austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

80 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
by capitalist powers to overthrow their governments (Blum, 1995),
including subversion conducted in the USSR as late as the 1980s that
the USA government admitted to in the 1990s (Chossudovsky, 1997).
These efforts at violent subversion were initially carried out mostly
by the British (before World War II) and then later more so by the
USA through the CIA, which did succeed in one case in violently overthrowing
a very democratic communist government in Chile in 1973
(Blum, 1995). If the communists had truly been as evil and dictatorial
as they are portrayed to be in the capitalist press, the peaceful revolu­
tion of 1989 in Eastern Europe (with virtually no related deaths except
in Romania) could never have occurred.
Moreover, it is fa r from clear whether the communist countries acted
more repressively against people with capitalist views than capitalist
countries have acted against communists (Schulz, 1982). Most who are
not communists are probably not aware of the harassment, economic
penalties (such as loss of a job fo r political reasons), torture, impris­
onment, and murder that even goes on in developed capitalist coun­
tries, not to mention the atrocities that occur in less developed capitalist
countries like Greece, Zaire, post- 1973 Chile, etc. (Blum, 1995). Just as
"ordinary Germans" in Hitler's Nazi Germany (i.e., those who weren't
communists or other people that Hitler hated) "had little to fe ar from
the Nazis" (Associated Press, 2000h), those who don't have communist
views are often not affected by capitalist government repression, and
so most don't feel threatened by it in any way. Nonetheless, despite
the fact that political repression by modern capitalist states does not
directly affect the majority of the population (just as Hitler's capitalist
German government directly repressed only a minority of the German
population), political repression by capitalist governments has claimed
millions of victims, such as close to a million unarmed civilians with
left-wing political views killed by a dictator put into power in Indonesia
by the CIA in 1965-66 (Griswold, 1979), as previously mentioned in
the Introduction.
In stark contrast to capitalism, there is long-term evidence from earlier
cultures such as the North American Indians that communist societies
can be very natural, free, and democratic (Novack, 1972). Some
evidence on the relative attractiveness of these societies can be found
from the fact that a large portion of white people taken prisoner by the
CHAPTER 1
Indians in the USA willingly stayed with them and refused offers to
return to the white capitalist society (Downes, 1940). Some of the initial
Spanish explorers/conquerors of the Western Hemisphere reported that
many of the Indians lived in a virtual communist paradise without shortages,
money, government, or violence (Sale, 1991). Although some of
the communist Indian tribes did engage in some limited fighting, especially
when invaded, attacked, or threatened (Churchill, 1994), there
were also many earlier communist peoples, such as the aborigines of
Australia (Reynolds, 1995) and 70% of Indian tribes (Sale, 1991 ), who
were almost completely pacifists. Even the Indian tribes that occasionally
fought other tribes did so much less ferociously than capitalist soci­
eties and were "internally more peaceful" with far less crime (Jennings,
1993).
Ancient communal societies show that violence, crime, and wars are
not innate to human nature but are instead the product of egotistical
ideologies and systems such as capitalism (Marcy, 1990). For instance,
capitalism in the USA promotes an unnatural self-centeredness that
has resulted in a long history of engaging in extermination campaigns
and other atrocities, as documented in the Introduction. In contrast,
evidence of a modem communist country that remains somewhat democratic
(despite the USA's enormous efforts to use virtually all possible
means to overthrow it) is provided by the Cuban political system.
Cuba not only allows free voting, but also has a procedure to allow fo r
the recall of elected officials (that is often used effectively in practice
against unpopular politicians), has the Cuban people themselves make
P?l�tical nominations (instead of political parties or the CIA), and prohi�Jts
candidates (or the CIA) from spending money on electoral cam­
paigns (Scheffer, 1998).
Some evidence that capitalist countries are also far more imperialistic,
militaristic, intolerant, and evil than modem communist countries has
been discussed in the Introduction. A general analysis of these issues,
especially with respect to the political repression of the capitalist superpower,
the USA, is also provided by Schulz ( 1982}, who documents
some of the terrorism carried out by the nearly one million CIA agents
worldwide that engage in scores of covert action each year to ensure
the widespread existence of capitalist governments friendly to the USA.
Further evidence is provided by Blum ( 1995}, who describes the events
81