Thankful this essay mentions it takes seriously "The Black Book of Communism" in the first section. Saved me the effort of reading through Merel's empty sophistry about "subjectivism"
Quite impressive how off the mark one can be, not seeing that it is simply part of a list of prominent 90s anti-communist books. I personally don't really care about the Black Book; this Mérel quote a few paragraphes into the article sums up the issue with this kind of literature: "The practical failure revealed by the application of a doctrine (endemic poverty, gulags, etc.) does not necessarily induce a pragmatic abandon of said doctrine from its defenders at all. It only does so if that failure gives birth to a revision of the subjective reasons that disposed them to embrace this doctrine."
Might as well say "The practical failure revealed by the application of a doctrine (allied occupation, war reparations, German territorial losses) does not necessarily induce a pragmatic abandon of said doctrine from its defenders at all." How can you say these are not empty words?
Your words are empty too, you don't even try to understand the author's point. The Black Book represents prevalent (liberal) anticommunist rhetorics, presenting a doctrine as false if it "fails" or produces fruits deemed too horrible, so it is mentioned (among other works) as representative of this kind of lazy rhetorics.
Thankful this essay mentions it takes seriously "The Black Book of Communism" in the first section. Saved me the effort of reading through Merel's empty sophistry about "subjectivism"
Quite impressive how off the mark one can be, not seeing that it is simply part of a list of prominent 90s anti-communist books. I personally don't really care about the Black Book; this Mérel quote a few paragraphes into the article sums up the issue with this kind of literature: "The practical failure revealed by the application of a doctrine (endemic poverty, gulags, etc.) does not necessarily induce a pragmatic abandon of said doctrine from its defenders at all. It only does so if that failure gives birth to a revision of the subjective reasons that disposed them to embrace this doctrine."
Might as well say "The practical failure revealed by the application of a doctrine (allied occupation, war reparations, German territorial losses) does not necessarily induce a pragmatic abandon of said doctrine from its defenders at all." How can you say these are not empty words?
Your words are empty too, you don't even try to understand the author's point. The Black Book represents prevalent (liberal) anticommunist rhetorics, presenting a doctrine as false if it "fails" or produces fruits deemed too horrible, so it is mentioned (among other works) as representative of this kind of lazy rhetorics.