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Mu sl im Broth erh ood ( h ttp:/ / w w w .th ec ommen tator.c om/ artic l es/ tag/ mu sl im_broth erh ood/ 370)

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Of Mandela, Apartheid,
Communism, and
apologists

The sad death of Nelson Mandela should not allow anyone to

make an equivalence between the massed ranks of Leftist
apologists for communist genocide and those who, while still
opposing it, were misguided about Apartheid on the Right. Yet,
the Right still has a lesson to learn

Everyone counts... and freedom is freedom everywhere

Robi n Sh eph erd, Own er / Pu bli sh er

(/author/robin_shepherd_owner_publisher/1)

(/au th or/robi n _sh eph erd_own er_pu bli sh er/1)

On 6 December 2013 15:17

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t has been unseemly of some high profile, Left-leaning

politicians and commentators to use the death of
Nelson Mandela to unload the guilt of the political
Left for the lies they told defending communist oppression
by trying to draw a parallel with the political Right's
allegedly similar apologism for the crime of Apartheid.
There is no similarity; there is no parallel. But there is an
issue to discuss, and people of decency may agree that
the Right too has something to reflect upon over
Mandela's passing. But first...
According to the best academic estimates, Communism
killed between 80 and 100 million people
(http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4230/so_how_many_did_communism_kill)
the 20th century. Hitler only killed fewer because he was
stopped in history's most violent war. And, as I see the
history of oppression between the great and terrible

psychopathic totalitarian systems, the Nazi Holocaust was

the worst and most degraded single crime of the modern
era, while Communism was the greatest criminal system.
There is a huge danger of getting locked into a numbers
game. When you reach the depths of what people such as
Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, Eichmann and
Mengele were capable of, I dare anyone to find a moral
proposition that can dredge any of them out of the deepest
depths of Hell.
And yet, very significant sections of the Left political
intelligentsia did that for decades in favour of the killing
fields of a genocidal ideology that slaughtered people in
their tens of millions: people who had lives and families
just as you do. They and their surviving relatives largely
remain abused by the insouciance of a modern Left that
spits on their graves, and has no time for what they
suffered.
That is far from being "another issue", but as we
contemplate the death of Nelson Mandela, true defenders
of freedom must recognise and internalise a terrible truth
about the Western liberal tradition (now primarily, but not
exclusively, held up inside one section of the political
Right) which remains uninternalised, and
unacknowledged, generally.
It is a lie to say that people on the Right in Europe and
America backed Apartheid as the Left backed
Communism (or played fast and loose with its oppression,
as most Leftists did with communism.) There was no
Right-leaning movement in the West backing Apartheid,
just a few scattered individuals.
Practically everyone opposed it, and said so (if you can
find the odd quote against that, then one merely clutches
at ideological straws). Most people just differed on what to
do about it, sanctions or not, sporting boycotts or not, etc.
But it is true to say that white people in the West did not
usually understand the appalling degradation that a
system like Apartheid represented against black people.
(Why, even at such a moment are so many writers
terrified of using words such as "white" and "black"? The
discussion is pointless without them.)
Apartheid meant that black people were to be accepted as
literally inferior -- sub-human, in relation to white people.
South African Apartheid did not kill people on any where
near the scale of even most oppressive regimes in Africa,
let alone of communism or Nazism.
But it was the last regime in history (we hope) that
regarded some fellow human beings as between humans
and animals. And, amid subtleties that most don't want to
deal with, the objective reality is that the political Left had
a better handle on that truth than most on the Right. That
is also a truth that no intellectually honest person can
escape from.
The legacy of Nelson Mandela, who embraced the last
white leader of Apartheid South Africa, F.W. De Klerk, and
called the white Queen of England a friend (as she did
him), is so extraordinary precisely because he had the
almost saintly moral stature to put centuries of
oppression against black people behind him.
His reputation should not now be sullied by Leftist
Western ideologues trying to work a way out of moral
problems they could resolve if they could only say, and
mean, a single word: "Sorry!" His legacy also needs to be
dealt with at just as profound a level by people on the
Right who were slow to understand what Mandela
represented.
At core, therefore, this is a time for reflection and
contrition. And, to respect Nelson Mandela's life, surely
the best response is to learn that freedom is indivisible,
and that our sometimes silly, and sometimes sad
obsessions with our own little political disputes, pale in
comparison to what really matters.

Robin Shepherd is the owner and founder of The

Commentator (http:/ / www.thec ommentator.c om/ )
Read more on : n elson man dela
(/arti c les/tag/n elson _man dela/1276), th e evi l of
c ommu n i sm
(/arti c les/tag/th e_evi l_of_c ommu n i sm/11202), Death
toll of c ommu n i sm
(/arti c les/tag/death _toll_of_c ommu n i sm/9728),
Gu ardi an apologi sts for c ommu n i sm
(/arti c les/tag/gu ardi an _apologi sts_for_c ommu n i sm/9159),
an d repressi on i n c u ba
(/arti c les/tag/repressi on _i n _c u ba/5922)

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J Simson

2 years ago

Nelson Mandela might

have been a man of moral
superiority but the current
ruling ANC party is far from
it.
The current government is
one of the most corrupt
and ineffective
governments ever.
The current prime minister
Jacob Zuma has been