Comrade Nehru and Comrade Stalin

The remarkable thing about the most successful mass murderers of the world is that they are great leaders. Great leaders are great persuaders.

You’d have to get up pretty early in the morning and work very hard all day if you aimed to kill a few million single-handedly by the end of the day. No, that won’t work. You have to persuade a whole lot of other people to do the slaughtering for you. Meaning a lot of people have to think you are a pretty neat guy and they are lucky that they get to do the great work you command them to do. Mass murderers have to be dictators because otherwise you can’t murder that many.

Lenin, as Stephen Kotkin says, is the gold standard in brutal dictators. Here’s Kotkin in conversation with Peter Robinson. A brilliant video.

Stalin killed an estimated 20 million people in the USSR, according to historian Robert Conquest. I like this limerick by him:

There was an old bastard named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.

Comrade Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru did not kill even a few hundred directly. But the disastrous socialist policies that he borrowed from the Soviet Union set India on the road to destitution which indirectly has killed hundreds of millions. Socialism kills silently through the starvation and deprivation it causes. But kills as effectively as guns.

Nehru was a retard. Nehru, the Nabob of Cluelessness. But he fancied himself to be a historian — among other things such as a statesman, scientist, economist, etc. Not knowing the facts did not deter him at all. He didn’t know that he didn’t know.

The gold-standard of brutal dictators, Marshal Stalin died on March 5th, 1953. Here’s part of the eulogy that Comrade Nehru made in the Indian Parliament on March 6th:

Sir…In the early hours of this morning Marshal Stalin passed away… When we think of Marshal Stalin, all kinds of thoughts come to…my mind…looking back at these 35 years or so, many figures stand out, but perhaps no single figure has moulded and affected and influenced the history of these years more than Marshal Stalin. He became gradually almost a legendary figure, sometimes a man of mystery, at other times a person who had an intimate bond not with a few but with vast numbers of persons. He proved himself great in peace and in war. He showed an indomitable will and courage which few possess…here was a man of giant stature…who ultimately would be remembered by the way he built up his great country…but the fact remains of his building up that great country, which was a tremendous achievement, and in addition to that the remarkable fact…is that he was not only famous in his generation but…he was in a sense ‘intimate’… with vast numbers of human beings, not only the vast numbers in the Soviet Union with whom he moved in an intimate way, in a friendly way, in an almost family way…So here was this man who created in his life-time this bond of affection and admiration among vast numbers of human beings… But every one must necessarily agree about his giant stature and about his mighty achievements. So it is right that we should pay our tribute to him on this occasion because the occasion is not merely the passing away of a great figure but…in the sense of the ending of a certain era in history…Some…describe him as…[a] gentle person… Marshal Stalin was something much more than the head of a State. He was great in his own right way, whether he occupied the office or not. I believe that his influence was exercised generally in favour of peace…

I highlighted the bits above to highlight what a retard Nehru was. What makes me sad, though, is that Indians are clueless and hold Nehru in high regard. They even call him “Pundit” — which in Hindi means “wise man.” The man was so vain that he awarded himself medals and honors. He gave himself the “Bharat Ratna” (“Jewel of India”). Pathetic doesn’t come close to describing the man’s character.

Nehru and Stalin are dead. That’s good. The bad news is that Modi is reviving the Nehruvian idiocy. He is following the same path. Modi is demonstrating that he did not learn anything from history. He saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disaster that socialism is. But no. Modi wants to do what Nehru did. Pundit Modi, perhaps.

Modi is headed that way. He’s already named a stadium after himself. Next I guess he will award himself a Bharat Ratna. And then the naming of roads, ports, airports, schools, colleges, universities, et cetera. Pathetic.

Author: Atanu Dey

Economist. View all posts by Atanu Dey