history teachers have trouble remembering which is which.
They think Charles Coughlin was not left wing. That George Wallace was not left wing.
They think Jim Jones was a Christian when he was a Marxist.
In reality, Lee Harvey Oswald was what Jackie called him, “some silly little communist.” But the preference is to blame Dallas, or Texas, or America.
And if Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism ever becomes unacceptable, at some later date, to his friends in the Democratic Party? We will be told that Louis Farrakhan was not left wing.
Nick Ronalds
Apr 22 2019 at 11:07am
Why, the answer to that question is easy. Left-wing politics and politicians have been dominating European politics for decades. That’s why they have long had a much more advanced welfare state than the U.S. Even the conservative parties in Europe, such as the CDU in Germany or Tories in the U.K., are relatively left-wing by U.S. standards.
zeke5123
Apr 22 2019 at 12:54pm
Do you think political power is a leading or lagging indicator? If you think political power is down-stream of cultural power, such that political power is a lagging indicator, then I think Prof. Henderson is 100% correct.
Moreover, if you look at the right-wing extremism, it has many elements shared with left-wing extremism. Stated differently, the enemy is populism and both the right-wing and left-wing strand is ascendant in the zeitgeist. Since both right-wing and left-wing populism has a nasty habit of leading to millions of deaths, maybe neither is particularly good? Finally, I think, at least in the US, while the right-wing populism is currently in power, its policy goals haven’t been expansive or achieved. However, left-wing populism has already achieved a decent amount but its stated policy goals are far more extreme (see e.g., the Green New Deal). Therefore, it is far from obvious the bigger concern is right-wing populist extremism.
David Boaz
Apr 22 2019 at 10:30am
Good point about firsthand testimony. If there are any teachers or school board members reading this post — and the comments! — they might take a look at some of these documentaries on life under communism:
http://missliberty.com/may-1-victims-of-communism-day-ten-films-to-honor-the-dead/
Also “First They Killed My Father”: https://www.netflix.com/title/80067522
And “Human Harvest”: http://missliberty.com/human-harvest-2014/
Thaomas
Apr 22 2019 at 5:05pm
Since no Communist disaster ever started out with people voting for candidates who favor things like free tuition or expansion of health insurance or higher child tax credits, I do not think that fading memories or those disasters has much to do with movements in US politics.
Mark Z
Apr 22 2019 at 8:15pm
What about candidates who favor the nationalization of major industries, state assertion of control over agriculture, mandatory national service, or confiscatory wealth taxes?
Its worth noting that the communist revolution of 1917 didn’t start with calls for purges. Arguably, the Bolsheviks came into power because they promised the government would give more things to the people.
Phil H
Apr 22 2019 at 8:18pm
No, but it very much did start with calls for revolution. When they marched in October, they weren’t calling for free Medicare.
Weir
Apr 22 2019 at 7:20pm
I’m not sure that The Economist has a particularly vivid memory of Hitler. It’s all just right wing extremism, Adolf Hitler and Ben Shapiro. It’s all the same thing to The Economist.
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