The New York Times just can't get enough of promoting, defending, and excusing Marxism and communism. At the paper's online blog called "The Stone" on Monday, Jason Barker, an associate professor of philosophy, celebrated the upcoming 200th anniversary of Karl Marx's birth by telling the Communist Manifesto's author: "You Were Right!"
During the 1930s, the Times carried the lies of Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Soviet Union-based reporter who claimed that the Holodomor in the Ukraine, during which millions of Ukrainians died as their farms were collectivized, wasn't happening. The paper contributed mightily to Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba by giving him credibility in America as a freedom fighter in what turned out to be an orchestrated fake-news story in 1957.
In 1998, the Times went gaga over the release of 150th anniversary edition of Marx's Communist Manifesto. Columnist Peter Lewis declared that "Karl Marx may have been right after all."
The paper spent 2017, the 100th anniversary of Russia's Communist revolution in Russia, publishing "Red Century" articles mostly defending communism's alleged good points — never mind the millions who were killed or starved (but hey, the women who survived under these oppressive regimes supposedly had better sex than their Western counterparts).
Thus, though it's offensive, it's really not much of a surprise that the Times gave space for someone prone to praise the progenitor of the social order and form of government responsible for 150 million deaths as of 12 years ago. Since then, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, mainland China, and several other countries have continued to add to the body count.
So how in the world can Jason Barker contend that Marx "was right"? Here's how:
Barker's deluded take is especially offensive because, according to the bio at the end of his Times piece, he "is an associate professor of philosophy at Kyung Hee University in South Korea." In other words, he only needs to look 35 miles to the north to see the unspeakable misery of totalitarian communism, the end result of any concerted attempt to impose a societal system following Marxist principles.
Meanwhile, the professor apparently sits in a country whose embrace of capitalism has moved its GDP per capita from levels equivalent to those seen in sub-Saharan Africa in 1960 to the top quintile of all countries in the world last year.
A review of headlines at "The Stone," which has been present at the Times since 2011, indicates that it's primarily served as a cauldron for loopy left-wingers, social justice warriors, and the perpetually aggrieved since it began seven years ago. Sample headlines from just the past six months:
- "Should I Give Up on White people?"
- "Should Chimpanzees Be Considered 'Persons'?"
- "James Bond Is a Wimp."
- "The Climate Crisis? It's Capitalism, Stupid."
Jason Barker's column is right at home with all of this nonsense.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
