Jacob Cherub writes: “Throughout history there have been repugnant dictatorships on both the left and right,” and their “repression and brutality is really no different than communist repression and brutality.” He then cites, among other examples, fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Nazi Germany, various Latin American dictators, the shah in Iran, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Ne Win in Burma and Sudan’s Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir.
This is close to constituting a perfect example of how leftist teachings pervert history and thereby distort the thinking of those who believe those teachings.
It is morally indefensible that anyone would write — after the communist genocides in China (65 million to 75 million), Ukraine (5 million to 7 million), Russia (about another 20 million to 30 million), North Korea and Cambodia — that there is no difference between communist regimes and other kinds of dictatorships.
There are two rather significant things wrong with Mr. Cherub’s list of dictators: Many are not rightists, and none came close to communism in terms of the number of people murdered and enslaved. Yet, nearly everyone on the left thinks as Mr. Cherub does, namely, that left and non-left dictatorships (they label all non-left dictatorships “right”) are morally equivalent. That is why so many on the left supported the Khomeini revolution — anything would be an improvement over the right-wing shah, the left reasoned. But, of course, what replaced the shah has led to incomparably more suffering among Iranians than under the shah — not to mention the first threat of Jewish genocide since the Holocaust.
But it’s not only about the shah that Mr. Cherub is so wrong.
While Mugabe is indeed a monster, he is no rightist. In fact, he is a self-described Marxist. And his destruction of Zimbabwe has been done entirely in the name of African solidarity and fighting white racism.
So, too, Sudan’s al-Bashir is not a rightist; he is an Islamist.
And as regards Nazism, it was neither right-wing nor left-wing (even though Nazism stood for “National Socialism”). It was sui generis, a unique racial, not rightist, doctrine.
Mr. Cherub ends his letter: “It seems Prager wants to paint anyone politically to his left as evil and comparable with Stalin and the like.”
Apparently it doesn’t matter to some people that I have written in every column concerning the left that there are good and bad people on both the right and the left. And while I am convinced that leftism has damaged Jewish life and almost everyone and everything else it has strongly influenced, I find it quite easy to distinguish between people with left-wing opinions — many of whom I know to be fine people — and leftism. I have never in my life written, said, implied or even thought that anyone politically to my left is comparable with Stalin and the like. That is a smear.
