Stalinism Quotes

1. "It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or 'objectify' them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like 'Stalinism,' say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

2. "Revolutia rusa se afla atunci inca sub stralucirea romantica a acelui Octombrie ... Cum inca nu incepuse epoca stalinismului, cu crimele sale, am simtit, cu un romantic fanatism, ca revolutia proletariatului va izbuti sa aduca oamenilor lumea pura intrezarita de stiintele matematice."
Author: Ernesto Sabato

3. "Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin."
Author: Harold Bloom

4. "Language is wild - you can't fence it or tell it what to do - and it's the same with people. Even under the worst excesses of Stalinism or consumerism, the human spirit will still express itself."
Author: Jay Griffiths

5. "I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness."
Author: Joe Eszterhas

6. "Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again."
Author: Lionel Blue

7. "Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we're lucky that we don't live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it's better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it's not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don't make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don't cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc."
Author: Mark Fisher

8. "The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it."
Author: Mark Fisher

9. "It's ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They're totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There's about as much freedom as under Stalinism."
Author: Noam Chomsky

10. "Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great."[Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]"
Author: Slavoj Žižek

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