Maggie's Farm

I think emotion clouds their reason. They want to be set apart, and so dislike majoritarian thinking. They quite rightly are offended by hypocrisy and jingoism in the people who are nearby, and so dig in in any contrary position. So far, these are but minor sins.

The evil comes when this initially-respectable (if not strictly wise) position is revealed to provide cover for the death of millions, and the oppression of hundreds of millions. The refusal to condemn even Stalin, even Mao, long after the first numbers were known - to persist in complaining "well, but America has done x and y" - is intellectually and morally vacant.

And now, when the first numbers are known to have underestimated the evil by a factor of ten, when even the craziest of right-wing nutcases 1930-1980 are shown to have not been sufficiently alert to the full extent of the evil, to persist in such accusation is pathological.

Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands will slowly force the truth into the popular consciousness, though it will take a generation. By then, however, the left will maintain that they had always condemned such and gone on to some new lie.