Evidence presented at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial documented about 50,000,000
deaths due to World War II, for which I would argue Hitler was unequivocally
responsible, despite the role of imperialist rivalries. Incidentally half of
those deaths, according to the evidence, consisted of civilians, almost entirely
in Europe. One-quarter of those civilians were Jews, the rest Russians and other
peoples of the USSR, Gypsies, gays, the mentally and physically disabled, and
civilians of western and southern Europe.
The Cold War powers of the West, of which the U.S. is the most important,
are responsible for many millions of deaths, both in unending local wars, in
civil wars stimulated and/or prolonged by American and NATO policy, hunger in
Iraq and elsewhere, the genocidal drop in population of the former Soviet
countries (consequent upon idiotic adoption of economic policies promoted by the
U.S., but not the result of American military action or blockade as of Iraq and
Cuba). Take all these together, and they do not approach the holocaust (small
"c": not the Zionist appropriation of that word) for which Hitler was
responsible.
Democracy is an easier way for capitalism to rule because it is better (or,
if you wish, a great deal less worse) than fascism. If you reject democracy, the
alternative is, at "best" a patriarchal form of rule under an absolute monarch
or one or another form of dictatorship, of which fascism is the worst. Is that
really what you prefer?
Bill Mandel
Carrol Cox wrote:
> "William M. Mandel" wrote:
>
> > I agree with your point but not your documentation. The Republicans and
> > Democrats are not Hitler and Goebbels. I am not speaking of the degree
> > of difference, but the difference between capitalist democracy and
> > fascism. Under the latter, we'd be in jail and tortured, maybe shot, for
> > these messages.
> >
>
> My emphasis was on degree of difference. But as I have now said in another
> post, if we look at the Third Reich or the U.S. *not* from the perspective
> of
> their *domestic* policy but from the perspective of the rest of the world,
> Bush and Gore are really worse, for two reasons: (1) the far greater power
> of the U.S. and (2) capitalist democracy is part of that power. Democracy
> has always been a more efficient system than dictatorship for ruling an
> empire. Certainly the U.S. is killing (directly and indirectly) far more
> people
> around the world and causing far more misery than Hitler was ever
> capable of inflicting.
>
> Subscribers to this list should really be more capable of looking at the
> U.S.
> from the outside. I know it's comfortable to live here (unless you are black
>
> in South Chicago, etc). But is that the main perspective on any "great"
> nation?
>
> Carrol
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