Talk:The Black Book of Communism
Any way we can refute Wikipedia and certain people in claiming the book is fraudulent?
Hi. I'm dealing with someone who claims the Black Book of Communism is fraudulent, and he's also claiming that two of the authors are claiming it was fraudulent, citing Wikipedia and some sources it cited.
I need to figure out how to refute those claims, maybe note it in this article while refuting it at the same time. Think you can help.
For the record, I'm referring to this passage:
"Moreover, two of the book's main contributors—Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin—as well as Karel Bartosek[1] publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Werth and Margolin felt Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million killed which resulted in "sloppy and biased scholarship"[2] and faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries.[1][3][4] They also argued that based on the results of their studies, one can tentatively estimate the total number of the victims at between 65 and 93 million.[5] In particular, Margolin, who authored the Black Book's chapter on Vietnam, clarified "that he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam".[1]"
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Chemin, Ariane. "Les divisions d'une équipe d'historiens du communisme [Divisions among the team of historians of Communism]", 1997-10-30. (fr)
- ↑ Ghodsee, Kristen (2017). Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822369493.
- ↑ Gvosdev, Nikolas K. (2008). The Strange Death of Soviet Communism: A Postscript (in en). Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9781412835176.
- ↑ Ghodsee, Kristen (2014). "A tale of" Two Totalitarianisms": The crisis of capitalism and the historical memory of communism". History of the Present 4 (2): 115–142. doi:10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/history_of_the_present_galleys.pdf.
- ↑ "Communisme : retour à l'histoire", 1997-11-14. Retrieved on 2015-06-14. (fr)
Pokeria1 (talk) 06:36, 27 June 2020 (EDT)
Start with "the death of one is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic" - Joseph Stalin. That's apparently the basis of that dispute and where it's headed. RobSTrump 2Q2Q 10:03, 27 June 2020 (EDT)
- Unfortunately, citing Stalin won't exactly work with this creep since he's the guy who thinks Lenin did a democracy and it was only under Stalin that it's a dictatorship, and that democracy and dictatorships are polar opposites (that, and apparently we American Minutemen were "extremists" and mistake us for founding a democracy). Here, this is the conversation I'm having with him:
- This isn't much of a dispute; so apparently 2 authors agree, commies murdered only 64 million to 95 million. Ahhh, poo poo, just cause two authors disagree with one, the commies are off the hook and the 65 million dead can be forgotten and ignored, not to mention the work of two scholars. Hmmm, sounds like a commie plot if I ever heard one.
- You just isolate the area of disagreement between the scholars, and emphasize the facts the other two scholars have reported on.
- If it were me, I'd pity anybody who tried to take me on in such a ridiculous argument once I'm armed with the facts. RobSTrump 2Q2Q 03:02, 28 June 2020 (EDT)
- In the discussion links you provide, it seems the focus is on how certain groups come to power, and some theoretical or ideological underpinings (democracy vs socialism, etc.) Focus on policy - deliberate murderous actions taken by a regime against its own population once in power. Ignore ideological labels and stick to what they call themselves. It's all done in the service of Marxism. RobSTrump 2Q2Q 03:14, 28 June 2020 (EDT)
- None of the three historical instances that make up the bulk of communist induced deaths - holodomor, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution - can be considered "accidental", "they meant well", "they had good intentions", etc. Communist's have no regard for human life. Period. Communists only have a lust for power, a lust to maintain power once its achieved, and will exterminate anyone who opposes them. The facts are undeniable, and even the most committed communists will admit it. If this fool won't admit it, he's a fool who will be first in line for extermination once he's done helping his slave masters off their opposition. RobSTrump 2Q2Q 03:20, 28 June 2020 (EDT)