It Hurts Doesn't it Palin Supporters?

I hope most of you reading this by now have heard of the new book that just came out called The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin.

In this book the author makes claims that Sarah Palin had an affair with a business partner of her husband. Apparently she also did cocaine with her husband(1). Blowing her image wide open to criticism.

Of course the Palinites have gone to extreme lengths to denounce this book as lies and just general misinformation.

Her own husband (probably in denial) came out calling the author a liar and "This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife,"(2)

I just want to ask the republicans and Palin supporters one question: How does it feel?

As Maoist we know how it feels to have someone release a book about some one who inspires us, and that book is full of lies. The book "the private life of Mao Zedong" was written by a Dr who claimed to be Mao physician yet no evidence exist that points out that this Li Zhisui ever even met the red sun. Let alone this is a second release of this book. His first edition didn't sell. But when he added bad things about Mao it started selling like crazy among capitalist nations. I think he even apologized to Mao's family for the lies he put in this book to sell it.

The book: "Mao the untold story." is another case where people quote untrue things from this book to me all the time. Academic experts have criticized the book for its falsifications of interviews and selective sources. Professor Andrew Nathan of Columbia University said of the books sources: "many of their discoveries come from sources that cannot be checked, others are openly speculative or are based on circumstantial evidence, and some are untrue." David S. G. Goodman, Professor of Contemporary China Studies at the University of technology, Sydney said of the book: "the 'facts' in The Da Vinci Code are about as reliable as those to be found in...Mao: The Unknown Story." Goodman argued that the style of writing was "extremely polemic" and that the book could even be thought of as a "form of fiction" where "a strong narrative" is "a substitute for evidence and argument." And many other criticisms were made of the book's facts, even by people's who studies are specific to modern China.

And what were the writers response to these criticisms? "the academics' views on Mao and Chinese history cited represent received wisdom of which we were well aware while writing our biography of Mao. We came to our own conclusions and interpretations of events through a decade's research." Wow, this is suppose to be a research/history book of a leader of China and the writers say themselves the cited 'RECEIVED WISDOM' and what takes the cake here in what is suppose to be a book on history, there for a non-fiction they say "WE CAME TO OUR OWN CONCLUSIONS" How was this book ever printed in the first place? Even worst: "we came to our own conclusions AND INTERPRETATIONS OF EVENTS"(3) I'm sure most people who would read this has had to write a research or argument paper at some point in their life. Never has a teacher in the history of ever allowed a student to cite their own conclusions and interpretations of events as evidence. A conclusion is the only place a student would be allowed to use this. So as writers of a research/history book it is completely unacceptable for this to happen.

But yet I still have these books quote to me all the time to point out the horribleness of Mao's personal life. At least now there is a book I can use to quote from to attack republicans on their hero's personal life. So I ask: How does it feel?


(1) "Sarah Palin: Bio Says She indulged in Sex and Drugs Husband says Biographer Has 'Creepy Obsession'". Montreal Gazette. AFP. September 16 2011. Web. September 16 2011. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Sarah+Palin+says+indulged+drugs/5410793/story.html

(2) Philip Elliott. "Palin Camp Denounces Racy Bio of Former Governor. Yahoo. AP. September 15 2011. Web. September 15 2011. http://news.yahoo.com/palin-camp-denounces-racy-bio-former-governor-162709708.html

(3) (all quotes take from wiki page for easier access to reader) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story#Criticism

Scare tactics

Nazi's Are Not Socialist

First lets start with the biggest myth associated with socialism. The biggest scare tactic is associating the German Nazi party with communism or socialism. Firstly in socialism all the people equally benefit from working as a whole. Instead of producing goods for profit the goods are created for the society use as a whole. Workers rights are put before that of the rich and ruling classes. Socialism attempts to destroy the ruling class and replace capitalism with a workers democracy.

National Socialism is only socialism for the national majority or in the Nazi's case, socialism only for white non-jewish Germans. But they benefited from the oppression and exploitation of the minorities. As anyone who cares to read up on history, the communist and social democrats were the first people thrown into the death camps or were just taken out into the country side and shot. The National Socialist party was actually more accurately described a fascist party. Fascism has been described by many people as corporatist jingoism (extreme and aggressive patriotism/right-wing-racist nationalism).

In Nazi Germany the unions were destroyed and profit for the ruling class and their factory owning friends was the number one priority. The only reason some Jewish men/woman lived through the Holocaust is they were a source of free labor.

All socialist/communist parties are staunchly anti-fascist and in most cases join forces with anarchist all the way to liberals to combat fascism. The two ideologies could not be more different.

Wrongful Name Association

One of the next biggest scare tactics against socialist is name association. As a socialist Ive been called many things in my life. It never fails for people to drop one name to trying when trying to discredit socialism; Stalin. I have personally been called a Stalinist so many times I have lost count.

Let me start by saying this; the word Stalinism has no base. Mao, Marx and Lenin, all of these people contributed something to the ideology of their respective forms of communism. For example Mao created "people protracted war" (and many other ideas) and there for Maoism is distinct from other forms of specific socialism. Stalin (unlike Mao/Lenin/Marx) contributed no advancement of socialist ideology. Thus the word Stalinist/Stalinism is just a scare tactic used to scare people away from socialism and has no base or meaning what so ever.

Communism is "Un-democratic"

First lets explain that un-like the popular opinion in the US, there is more than one form of "democracy". The US uses bourgeois democracy, meaning that the candidate with the highest funding mostly wins the election. In the US "democracy", party candidates are nominated by the parties after paying a sum of money, then voters get to pick from them in the primaries.

In socialism countries run on democratic centralism people are nominated by other people at the local level. Then after this they will run in a popular vote at the local/state or national elections depending on what they are nominated for. This is commonly called a workers democracy. In democratic centralism everyone votes as individuals but acts as one. This also keeps the citizens of said country involved in their government but this system also has problems but I will touch on that in a later post. The idea that communism is un-democratic is a truthful as saying Iraq still has WMD.

Socialism is an idea of peace, love for your brothers and sisters, community, equal rights, anti-oppression, anti-imperialism, and is all about giving the power to the majority, power to the people!

By: Dusty Slagle