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I just started reading this, but I want to add something immediately: It's my understanding that South Koreans are also very racist. So I'm not sure if the reg

I just started reading this, but I want to add something immediately: It's my understanding that South Koreans are also very racist. So I'm not sure if the regime is at fault for that one. ... Yeah, I dunno. It's Hitchens and he seems to be writing a sideglance apologia for Communism. (As in, "See these shrunken slaves: It's nationalism that made them this way, not Marxism.") Nothing new really. China is doing something very similar actually, and they have been replacing Communist rhetoric in schools with nationalistic rhetoric, and for them it seems to be not a problem.

jbm 17y ago
South Koreans racist? They aren't worse than the Japanese, and Japanese aren't really extremely racist (they appear so to people who never had to experience "race consciousness" in their country of origin). My experience with South Koreans is that they are generally proud of their accomplishments (rightfully so) and there is a subgroup that is abysmally ignorant. You could compare the second group to "rednecks" (and whatever the equivalent is wherever you are), except for the fact that it is much more difficult for a South Korean to travel than for a westerner. Throwing the racist epithet around in this case seems overblown.
netcan 17y ago
Hitchens is a sort of dying breed, a disillusioned communist. He takes Orwell's position: Communism and opposition to totalitarianism. Adherence to the latter led to abandonment of the former. Most of his atheist stuff boils down to hatred of totalitarianism. He is definitely not immune to bias, but I would bet the bias is hatred of the North Korean regime.
- ahi 17y ago
  And yet he drank the neoconservative koolaid. Mostly I think he is a hell of writer that just wants to be read. I'm not sure the content matters much to him.
  - netcan 17y ago
    I think content content matters to him a lot. My theory on his axis of evil theory is that it comes from the same opposition to totalitarianism and internationalism. I think he wants to believe in internationalism also. The UN (which was never intended to be a guardian of democracy, human rights or such things) was failing. It would never 'liberate' Iraqi, Afghanis, Burmese, North Koreans or anyone else. So, he turns to the US for this job with, I think, the hope that this will eventually result in a paradigm shift empowering internationalism in general. Remember that he comes from a very internationalist socialist "heritage." Afganistan and Iraq were (and still are) oppressive totalitarian regimes where the individual's mind was being invaded. He supports liberation. Iraqis largely see the coalition as occupiers, not liberators (apart from the Kurds who never saw themselves as part of Saddam's Iraq) regardless of their views of the previous regime. Accepting that Iraq was not in fact liberated is accepting that liberation is not possible. His solidarity is delusional. That's got to be a bitter pill for someone like Hitchens. The thought of North Koreans rejecting liberation from their regime to Hitchens is like the thought of an American slave rejecting abolition to some lingering flag bearer of the Black Panthers, like Hatians begging for the return of the French.
  - adelevie 17y ago
    He's an awesome writer with a knack for argumentation. He's also rare in that he boasts of the merits of Western liberal democracy yet is mostly scornful of the Right. He doesn't let bastardized concepts of multiculturalism force him to tolerate flagrant intolerance.
rw 17y ago
Definitions, definitions, definitions. North Korea claimed to be communist, but it is totalitarian. China claims to be a republic, but it is totalitarian.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  Oh come on. China is not totalitarian and has not been for decades. It is authoritarian at most, and considering the effective one-party nature of most long-lasting "democratic" states these days, I'm not even sure that word means anything anymore. It is impossible for non-establishment actors to organise politically in most big countries and the only difference is the fertility of the grounds for political unrest, and the mechanism by which opposition is put down. Mostly-competent entrenched ruling class (with token democracy) vs. mostly-competent entrenched ruling class (without the token democracy). That's what we're looking at here, and quite honestly, I am not sure that the periodic input of a disinterested and politically naive bunch of voters is all it's cracked up to be.
patio11 17y ago
The difference between China's democides/labor camps/external aggression and North Korea's democides/labor camps/external aggression is largely that China got rich doing it and North Korea got poor. (Well, "rich", at any rate. About 10% of China is a fast growing dynamic economy which has eventual aspirations of being a world power -- and the other 90% lives in grinding poverty.) Anyhow, since China is rich, it is considered sort of impolite to say "China, please stop committing genocide" or "Hey, China, working people to death in your laogai camps is sort of uncool." (This is sort of related to how it was tres gauche to mention that Soviet Russia was a brutal, genocidal dictatorship and how a huge portion of the American and European intelligensia supported that model and wanted it for their own countries. Which is itself related to it earlier being quite undiplomatic to talk about what the Austrian chap was doing in addition to his economic reforms.) Be that as it may, reluctance to confront evil in China should not lead to reluctance to confront evil in North Korea.
- maxklein 17y ago
  That's a very japanese point of view you have there. Why does nobody speak of the exploitation of china (nanjing massacre, etc) as part of what made Japan rich.
  - patio11 17y ago
    People do discuss Japanese wartime atrocities. Frequently. It would have been a bad example for the above post, though, because people actually opposed Japan's conduct in Manchuria contemporaneously (whereas China's conduct in the status quo, the Soviet Union's conduct for its entire existence, and the first few years of German fascism were/are dealt with limp-wristedly when they were not actively applauded). For example, the United States hit Japan with a steel/oil embargo after Japanese refused to withdraw from Manchuria, which was the proximate cause of Japan deciding to go to war with the United States. (Funny little historical note: the US didn't actually intend the embargo to be a total embargo. When it was conceived in Washington it was as a temporary cutback to force Japan to the negotiating table. A minor bureaucrat misfiled something, though, and the planned periodic review never happened, which turned it into a total embargo. "Whoops.") As an aside, essentially none of Japan's present economic prosperity is owed to wealth stolen from China. Most of that got very comprehensively burned, along with the rest of the country. Japan was pretty desperately poor postwar prior to the US' Korean war buildup, which they largely sourced in Japan, re-laying the industrial base which ignited the Period of High Economic Growth (高度成長期) that brought Japan from "substantially poorer than Mexico" to "really freaking rich". Apologies for the lecture.

jbm 17y ago

South Koreans racist? They aren't worse than the Japanese, and Japanese aren't really extremely racist (they appear so to people who never had to experience "race consciousness" in their country of origin). My experience with South Koreans is that they are generally proud of their accomplishments (rightfully so) and there is a subgroup that is abysmally ignorant. You could compare the second group to "rednecks" (and whatever the equivalent is wherever you are), except for the fact that it is much more difficult for a South Korean to travel than for a westerner. Throwing the racist epithet around in this case seems overblown.

netcan 17y ago

Hitchens is a sort of dying breed, a disillusioned communist. He takes Orwell's position: Communism and opposition to totalitarianism. Adherence to the latter led to abandonment of the former. Most of his atheist stuff boils down to hatred of totalitarianism. He is definitely not immune to bias, but I would bet the bias is hatred of the North Korean regime.

ahi 17y ago
And yet he drank the neoconservative koolaid. Mostly I think he is a hell of writer that just wants to be read. I'm not sure the content matters much to him.
- netcan 17y ago
  I think content content matters to him a lot. My theory on his axis of evil theory is that it comes from the same opposition to totalitarianism and internationalism. I think he wants to believe in internationalism also. The UN (which was never intended to be a guardian of democracy, human rights or such things) was failing. It would never 'liberate' Iraqi, Afghanis, Burmese, North Koreans or anyone else. So, he turns to the US for this job with, I think, the hope that this will eventually result in a paradigm shift empowering internationalism in general. Remember that he comes from a very internationalist socialist "heritage." Afganistan and Iraq were (and still are) oppressive totalitarian regimes where the individual's mind was being invaded. He supports liberation. Iraqis largely see the coalition as occupiers, not liberators (apart from the Kurds who never saw themselves as part of Saddam's Iraq) regardless of their views of the previous regime. Accepting that Iraq was not in fact liberated is accepting that liberation is not possible. His solidarity is delusional. That's got to be a bitter pill for someone like Hitchens. The thought of North Koreans rejecting liberation from their regime to Hitchens is like the thought of an American slave rejecting abolition to some lingering flag bearer of the Black Panthers, like Hatians begging for the return of the French.
- adelevie 17y ago
  He's an awesome writer with a knack for argumentation. He's also rare in that he boasts of the merits of Western liberal democracy yet is mostly scornful of the Right. He doesn't let bastardized concepts of multiculturalism force him to tolerate flagrant intolerance.

rw 17y ago

Definitions, definitions, definitions. North Korea claimed to be communist, but it is totalitarian. China claims to be a republic, but it is totalitarian.

sailormoon 17y ago
Oh come on. China is not totalitarian and has not been for decades. It is authoritarian at most, and considering the effective one-party nature of most long-lasting "democratic" states these days, I'm not even sure that word means anything anymore. It is impossible for non-establishment actors to organise politically in most big countries and the only difference is the fertility of the grounds for political unrest, and the mechanism by which opposition is put down. Mostly-competent entrenched ruling class (with token democracy) vs. mostly-competent entrenched ruling class (without the token democracy). That's what we're looking at here, and quite honestly, I am not sure that the periodic input of a disinterested and politically naive bunch of voters is all it's cracked up to be.

patio11 17y ago

The difference between China's democides/labor camps/external aggression and North Korea's democides/labor camps/external aggression is largely that China got rich doing it and North Korea got poor. (Well, "rich", at any rate. About 10% of China is a fast growing dynamic economy which has eventual aspirations of being a world power -- and the other 90% lives in grinding poverty.) Anyhow, since China is rich, it is considered sort of impolite to say "China, please stop committing genocide" or "Hey, China, working people to death in your laogai camps is sort of uncool." (This is sort of related to how it was tres gauche to mention that Soviet Russia was a brutal, genocidal dictatorship and how a huge portion of the American and European intelligensia supported that model and wanted it for their own countries. Which is itself related to it earlier being quite undiplomatic to talk about what the Austrian chap was doing in addition to his economic reforms.) Be that as it may, reluctance to confront evil in China should not lead to reluctance to confront evil in North Korea.

maxklein 17y ago
That's a very japanese point of view you have there. Why does nobody speak of the exploitation of china (nanjing massacre, etc) as part of what made Japan rich.
- patio11 17y ago
  People do discuss Japanese wartime atrocities. Frequently. It would have been a bad example for the above post, though, because people actually opposed Japan's conduct in Manchuria contemporaneously (whereas China's conduct in the status quo, the Soviet Union's conduct for its entire existence, and the first few years of German fascism were/are dealt with limp-wristedly when they were not actively applauded). For example, the United States hit Japan with a steel/oil embargo after Japanese refused to withdraw from Manchuria, which was the proximate cause of Japan deciding to go to war with the United States. (Funny little historical note: the US didn't actually intend the embargo to be a total embargo. When it was conceived in Washington it was as a temporary cutback to force Japan to the negotiating table. A minor bureaucrat misfiled something, though, and the planned periodic review never happened, which turned it into a total embargo. "Whoops.") As an aside, essentially none of Japan's present economic prosperity is owed to wealth stolen from China. Most of that got very comprehensively burned, along with the rest of the country. Japan was pretty desperately poor postwar prior to the US' Korean war buildup, which they largely sourced in Japan, re-laying the industrial base which ignited the Period of High Economic Growth (高度成長期) that brought Japan from "substantially poorer than Mexico" to "really freaking rich". Apologies for the lecture.