Bengal Famine Makes It into the Washington Post

Published at 08:53 on 11 March 2018

That happened in this article, whose account of the famine basically jibes with my own understanding of it.

The Bengal Famine is a historical fact, one of many which make the imperialism of the capitalist nations far less distinct from the imperialism of the Soviet world when it comes to ghastly acts of oppression and mass murder than many believe it to be. This tends to be inconvenient for many capitalism fans, who find it useful to use the USSR’s many crimes as a brush to tar all of socialism with. Typically this is done by pointing out things like the Holodomor, the implicit point being that at least the capitalist West didn’t create famines for reasons of political expediency.

Well, sorry, but the capitalist West did. It’s just that the subset of history which most get taught leaves the ruling class’s own side’s greatest crimes out of the picture.

And yes, of course, Churchill indeed did a great good by fighting the Nazis—but then again, so did Stalin. Fighting Nazis shouldn’t be a blank check that gets one excused from all one’s crimes.

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