Eric Hobsbawm obituary

From the Guardian:
Eric Hobsbawm obituary.

Thanks Bob,

That was interesting enough that I put his 4 major works, or at least those mentioned 4 works, on my wish list on Amazon.
And I usually do get books (and read them :-) from my wish list. Eventually :-)

So the guy was basically Barack Obama, only white?

LOL.

I didn't know that Barack Obama was a Marxist historian. There I go again, learning new things.

Forget "Marxist" historian. I didn't know Obama was a historian of any kind whatsoever.

Which makes the above JGL comment even more mysterious. But, you know, "Its a mystery." isn't an uncommon statement among believers.

The New York Times reports,

In 1994, he shocked viewers when, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff on the BBC, he said that the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens under Stalin would have been worth it if a genuine Communist society had been the result.

More specifically, per other sources, it wasn't just millions, e.g. the Wall Street Journal,

In a now infamous 1994 interview with journalist Michael Ignatieff, the historian was asked if the murder of "15, 20 million people might have been justified" in establishing a Marxist paradise. "Yes," Mr. Hobsbawm replied. Asked the same question the following year, he reiterated his support for the "sacrifice of millions of lives"

~7

Yept, there is little question that Hobsbawn was a doctrinaire Marxist whose life was devoted to trying to justify the historical distortions of Marx and Engels and to apologize for the regimes created in their names.

In that respect, it might seem amazing (among the naive) that similar "scholars" such as David Irving (the unfailing apologist for Hitler and his ilk) have not received similar honors from their colleagues. I guess it is just because there are still nominally Marxist Leninist regimes willing to dispense grant money, whereas Hitler and his regime are long extinct and not the source of enhancements in academic incomes.

#8

nah, we just view someone who can kill up to 60 million people as pretty damn efficient, while Hitler and company were more focused on the race of victims, and less effective.

Hitler lost. Although The U.S.S.R also lost, it took a much longer time to fail.

Everyone loves a winner, or even a survivor, and one must admit that after World War II, Stalinist Russia had survived.

~11

What Heroes !!! Good old Uncle Joe, the great Democrat. (You know, if you hurry you can probably get into Cuba before that system also collapses. Castro, the winner and survivor against a determined effort by the US for decades and decades. Maybe a new holiday should be declared?)

And again, although what Castro built probably won't survive his passing, how many other Latin American rulers defied the United States for that length of time and survived?

Surely durability in the faceless of relentless opposition should count for something.

Truly, how admirable. (You have the strangest set of values I have ever run across. I haven't even been able to fully sort them out so far.)

#13, Yep I have created a title for those types.

"Beloved murderous areshole of the people"

Guido.

PS. I will have to rethink my desire on whether to read
'Hobsbawn', but I have read some of Irvings histories
and even when looking for his 'distortions', they are sly, usually.

You can't tell when your leg is being pulled?

~15

Yes, indeed, Irving is very "sly," except when he's addressing a Nazi group. Then the slyness evaporates and the true Irving comes out.

#15

I'm not sure that would catch on, although it's a catchy title. Such awards are generally named after famed figures in the field.

Perhaps...'The Stalin'?

Yeah but who could you possibly award "The Stalin" to? No-one even comes close. Whichever murderous dictator won the award would just feel inadequate. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

Trouble is there was a Stalin Prize for Engineers/Artists etc.

I propose instead the The Beria

Yezhov was a lady killer.

But "Beria" lasted longer.

I wasn't going to post that quip, but the devil (Stalin) made me do it.

Just dragged out my Stalin and his hangmen by
Donald Rayfield to check on "Yezhov/Ezhov" and thought
about..."is there a scale of Evil?"

I guess my quip was a sort of "histerical laughter" in trying to comprehend true horror.

Guido.

Turks used to enjoy tossing Greek or Armenian babies in the air and spearing them on their bayonets.

That seems to me a rather difficult evil to beat, at least in terms of chosen victims and methodology of murder.

Unless we want to go back to medieval times.

Eichman never, apparently, killed anyone.
He was though a very good organizer.

Eicheman is a great metaphor for American foreign policy in Latin America. Godwin! Oh, snap!

Turks used to enjoy tossing Greek or Armenian babies in the air and spearing them on their bayonets.

Unless you have a source that confirms this, I would doubt this was actually true. I have heard similar claims about Vikings, the Teutonic Knights in Russia, the Mongols, the Huns, the Saracens, the Moors, and probably a couple other groups I am forgetting. It is a common rhetorical device chroniclers have used to demonize their opponents.

yeah most of them did not even have Bayonets

Here's an article about the Rape of Nanking where babies were tossed and speared with bayonets.

Rape of Nanking.