why is it that we pay far more attention to what happened to 'victims'
of joe mccarthy than the 100,000+ japanese-americans who were
dispossessed, imprisoned, and treated much horribly than anyone who
was blacklisted during the red scare era?

why is it that far more attention has been paid to the Moscow Trials
than the mass killings and famine that led to the deaths of 10 million
Ukrainian peasants in the USSR?

why is it that the victims of the chinese cultural revolution have
received far more attention the victims of the Great Leap Forward?

in all three cases, there was a great imbalance in the magnitude of
the suffering. japanese-americans suffered in far greater numbers and
to a much greater degree than far fewer people who were blacklisted
during the mccarthy era. japanese-americans were all targeted
regardless of their political beliefs or ideology, whereas blacklisted
folks under mccarthy were targeted for their politics. for example,
even though the disproportionate number of communist sympathizers were
jewish, jewish-americans were not targeted as a group--though far more
jews spied for the enemy than japanese-americans did. also, even
those who were targeted under mccarthyism were blacklisted from
certain jobs; they were not dispossessed, forbidden from all work, and
certainly were not tossed into prison camps.

in the case of Great Famine of the mid 30s, it's possible that up to
10 million peasants in Ukraine died during forced collectivization.
millions were forced into cannibalism. many were driven mad, driven to
suicide. many more were dragged off to gulags where most of them were
treated worse than cattle. in contrast, the victims of the Moscow
Trials and the related purges number in the 100,000s. also, unlike
the peasants who were innocent, many of these 'victims' of the purge
were the very thugs who carried out the policies that killed
millions. before the purge, they'd been stalin's willing
executioners. good number of them were jews though jews fared better
during the purge than other groups such as soviet citizens of german,
polish, or latvian background. also, many jews helped stalin during
the purge.
the purge was horrible but nothing compared to the Great Famine; it's
been said that 100,000s were killed in the purge. this just doesn't
compare with the 10 million killed during the Great Famine. also,
many of those purged by stalin had blood on their hands. if the purges
were unjust, it was because stalin gave the orders. but, the fact is
many of the 'victims' of the purge deserved to get their comeuppance.
the moscow trials and the purge were as though hitler himself carried
out the Nuremburg Trials to get rid of his (perceived)enemies within
the Nazi Party. in a way, the Night of the Long Knives was like that--
a kind of mini-purge. as with the soviet purge, the ONLY injustice was
that the SA thugs were killed by SS thugs. similarly, no commie who
was purged by stalin was innocent by any stretch of the imagination.
they all acquiesed in the creation of a totalitarian terror state,
supported the regime's campaign of violence, and dehumanized all non-
and anti-communists as scum of the earth. so, they had no reason to
complain when they got a taste of their own medicine. the only
problem was the medicine was being force-fed by the biggest monster of
all--stalin.

much the same can be said about the Great Leap Forward/Cultural
Revolution. as in the Great Famine in USSR, the victims of the Great
Leap Forward were mostly chinese peasants. the major difference
between stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture and mao's agro-
communization policy was that while the soviet peasants--especially
the ukrainians--bitterly opposed the government policy, the vast
majority of chinese peasants--who were psycho-culturally more obedient
to the emperor-like Great Leader--blindly went along with mao's
campaign. resistant or enthusiastic, both turned into total fiascos.
the Great Famine killed millions, and it's been said that the Great
Leap Forward killed a staggering 30 million peasants. that's about the
entire black population of the US in 1990.
the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976 was also horrible but not as
horrible as the Great Leap Forward. the number of dead during the
Cultural Revolution is estimated to be from 2 to 5 million, but no one
will ever know for sure. though the economy of china remained
stagnant, most chinese peasants had just enough to eat and things
remained relatively normal in the countryside during the years of the
CR. the people most affected during this period were the so-called
intellectuals--professors, teachers, scholars, anyone associated with
book learning--, so-called 'capitalist roader' bureaucrats, and the
urban young who finally were put down by the PLA.
(there is a myth that the PLA moved against the chinese people for the
first time in the tiananmen incident; in fact, the PLA killed far more
young people in suppressing the excesses of the CR than in 1989. the
1989 massacre was the first PLA bloodletting captured on live camera
for the world to see.)

in this sense, the Cultural Revolution was more like the Moscow Trials
and the Purge. but, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Great Leap Forward
where tens of millions of chinese peasants were driven to cannibalism
and death by starvation. also, there was a certain justice to the
Cultural Revolution as with Stalin's purges. most of the 'victims'
were diehard communist who had loyally obeyed mao and helped establish
a crazy totalitarian order that ruled by violence, terror, and mass
murder. many of the people who were purged during the Cultural
Revolution had obeyed mao's orders in the 50s down to the letter. as
with the Night of the Long Knives and Stalin's purge, the main
injustice of the Cultural Revolution was that it was carried out by
mao, when he'd always been the main culprit behind the failures of
'revolutionary' china. of course, there were many innocent victims
of the Cultural Revolution. anyone who owned a foreign book could be
accused of being a foreign spy. entire families could be accused and
condemned for the 'crimes' of its single member. and, the damage to
culture--artworks, literature, libraries, schools, etc--was
incalculable. but, by far the worst period of mao's rule was during
the Great Leap Forward. in a span of 3 yrs, 30 million died.

anyway, why is it that in all three of these cases, far more
attention--books, articles, tv programs, seminars, etc, etc--has been
paid to the lesser horror than to the greater horror. why more
attention to some blacklisted folksingers during the mccarthy era than
entire families dispossessed and locked up during the internment era?
why more attention(and sympathy) to the 'victims' of stalin's purge--
the very people who had loyally carried out stalin's monstrous
policies--than to the truly innocent victims of stalins' forced
collectivization? why more attention to the brutalized intellectuals
and bureaucrats during the Cultural Revolution than to the millions of
starved peasants during the Great Leap Forward?

there's a famous joke about sharks not attacking lawyers out of
professional courtesy, and it seems it's also true of intellectuals
and such folks. most of the people who record, study, analyze, and
write history are intellectuals or academics. or, they are closely
linked to political power. as such, they feel much greater sympathy to
similar people around the world. they identify with artists,
intellectuals, bureaucrats, statesmen, etc, etc, than with ordinary
people. since many of the blacklisted individuals during the mccarthy
era were intellectuals and artists, they get more sympathy and
attention than japanese-americans who were mostly regular folks. and,
the often illiterate and 'conservative' ukrainian peasants get less
sympathy than some communist bureacrat or writer purged by stalin in
the USSR. and, those dirty filthy stinking chinese peasants receive
much less sympathy than urban chinese intellectuals who were targeted
during the Cultural Revolution.

for all the professed egalitarianism of western liberals, they prefer
the poet to the prole, the penseur to the peasant, the bureaucracy to
the beercart.
this is especially true when it comes to western perception of
leftwing tyrannies which are ideally supposed to ruled by radical
intellectuals, artists, and bureaucrats in the Name of the People.
this is why castro still has his backers in the West. and it was
ayatollah's 'intellectual' pretensions--and anti-americanism--that won
him the grudging support of some western intellectuals. and this is
why the french lawyer guy in the documentary 'Terror's Advocate' still
has a soft spot for Khmer Rouge; they may have been mass murderers but
they were 'intellectuals'.
western artists frustrated by market forces and jealous of businessmen
and sell-out entertainers may forever fantasize about a utopian state
ruled by progressive intellectuals who advantage the 'correct'
artists. there was some of this under nazism too, though most
rightwing artists were of less caliber than leftwing artists.
of course, in due time the genuine artists under leftist rule lose out
to the hacks, and intellectuals lose out to the bureaucrats. this
isn't hard to understand why. under communism, the state owns and
runs everything. in a nation like the US, most of society runs
outside government; so even when government is 'paralyzed' much of the
nation goes on as usual. but, under communism, the state must
constantly act and make everything work. intellectuals prefer ideas
and instigation over 'getting down to business'. this is why stalin,
as brutal as he was, was the only person who really understood
communism--nothing gets done with intellectuals arguing all the time.
some leftists say there was 'free debate' in the early yrs of soviet
rule, but they miss the larger point. in a nation where state owns/
runs everything, the intellectual rulers can't afford the luxury of
endless 'free debate' as clowns in US congress do. even if congress
doesn't pass another bill for the next 10 yrs, US will go on pretty
much as it always has. this was not the case in the USSR where the
state had to 'get down to business and run things'. so, bureaucratic
minded stalin and his roll-up-the-sleevers were destined to toss
trotsky and his intellectual bickerers aside.
on the cultural front, even as the revolution embraced aggressive and
confrontational artists prior to its victory--as such artists were
enemies of the old guard--and even during the early stages of
revlution--as the new order required impassioned propagandists--, free-
minded artists were destined to be suppressed, imprisoned, or even
killed once the 'revolutionary' rule became consolidated. the rulers,
in order to maintain social order and unity, no longer found
subversive artists useful, especially as free-minded artists were
bound to feel cheated or disillusioned by the new order. this is why
the notion of an anti-democratic free-spirited artist is idiotic. one
can only be a free marxist artist OUTSIDE the marxist state; within
the state, you could only function as an hack--though there were
exceptions who fell thru the cracks.

perhaps, there is some justice to the fact that the media and academia
pay much more attention to certain people over others. for one thing,
even the masses are more enamoured with 'special people' or
'celebrities' than with real people. most regular people were more
interested in and saddened by the death of princess di than of their
own grandparents. so, people are fools and suck.

also, it could be argued that some people are simply more important
than others. even in our era of egalitarianism, this is how many of
us feel. after martin luther king died, blacks attacked and killed
several white people. yet, why do we hear endlessly of the martyrdom
of king while we hear nothing of whites killed by blacks? we can
argue that some 'great people' have greater impact on society, and
losing them is a bigger tragedy than losing most folks.

there is some truth to this. suppose 1000 top scientific geniuses
were to be killed in one scenario while a 100,000 highschool dropout
morons were to killed in another scenario. it's probably true that
the loss of people like einstein and darwin would be a bigger loss to
humanity than the loss of many morons. this is why some people grieve
the loss of jews in the holocaust and gays in the AIDS epidemic more
than the loss of most other folks. when jews were killed in the
holocaust, how many were potential einsteins? when gays dropped dead
like flies of AIDS in the 80s, how many of them were potentially great
artists or fashion designers? in contrast, does that the fact 300,000
darfurese have died really mean anything to The World? or, the deaths
of 30,000 burmese from the typhoon? or, the death of a million north
korean dummies under communism?
people are more than their biology. humanness is defined by culture,
values, ideas, etc. so, the segment of the population more closely
engaged with Important Matters are valued much more highly than
regular folks.

suppose there's a community of 1000 where only 10 can read. the
community needs the 10 to teach others to read and preserve the
culture; without the literate teachers, no one will learn to read and
there will be cultural memory. suppose this community was faced with
a choice. they could lose the 10 that can read or lose 200 who can't
read. would it necessarily be less moral to choose to save the
literate 10 than the illiterate 200?

it's easy to create more people as all that's required is men and
women fuc*ing. but, cultures and values have developed painstakingly
thru trial and error over 1000s of years. if a people lose half
their population but maintain their civilizational core, their
population will be replenished one day and their culture will go on as
usual. but, if a people don't lose any people but lose their culture
and values, they will soon sink into anarchy--like them crazy negroes
of africa. (and when cultural values go, so does civilization, and
what follows is mass killings and mayhem on a truly monstrous
scale.) in the holocaust, jews lost whole lotta folks but kept
their jewishness, and today there are, again, as many jews as there
had been before the horror.
in this light, one could argue that blacklisting of jewish writers
under mccathy was worse than imprisoning wholesale families of
japanese-americans because jews were in a position to make a
difference whereas japanese-americans were a bunch of uncreative
lamos. (of course, one could argue that the leftwing jews, for all
their creativity and intelligence, were out to undermine and destroy
the anglo-american democratic capitalist order and had to be stopped
by anti-communists. they were not sufficiently stopped and have done
irreparable damage to the fabric of american society since the 60s.)
and, one could argue that the cultural revolution, though its
casualties were much lower than the great leap forward, was more
tragic because it targeted the people with the talent, intelligence,
and knowledge to preserve the best of chinese culture and bring china
into the 20th century.