反共產 Growing Up Communist (EX-COMMUNIST perspective)

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have no clue so first time using YouTube directly instead of you now for this kind of live streaming mm-hmm so I don't know it says new live chat replay mmm so then we can upload it to thing so this sum in case you're tempted to edit this takes the editors power out of your hands you can you can't that it if we posted to YouTube in this format but Kylie I'm not recording it in any other shout out to David shout out to everyone in New Zealand who's awake at this time this is 10:30 p.m. on the west coast so yeah this is prime time in New Zealand and uh all right um yeah okay so we got a bunch of different tops to talk about but what if is this gonna go to YouTube as just one video thanks in that case we should do just one topic and then I should title it accordingly right like we can just do the the Russian film that's that's you're ready to do yeah let's do that yeah I think okay so guys we're gonna talk about the most edgy and worthwhile topic of 2018 communism Thea wants me know look you know a joke but recently I watched some videos criticizing the Nazis criticizing you know the Nazis in World War two and I calmed you at the time I said you know Melissa you know just watch these videos I posted some to to Twitter and stuff somebody they were they were good they were interesting videos but you know what the truth is even though that stuff is interesting I've done plenty of reading about history of fascism it's not really relevant to present political concerns the way the history of communism is you know so I do get requests you know one of my longtime fans Alec he wrote to me complaining he said why do you always use examples from communism and Catholicism now this complaint and you don't use examples so much of fascism or the other example fascism or I forget the fascism or imperialism I talked about my talk about imperialism affair Bennett yeah well you remember I had a cartoonist making fun of me recently and in the cartoon making fun of me he said I equally cast aspersions on left and right on anyway yeah I'm not I'm not trying to go for a perfect 50/50 ratio but yeah ha anyway um but you know my answer that master that partly is you know um you know I really do think the critique of the left is productive it's relevant to my life it's relevant to a lot of real-world regimes I got a deal with its role it was relevant tomorrow I've even a Toronto though you know you've heard me say a lot about that and I don't know I know I've seen some some signs of that now I'm ok let's let's just says that before we get in the communism proper cuz look you've just contrasted what life is like in Michigan to Seattle to Vancouver and Victoria I mean I know yeah but I mean you know I don't know do you feel Canada is way more left-wing than the United States you think the sense of what's normal the political spectrum here is further the left from what do you told me about it that's the impression I get but you know I haven't lived here that long well we're not debating abortion here I'm just as an example right yeah but isn't Trump now talking about making abortion illegal in the States so that debate isn't over and the stakes here it's it's over you know you know things like do you teach sex sexual education in schools that stuff's over here we had gay marriage before the states too I mean I can't say it's dramatically further to the left but I mean my experience of downtown Toronto was really left-wing yeah and you know that's also things so I've seen a study of this in the UK in England um but you know there's also a sense in which people become self-selecting and those political patterns become self reinforcing so like within England only a certain type of personality wants to live in downtown London it's noisy it's crowded its competitive and people who don't like that even if they're from downtown London Oh completely appropriate shirt for the video too um even if you're from downtown London originally um be careful not just them I am you will do you want before to move for your own good okay uh but you know even if you're from Denton on an original you'll move elsewhere so I think there's some of that going on too even just the suburbs of Toronto would have been more conservative than Toronto but yeah in case you guys don't know I've talked about this in the past we talked about in some depth now I grew up with communist parents and I normally have to reiterate those people it's the worst with academics a lot of people hear that and think oh you mean you had liberal left-wing hippie parents who were into Buddhism and yoga and sympathized with Nicaraguan rebels or something no my parents were real communists and that included you know hating Buddhism and justifying you know the massacres of Buddhists by Mao Zedong supporting you know crackdown on on Buddhist and Tibet by the Chinese you know they they were real hardcore communists who really believed really justified mass murder really justified the atrocities at home what do you say that they support that they supported it yes what exactly do you mean like they weren't actually like they would tell you that they were in favor of these right what you just mentioned yeah and more yeah sure I mean it's not it's not that passive mean you know Canada had communist parties political organizations they'd be members of and they donate money too and they'd subscribe to their newspapers and they would you know so I mean when they were younger they were actively involved in in activism which included you know protests and political events and publications publishing books and giving lectures and organizing things and trying to infiltrate in the Communist Royce Anna's trying to infiltrate label labor unions you know when I was growing up they you know that all their time was devoted to their business they're completely capitalist but it's important yeah but so the that activist side of it had had passed out of their lives there was also the fact that they were basically in a situation where they were backstabbed by other communists and of course other communist perceived them as backstabbing other people and you know as they tell the story they were afraid for their lives they thought they'd actually be murdered by other members of the communist movement they've been a part of now you know my father had great difficulty telling the truth about anything so you know I have more than one kind of perspective on that that story is hard for me to tell because I have to throughout it put in asterisks and say well this is the way he tells it here's what I know from other sources you know etc however you know Mena's have a tremendous history of massacring other communists and you know even in Afghanistan even in places you don't associate with communism I put up my hand in class so you know just to mention Afghanistan is still to this day not that densely populated a country I put up my hand in class in my class on communism history of communism that at UVic and I said you know professor a really short question because he really didn't have time for her you know wasn't asking long serious questions I said you know I've seen textbooks and so on move you're sure for babe you know I'm sorry okay so you comfortable right no it's fine okay you want pillow no no edits keep rolling anyway you know uh you know Anna Stenson you know the textbook sources and so on they say like an over 1 million body count liked or even a million people being killed in communist sectarian violence so one group of communists fight against another in getting over him I say you know where these are these body counts legitimate and the professor said yes to my knowledge you know these illegitimate so you give these unbelievable white know Cambodia is another one where just because it's such a small country a lot of people who are not like Holocaust deniers they wonder how credible the the numbers are and I've been through the math there's a famous essay that's titled accounting hell that's the title counting hell about the different efforts to put a body count on a precise bodycon how many people the crime is killed but a lot of the violence including under Lenin when you know communism start in Russia and that he said the 1917 to 1921 kind of period a lot of their massacres right off the bat you know we're calm unist on communist not the enemies of communism but you know what they perceive that so I just say in that sense that's that's part of the background of that situation but whether or not my parents were really rolling with a bunch of killers you know but they took communism seriously and they felt the other people in the movement took it seriously enough to have them killed when they started to fall out of favor with with the leadership and they fled they were there is my father tells the story they fled for the lives but there were a lot of reasons well anyway from from other for what comments oh so they think we're living in southern Ontario generally my impression is they moved again this is what communists are into you know organizing labor unions well I was well nobody really ended when my memory starts so I was born in Ottawa but they didn't live in Ottawa for long my impression is you know my father originally is from a steel steel mill town I mean that sense he's an authentic working-class you know communists his mother worked in a steel factory his mom was a single mom working in the steel factory so you know unlike unlike the kind of stereotypical bourgeois champagne socialists my father did come from a working-class background in a steel town so I think a lot of his organizing was there but you know it's like a one hour drive between Hamilton in Toronto so I think they were in the Greater Toronto southern Ontario area but leave ask me where were they living you know to what extent it was Toronto versus Hamilton versus died you know it's versus Guelph I think they didn't move around on that on that scale during the the period of their most intense communist activity and so just briefly sorry that this is the thing about a spontaneous conversation we're not talking like analytically about just one topic but you know one one interesting element of that is that their particular rose to fame because they published a poet they published a book of poetry with kind of socialist and calm communist overtones and then my father's book was supposed to be kind of the follow-up hit a hit book I mean work in this context plus brother one reading it but yeah so he wrote a book which was it's titled the art the history of art and painting in Canada and is 100% communists you know propaganda it's unbelievable you want to how good this becomes but yeah look look at this book literally like one if you leave through it one of the diagrams like one of the illustrations is of a working-class man with a hard hat a construction hat knocking over the capitalist system there's like a diagram it shows like the workers the capitalist system and like this like you know cracks in the system it's like oh so this is how it works so this explains yeah yeah yeah like it's that like where I say it's propaganda like it's it's pretty transparent anyway no so I read that book I'm guessing in my first year of university you know and you know one of the parts one of the only parts I could relate to positively I talked to my father said well you have all this stuff go First Nations the stuff that like seems to really care about you know Candice is just people and so on and I remember his response to that was just yeah well like you know for the movement they required that kind of thing but he just regarded that as propaganda this stuff about like the importance of First Nations and their their culture and their future and so on he regarded that as insincere you know the regard positively yeah so equally for communism because you know I compare it to like my experience with religion when I was growing up my mom was more of a religious person and our family we wouldn't have gone to church if my mom my dad often complained that we would have to go to church every Sunday so it was it was obvious you know who was who was actually who was actually making us become Chris right right was it was it anything like that were both of your parents so so they both I mean before I was born I think it's fair to say they were both a hundred percent committed and sincere or communists before I was born my father was more of a Stalinist so that was what inspired us to make this video by the way it was the death of someone this movie that came out once all together so it's the occasion for this video although generally of course this is an issue that comes up again again and my mother was more of a Maoist was more towards the the Chinese side of communism the other element here really is Cuba and even Yugoslavia because at that time those were also contrasting forms of communism and I've seen the evidence that my father was was Pro Cuban probably when he first was getting into communism that was the image of communism that you're a man but when he was quite young and even Yugoslavia was this was a kind of alternative to you know Stalinist communism you know it's the calm communism of outright mass murder for Incred bleep reasons by the way sorry I just measure so we saw this movie they said well get back to my situation but like you know Stalin did things like he massacred everyone who could speak Esperanto they just everyone could get this barato Stalin literally killed more German communists than Hitler did you know Hitler carried out massacres of German Communist which is not surprising but a huge number of German communists fled to Russia because they knew you know they were anti-nazi and they knew what the non-supported was about so they were people who are pro communists and sincerely went from Germany to Russia then after they got there and settle down Stalin carry two approaches massacring those people so again you know to really continue supporting Joseph Stalin over those decades the decades of my father's life it's pretty mind-blowing to not crack and was your fate so I'm coming back to the question I'm coming back to the combative question you know so the question is to what extent were my parents equally communist or one one more than the other so I think I think before was born probably my mother and father equally were more totally a hundred percent pro-communist but the question is then how do you deal with the way your life fragments and the way the world fragments as you as you get older because communism is is a childlike religion it's childlike in its simplicity note here by the way if English is your second language childlike is not the same as childish I don't mean shall - I mean childlike you know I'm just sorry it's a digression but it's it's a good one out here like for my father growing up in a steel town poor and hating rich people there is a childlike simplicity to a political philosophy that just promises you you can kill the wretch you can stop killing the factory owner it's it's not a lot of analytical defecation but then as you get older so maybe when you're 15 or something that makes sense to you not 15 I was already pretty cynical but you know like maybe at eight maybe eight years old I mean it's its childlike yeah yeah you mentioned you had a friend who ended up going to a private school once you got to school yes that's right it led to a falling-out between you two yeah I just I completely something that's right right because you went to a private school yes because you were yes you know each other it was actually no he was in the same home he was a he was a class enemy that's right when the next that's right that's right it's a hundred percent that's right he will you know if you believe in communists on your family religion that you believe there's a war coming there's a civil war coming like they had in Russia in 1917 where the rich fight against the poor or like that in China and the various purges after 1949 that your class enemies will be your literal blood enemies that you'll kill each other you know that's that's the Utopia promised by by communism so yeah somebody who identifies as you know somebody wears the uniform of the other ruling class of the aristocracy or whatever who that's you know yes yes you so you get to be a friend with some of that I've toyed this is best sorry digression I think this is already mentioned on YouTube it's but it's direct answer this question we should come back to your earlier question but um there was one kid in my school and his parents were Nazis now I'm not using Nancy in like a figurative sense here I'm really do mean like they were Germans they own Doberman Pinschers his father actually lost his job because of his commitment to Nazism his father was fired from his job I don't want to give too many details because people could actually figure this wasn't wrong but you know the social he was you know he was fired because of his racism the father and the father became a taxi driver apparently a good living his texture they seemed to be doing all right and you know all the sons they all had these nasty names I'm not gonna give the names but like if you know some things about German and fascism like they're given their kids like weird names so they were really hardcore Nazis no no you know you know the current the current term is dog whistling you know there was a sense of that being a little bit code it'll open indirect but anyway um you know but when I looked at that family you know I could see that there's a parallelism between these the kids growing up with with fascism and then racism it was really racism was the main thing and then my growing up in a communist household just in that they were growing up being taught you know just like Christians with the end of the world is coming they were growing up being taught you know like in the future like look if you make friends with these kids who are of other races guess you know guess what's coming in the future in the same way I was being taught you know you know if you you know if you make friends with kids of other social classes you know the the war the class struggle is coming you know and and some people don't understand what class struggle means and some people do I mean but class you know that's what happened after 1917 and so on yeah so yeah that was an interesting parallel that that clicked for me was well here are these kids being raised being taught you know black people and Hispanics and someone were implicitly then amines and likewise there was a class you know and in my business class classroom I'm yeah it was the original course we branched off from him I'm totally sure take notes or they wanna do sorry humor right now so you want to but look the question you asked before was were they both equally compassionate vote communism so you know when I was growing up they were struggling with the kind of you know round peg in a square hole reality of how how different their real lives were from the ideology they preached and they cope with that in different ways my father so I talked to my father a few times before he died we didn't talk at all for period of 10 years but then when I did try to talk to him again I remember he at first he was trying to just deny that we were raised communists at all yet these various excuses I don't know you weren't you weren't raised communist to them and I remember saying to him you know um how often do you think around the dinner table you know what Jewish family talks about Judaism and Jewish philosophy like you're if you're raising your Jewish and you know he was quite stunned at this question and I said you know I said to him very like do you not realize like every night for like two hours we talked about like communist politics felt like most like there are some Jews like if your father is a scholar of Judaism who's really passionate maybe you grow up with this level of discussion but yeah yeah yeah yeah but I'm just saying it was really you know and you know it was dinner table conversation you know in death sorry there's one more big pointer coming up but you know I said to my father you know for a child growing up like you can't like even if a Jewish family never took their kids to Temple like you know if you never took them to a ritual if you grew up having this kind of in-depth discussion about you know politics and philosophy and so on of Judaism every night then your kids are raised Jewish they're raised with a huge education in Judaism and like I grew up with these kinds of conversations well when my father was in town all the time he traveled a lot for business I grew up literally with communist books on the shelf in my bedroom and in the the family living room you know which I did read I could talk about what those books were I know because I remember all this I have a painfully accurate memory for these details but here's the big difference but if you were raised Jewish what you see in the outside world is what you see in the newspapers and it's what you see like maybe Jerry Seinfeld so Jerry Seinfeld's a comedian who happens to be Jewish you know so you maybe you see Judaism inside the family and then you see in the outside world in this different way what made my parents religions so powerful as a child for me was that you'd see their religion inside the household and then in the newspapers on the TV news you saw a lot of the same things being confirmed right so there'd be just enough truth in what I was being told that when you are child and you see like Oh Ronald Reagan is talking about nuclear bombs people are talking about war with Russia it affirmed for you what you were being told right it there were there was enough factual content corresponding to problems in the real world that everyone was talking about that the newspapers and you know that you know the media of the day we're talking about that it it made it all seem very real and you don't have that with by and large with Christianity and Judaism I don't know like you know I guess once in a while there's a news item saying Oh archeologists are trying to find pieces of Noah's Ark you know like maybe there's some like that in the news but in that sense where it was being affirmed as real yeah yeah so I was just going through my notes on Euthyphro thinking about know it would approach this topic of what is piety and it got me thinking about how I was raised with my moral code like and how that was influenced by religion and I wonder how the religion that you were raised with how communism led to a certain moral code when were you able to think about that in your own words and make your own moral code right maybe think yes some things that you learned we're not you know good not correct like that you're sure the private school made him an enemy of the working class right yeah yeah you know the the aesthetics and ethic of communism did influence me as a kid and that can be boiled down to helping the poor you know wanting to help the poor right you've said you've expressly you raise interest in poverty in general right they're only three points in this list so one is one health before - I would say is simple living voluntary poverty you know which we still do now in this apartment yeah I'm sorry he's still you know and and and three I would say would be an overall kind of air SATs militarism mmm you know like I've misha's you many times growing up being ready for World War II World War three wanting to be ready for world with not nothing actually yeah but you know that that that that sense of it and you know the the push-ups and the serve you right right right but this so this this was gonna say but even those three points so these are very vague elements obviously this isn't anything as specific as like Marxist dialectical materialism or specific principles from Lenin and Stalin and what have you you know growing up what you see is your parents utterly failing to practice what they preach right what you see is your parents utterly failing to live up to you know the the the again the aesthetic and the ethics of their of their own moral system yeah right Luke so are you in viewing as I asked my parents I remember being a small child so you again most American remember kind of how tall I was in which house we were in but don't remember the year but I remember being a small child so I don't know if I was eight years old or what and I remember asking my parents ago about getting done training about getting military training and and what and they laughed at me and I was like look I'm serious but we're talking about World War three we're talking about the Revolution and so on I said how do you think che guevara you know prepare I remember I had examples how do you think Ho Chi men prepare for so these Ho Chi Minh's leader of revolution in in Vietnam Che Guevara's leader of revolution and acute those like you know how did these people do it how do you expect me to do it if you don't provide me with this kind of training and you know they like I can't even remember what their I can remember what the response was to you know but the point is you're growing up asking those questions I'm looking around for that and then you know the reality of who my parents were was that they were kind of utterly corrupt and decadent bourgeois people yeah yeah but even even so even within that did my parents keep even given that you could own a capitalist business and still be as sincere communist Mostar did they ever give a about feeding the homeless did they ever give a about going out and helping poor migrant farm workers you could you know Tehran you could go out and get involved with oh yeah the Nicaraguan illegal immigrants here working on the farms when I was kid that was case in southern Ontario a lot of Nicaraguans and people from that Park Latin America coming and picking apples and strawberries and the we farm in southern Ontario you know um you know there there was no sincerity there was no purse engagement of that of that kind you know said the course there were sincerity in other ways I'm just saying they weren't living up to the aesthetic worthy or the ethics yeah those those ethics are a lot in my opinion more difficult to live up to than the basics of you know most of the Commandments in the Bible you know don't reveal don't kill these were fairly easy and were demonstrated by my parents but what got me knows I'm actually going out and helping the poor as you right you're right right well look there's more obviously hey this isn't like advice for communist there's more than one way to be a communist you know I think there is there is more than one way to try to live up to that ethic and that aesthetic but for me as a kid it was just figuring out my parents had no interest in trying you know what they were interested in doing was going to the Opera in Paris sir opera is not that great example yeah right but my father's passion was they weren't living in countries that is true yeah you really believe I don't even know if they were visiting I mean during communism you know I don't think they ever visited Russia or Cuba oh yeah you know my father's tells the story that he applied to migrate to Cuba at a certain point his life right but a lot of things about that story seem like a story he made up it's just you know now looking back at it as an adult it's like you know yeah I I maybe you know maybe there's 20% of truth to it or something but the stories he told though just because it is a short story he claimed that basically the Cuban embassy told him if you become a dentist well am i but you know get a profession get a respectable job like they get that tested that will let you to keep it's not it's not that hard to believe but yeah yeah yeah yeah so at one point he was he wasn't nervous than that but yeah so you know I just want to emphasize those evening you asked in what ways did the the teachings kind of shaped me growing up you know it's shaped those questions about you know the difference between the rich and the poor why are some people some wire some people for as I say it sheep the question I was really haunted by the genocide of our native people there was just a couple of buildings in all Toronto that had a sign up in an indigenous language and things you know it shapes you know those those kinds of questions but then what you realize is one my parents don't have the answers and to the answers my parents do have are totally wrong totally immoral and totally preoccupied with justifications for for mass murder that's unbelievably terrible history of communism and it's not like the future or communism is better it's not it's really not like these people saying oh no no next time it'll be better really what they're promising is next time it'll it'll be the same you know next time will be you know the cycle of history you know it'll is you know I just say it's not like they're saying next it's not like they're saying they're reeling violence from now on which you know some groups do that they have a period of being violently change you know there isn't any change of that no they they believe in class struggle they believe in you know very literally decapitating they were stress there it's really heavy stuff for a kid when did you learn about I you know I remember so again so we just saw the movie stolen so the death of stolen you know I remember my sister or saying to me that she'd always remember the day that that our Father said that he considered Stalin the the greatest man in history you know and this value dinner and it's a funny thing because I can't remember my father ever saying anything that unsophisticated to me you know I mean different people even then are aware of it they kind of put their guard up and I was I was a shrewd kid and you know all kids can be cruel all kids can be mocking all right you know I mean you know even even my daughter already at age five or so well she kind of says things that are you know and it did I mean even when I was a kid it did hurt my parents feelings when I said things that you know called their beliefs and a question in our or made them feel foolish made them feel like I can rectify you know was asking questions that couldn't answer stuff which is pretty easy to do and Tom as I pointed out contradictions and what they what they believe in this sort of thing so I can't remember my father ever saying something that blunt and not sophisticated to me you know instead when he talked to me about Stalin there had to be a lot of you know baffle gab of saying well whereas you know mistakes were made and there were massacres and so on nevertheless you know what I mean it was more it was really much more that that kind of thing yeah so you would have been right yeah right I'm born and I'm born in 1978 so 11 I thank you yes approached communist it affected me I mean I think my parents you know were shell-shocked I mean for it's kind of a overused metaphor but I remember my reaction to it I remember me even talking to children in the schoolyard about it I remember my asking my parents questions about it and I remember them you were just not being able to cope with it at all you know I mean the the Berlin Wall was one of the pillars of the earth you know for them it defined you don't define everything and you know I mean I'd say the term cognitive dissonance is overused but I mean they lived with the awareness that live with the knowledge that if they themselves had lived in Russia under Stalin they would have been killed it would have been liquidated my father said it to me several times not many times I can work specifically so they knew if they had lived in in Russia you know basically during any of the periods of history when communism was taken seriously they would have been murdered one way or another by the communist regime they knew they were in effect to free thinking and to Liberty I mean let's you know it's people on you know who to to live in that regime they were morally approving of a regime that they knew would have killed them and did kill a lot of people like them right so but on the other hand they were trying to justify the way at that time there was a lot of attention on how Russia was treating the Czech Republic how they were treating you know was the serval East Germany you know then the part of Berlin they had occupied and so on you know the treatment of those people's there were a little bit more exposed to the kind of the Western their press and there was a little bit more attention on them and yeah so they're trying to justify a form of oppression that they were aware they themselves wouldn't be able to endure you know and then with the fall of the Berlin Wall all that excuse making all that rationalization suddenly doesn't make sense anymore you know what was the point what was it all about man you know but they never in front of me you know showed whatever process that went through but I you know many years later probably about ten years later I can remember my father reading a poem in one of the Communist newspapers communist publications he was getting and it was a poem about the poem was basically saying oh don't worry we can go back in time you know the fall of the Berlin Wall was all a mistake and you know like we can go back to the old days of Joseph Stalin this this kind of thing this is the center of the poem and you remember my father having a really emotional reaction in that poem but I don't know if they have a process that I remember whatever that was on the news because I was on the news a lot at that time when I was a kid it wasn't news a lot for like a whole year they were all it wasn't like one day story there were all these consequences of the story including these just mentioned they were like news stories about like the actual physical pieces of the Berlin Wall where they were gonna be like stored and like oh this one's being put into a museum but this one's you know so they say it's stayed in the news and I remember them always being very blank and very sort of just an XI ated you know in in dealing with this but at the same time I remember we met we met in new I'd love to know what happened that guy we met in new a family and they were they were refugees from the Czech Republic and you know again they were probably probably my father thought of himself as that sort of person also could be persecuted by the communism and you know I expected my father to be harsh and condemning towards them because they were anti-communist and my father wasn't he was very sympathetic you know he really you know I remember his reaction to meeting them and chatting with them you know so there's a you know there's a kind of there's an unbridgeable gold there you know and that anyway maybe that's one of the defining marks of of real communism if you take communism seriously you have to believe in massacring innocent people and you know and and you know but my father Elise is very much cognizant these people were innocent you know it's not that they deserve to be massacred or something yeah yeah so peculiar peculiar ideology yeah in a real contact rustic Christianity or what-have-you I mean yeah despite all of its flaws being raised you know you mentioned that you had these discussions at the dinner table being raised with a political religion yes you can see the many benefits from because you care about politics and you are very well-versed and from a young age political right I read anything real political until just recently and that wasn't order emphasized when I was growing up the importance of actually so just sir just to acknowledge that we're getting the the questions the audience so ghosts of Karl Marx glad you stuck with us goes to crow Marx goes to Karl Marx asks what did your father think of anarchism so you know his type of response to that what would be typical this would be the first thing he'd say but something to be longing to say he would say well you know I think it's mistaken this emphasis on the individual yeah so he was you'll hear critics of communism saying that more often the Communists he was a real communist and that he believed in collectivization and losing your individual identity of the individual not being real you know it's normally it's only critics of communism said it's not people who support the notion but he believed that and so for him that was enough to that was enough to kind of debunk debunk anarchism like well people don't exist like the only abstractions like we only group identity exist so that's that's a remarkable thing now I could mention other other other comments he made about it you know mostly based on the one big real historical example of anarchism is Spain is Spanish anarchism in the Spanish Civil War which of course was negative from a communist perspective yeah hmm yeah we just mentioned that you you had heard you're dead reading a poem right yeah well you've mentioned out other times that you're never read articles from the newspaper and write emphatically yep really oh yeah you know how having a presence like that and in the household when I was growing up would have influenced me and changed me for I don't really know but you know coming from somebody whose father didn't read like he you know just watch TV all the time like actually having that business on reading and paying attention to world news and paying attention to what political ideology I think you know even though right I definitely wouldn't right so look I I agree a couple of which much the first point is is really to response to this one um so my father had nine kids yeah I only had this effect on me right so I responded it this way or I just as you described care about political ideology care about paying attention to politics I'm making these connections I'm worried about you know World War three coming all this stuff I of the other eight kids I don't think even one responded to the stimulus in this way right and now so my own sister so I have two sisters out of the better than nine but you know um so it's a pretty high failure rate I think you're right that it did succeed in my case you know she doesn't she's never given a about politics she doesn't give a about the poor she doesn't get I mean you know she isn't a bad he doesn't have a humanitarian bone in her body no I'm sorry but I mean you know saying she has a pH sort you have a PhD in chemistry it means no I'm sorry is no no connection must sir but I mean PhD is just your level of education let me know it's it's no we're talking about when I'm talking about getting a PhD Darian mode you know taking some kind of political impetus from this sort of a sense of direction ya know anyway so just say in the immuno some of my other brothers have respectable careers one of them is an archaeologist but again not a political bone his body and so on but yeah you know you make an interesting broad point in saying that growing up with communism as a religion you are growing up with this worldly you know religion you're growing up with a religion that's based on real events you know historical and present what sits above all else it's a fetish about history if anything but like you know the French Revolution I mean everyday history of every revolution but the French Revolution the Russian Revolution that cares about about history and what happened yeah that's right yes that's right and it's based on actual history not made-up stories like Noah's Ark right but with with the caveat that they're telling a lot of lies that the Hicks history itself is quite fictionalized yeah so you know just to mention briefly I think I've told you this but it's verbally at one point but you know one of the books that was on my childhood bookshelf was a cartoon history of the Russian Revolution probably someone else remembers this plug they must have it was a pretty it was obvious that a lot of them published it was published by some some Communist Party Congress party the USA or something I forget but it was a history of the revolution with you know illustrations and you know it seemed down-to-earth and it seemed honest and it you know you know I remember the opening pages it said look different people tell a lot of different lies about what happened during the Russian Revolution yeah good showing up okay you know it said you know uh you know there are a lot of Lies told some people say there's something so that's what really seemed like it was presenting with a balanced truth there was as many years later than I realized like almost everything in this book was a lie you know like everything that was telling you about about the Russian Revolution yeah but no you're right I mean it is it is connected to to real history and you know you know real human suffering and tragedy I mean you know as a child anyway you know it pulls you into reality that way if you're if you're susceptible to be let me plug into it sure right yeah so we saw death of snow remember what I had to say about entertaining and I thought it was actually you know I did laugh out loud funny you said that you didn't actually laughs yeah right yeah I found the human to my liking at some points it was just you've said that some points some parts of it will not totally yeah to be expected from us right budget big-budget film like this but it's a dramatization yeah yeah but not so much as while we were watching it the previews were one of the previews was for a movie coming up about Karl Marx that looks like propaganda Wow Marxist propaganda animation it wasn't glorifying something it wasn't no horrifying any outfit posse so yeah that was those was interesting for me because you know I don't I'm not familiar with this history and I didn't know about the death of Stalin until yeah for me I felt the greatest strength of the movie was just portraying all the historical characters as real human beings mm-hmm you know they did that for the purposes of comedy but from my perspective the main effect was of the comedy was just humanizing the people involved that they were very human they had very relaxed human conversations to me it really wasn't funny it wasn't laugh out loud funny but you know it was nice to see those people portrayed as you know human human all do you think I think that might have to do with the fact that you've done so much research and you know so much about history and I remember whispering like yeah I never thought I would see these warriors being portrayed on right in a movie right so are you I think you are more inclined to take it seriously right I mean for me it was really just like a real serious historical drama but with you know with this much more human element where people act like statues you know they they behave in a more yeah you know their manner of speaking is more and more human and relaxed and so on yeah but it's so like I don't know it's just so foreign and the the one of the funny parts to me it was once Stalin died the comitia trying to figure out what their policy should be I'm feeling like they're somehow being umpires that they are going against their leader when they wanna change want to do something different want to stop the mass murderers once you stop the mass arrests um and you know kind of going back and forth about like whether this is this is good for for the country you're good yeah I mean you know look obviously you know that but the the film gives you a sense in broad outline of what it was like living under that regime and you know the quite the reason that for making this video is what is it like growing up with people who glorify and with that regime yeah I mean you know there are all these questions surrounding you know starting Stalinism and so on I mean oh and the other side of it that's sick is you know for so many years the Cold War provided this this huge distraction where was like anything bad the United States did they'd say well it's not as bad as as what the Russians are doing and even though that's true I mean it's what is this a race to the bottom from the lowest dad it's like this I mean it's true like for example you know during the same period of history you can say well the Americans are treating african-americans very badly it's true status of black people nervous was really really terrible but people really did say back oh well they're treated better than the ethnic minorities in Russia and frankly it's a little bit higher you know yeah because it was absolutely you know nightmarish yeah it's bizarre I mean something else that came out of the movie and a few memories to me saying this when we left I point out you me there's this huge literature produced by by Russian communism and then the minute the life and death threat disappeared the minute they stopped holding a gun to people's heads nobody read any of those books they all you know everyone suddenly recognized they had no literary value that weren't entertaining that weren't interesting right and this includes the final work of Joseph Stalin his posthumous work though the book he was writing right up to his death it was only 98% completed his death and then it was published after there's nobody read it you know if it had been published during his life everybody what I read it you know you kind of wouldn't have a choice it would be in the curriculum and so on but it was his his supposed you know masterpiece and yeah I mean we also just talked about you look at me it seems to us like freedom of speech is such a weak to all these days you know how does freedom of speech really shape the world and change the world but that was a regime that couldn't cope with allowing freedom of speech we talk about a lot of after film I was pointing out to you like in this period after the death of Stalin they sort of experimented what they tried to have a little bit of freedom of speech but as soon as you had a little bit of freedom of speech you started getting allegations coming in against government officials and bureaucrats right that they murdered people they rape people they tortured people just there is yeah right and you know Sun is just reports of criminal activity you know within the government just you know as soon as you had any freedom of speech or even the reports about starvation and stuff reports about shortages as soon as you have the newspaper that can that can publish in a letter or something complaining put this stuff this you know shakes the shakes the regime to its core so yeah that's that's that's a real difference but anyway sorry I mean we're not even comparing something else but that was that was one of the themes that came out of that and I guess you know the the ego trap that people in my parent like my parents were were stuck in was exactly that they did have the freedom of speech they did have the access to information they knew all the things and had the freedom to talk about all the things that people inside Russia couldn't talk about and couldn't read about or not not easily not openly and so the only people who remain the Communists in a country like Canada were really crazy and really committed and really engaged in a kind of a very pious form of self-deception you know I mean how you know how do you believe in Stalin after Stalin has been totally discredited within Russia ya know that's really the question is that's exactly what happened after the film doesn't go into that that period but but by the 1980s I mean the nineties it totally discredited I mean you know it takes some time you know how how do you continue believing in Mao Zedong so the leader of Chinese communism after he's been totally discredited within China you know when the official Communist Party history even regrets that stuff well it was obvious that at least in the portrayal in the movie that they wanted to make changes immediately after story that died thought that arresting so many people just like couple days prior was an error and so and they all had friends and in the film just a lose that but they all had friends and girlfriends and lovers who had disappeared into the garage establishment they don't explain you but Stalin's daughter is weeping because of a boyfriend we presume who's disappeared into the into the gulag yeah it may or may not be exactly the historical reality they're falling here because she did have one lover this there is a real historical story but regardless it turns out that the film depicts it you see everyone has been touched by this this kind of repression yeah so everyone knows the Armagh can do yeah one thing that we were talking about was that this was really this was really an aristocratic group yes relates to what you were just saying because one of the I forget his name but you know when he was talking to Sullins daughter he said I'll make an exception you know like okay oh I'll do what I can to find your boyfriend Alexei or whatever and you know it turns out he's been killed in the gulag you can't bring him back from the dead so but you know he's pulling out the stops for this they really have this aristocrat you know when it's the beginning it takes poison this big mansion or cabin of Stalin's and their third servants and all the cylinders inside the halls of power and the government or in these you know aristocratic palaces with marble columns and you know sumptuous you know we Russian Imperial decorations right I'm one of the one of the scenes was really notable was just this huge gate yes right and you know to me all that's all that sickening to I mean you know the the look I mean both the poison and the medicine of communism is the promise of equality so I mean you just read about Sparta in many ways the written description of Sparta not the historical reality but the the somewhat glamorized written description of what ancient Sparta was like was this huge inspiration to communists and other political extremists probably also fascism and again with Sparta kind of the the bait on the hook you know is is equality but in Sparta's case it's at least an attempt at literally quality there's no money allegedly yeah footnote in reality Sparta had money you know everyone wears the same clothing everyone eats the same yes right everyone's cut yeah everyone does the same military service everyone wears the same shirt yeah there's one tunic everybody wears the same shirt no no buddy that's another one wasn't in your in your video nobody in Sparta was allowed to carry a lamp or a lantern yeah cuz if one person is alone everybody's gonna want on it no no lanterns for anyone in the dark walk in the dark it'll toughen you up it'll make you better better at walking in the dark barefoot everyone's got to be playful yeah that's right so yeah you know but I mean the meaning of equality in Sparta is very clear and then you look at these you know communists despotisms and it's just a new aristocracy in every meaningful sense you've just created new aristocrats including the hereditary element that it does go from father to son I mean the the first generation of aristocrats is true and most aristocrat assistance is created by a war or a civil war the very first aristocrats are soldiers of some kinds or war heroes or something but then it immediately the next generation are there in power because they're the children of the war here so it really becomes becomes nothing but an airstone and but even as the traffic's even as the aesthetics they're not making any effort to wear the same shirt as everyone else or live in the same house that when I'll sort of starve what everyone else is starving they're living in this this kind of to me unforgivable you know splendor in the midst of you know the very poverty and starvation there they're dictatorship is creating right yeah and just the the sheer power that was given to Stalin is you know that and one example from the movie is they were trying to replicate a portrait of Stalin was a young girl and they were like okay we need to we need to do everything to find the same girl so she can be in the photo with the new head of the state and yeah so anyway yeah just knowing and seeing the extravagance of the funeral it was you haven't first on - yep and you know I mean the joy everyone's calling each other comrade I mean comrade means we're equals right yeah a very clear hierarchy to who some people are more comrade than others you know yeah yeah yeah yeah it was interesting to see the power struggle yeah coming to power not sure any well you know for me I could talk about this all day part of the kind of heartbreak of this history um so that the winner as presented this movie is Nikita Khrushchev and then it ends by saying well Nikita Khrushchev was in power until one day there was a coup d'etat against him which is true and you know I've said before in other videos Nikita Chris trip was a relatively hopeful figure he's not remembered as one of the great monsters of history the way Stalin was the way the way uh Lenin is but um I'm sorry I've lost my train of thought for once I've managed to lose my train of thought you know sorry this was gonna say for me you know there's this issue of Nikita Khrushchev promising reform and promising to be moderate when you're in a system with this who is moderate you guys go into the history of this one of the reasons why Stalin rose to power in the first place was that he was perceived as moderate he was the moderate anti-war candidate compared to the other guys he was competing with for the leadership of the time well he gets into power and he's not so moderate now I mean even Chris chef who I say is not remembered as that that terrible leader so when Khrushchev was coming to power wire people supporting him because he's a moderate he's against the massacres he's against the gulag he's against this repression of free speech he's promising liberalisation and reform zone once he gets in the power you know how different is it really from Stalin's grid now it was there was an improvement I mean as I say it's not it's not it what has terrible as but you know they still had the same but still was fundamentally the same horrible communist system and so it still was you know we was styling light was what it was you know in this town that's the reality right so I mean they didn't make you know exactly do I mean they still didn't have newspapers or elections or you know idea the things you might have and this starvation problems went on and so and so forth and still nobody had the freedom to criticize the government and all these things and then the other thing that's tragic here which they kind of allude to but you don't really get at um there's the sense of Baria so BER are they the area right but that's so that for me is the tragedy tugging it is a real historical fact in as much as we can know anything is a realistic like that burial was at this time apparently offering real reform will heal liberalisation and peace of the United States that's what he was going for was the end of the Cold War and an end to the negative elements of Stalinism even though Barry oh right I mean he may hold the record as having raped the most women of anyone in the 20th century it's really if anyone else in that century could have raped as many wounds him is he has an unbelievable record as a sexual predator as a torturer you know and so on and yes you know perhaps because he was he very much was Stalin's for him any real permit was Stalin's bagman you know he did you we carried out the killings and what-have-you but is it because is it for that reason or is it despite that reason that area was actually the the pro-reform Pro liberalization pro-democracy propia the minute Stalin died he thought here's my chance or or isn't even that he wanted to have a Redemption arc that he wanted to go from being Baria the most hated you know butcher the butcher of Moscow or whatever to being remembered in history as the great man who brought the Soviet Union back into the the normal world made it into a normal country again you know was he thought this is my chance to redeem myself what was going on there in terms of real history and then again I mean you know looking back at that is it a tragedy or is it something we should celebrate that Baria was snuffed out you know I mean you know in terms of the the the the difference between real world morality and storybook morality or logical morality and you know what a horrifying thought that beriah whoa k1 Baria might have been a better dictator than Stalin too because I mean everyone blamed Baria for the horrors of stone because he I should carried them out and he carried out the orders he carried out the torture and interrogation and what-have-you and then to the barium might have actually been a better leader than Nikita question of so that's I mean to me that's kind of profoundly unsettling it's not unsettling in a shallow sense the way a horror movie is or something but you know wow there's this alternate history where we're very close way and what I said to Melissa I don't have to give Melissa morality lectures but it really is an interesting round electro Baria couldn't carry out his his reform plan he couldn't do what because he was number two in the chain of command he could have replaced Don he could have taken over the leadership and that would have ended the Cold War would have ended the threat of nuclear war or the whole world would be different today and Russia probably profoundly better off but he couldn't because he had discredited himself ethically I mean he was tainted you know so it's like well I mean there's a real lesson in that one of the reasons to be a kind of moral and upstanding person you know is so the you can do things that are even totally unrelated there's no relationship between Berea's sex life and his political convictions I think that's what the historical record shows and that's even shown in this movie like okay so this guy is a horrible rapist but even he sees the gulag system as evil you know what said even he wants bug and they didn't touch on this he wanted peace of America and some kind of fundamental shift towards democracy and freedom and just normalcy it's being in a country you know whatever not being this this this unbelievably horrible place yeah but even though your sex life is not related to your political convictions your sex life can totally viddy eight totally undermine you totally discredit or your political aspirations and everything here and I'm sorry I feel that way about other vegans like other vegans who kind of dabble in racism we're kind of softcore racist well in a sense racism is unrelated to veganism but guess what this totally discredits you you know as a vegan later you know I think I think there are all kinds of throw all kinds of examples of that this YouTube channel probably discredits me and in a lot of my a lot of my political aspirations and we'll see we'll see if I run for mayor we'll see if this if this very YouTube video you know discredits me so yeah that's that's another lesson okay thanks for coming on livestream with me babe we don't mmm now that she has her own YouTube channel we don't do so many recordings together but that was spontaneous we didn't talk about any of this stuff we thought I'd talk about but I think we laid down a lot of quality content yeah okay this is our first time live streaming directly over ytube seems like there were no technical problems shout out to David showed up the ghost of Karl Marx sure to give me the kiss shouldn't they want to join us I mean hey man I mean look I mean I think everyone knows the ultimate irony is you know veganism also is one of these grand missions to save the world save the planet and you know obviously coming out of the shadow communism my engagement with Buddhism my engagements humanitarian work my age with economics there'd be a whole separate video you know economics and political science but a special the economics economics is the sacred science of communism some of those moral and aesthetic concerns obviously carried over from my being reused communist into my anti-communist adulthood and all you guys I hope still are are trying to save the planet