Neil ‘Free Slobo’ Clark is on the Guardian website today writing about Havel.
It is a classic of the genre. Note, in particular, the reference to “the son of a wealthy entrepreneur whose companies were nationalised when the communists came to power”, which of course, wink-wink, explains it all…..doesn’t it? It was all bitterness about his plot of land wasn’t it? Bloody Kulak. And an ungrateful one at that….
“Havel’s anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women’s rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.”
I’m not surprised the idiot Clark still reproduces this ‘Morning Star in denial’ garbage – but it is still slightly odd that the Guardian deems it worth of a place on their website. Isn’t it?
Update: This response from a Czech Guardian reader Anicka to the article:
Has Mr. Clark ever LIVED in Czechslovakia during Communist regime? Yes, people were employed but you couldn’t even choose where. You couldn’t choose where to live. You couldn’t travel, study and most of the time the regime even failed to secure basic goods. Have you ever tried living in a constant fear of being arrested, having your country occupied by the Red Army, live in constant fear of being arrested?
Vaclav Havel was one of few people who actually chose to stand up to the regime. Have you ever wondered why he didn’t have any children? Because he chose to fight for freedom of his country and he was fully aware that the regime would use his children to punish him. This brave man gave us freedom. He even gave me freedom to say: Please Mr. Clark shut up about things you will never understand.
And for the record Mr. Havel never supported war in Iraq. He supported the war on terrorism but he warned again and again against this war taking its toll on civilians.
Michael Ezra adds a quote from the book below:
Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes Terror Repression (Harvard University Press, 1999),p.4:
The following rough approximation… gives some sense of the scale and gravity of [Communist] crimes:
USSR, 20 million deaths
China: 65 million deaths
Vietnam: 1 million deaths
North Korea: 2 million deaths
Cambodia: 2 million deaths
Eastern Europe:1 million deaths
Latin America: 150,000 deaths
Africa: 1.7 million deaths
Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths
The international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power, about 10,000 deaths.The total approaches 100 million killed.