{"id":17323,"date":"2012-10-14T11:25:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-14T16:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17323"},"modified":"2012-10-14T11:25:59","modified_gmt":"2012-10-14T16:25:59","slug":"imagine-if-eric-hobsbawm-had-been-a-nazi-apologist-rather-than-a-communist-apologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/14\/imagine-if-eric-hobsbawm-had-been-a-nazi-apologist-rather-than-a-communist-apologist\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagine if Eric Hobsbawm had been a Nazi apologist rather than a Communist apologist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bostonglobe.com\/opinion\/2012\/10\/13\/true-moral-giant-and-dogmatic-leftist-creep\/jlnwDU6jUSpm8O8ZeBRnzK\/story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Jeff Jacoby<\/a> in the <em>Boston Globe<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hobsbawm [&#8230;] was a lifelong Marxist, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party from his teens until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Long after it was evident to even true believers that the Bolshevik Revolution had unleashed a nightmare of blood, Hobsbawm went on defending, minimizing, and excusing the crimes of communism.<\/p>\n<p>Interviewed on the BBC in 1994, he was asked whether he would have shunned the Communist Party had he known in 1934 that Stalin was butchering innocent human beings by the millions. \u201cProbably not,\u201d he answered \u2014 after all, at the time he believed he was signing up for world revolution. Taken aback by such indifference to carnage, the interviewer pressed the point. Was Hobsbawm saying that if a communist paradise had actually been created, \u201cthe loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?\u201d Hobsbawm\u2019s answer: \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Imagine that Hobsbawm had fallen in love with Nazism as a youth and spent the rest of his career whitewashing Hitler\u2019s atrocities. Suppose he\u2019d refused for decades to let his Nazi Party membership lapse, and argued that the Holocaust would have been an acceptable price to pay for the realization of a true Thousand-Year Reich. It is inconceivable that he would have been hailed as a brilliant thinker or basked in acclaim; no self-respecting university would have hired him to teach; politicians and pundits would not have lined up to shower him with accolades during his life and tributes after his death.<\/p>\n<p>Yet Hobsbawm was fawned over, lionized in the media, made a tenured professor at a prestigious university, invited to lecture around the world. He was heaped with glories, including the Order of the Companions of Honour \u2014 one of Britain\u2019s highest civilian awards \u2014 and the lucrative Balzan Prize, worth 1 million Swiss francs. His death was given huge play in the British media \u2014 the BBC aired an hour-long tribute and the <em>Guardian<\/em> led its front page with the news \u2014 and political leaders waxed fulsome. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair called him \u201ca giant \u2026 a tireless agitator for a better world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe: Hobsbawm [&#8230;] was a lifelong Marxist, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party from his teens until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Long after it was evident to even true believers that the Bolshevik Revolution had unleashed a nightmare of blood, Hobsbawm went on defending, minimizing, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,62,7,28],"tags":[780,506,433,764],"class_list":["post-17323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-europe","category-history","category-media","tag-communism","tag-revolution","tag-sovietunion","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4vp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17324,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17323\/revisions\/17324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}