One bastard versus another bastard!

When Bret Stephens wrote his first column for the NY Times, there were protests online.  A few wrote about canceling their subscriptions altogether.  If you need a refresher about that episode, click here to read his first column.

Today, he showed yet again that he knows how to pick and choose in order to advance his argument.  First, what was his column about?  To some extent, Stephens has a legitimate point, like with this one:

Do the same people who rightly demand the removal of Confederate statues ever feel even a shiver of inner revulsion at hipsters in Lenin or Mao T-shirts?

I have written about this, too.  (What have I not blogged about, eh!)  In this post, for instance, I wrote:

Che's use of violence to achieve his version of utopia is no different from how Osama bin Laden didn't find anything wrong in killing civilians. Yet, while no rational person would walk around wearing an Osama t-shirt, thousands all across the world, including here in the US, think it is cool to wear a Che t-shirt. ...
I wish the world would stop applauding Che and making a saint out of this killer and, instead, remember him for what he was

Che was a secular jihadist.

And when Fidel Castro died, the title of my post says it all: Ding dong. The dictator is dead!

So, yes, I agree with Stephens that we should denounce Lenin and Mao and Castro, with as much loudness as we demand the removal of confederate monuments.

But then, Stephens resorts to quoting the big time empire-building white supremacist bastard, winston churchill.

Oh please, churchill was not all that better than Castro.  churchill was the guy who intentionally let millions of people in Bengal die.  churchill was a passionate defender of the British right to rule over the brown-skinned even when there were plenty around him who were increasingly uncomfortable with the brutal colonization.  churchill's rhetoric was all about saving the white skin; the browns be damned!  He openly said things like this:

I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

As Shashi Tharoor says, churchill has as much blood on his hand as hitler does.  I wish people would stop making a saint out of churchill.  Fuck churchill!

Let's not cherry pick our way through; instead, let's be honest and admit that evil comes in all flavors--not merely the communist type.