So yesterday I quoted some random Spearheader who described women (well, white women in particular) as “complete parasitical whores roaming the landscape spreading VD like Johnny Appleseed and fucking men over.”
One reader wondered if Mr. Appleseed really went about spreading VD. So I did a little research, and it turns out that it is exceedingly unlikely that Mr. Appleseed – who actually was a real person — spread anything other than the magic of apples. And his Swedenborgian beliefs.
Why? Because Mr. Appleseed – real name John Chapman – was what these days we might call a Man Going His Own Way. Seems he didn’t have much truck with the ladies, according to one contemporary account quoted in his Wikipedia entry:
On one occasion Miss PRICE’s mother asked Johnny if he would not be a happier man, if he were settled in a home of his own, and had a family to love him. He opened his eyes very wide–they were remarkably keen, penetrating grey eyes, almost black–and replied that all women were not what they professed to be; that some of them were deceivers; and a man might not marry the amiable woman that he thought he was getting, after all.
So what led poor Mr. Appleseed to these dire thoughts about women? Apparently the underage girl he hoped to some day get with was more into dudes who weren’t him:
Now we had always heard that Johnny had loved once upon a time, and that his lady love had proven false to him. Then he said one time he saw a poor, friendless little girl, who had no one to care for her, and sent her to school, and meant to bring her up to suit himself, and when she was old enough he intended to marry her. He clothed her and watched over her; but when she was fifteen years old, he called to see her once unexpectedly, and found her sitting beside a young man, with her hand in his, listening to his silly twaddle.
That ungrateful little strumpet!
I peeped over at Johnny while he was telling this, and, young as I was, I saw his eyes grow dark as violets, and the pupils enlarge, and his voice rise up in denunciation, while his nostrils dilated and his thin lips worked with emotion. How angry he grew! He thought the girl was basely ungrateful. After that time she was no protegé of his.
But Appleseed, despite giving up on women in the real world, held out hope for the afterlife – explaining to others that he expected to have two spirit wives all his own after he died. Which I guess is the 19th century equivalent of the MGTOWers today who fantasize about the sexy robot ladies who will eventually, it is hoped, make actual human females – with their troubling “thoughts” and “needs” and “desires” of their own – obsolete.
Mr. Appleseed’s quest to remain alone was probably also helped by the fact that – if the illustration I found on Wikipedia is any indication – he looked a bit like Dale Gribble from King of the Hill. Only much, much sloppier, with long hair. Oh, and instead of wearing a baseball cap, he wore “a tin utensil which answered both as a cap and a mush pot.”
So, yeah, a creepy weirdo who hates women — definitely an MGTOWer all the way.
Oh, except that he actually did something with his life — you know, helping spread apple trees to a big portion of the midwest — instead of spending all his time going on about how all women are whores.
Since apples don’t breed true (all edible apples are grafted clones of the rare trees that produce apples that aren’t too sour to eat) producing anything but cider apples would have forced him to 1) have a way to carry slips (the cuttings which are grafted onto rootstock) and 2) forced him to stay in place for years while people moved in around him.
seriously pecunium is there anything you dont know about?
Pecunium is the Sherlock Holmes of our times.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought there was actually an ongoing debate over the Holodomor. Not about the fact that a terrible famine happened, but whether or not it should be recognized as genocide. I was under the impression that it was a very, very hot topic in certain political and academic circles.
i dont know specifically about the debate on the holodomor, but genocide is a specific intent crime: you have to specifically target that race and intend to wipe them out. if you have multiple causal factors and no agreement on their impact, thats necessarily going to be hard to prove.
personally, im a purist about the term genocide, it should be reserved only for those cases where we can prove that the aggressor wanted to wholly eliminate the victim race and made substantial steps towards achieving that. off the cuff, i dont think the holodomor qualifies. looking around, i see some parties have chosen to classify it as a crime against humanity instead, which imo is a much better designation.
Timothy Snyder makes a pretty persuasive case that the Holodomor was deliberately engineered by Stalin. As evidence, he identifies seven specific orders personally signed by Stalin between late 1932 and early 1933, which involved setting impossible targets and penalising those who failed to meet these targets (which in practice meant most people) with equally onerous ‘fines’ in the form of livestock or seed grain.
In the most generous possible interpretation, Stalin was completely indifferent to the Ukrainian kulaks’ fate – but it seems far more likely that he was fully aware of the likely consequences: without livestock or seed grain, they would be unable to support themselves independently, and with no support from the Soviet state (which was requisitioning rather than distributing the grain), they would inevitably die. Which of course happened, in numbers that cannot be accurately assessed (given that records wouldn’t distinguish between natural causes or deliberately-engineered famine), but which were certainly in the millions.
Absolutely. The Holocaust was unusually well documented for a number of reasons: Germans are meticulous record-keepers, it involved complex logistical operations involving transportation and extermination, a huge amount of evidence was presented at the Nuremberg Trials only a year or so after the extent of the crimes was revealed, and documentation was similarly made available to historians – who also had plenty of Holocaust survivors to talk to.
By contrast, no-one (or at least no-one with any real influence) was interested in Ukraine in 1932-33 – it was a classic example of what Neville Chamberlain called “a faraway country of which we know little”. Even those who were aware that there was a terrible famine would have assumed that it was just one of those things: failed harvests are hardly a new phenomenon. The notion that the famine had been deliberately engineered wouldn’t emerge for decades – often, the relevant documents simply weren’t accessible to historians until the 1990s, over sixty years later. And, as you say, people are still wrangling over the detail.
Indeed. My sister’s PhD research involved spending a great deal of time in Moscow archives poring over 1930s documents, and of course she had to take everything with a massive pinch of salt – especially if it was in a state-sanctioned news report.
Pecunium is the Sherlock Holmes of our times.
since i already churned out a factpost this morning (and maybe because i want to prove i have some fraction of pecuniums factposting ability) and also because im a huge sherlock holmes geek i want to object to this characterization of the sleuth of baker street. holmes was emphatically not a generalist, and his knowledge was, by his own design, very limited and specific to those things he believed would help him solve crimes.
he can explain it better than i can, so- from a study in scarlet:
And, as you say, people are still wrangling over the detail.
If I had a personal interest in the Holodomor, that kind of political wrangling over the ‘detail’ would make me furious. It doesn’t take too much cynicism to see where Russia might have an advantage in that fight. But that cookie will crumble as it will, and the Holodomor really needs a more prominent place in the history books either way. Soviet history, and America’s complicated relationship with it, really does deserve more attention. This is one place where I think NWOSlave will really appreciate some revisionist history.
darksidecat:
I’ve met a small handful of genuinely unrepentant Stalinists, not least during a trip to Georgia (where attitudes towards him are still somewhat ambivalent – he is, after all, by far the most globally significant figure ever to emerge from that country), but I was referring more to the pretty substantial number of people who, though not Stalinist themselves, are nonetheless keen to play down his crimes in a way they wouldn’t dream of doing with Hitler.
The argument usually goes something like “Yes, Stalin got a lot of things wrong, but he transformed an agricultural backwater into an industrial powerhouse, improving the lives of untold millions. Whereas Hitler was just an evil racist, and I don’t care how many autobahns he commissioned.”
“NWO is saying that it’s racist to form a group based on a common race, as this is “special treatment” because whites aren’t allowed to do that.”
And yet….if you ask Slavey, it’s PERFECTLY ok to form a group based on a common resentment of ONE sex (females)….not a display of racism, of course, but a definite organization of a group promoting HATRED, so how is that any different from promoting racism? HUH?
Then again, maybe Slavey isn’t getting the attention he obviously so desperately desires, so allow me….Slavey, I know of NO milkmaids except for yourself, so I do have some questions. Do you have long blonde braids? Do you stick those metal milking thingies on the cows teats, do you milk them by hand, or do you just turn the cows upside down and shake them? Have you milked a goat? Oh yeah, and I like Soymilk–have you ever milked a soybean? Seriously, I wanna know! And do you then load your truck up with the milk and then lob the milk bottles/containers at the doors of suspected feminazis?? You GO with your milkmaid self, Slavey!!
@kysokisaen: This is one place where I think NWOSlave will really appreciate some revisionist history.
This would be true of anyone who is capable of Earth logic, but I would bet a nickle that the term “revisionist history” will send NWO into a major frothing rage and rant against the evil feminists of the world who are revising his HIStory.
And does he have a three-legged stool?
Sharculese: There are lots of things I don’t know about, but I don’t try (unlike some others here) to make people think I do know about them.
It’s a great help when it comes to looking intelligent.
But I like to know things, and so I’ve read a lot. Some of those interests (food/history/natural history/science) overlap. Take apples. I found a collation of the newsletters of an obscure foodie in, I want to say Mass. He did an issue about apples. That’s where I learned that all apples are unique, and most are, “spitters”. One can make cider from them, and jelly,but not much else.
The book, “The Botany of Desire”* has a section devoted to apples, which discusses Johnny Appleseed, and the whitewashing of his efforts (he took log canoes, with piles of seeds, that means he wasn’t planting “Hand apples”, but rather cider apples). Some of his other traits have also been lost. It could be argued he “invented” franchising. About the time the trees were ready to sell, someone would show up, and Appleseed would sell him the orchard, after showing him how to maintain it.
Move down the river, and do it all over again. He claimed the land by planting apples, and then sold it. The people who bought it from him (it’s not clear what he took in trade) were often then in a really good position to prosper, because they didn’t have to clear the land… the people who wanted apples would do it for them.
*It’s a decent book, but not great, maybe a 7 out of 10.
I’ve eaten wild grown apples, they were perfectly edible. The ones on our farm are tiny, oddly shaped, green, and a bit sour, but taste fairly good, in my opinion. They don’t taste like the sweet apples you get in stores though.
Shit, you can actually eat most kinds of crabapples, it won’t hurt you, they just taste bad raw. Some people make jellies from them…
But I like to know things, and so I’ve read a lot.
this is me, too. i guess im just jealous cause youve got a good number of years on me.
NWOslave. If you want a primary source for Columbus and slaves, try his letters to Isabella, and HIS OWN SHIPS LOG, where he speaks of the wonderful ease with which the Arawaks were enslaved. Quoted at and commented on in the classic (freely available online) A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
Now, before you scream about lefty revisonism and such, please read just this one very relevant excerpt from Zinn’s book. –
“The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole.
…
“History is the memory of states,” wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen’s policies. From his standpoint, the “peace” that Europe had before the French Revolution was “restored” by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.
My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. ”
This is the thing, NWO. When you speak about slurs on the memory of Columbus, or any criticism of a godlike view of the Founding Fathers, which I have also seen from you, you speak against questioning the state schooling propaganda of Big Daddy Government.
So once again, I attempt to get an answer for you: What is your position on the State?
What is your position on its schools? What is your position on a Government Approved Version of history?
Because the whitewashing and abject deification of approved national figures is utter statism. Big Daddy incarnate, shoving the official line into the heads of the young. Yet, when this is questioned by people on this site, you’re the big defender of Big Daddy’s spiritual guidance by example of the State Saints. Please tell me why.
It seems like the ONLY “offical line” you’re willing to question is the freaking holocaust! The one where primary sources are EVERYWHERE.
Why is that?
Stop running from me. Just give me some answers, already!
I’m just one little libertarian lady. I’m not that scary.
Wetherby, dude, I know what you’re talking about. Reportage of the crimes of Hitler did drown out reportage of the crimes of Stalin, especially on/from the American left, during the 1930’s and 1940’s. This happened because many people who were then part of the American left thought the Russian experiment might prove successful and desperately wanted it to pan out. They didn’t want to be on the same side as W. R. Hearst. They thought they would be vindicated by history. But they were enthusiastic about exposing Hitler and did so whenever they got an opportunity. So, that was inexcusable, but — the thing is, all those people are dead now. Knowledge of the extent and weight of the Stalinist purges has been widespread for decades. I don’t know of anybody today who’s playing that knowledge down, but I know of a few people who are playing it up. Which is their prerogative, of course.
You confess in a sideways fashion that the handful of unrepentant Stalinists you’ve met you’ve met in Russia. So, once again, meeting unrepentant Stalinists in Georgia in Russia isn’t exactly the same experience meeting unrepentant Stalinists in Georgia in the United States would be, right? (In the event you’d ever get a chance to have that experience, which you wouldn’t? They’re even really hard to find in Portland and Seattle.*) For my own part I’d like to observe that, though I live in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve met more than a few unrepentant Nazis; more, probably, than I’d be likely to encounter in Germany.
*This was intended as snark, though I realize that it may not be accepted as such.
“So once again, I attempt to get an answer for you:”
From you, not for you. Sorry.
Not that it probably matters, since your record of cowardice in the face of simple questions about your beliefs is so far unbroken…
So, once again, meeting unrepentant Stalinists in Georgia in Russia isn’t exactly the same experience meeting unrepentant Stalinists in Georgia in the United States would be, right?
im from the other georgia and when i used to be a stalinist i was the only one i knew of. (ive since matured significantly)
So, once again, meeting unrepentant Stalinists in Georgia in Russia isn’t exactly the same experience meeting unrepentant Stalinists in Georgia in the United States would be, right?
Tangential, but Georgia is an entirely separate country from Russia. Georgians, like many other residents of countries the Soviet Union gobbled up, often tend to get pretty annoyed when people suggest that they are Russian.
Tangential, but Georgia is an entirely separate country from Russia. Georgians, like many other residents of countries the Soviet Union gobbled up, often tend to get pretty annoyed when people suggest that they are Russian.
They’re not ethnically Russian, which is to say not ethnically Slavic, but they were a part of the Russian nation during the Soviet era and, IIRC, during the Imperial (Tsarist) era as well. In my book that qualifies them as politically Russian, at least during the centuries in which they had been absorbed by Russia. YMMV.
(Stalin was the Russian Tyrant-in-Chief, was he not, as opposed to the Georgian Tyrant-in-Chief? See what I mean?)
(Stalin was the Russian Tyrant-in-Chief, was he not, as opposed to the Georgian Tyrant-in-Chief? See what I mean?)
NO, Stalin was the tyrant-in-chief of the Soviet Union, which was politically speaking a different entity than Russia, which was a part of the Soviet Union.
Granted that in practise some parts of the Soviet Union were clearly more equal than others, but still.
There was a lot of anti-Stalinist and, even before it, anti-Leninist sentiment in huge swaths of the American left, which was dominated by the Socialist Party of America. Part of the rapid shrinking of the Communist Party in the US was that when the Communist Party tried to close ranks and be strictly Leninist, a lot of anti-Leninists left, and even more left when it went Stalinist. The general sentiment of the left in the US on Stalin tended to be very negative. The Communist Party was not the majority of the American left in the 20s though the 40s, which is easily discovered, as the Socialist Party, the IWW, and a number of other non-Leninist leftist parties had significantly higher numbers and significantly more political heft than the Communist Party in the US. The Socialist Party did have a solid Trotskyist faction until 1937 (there was a split, then a partial reunification in the late 50s), which gives you some clue to just how not popular Stalin was.
Norman Thomas, who was a Socialist Party presidential candidate numerous times wrote this about the Soviet Union Communist Party, as part of an entire anti-Stalinist pamplet in 1937:
It is not true that the American left ever went substantially Stalinist, though this was a common claim of McCarthy-ists
On the number of nazis vs. number of Stalinists I have met, yes, I have met far more nazi supporters than Stalinists. There is an entire organized nazi group one county over from my home county (a seperate group than the Klan, though the two did have some membership overlap). I have seen more than one swastika tatoo and none of those people were as easily talked out of it as only needing some coffee meetings and a few history books.
Interestingly enough I’ve met multiple Maoists, but no Stalinists. I say interesting because it’s not like Mao doesn’t have plenty of blood on his hands too, and there’s no debate at all about the fact that he was responsible for the famine that killed millions of his people.*
*Which wasn’t genocide, obviously, more hubris and incompetence.
Well, I’m willing to fold and leave the table after one more observation. When Stalin governed his nation he did it from the complex called the Kremlin which is located in a city named Moscow. (For the most part: the Kremlin and large sections of Moscow were bombed-out during WWII and the location of Soviet — I dare not call it the “Russian” — government was temporarily changed.) During the Tsarist era a nation with very similar borders was governed from the same complex situated in the same city. At that time English-speaking people referred to that nation as “Russia”. Later, after the revolution had happened, when a nation with borders which were not too different continued to be governed from a complex called the Kremlin which was located in a city named Moscow, it seemed reasonable to most English-speaking people to continue to refer to that nation as “Russia”. Few of them were confused; most understood what was meant. This may have been a solecism but it was a very common one: it pops up in the newspapers and everything.
(Cripes…I’m going to start calling the Civil War “The War of Northern Aggression” next…)
The British comedian Alexei Sayle said that he had to become a Maoist in his teens because his parents were Stalinists and you were supposed to move to the left of them.
As for Georgia, while it’s certainly been part of a Russian-controlled empire for a large chunk of its existence, it is a separate country with its own non-Slavic language, which they write with a wonderfully distinctive alphabet that I think is pretty much unique. Thanks to an accident of geography, they consider themselves simultaneously part of Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and pretty much every Georgian I know would strongly resent the suggestion that they’re Russian. After all, the countries were at war not that long ago.
One thing I probably should make clear, though, is that I’m commenting from a European perspective: you’ll still find plenty of Stalin apologists amongst the British Left. Even a few seconds’ Googling turned up this choice example of exactly the sort of thing I mean. The comparison with Tony Blair in which Blair comes off worst is particularly entertaining.
“It is not true that the American left ever went substantially Stalinist, though this was a common claim of McCarthy-ists”
True, but I was trying to hew to the “give your opponent his due” high-school debating team principle, which was probably stupid of me. Reprimand accepted.
I think the fact that Americans (and Westerners generally) show more tolerance for Mao than for Stalin is connected with the fact that Americans, and Westerners generally, are less vocal in their condemnations of Stalin than of Hitler. In each case, we’re less concerned about the depredations of the tyrant who is “more exotic” and further away.