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.
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....
Just like the bombing of Cambodia, one can ask "How many did you think were going to die?"
If the answer is " Quite a lot, even if that is not really our intent but we are going to do it anyway" then you are going to be judged on that spectrum.
The gulf of Tonkin incident was manufactured to start a war. You might not blame the Army for everything that followed but you still need to blame the politicians.
This is outrageous. There’s no logical connection between Mandela and Mao just by way of pointing out one of the many condemnations by associations in this basically vicious article.
Are we supposed to condemn all American conservatives and Reagan voters (like Caplan) because they sided with the apartheid regime which in turn caused innumerable deaths and hardship for blacks in South Africa?
If Mandela had joined the American Nazi Party, would you say that there is no connection between him and Hitler?
By the way, I would be very surprised if Bryan had voted for Reagan, for two main reasons. He would have been too young to vote for him and even if he had been old enough, he probably doesn't vote.
If he had joined the American Nazi Party, his sin would have been endorsement of an evil ideology, not association with Hitler. There is nothing comparably evil about the ideology of communism, in and of itself- the atrocities were features of the execution, not the concept itself.
If the concept leads to the murders of tens of millions of people, as Communism, did, the concept is indeed evil. And remember the time line, which Bryan points out: Mandela endorsed Communism well after it had led to tens of millions of deaths.
I don’t know; many people have died under capitalist systems too (and every other kind of system). Communism more reliably, so this is not necessarily an argument for it- but I think it’s an argument for previous support of it not being inherently discrediting. If you think ‘communism hasn’t worked so far because of contingent facts about those implementations’, you may be showing poor judgement. But it’s not the same as sympathising with an ideology which is centred around murderous ethnic cleansing as a defining object.
Makes more sense to me to ask what better recourse Mandela had available. There were a few liberal sympathizers but it doesn't look to me like the ANC could have successfully defeated apartheid without the backing of the South African Communist Party, the main preexisting power in South Africa that wasn't divided on the basis of race with the personnel and funds to support an extended campaign.
It doesn't seem obviously reasonable to me to say that people who were dissatisfied with apartheid's constant intrusions and humiliations ought to have voluntarily lost rather than looking for allies where they could. Mandela's options compare unfavorably - and his choices therefore compare favorably - with those of Sun Yat-Sen, who might reasonably have hoped to throw his weight behind getting China fully colonized by the British Empire, at substantially lower cost of blood per unit of state capacity or surplus thereby obtained for the people in China than the actual result of Chinese nationalism.
It makes more sense to me to blame the white Afrikaners for their inflexible commitment to racial supremacy and violent suppression of dissent, forcing this to become a conflict rather than a rational negotiation.
Joe Slovo (Red Joe) was a key ally to Nelson Mandela, acting as a crucial strategist in the ANC-SACP alliance, co-founding the armed wing uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and leading negotiations to end white rule. Red Joe was a devoted communist and ANC leader. Slovo played a central role in transforming South Africa to majority rule. The 1975 Act on Expropriation of land and business has been abused, and the new law, the Expropriation Law of 2024, is even more aggressive. South Africa has emptied out; many of the businesses that were there 30 years ago are gone, and huge building sites are empty and derelict. The state electrical utility Eskom, once a diamond in the rough for its efficiency and price competitiveness, has been so poorly managed that the country has been experiencing rolling blackouts for years.
The citizens have been very poorly served by the incompetent and corrupt, who have ended up running South Africa. South Africa is not communist, socialist, or democratic. It is a kleptocracy.
On the contrary, my guess is that Bryan's idea of a hero in this case would be someone who went after Apartheid without joining the Communist Party. A better candidate would have been Buthelezi.
If Caplan is critical of Mandela, who joined the Communists but didn’t govern as one, why should he be any less critical of Buthelezi who served in Mandela’s government? Are we supposed to believe that the mere act of joining a party is enough to condemn him?
Could it be because he — and so many others — thought in terms of the utopia or ideal of communism, rather than the 'real existing' thing? Like Catholics remaining Catholic despite the Inquisition, or capitalists remaining capitalists despite the evils of capitalism in Latin America and Africa, or libertarians remaining libertarians despite the Chicago boys' support for Pinochet's bloody dictatorship?
There is a direct line from the Communism of Mandela to the current Communist faction there that seeks to dispossess and preferably exterminate people of European ancestry. Mandela was the smiling salesman and had to know where it would lead.
Replace "Communist Party" with "America" and ask why any American would stay in a country responsible for 10 million war-related deaths since WW, and appears ready to tank the world economy . Maybe you'll find what motivated Mandella.
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....
The US army didn't intentionally kill millions of people.
Just like the bombing of Cambodia, one can ask "How many did you think were going to die?"
If the answer is " Quite a lot, even if that is not really our intent but we are going to do it anyway" then you are going to be judged on that spectrum.
The gulf of Tonkin incident was manufactured to start a war. You might not blame the Army for everything that followed but you still need to blame the politicians.
This is outrageous. There’s no logical connection between Mandela and Mao just by way of pointing out one of the many condemnations by associations in this basically vicious article.
Are we supposed to condemn all American conservatives and Reagan voters (like Caplan) because they sided with the apartheid regime which in turn caused innumerable deaths and hardship for blacks in South Africa?
If Mandela had joined the American Nazi Party, would you say that there is no connection between him and Hitler?
By the way, I would be very surprised if Bryan had voted for Reagan, for two main reasons. He would have been too young to vote for him and even if he had been old enough, he probably doesn't vote.
If he had joined the American Nazi Party, his sin would have been endorsement of an evil ideology, not association with Hitler. There is nothing comparably evil about the ideology of communism, in and of itself- the atrocities were features of the execution, not the concept itself.
I think you would benefit from reading the Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.
And as for your analysis of communism, as Bryan would say, actions speak louder than words.
Thanks for the recommendation!
If the concept leads to the murders of tens of millions of people, as Communism, did, the concept is indeed evil. And remember the time line, which Bryan points out: Mandela endorsed Communism well after it had led to tens of millions of deaths.
I don’t know; many people have died under capitalist systems too (and every other kind of system). Communism more reliably, so this is not necessarily an argument for it- but I think it’s an argument for previous support of it not being inherently discrediting. If you think ‘communism hasn’t worked so far because of contingent facts about those implementations’, you may be showing poor judgement. But it’s not the same as sympathising with an ideology which is centred around murderous ethnic cleansing as a defining object.
Makes more sense to me to ask what better recourse Mandela had available. There were a few liberal sympathizers but it doesn't look to me like the ANC could have successfully defeated apartheid without the backing of the South African Communist Party, the main preexisting power in South Africa that wasn't divided on the basis of race with the personnel and funds to support an extended campaign.
It doesn't seem obviously reasonable to me to say that people who were dissatisfied with apartheid's constant intrusions and humiliations ought to have voluntarily lost rather than looking for allies where they could. Mandela's options compare unfavorably - and his choices therefore compare favorably - with those of Sun Yat-Sen, who might reasonably have hoped to throw his weight behind getting China fully colonized by the British Empire, at substantially lower cost of blood per unit of state capacity or surplus thereby obtained for the people in China than the actual result of Chinese nationalism.
It makes more sense to me to blame the white Afrikaners for their inflexible commitment to racial supremacy and violent suppression of dissent, forcing this to become a conflict rather than a rational negotiation.
Joe Slovo (Red Joe) was a key ally to Nelson Mandela, acting as a crucial strategist in the ANC-SACP alliance, co-founding the armed wing uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and leading negotiations to end white rule. Red Joe was a devoted communist and ANC leader. Slovo played a central role in transforming South Africa to majority rule. The 1975 Act on Expropriation of land and business has been abused, and the new law, the Expropriation Law of 2024, is even more aggressive. South Africa has emptied out; many of the businesses that were there 30 years ago are gone, and huge building sites are empty and derelict. The state electrical utility Eskom, once a diamond in the rough for its efficiency and price competitiveness, has been so poorly managed that the country has been experiencing rolling blackouts for years.
The citizens have been very poorly served by the incompetent and corrupt, who have ended up running South Africa. South Africa is not communist, socialist, or democratic. It is a kleptocracy.
And it is heartbreaking.
Presumably Caplan’s idea of a ‘hero’ in such a situation is to quietly acquiesce to apartheid.
On the contrary, my guess is that Bryan's idea of a hero in this case would be someone who went after Apartheid without joining the Communist Party. A better candidate would have been Buthelezi.
If Caplan is critical of Mandela, who joined the Communists but didn’t govern as one, why should he be any less critical of Buthelezi who served in Mandela’s government? Are we supposed to believe that the mere act of joining a party is enough to condemn him?
The big difference is that Buthelezi didn't join the Communist Party.
Don’t see the big deal personally. Actions speak louder than words and so on.
But joining the Communist Party IS an action.
Could it be because he — and so many others — thought in terms of the utopia or ideal of communism, rather than the 'real existing' thing? Like Catholics remaining Catholic despite the Inquisition, or capitalists remaining capitalists despite the evils of capitalism in Latin America and Africa, or libertarians remaining libertarians despite the Chicago boys' support for Pinochet's bloody dictatorship?
Deng *was* a hero. He rescued a billion people from grinding poverty.
There is a direct line from the Communism of Mandela to the current Communist faction there that seeks to dispossess and preferably exterminate people of European ancestry. Mandela was the smiling salesman and had to know where it would lead.
The architects of Apartheid also knew where their policies would lead. Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.
Sowed any wind lately, Matt?
Passed, certainly
Mandela was able to be a comprmise figure because the whites knew he'd take millions of dollars in bribes to not kill all t he white immediately.
Replace "Communist Party" with "America" and ask why any American would stay in a country responsible for 10 million war-related deaths since WW, and appears ready to tank the world economy . Maybe you'll find what motivated Mandella.