I wonder how Freud's early reflections in 'Totem and Taboo' would have been effected by living so close to actual indigenous people
Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
31–40 of 61 posts
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nothing ingenious or intellectually redeeming about using brutality and deceit to gain power. That's all people like Adolf Hitler and Leon Trotsky did. They betrayed humanity and the culture of humanitarianism that had been built up for millenia before them to gain an advantage. Mass murderers who traded the moral foundations of their civilization for tactical and strategic advantage are intellectual midgets…
so napoleon wasn't ingenious either? what about sun tzu's art of war? does it have zero ingenuity too?
My knowledge of history is too limited to comment on either. If Napoleon was more brutal than his contemporaries, then no, he wasn't ingenious, just dishonorable.
Trotsky and his fellow Soviet revolutionaries were proud of mass murder, making them far more depraved than their peers and predecessors in Russia. The term "Red Terror" is not some term used by his opponents to cast him in a bad light. It was a term Trotsky used, to describe the murderous purges his government carried out. He advocated for the eradication of an entire class of people. He was one of the progenitors of the hell on Earth that were the territories under the totalitarian Soviet state.
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#33The attempted tongue-in-cheek close is a bit of a letdown for an otherwise-interesting collection of trivia about Mexico and the Anschluss.
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#34Calling Trotsky an intellectual is pretty macabre. The man personally ordered the execution of numerous prisoners of war and civilians. He was a major advocate of the "Red Terror", which introduced new levels of brutality to Soviet political culture that set norms for decades to come. His intellectualism consisted of little more than inflammatory classist conspiracy theories, hate propaganda against the properties cl…
It's true that the Red Terror was brutal.
What is less obviously true is the newness. It happened in the revolution directly following Russia's collapse in the First World War; a time of food shortages and massive, unnecessary casualties there as a result of incompetent and careless leadership. If they had learned brutality, they had learned it from the Tsar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
arguably the russian revolution would have failed without trotsky's ingenious tactics
There is nothing ingenious or intellectually redeeming about using brutality and deceit to gain power. That's all people like Adolf Hitler and Leon Trotsky did. They betrayed humanity and the culture of humanitarianism that had been built up for millenia before them to gain an advantage. Mass murderers who traded the moral foundations of their civilization for tactical and strategic advantage are intellectual midgets…
"Culture of humanitarianism" is not a good description of Tsarist Russia. No, the problem with Trotsky et al is the extreme brutality in the name of liberation.
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
so napoleon wasn't ingenious either? what about sun tzu's art of war? does it have zero ingenuity too?
The Art Of War emphasised winning without fighting wherever possible. So not really comparable.
One of the more well-known stories about Sun Tzu, taken from Sima Qian, illustrates Sun Tzu's temperament as follows: Before hiring Sun Tzu, the King of Wu tested Sun Tzu's skills by commanding him to train a harem of 360 concubines into soldiers. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies, appointing the two concubines most favored by the king as the company commanders. When Sun Tzu first ordered the concubines to face right, they giggled. In response, Sun Tzu said that the general, in this case himself, was responsible for ensuring that soldiers understood the commands given to them. Then, he reiterated the command, and again the concubines giggled. Sun Tzu then ordered the execution of the king's two favored concubines, to the king's protests. He explained that if the general's soldiers understood their commands but did not obey, it was the fault of the officers. Sun Tzu also said that, once a general was appointed, it was his duty to carry out his mission, even if the king protested. After both concubines were killed, new officers were chosen to replace them. Afterwards, both companies, now well aware of the costs of further frivolity, performed their maneuvers flawlessly.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu
In longer form:
https://titusng.com/2013/03/04/the-test-of-sun-tzus-art-of-w...
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#37Calling Trotsky an intellectual is pretty macabre. The man personally ordered the execution of numerous prisoners of war and civilians. He was a major advocate of the "Red Terror", which introduced new levels of brutality to Soviet political culture that set norms for decades to come. His intellectualism consisted of little more than inflammatory classist conspiracy theories, hate propaganda against the properties cl…
It's true that the Red Terror was brutal. What is less obviously true is the newness. It happened in the revolution directly following Russia's collapse in the First World War; a time of food shortages and massive, unnecessary casualties there as a result of incompetent and careless leadership. If they had learned brutality, they had learned it from the Tsar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana
The Russian Civil War (Where the new government was, in fact, surrounded by enemies on all sides, many of them receiving foreign support) was a more relevant formative experience for the policies of the Bolsheviks.
Once their actual enemies were dealt with, they, of course, spent the next three decades finding largely (but not entirely) imagined ones. The Russian Civil War 'ended' in 1922, but died with Stalin, in 1953.
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#38Calling Trotsky an intellectual is pretty macabre. The man personally ordered the execution of numerous prisoners of war and civilians. He was a major advocate of the "Red Terror", which introduced new levels of brutality to Soviet political culture that set norms for decades to come. His intellectualism consisted of little more than inflammatory classist conspiracy theories, hate propaganda against the properties cl…
It's true that the Red Terror was brutal. What is less obviously true is the newness. It happened in the revolution directly following Russia's collapse in the First World War; a time of food shortages and massive, unnecessary casualties there as a result of incompetent and careless leadership. If they had learned brutality, they had learned it from the Tsar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana
This doesn’t give the Communists anywhere near enough credit for their own depravity or the energy and vigor they put into the suffering of their enemies. I do not recall the Tsarist regime using rape (in order of seniority) as a weapon of terror, or pouring molten lead down the throats of anyone like the Communists did to priests, or rolling Tsarist officers down hills in barrels studded with nails on the inside.
The Communists made the Tsarist regime look like rank amateurs in terror, they weren’t even trying in comparison
Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis
#39Calling Trotsky an intellectual is pretty macabre. The man personally ordered the execution of numerous prisoners of war and civilians. He was a major advocate of the "Red Terror", which introduced new levels of brutality to Soviet political culture that set norms for decades to come. His intellectualism consisted of little more than inflammatory classist conspiracy theories, hate propaganda against the properties cl…
It's true that the Red Terror was brutal. What is less obviously true is the newness. It happened in the revolution directly following Russia's collapse in the First World War; a time of food shortages and massive, unnecessary casualties there as a result of incompetent and careless leadership. If they had learned brutality, they had learned it from the Tsar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana
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