How bad were the gulags, and why aren't they talked about as much as the nazi death camps?
You know what was worse than Nazi internment camps? Japanese camps on the Chinese mainland. No records were kept and the treatment was less humane than the way Nazis treated Jews. Tens of millions died.
I have no clue why no one ever talks about it. Lost to history.
>>1186085
>>1186100
The majority of post-war intellectuals in England and France (and most of the world, really) were vehemently left-leaning if not entirely communist in their mentality. Therefore, critiquing the USSR would've been counterproductive to their efforts. Mentioning the gulags would've also created a parralel to the Nazi death camps and therefore eroded any public sympathy due to the fact that the disgust for the German atrocities was at its freshest.
>>1186100
>I have no clue why no one ever talks about it. Lost to history.
Because it doesn't concern us, western europe talks about jews getting killed, eastern europe talks about slavs getting killed, china talks about chinks getting killed.
>>1186157
Nah, it must be da joos at work.
>>1186085
Nice butts.
The fact that almost no comprehensive treatment of the GULAG system has been published since pic related is a testament to the strong left bent of western academia.
Not even Nazi desu.
>>1186085
People tend to forget that there were many, many Americans who either wanted America to stay out of the war or even support Germany and as such really hamming up the Nazis' death toll while marginalizing others (especially when you consider America's Lend-Lease policy towards the USSR) was considered prudent by many in the government and for their part the intelligista - including and especially college academics - had a significant bias towards Marxist schools of thought.
>>1186085
Now I love Jewish people
But zionists like to have a monopoly on terms like death camp and diaspora because it helps them justify their current apartheid state in isreal. Anytime anyone tries to criticize Israel they are immediately chastised as being an anti Semite, and the implication is that they are a nazi
This and what everyone else is saying about academias love affair with communism
I look at young Germans' sleep -
Strong, calm and innocent;
Train traverses eternal Rhine,
In waves rocking are the chimes.
Uniform, leave, beer and schnaps
And each wakes on time
to return to his unit -
where they teach him to kill humans.
But meanwhile, he sleeps calmly;
head rests on a bent elbow
and not about blood he dreams
and in real death doesn't he believe.
And 300 miles from here,
where you can still smell human furnances -
their peers' nightly guard
shoot at workers' backs.
And in my mind thought collide,
when I gaze at sleepy heads:
These are hitlerists children,
and that army is People's!
>>1186230
>apartheid state in isreal
will this meme ever die?
(also isreal...lol)
>>1186085
Mix of winners bias/cultural bias (continentals and anglos just expect the russians to be brutal peasants ruled by an iron fist)/ and the bigger fascination with Kzs. Gulags were fairly standard slave labor camps lacking the industrial extermination.
>>1186304
Perhaps we can argue whether or not the situation constitutes "apartheid" but I think it's pretty hard to deny that Israel has done, and continues to do some fucked up shit to Palestinians.
>>1186345
Not him but even though I don't entirely care for the hyper politicized discussion surrounding the issue I don't think the apartheid comparison is that off. The Palestinians are kept separate from the Israelis and they do lack basic rights since they lack a state. Its obviously not exactly the same but I think there are enough general similarities.
Its not like when some activists call it a genocide. Now that to me is exaggerating it.
>>1186360
Well I think that people are entitled to their ancestral land and that taking someone's land is similar to exterminating their identity. Israel has done that and continues too.That being said I wouldn't exactly call it a genocide either because, again going back to the OP here "genocide" makes me think of the holocaust or Armenians and that was way more mass murder then this very slow grinding battle of attribution
Boer concentration camps are hardly talked about also. Not implying they are worse, I'd imagine they to be one of the least bad.
>>1186085
The guys in the gulags were threats to the establishment. The guys in the death camps were mostly just scapegoats. Anyway, nobody cared much about dead Russians.
>>1189561
>communists
>not a threat to the state
good meme
>>1189799
>comunists
>not a threat to humanity as a whole
>>1186085
What does that Cyrillic say?
>The 14th People's Soviet of Russia Plenary On Internal Economic Affairs And Quotas finds that dat ass was indeed fat. Glory to Comrade Stalin.
because academia and media are mostly communists or communist sympathizers
>>1186360
a large number of Israeli citizens are palestinian, I think 25% though I could be wrong. they have all the same rights as Israelis (though they certainly face some discrimination especially in regard to profiling at security checkpoints and airports). the only reason Palestians in the West Bank and Gaza don't have the rights of citizenship is because they are expected to eventually become fully self ruled and some self rule has already been implemented though it's been stalled for the past decade
>>1189988
Self-rule was never on the agenda, not even the Oslo Accords declared it. The furthest thing that was discussed was administrative autonomy.
Palestinians simply came up with a wish-list and got the entire world to back them up on it unconditionally.
>>1186100
Because MacArthur pardoned them of their warcrimes for their data
>>1186100
Fukin fag, they didn't have internet camps back then..they didn't even have computers..dumass
>>1186085
tl;dr authoritarianism is shit on both sides of the political spectrum
There are secret sex orgies in today's world for the top 1%
>>1191373
Source?
>>1186085
Never knew all russian women butts were like that!
>>1191373
That's not entirely true.
Their orgies include several members of the 99%. Just the most nubile ones, though.
>>1191373
the difference is the sluts, gold diggers and bar whores want it
>>1191414
http://www.businessinsider.com/elijah-wood-hollywood-pedophile-ring-2016-5
The gulags were terrible, but they were NOT death camps.
They were hard labor camps, which was a carryover from Tsarist era.
Despite left over cold war rhetoric, most people who were imprisoned were released, eventually.
>>1194070
>Stalin a good boy, he dindu nuffin!
>>1186085
Not as bad as literal Nazi death camps but you still wouldn't like to go there.
They were more like prisons where forced labour was the mission, a lot of people in prisons in the US get a similar experience.
>>1194091
>HURR FORCED LABOUR IS EVIL, FUCKING COMMIES.
You do realize western governments do this as well?
>>1186130
>most of the west were leftists or commies
Back to /pol/
My ex's grandfather was a fucking mobster and spent time in the Gulags during the Bitch Wars.
He was more worried about the other prisoners rather than the guards and labour. Violent shit he told me about. Its incredible what some people go through.
On a side note my grandfather was arrested 3 times between 1970-78 trying to escape communist Cuba. 2 years after he gets to America, Castro opens up the boarders for a certain amount of time. Lol
>>1194104
No they don't.
Now fuck off, tankie.
>>1194117
Tell me a single non-communist Western intellectual.
>>1186184
Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History ring any bells?
>>1194159
>journalism
>academia
>>1194104
>making prisoners do factory work and road maintenance is the same as forced marching them into the middle of Siberia in winter and having them build their prison camp from scratch
>>>/r/fullcommunism
>>1194159
Yeah, Journalists who attempt "histories" should be shot, whether soviet aligned or US aligned.
As someone else has already mentioned, I think it's primarily cultural bias. White westerners killing white westerners simply isn't the done thing, don't you know? All that shit that wen't down in colonial Africa? Well they were funny sounding brown people, that doesn't count.
>>1194146
von Neumann, but your basic argument is valid.
Unfortunately there are more leftist cucks in Europe today than there were in 1945
>>1186376
>taking someone's land is similar to exterminating their identity
Except for the fact that "Palestinians" are not culturally distinct from Arabs. Being from Palestine has as much meaning as being from New Jersey.
>>1194146
William F. Buckley Jr.
>>1194823
Well we should give NJ to the jews too then? After all there's tons of other american places in the world.
>>1186184
Even the American "left" is rather anti-communist
>>1194091
0/10 meme+strawman combo
>>1186085
looks pretty good if they were getting all that hot russian ass
>>1194169
Hello, Joe Arpaio.
>anyone who disagrees with me is communist
ebin
>>1194902
>everyone who uses blatantly false whataboutisms is a communist
yes?
>>1189988
>though they certainly face some discrimination especially in regard to profiling at security checkpoints and airports
Gee I wonder why that could be.
>>1194904
No?
>>1194910
maybe
>>1194146
Ben Garrison
>>1194146
Stefan Molyneux
>>1186085
Because it is a source of income for the intellectual class to write about it. One of my professors wanted (and tried ) to make a career out interwar era Italy. No on gave a damn it. Then he changed over to a focus on Nazis eugenics and everything greatly improved for his career.
The follow up should be why does no one give a damn on subjects like the rise of the Fascist in Italy or the gulags. Because it is not political meanful to us in the same way as nazis death camps.
Because they were work camps, not death camps. The conditions were harsh, but the death rate is usually exageratted, and the time served there wasn't for life but usually 10-15 years, would only be for life to the people that died of overwork. And They weren't used to systematically kill off entire nationalities/races, but to punish government enemies, if the people were guilty or not it's entirely up to your idea of guilty
>>1194146
Hoppe
>>1186085
It's not politics, it's not lack of data, it's not da joos nor da commies.
99% of people get their entire knowledge of history from basic education. Now the Nazi death camps is easy as fuck to talk about,
Nazis hates certain groups of people and decide to gather every man woman and child and kill them. Huge simplification but that's kinda right and it works in the normal education system, you can spend one week on the subject and kinda understand it.
Now the soviets camps is a different story altogether. Look at your question: "How bad were the gulags".
What is the gulag? It is not a place or several places it is an administrative department responsible (from 1934) for all places of detention in the USSR.
What you mean with the soviet camps is the Corrective labour camp system, Ispravitelno-Trudovoj Lagera or ITL for short. BUT those sent there could be sentenced for any crime, not only political prisoners, and plenty of political prisoners got criminal sentences placed on them, and plenty of criminals who the police just wanted to get rid of had political charges placed on them.
You start to see that it is very hard to get an overarching picture of what is usually called "the gulag system", just explaining what it is is quite hard.
Add to that a bunch of ideological reasons, real politik, Soviet internal powerstruggles between different factions, and the entire soci-political landscape of the USSR you'll basically have to spend 3 months before people get a basic accurate picture of what the fuck was going on.
I know plenty of people who study history, who even study the soviet union that have a little or no understanding of the repressive systems of the USSR and what made them tick.
In short it isn't studied because to understand it requires a lot more knowledge of Soviet history and ideology, not something you can bring to a classroom of your average 15 year olds. The holocaust is a much more straight forward story.
