Taken from NewsReal Blog on September 23rd, 2010
I honestly do not understand individuals who admire communists. Maybe I am a delusional daughter of Lithuanian immigrants who “brainwashed” me with their anti-communist rhetoric. Maybe I am a paranoid conservative eager to dispel the myths that communists are not worth celebrating. Either way, it is frustrating that some Americans do not understand how evil these people are and fail to grasp the insurmountable number of people they killed! Try explaining that to my peers in college who hang up flags of Che Guevara and embrace the works of infamous Marxist-Leninists. Now, communists—alive and dead—continue to plague the halls, dorm walls, and social hubs at universities. Here at UC-San Diego there’s even a Che Cafe and several homages paid to a Messianic Obama around campus.
Recently, I crossed paths with the famed red drink adorned in Cyrillic and a haunting portrait of V.I. Lenin called Leninade.
Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever. –Vladimir Lenin
People will argue that this drink’s message is a harmless play on words and mockery of communism. Regardless, my fellow Eastern Europeans with an understanding of communism and its travesties find this gesture extremely offensive. It can be appropriately compared to plastering one’s college dorm walls with a poster of a shirtless Vladimir Putin—Russian Prime Minister and former KGB operative.
The photos will inevitably trigger mass swooning by women all over Russia – as well as unfavourable comparisons of their husbands to Mr Putin’s manly physique.
Making communism sexy and appealing is only going to aid the cause of advancing this oppressive—albeit failed—system, not prevent it. Let us hope that college students do not swoon over pictures of Hugo Chavez, Joseph Stalin, and Fidel Castro because it is not sexy and hip!
Leninade is adorned with the phrases, “”POPAGANDA,” “Get Hammered and Sickled,” “A Taste Worth Standing in Line For,” and “Drink Comrade! Drink! It’s This or the Gulag!” Does Leninade creator Danny Ginsburg understand what he is propagating? Placing communist rhetoric on pop drinks and posters is only going to leave Obama Zombies susceptible to this doctrine. Ginsburg is obviously not sensitive to the victims of Lenin and their families with this gesture. Lovely when “humanitarian,” so-called liberals don’t condone these killers in their campaigns, right?
Time will only tell if naive Americans will finally grasp that communism is ill-fated, not something worth capitalizing on.
Comments 6
The poster says “Comrade Lenin” is driving Orthodox
Christian priests, capitalists and the Czar from Russia.
Appropriately, a massive religious revival 3 generations
later would topple the Soviet Union. Alexei, leader of
the Russian Orthodox church, was an indispensable
ally to Boris Yeltsin during several crises of the 1990s.
A more complete translation of the Russian-language
poster shown above at the top:
“Comrade Lenin cleans the Earth from Sewage.”
The character toppling downward at the lower left,
and dressed in black, is a Russian Orthodox priest.
As Solzhenitsyn documents in the “Gulag Archipelago”
the whole brutal Gulag system was made possible by
Lenin’s murderous desire to destory any possible
political opposition. Stalin merely carried that idea
to its predictable extreme.
Proudly wearing my anti-Che shirt, (which consists of the terrorist’s famously striking effigy “crossed-out” with a universal, red negation sign) I made my way across the street to the coffee shop. Upon arrival I was immediately accosted by an all-too-representative SDSU professor emeritus who was (of course…) sipping herbal tea while waiting for his yoga class to start. “What’s the matter with Che?” he demanded indignantly.
I paused. After all, when dealing with this level of moral/political obtuseness, one hardly knows where to begin.
I answered, “You mean, aside from having been an enthusiastic true believer in the bloodiest genocidal ideology of all time?”
He looked at me blankly, then rolled his eyes and walked off.
Great story, Craig !
Che was trying to bring the “blessings” of communism
to Bolivia in 1967 when killed in a shoot-out with the
Bolivian army.
Many historians believe Fidel Castro secretly betrayed
Guevara to the Bolivians, fearing him as a potential
rival should he return to Havana one day.
Thanks, Jim.
I still not infrequently see young men–no doubt former students of the aforementioned history prof.!–wearing “Che shirts” without a trace of irony.
Funny, you never see people wearing, say, “Goering” or “Himmler shirts.”
Could anything discredit the Left more than it’s infatuation with communism?
Author
It is outrageous that people praise killers and belittle conservatives. What has become of America?