This day in 1940...

so what do you think trotsky's personality was all about so nice he was a murderer? so nasty that he was kinda sweet?

either way i'm guessing he wasn't really a communist. i dunno why it's just that he did try a 'don't make marx too lefty' speech early 20th century and that makes him willing to make stupid metaphorical statements. i could find the quote i dunno.

Only if its for the same reasons mate...

Otherwise I'd surely logically have to line up with George Galloway when Bush dies of stupid.

Trotsky was killed because the bourgeoisie, including Stalin, feared that the second imperialist world war would give rise to a new 1917. Rightly or wrongly,Trotsky was still seen as a symbol of international revolution. So even if you don't think Trotsky was still part of the workers' movement in 1940, by gloating over his murder by a Stalinist agent you are running with the whole capitalist pack.

I think celebration of murder is appalling whatever the motivations and Stalinist hitmen (the "lucky fucker") are strange company for so-called "anarchists".

You don't see communists celebrating the death of Kropotkin who joined a bourgeois government in Russia or those anarchists that joined the Republican government in Spain and acted as apologists for the repression against workers.

You never see such venom directed against Noske (the Bloodhound of Counterrevolution). Why does Trotsky inspire such ire?

The debate about showing pictures of butchered victims of Stalin's henchmen, has already been done to death here.

I find that a genuinely disturbing attitute WeTheYouth. This goes far beyond the question of Trotsky.

In the early days of the Russian Revolution, the whole movement was marked with a genuine desire to build a new society, one marked by compassion and forgiveness, even for the old bourgeois. This was obliterated in the Red Terror and Civil War, which created an atmosphere of reprisal and began the process of dehumanisation that led directly to Stalinism.

Understand I'm not a pacifist, I advocate revolutionary violence. But "hating" the ruling class, particularly specific individuals is a dangerous step in the wrong direction, don't you think?

What a lazy binary you've created there. We obviously welcome the deaths of all tyrants and anti-worker vanguardists who slaughtered our past comrades. It's funny how left communists can be so critical and intelligent on some matters but when it comes to Trotsky you're down-right irrational.

"It's funny how left communists can be so critical and intelligent on some matters but when it comes to Trotsky you're down-right irrational"

Funny, I had always thought that the very mention of Trotsky's name opened up a deep well of irrationality among anarchists, making any sober discussion about his contribution to the proletarian movement impossible. Did theTrotsky who wrote 1905 - the first major text to really grasp the historic importance of the soviets - also deserve to be murdered by the ruling class?

Thatcher as an individual is irrelevant. She was the expression of a social system, just as money is the nexus for an entire series of social relations. Hating money may be a natural reaction to the tyranny of commodity relations but I think we're all smart enough to see that this a futile response. In a similar fashion, workers may hate Thatcher in the manner that a dog hates the man who kicks it on the street. But this is a purely reactive, infantile response. Until the working class can understand why Thatcher exists it is in no condition to overthrow capitalism.

I also don't think you've adequately dealt with the points I raised in my previous post about "Red Terror". When hatred (and the reprisals that follow) become the dominant force within the working class it is a clear sign of a revolution in degeneration.

Really, honestly, I don't give two stuffs about Thatcher any more than I care about Blair, Bush, Hitler, Stalin or any other monstrosity that this degenerate social system has produced.

I don't deny I have my guilty pleasures though. Watching the Tory party convulse (and especially seeing David Cameron squirm) is the best free entertainment in years. But I don't pretend this has any revolutionary content at all, I certainly don't make any kind of political programme out of it, and more importantly, it's not quite the same as celebrating the death of another human being.

Who hates Trotsky? Stalinists and anarchists. I think its very telling.

I'd disagree but that isn't the point I was making. If you want to have a discussion about Trotsky, that's fine but it's not the same issue.

As a left communist, I find the betrayals of Kropotkin, Noske, the CNT, Stalin and many others deeply "offensive". I don't celebrate their death and/or murder. There is a difference.

Please point to another thread where someone has posted a picture of a corpse and celebrated the guy's murder!

The other thread was where someone started up a critique of a bloke who had recently died. On that thread, this was said:

You yourself said:

Is Trotsky a special case?

hey Alf what do you think of Trotsky's 1904 criticisms of Lenin. I think some were clearly pertinent; but I don't understand why he was accusing Lenin of accusing Marx of "moderation" :?:

Yeah, have to side with the left communists on this one. I know it was meant as a joke but apart from being unfunny..

Trotsky's negative effect on the workers movement far outweighed his positive one. That said though i don't think he murder at the hands of stalinists should be celebrated. At the time of Trotsky's death he posed no real threat to the working class, what he was doing however was criticising Stalinist Russia and bring international attention to the purges etc.

This is a more probable reason why he was killed, not because he brutally supressed the Soviets in Russia.

Also that picture is fuckin disgusting, and people say insurrectionists glorify violence from far away...

i dunno the spanish anarchists probably killed alot of fascists tho