Mandela and Communist Villainy
But Mandela’s Communist affiliation is not just a bit of history’s flotsam. It doesn’t justify the gleeful red baiting, and it certainly does not diminish a heroic legacy, but it is significant in a few respects.
I’m puzzled. How can a “hero” join a movement that murdered millions of innocents? How can a “hero” remain in a movement that continued to murder millions of innocents? Because that is precisely what Mandela did. At the time Mandela joined, the Soviet Union, Soviet satellites, and Maoist China had already murdered tens of millions via execution, terror-famine, and draconian slave labor camps. After Mandela joined, Communist movements around the world continued this villainous tradition, and Maoist China took it to new heights.
Are we really supposed to believe that Mandela didn’t know about these bloodbaths? If he somehow managed to remain oblivious for decades, he’d be a fool, not a hero.
If Mandela had merely allied with the South African Communist Party – as he repeatedly lied – you could say, “His actions were no worse than the U.S. wartime alliance with the Soviet Union.” But he wasn’t a Communist ally. He was a member of the SACP’s Central Committee.
But isn’t it great that Mandela didn’t act like a Communist once he gained power? Sure. Yet that doesn’t make him a “hero” any more than Deng Xiaoping. Utterly villainous systems are often reformed by moderately villainous people. We should be thankful for these reformist villains. But that’s no reason to forget what they really are.
The post appeared first on Econlib.
This is just thoroughly who Mandela was, though. The Communists were only a small part of it, he supported a lot of violent groups. But isn’t that kind of what you would expect for someone searching for any possible way to defeat apartheid?
He was able to be a reconciliation figure essentially because: 1. he was acceptable to the white minority and the international community because he was in jail for so long and thus was not directly associated with recent violence but 2. he had credibility among the (violence-supporting) majority because he had a past of supporting many of the affiliated groups.
source: the great Jonny Steinberg book
I generally am in tune with many of the things you say about science but here I think that is a bit of an OTT historical conclusion regarding Mandela's membership of the CP in the context of the times and his journey to political maturity.
By the standard you are setting one should not join the US Army (Amongst other examples because of The School of the Americas training camps which taught dictators in South America to suppress their populations, the effect of the Realpolitik of Kissinger in Cambodia, etc & from the point of view of the people involved in the battle of Mosul who might have a different opinion about the collateral damange on the locals).
One could say the same about joining the British Army (Given the way it acted in its colonies, Cromwell was decidedly NOT a hero if you were to ask an Irishman), etc,etc.
You might then argue about scale but is that really the distinction you want to draw here?
It's still a case of living in a glass house chucking stones....