When I was in high school, I used to like looking through my grandparent's books. One of the prizes I found was "Six Songs For Democracy", which was six songs recorded by Ernst Busch and his orchestra in support of the Republicans in Spain, with whom the communists were allied until they were cut loose by Stalin after the friendship pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. My grandmother explained that it was still legal to listen to such music in the early years of Nazi rule. Supporting democracy in Spain was a sly way of showing opposition to the Nazis.
Despite being on opposite ends of the political spectrum, the music of the Nazis and that of Ernst Busch sounded remarkably similar. There are a number of different directions to take this observation. The first and most reassuring is that war and aggression are by themselves morally neutral, that a mobilising a nation for self defense is not the same as mobilising them for conquest, even though the emotions and mood are similar.
The other interpretation of the seeming similarity of Nazi and communist aesthetics is that they really are similar, that they simply lend a different vocabulary to the same underlying ideas. Communism claims to champion the international working class and to transcend nationalism. In reality, it usually becomes a newly packaged nationalism. Russia under the communists became an empire every bit as much as the Czars were. China unde communism was expanionist. Vietnam did not purge itself of anti Chinese prejudice. In 1975, Vietnam put its ethnic Chinese out to sea in rickety boats.
To me, the eagles on the pillars in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn are a perfect illustration of the political extremes on the left and right. In politics as in the eagkles atop the pillars, the extreme left and right are very close.
There is a story told among Lubavitcher Chassidim that a wagon driver for one of the rebbes was asked what the difference was between communists and fascists. On a road with no cars and many horse drawn conveyances, he pointed to some horse droppings that had been run over by a carriage ahead of his traveling party.
"See that pile of horse manure with the wagon wheel track in the middle? The left side is like the communists, and the right side is like the fascists."
In 1939, Hitler and Stalin discovered enough in common to establish the German Soviet Friendship treaty, in which they divided Europe between themselves.
There may well be decent people who support totalitarian ideologies. But they almost always end up as pawns in the hands of people who know a lot about getting other people to do their bidding.
Little more than 20 years ago, communism fell around the world. It is reasonable to fear that like a hardy virus, it is reinventing itself.
Reprinted with permission from Rudistettner.com