…and some of you gung-ho military meatheads won’t like this one bit. But imagine a film that actually shows the human side of evil “godless” communism.
We have an alternative theatre in our area that shows a lot of foreign films, documentaries, etc instead of the usual Hollywood blockbuster junk.
Went last night to see “The Motorcyle Diaries”. An absolutely excellent film about the early years of Che Guevara, long before he was murdered in Bolivia by the CIA. Ernesto Guevara, then a young medical student and his best friend Alberto Granado head out in 1951 to travel South America on a clapped out old Norton motorcycle. They have some wild adventures but the poverty and descrepency in wealth that Guevara sees starts him on his road a communist revolutionary that as we all know, eventually took him to Cuba.
You may not agree with his political views and I’m no commie either, but it is a excellent movie about an interesting man. It was in Spanish with English sub titles. Well recommended.
In December, 1951 a young medical student and a biochemist from
Argentina set off on road trip across South America traveling on
a rickety 1939 Norton 500. The record of their trip may have
disappeared into the ether if one of the riders departing on
that fateful day hadn’t been the future insurrectionary
figurehead of the Cuban revolution Ernesto “Che” Guevara (played
by Gael Garcia Bernal). The young Che’s companion on the trip
was his best friend, Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna), with
their simple goals being to enjoy themselves and meet some girls
along the way. Although the bike breaks down on the course of
their eight-month journey, they press onward, hitching rides
along the way. As they begin to see a different Latin America in
the people they meet on the road, the diverse geography they
encounter begins to reflect their own shifting perspectives.
When they arrive at a leper colony deep in the Peruvian Amazon,
the two begin to question the value of progress as defined by
economic systems that leave so many people beyond their reach.
Nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language
Film and based on the books “The Motorcycle Diaries” (by
Guevara) and “Travelling With Che Guevara” (by Granado),
director Walter Salles (Central Station) pulls some highly
accomplished performances from his two leads. The South American
landscape is breathtakingly captured on camera, with Salles
vividly reproducing a continent beleaguered by poverty and
disease, but containing a population in possession of an
unshakeable sense of optimism as personified by Guevara and
Granado.
**But imagine a film that actually shows the human side of evil “godless” communism. **
Why the quotes around “godless”? And why the cracks at right wing/Republican/gung ho military types? It’s too hard to restrain yourself and just say it’s a good movie about an interesting man?
I know that your politics run very socialist left - and that’s OK, I’m not bashing you for it. I have never gone political on this forum but if you are going to post something so pro Che (and saying Che was just a doctor who rode motorcycles is like saying Hitler was a vegetarian who was concerned with high unemployment) then please take the time to read this link:
Yes, it is from a conservative website but that doesn’t (or in my mind shouldn’t) invalidate all of the content on it. Che was a butal murderer, and there are still many people alive today whose parents were executed by Che personally for dissagreeing with his politics. As I understand history, artists and homosexuals were the first group that he targeted. It bothers me to no end to see kids wearing Che shirts. My first response to it is revulsion, followed by pity.
Don’t know much about him, but I heard him talk on the radio once and thought he had some interesting things to say.
It’s odd that the word “communism” is so demonized. It would seem to be all about “community”, not the devil or some voodoo magick party. I really don’t know much about it though.
If Russia had “won” the cold-war, would they be justified in spreading communism the way the US is spreading democracy?
"If Russia had “won” the cold-war, would they be justified in spreading communism the way the US is spreading democracy? "
It’s not quite the same because Communism depends as an ideology on the eventual worldwide spread of itself. Democracy doesn’t depend on it’s own spread to survive as a theory. While communism said that it had to spread through the classes, democracy is about free choice so if someone chooses something else, that’s technically ok. Now, whether or not we’re practicing that kind of democracy may be up for debate.
Also, Cerveloguy ought to hold off characterizing military types as meatheads, or assuming he knwos what we will like or not like.
It’s odd that the word “communism” is so demonized.
It isn’t odd at all. Communism is an unjust, oppressive, evil ideology. The nations that have been afflicted with it have suffered under some of the worst regimes known to man.
Well, this is news. Hollywood makes a movie that promotes a Communist without bothering to mention all of those that he killed. After all, Che meant well while he was killing people. For longer than I have been alive, Fidel Castro has been imprisoning, torturing and murdering other Cubans because they want to be able to speak their mind or vote. And, he really has it out for the black Cubans. But, Cuba has free health care, so it’s all worth while, right?
It’s odd that the word “communism” is so demonized. It would seem to be all about “community”, not the devil or some voodoo magick party. I really don’t know much about it though. I really don’t see how you can believe that trying to spread democray, which allows people to live free, is the moral equivalent of enslaving them to totalitarian governments. But, perhaps you don’t know that: Stalin killed about 20,000,000 through famine and his gulags. Mao killed more than 50,000,000 through the Cultural Revolution and similar methods. Pol Pot only killed 2,000,000 Cambodians, but you have to give him some extra points for effort here because he only had 7,000,000 to work with. The North Vietnamese killed 1,000,000 after 1975. No one really knows how many have died and are still dying in North Korea. Compare this with “only” 55,000,000 or so killed through the combined efforts of all the militaries in World War II. If you would like to learn more, try reading this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674076087/qid=1105107222/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-3857954-4637716
Communism is not evil. It just doesn’t work. As usual Vitus, your ideology is getting in the way. Communism isn’t oppresive as an ideology, it is just very susceptible to being used poorly by bad men to oppress the masses.
It’s odd that the word “communism” is so demonized. It would seem to be all about “community”, not the devil or some voodoo magick party. I really don’t know much about it though. I really don’t see how you can believe that trying to spread democray, which allows people to live free, is the moral equivalent of enslaving them to totalitarian governments. But, perhaps you don’t know that: Stalin killed about 20,000,000 through famine and his gulags. Mao killed more than 50,000,000 through the Cultural Revolution and similar methods. Pol Pot only killed 2,000,000 Cambodians, but you have to give him some extra points for effort here because he only had 7,000,000 to work with. The North Vietnamese killed 1,000,000 after 1975. No one really knows how many have died and are still dying in North Korea. Compare this with “only” 55,000,000 or so killed through the combined efforts of all the militaries in World War II. If you would like to learn more, try reading this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674076087/qid=1105107222/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-3857954-4637716
Easy tiger. You are projecting something on to me that I wasn’t ever intending. What I said, or at least was intending to say, was that the word communism LOOKS a lot like the word community, and community isn’t such a bad thing. Pretty simple. I wasn’t trying to equate democracy with communism when asking if communism would spread if Russia had “won” the cold-war.
As for allowing people to “live free”, that may be a bit of a stretch. Among other things, the Democratic and Republican parties wouldn’t even allow a single third-party candidate into the major televised “debates”, which were really bullshit Q&A’s where Bush and Kerry never even debated one another. As well, I believe the US is currently pushing to be able to legally hold people in detention for life without trial or any concrete evidence of wrongdoing. How does one “live free” in a society where there are more man-made written laws than could ever be read and understood in one’s lifetime?
I don’t mind showing my ignorance so I’ll ask. How can a system in which everything belongs to the state NOT be used by those in control to oppress the masses? I would say that not being able to benefit from my own efforts is a definition of oppression.
I don’t mind showing my ignorance so I’ll ask. How can a system in which everything belongs to the state NOT be used by those in control to oppress the masses? I would say that not being able to benefit from my own efforts is a definition of oppression.
I think you need the people “in control” to be functioning from a point of agape love for the masses. Clearly that has yet to be the case with communism.
Yes, communism is evil. At its best, it robs the individual of the just fruits of his labor. At its worst, it enslaves the will, spirit, and independence of the people through subordination to the state. Our system is a system of government by, for, and of the people–not vice versa.
“I would say that not being able to benefit from my own efforts is a definition of oppression.”
That’s a very capitalistic way of looking at it, and that’s fine if your idea of freedom is the ability to personally prosper from your work. However, if your idea of good society is one in which the whole society prospers from the efforts of it’s members, then communism isn’t oppressive. Communism isn’t supposed to have a state in control of the resources. Communism is about communal holding of assets and property which are distributed for the common good. It’s about not having economic classes, so that there are no rich or poor people because they all share. Now, what the Soviets practiced is not actual communism as the theory really goes, just like what we practice isn’t really democracy, but rather democratic republicanism. I don’t think communism would ever actually work, partially because people just aren’t willing to share everything and abandon the chance to become richer than their neighbors, and that’s how you get those guys controlling everything in a Politburo or the like.
