Canada's intellectual and political elite have a dilemma: how do they deal with Dr. Norman Bethune's legacy?
On the one hand they desperately want to praise Bethune for his so-called "humanitarian" and innovative efforts as a surgeon, but on the other hand there's that nasty little historical fact concerning the good doctor's sordid political beliefs, i.e. he had a crush on Joseph Stalin.
Stalin, recall, is infamous for butchering millions of people, for creating one of history's most brutal dictatorships and for ruthlessly terrorizing half a continent -- and that's when he was in a good mood!
Yet Bethune the "humanitarian" thought Stalin was the bee's knees, so in 1935 he joined the Communist Party.
That's right instead of joining his local Rotary or Optimist Club, Bethune thought he could best help society by doing such things as advocating cockamamie economic theories, waving red flags and whistling L'Internationale.
Now in the 1960s and 1970s, this Stalinist past actually wasn't much of a problem for Bethune worshippers. Those were the days, after all, when supporting the communist ideal was still trendy in left-wing academic and media circles.
Sure communism wasn't perfect, they argued, but anything was better than capitalism, which simply didn't work and which they confidently predicted would collapse in or around 1985 due to its own obvious internal contradictions.
Yep the super-geniuses in academia had it all worked out.
Except reality didn't co-operate. In fact, after 1991 it sort of became clear that capitalism was, in reality, far superior to a system whose existence required generous doses of barbed wire, secret police and Siberian gulags.
Even Ivory-tower-ensconced university professors couldn't help but notice the Berlin Wall toppling, the once mighty Soviet Union dissolving and China adopting a decadent, non-progressive, quasi-market-oriented system.
The only truly Stalinist state left was North Korea and aside from its snazzy military parades, it just wasn't all that cool. It's kind of hard even for intellectuals to idealize a society where the chief leisure activity is known as "trying not to starve to death."
Consequently by the onset of the 21st century communism lost much of its cachet.
Which brings us back to Bethune. For better or worse, the guy will forever be tied to a discredited and blood-drenched ideology, yet oddly, there are still those in Canada who seek to romanticize his life.
And to do so, Bethune groupies have come up with two ways to overcome the "Bethune was a tyrant-admiring communist" problem.
One way is to simply ignore his communist ties. This is the method, for instance, Treasury Board President Tony Clement used to justify his government spending $2.5 million to build a Bethune shrine in his riding. (Coincidently his riding is also the official federal repository for all things to do with Public Pork and Gazebos.)
Clement basically said Bethune's communist past didn't matter. As he put it, "I think we as Conservatives can be comfortable that there's a message here broader than just his communism, that goes to his humanism and entrepreneurship."
Well, all I can say to that is... hey, wait a minute! Did Clement actually call Bethune, the Stalin-loving, Mao Zedong-adoring communist, an entrepreneur!?
Maybe I'm wrong about Clement. Maybe he isn't a Bethune groupie at all. Maybe he is actually using clever irony to insult the dead doctor.
I mean calling Bethune an entrepreneur would be like calling Thomas Mulcair a member of the Calgary Petroleum Club. As a good communist, Bethune regarded entrepreneurs as bourgeois enemies, as exploiters of the proletariat, as the people who would sell Stalin enough rope to hang everybody.
The best place for entrepreneurs, in Bethune's view, was is in front of a firing squad.
So this leads to the question: why is the supposedly pro-free enterprise Conservative government paying homage to guy who regarded free markets the way Mike Tyson viewed human ears?
Well it seems Prime Minister Stephen Harper is really desperate to impress Communist China. The Chinese Communist Party recently gave him a few cute pandas, so the least he can do in return is lionize Mao's favorite Canadian.
Of course, before the Conservatives could glorify Bethune in this manner they had to first set aside certain facts. They had to set aside the fact that Bethune supported Mao Zedong, a man who surpassed Hitler in the All-Time Mass Murderer Rankings.
They had to set aside the fact that Bethune turned a blind eye to the horrific atrocities that took place in Stalinist Russia during his lifetime. They had to set aside the fact that Bethune embraced a totalitarian ideology that had as its goal the destruction of Canada's democratic values.
And oh yeah, there's one more thing the Conservatives had to set aside: their principles.
But I digress. Let's get back to whitewashing Bethune's communist past. As I said, you can ignore it like Clement did or the other method is just to pretend it never happened.
This is the strategy Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson used in a recent column in which he paid homage to Bethune.
While describing all the supposedly wonderful qualities of the doctor, Ibbitson nonchalantly declared Bethune's "communist taint" has been "rinsed away."
Really? And exactly how and when did this miraculous cleansing take place? Did historians discover Bethune really admired Groucho Marx and not Karl Marx?
Did any of Bethune's letters recently emerge in which he wrote something like, "I tried to contact some of my comrades in Russia today, but found out they had all been purged after a series of show trials. Apparently Stalin had them all tortured and then shot. Yikes! I know this might sound bourgeois and all, but it got me thinking that perhaps this working class struggle bullshit isn't all its cracked up to be."
If such a letter exists it's news to me. Maybe Ibbitson will provide evidence of it in a future column.
In the meantime, I will continue to oppose my government using my money to honour a man who was not only on the wrong side of history, but on the wrong side of morality.
You see unlike Bethune-apologists, like Clement or Ibbitson, I have no difficulty in judging the communist's legacy.
Nor, I suspect, will history.
It's one thing to look back from now at how Mao and Stalin abused their power.
It's quite another to try to see it in 1935, when both leaders were celebrated heroes with cults of personality around them, and people still remembered children who died in factories and mines or died of malnutrition and TB because the factory owners paid daddy as little as possible, and didn't care so much if blood was spilled to change the abuses of the Industrial Revolution.
You're just as bad as the FOX pundits freaking out over "class warfare rhetoric" that prompted the French Revolution -- deliberately forgetting that there were very serious economic and social issues that drove the working class into a rage.
although i do not in any way support the atrocities committed by communist regimes, to state categorically that capitalism is far superior, while conveniently ignoring all the atrocities occurring in countless countries to often indiginous, always poor populations by the capitalistic resource extraction companies. it is to ignore the criminal behaviour of the banking industries, it is to ignore the huge rise in inequality that is the result of lesser regulated market capitalism.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/christophermajka/2012/07/dumb-dirt-bethune-mao-anders-and-new-mccarthyism
Norman Bethune died in 1939.
He did visit the Soviet Union in 1935 and was impressed with their healthcare.
He fought in the Spanish civil war (along with Orwell and others) on the side of the "left" against Franco and the right. Yes, Franco the fascist. I'm sure Gerry would like to pillory him for fighting with the communists in Spain against the fascist Franco.
Then he went to China, to fight with Mao. In 1939, there was no great leap forward or cultural revolution - Mao had only killed enough people to solidify his control on the party and keep his army alive against the Nationalist forces (who were no angels) and the Japanese.
Yes, at this point Mao was fighting against the fascist Japanese, those paragons of civility and virtue.
Communism looked a lot better in 1939 than it does now, especially when the communists were at the forefront of the fight against fascism in Spain and East Asia and Stalin had achieved huge increases in industrial production at a human cost that was little known (but that did save Europe from Hitler).
Bethune will be remembered primarily as an example of internationalism - supporting a cause you believe in another country.You know, the same kind we pat ourselves on the back for by liberating Afghanistan from its previous, indigenous rulers the Taliban. All the while his goal was to save lives rather than take them.
As I oppose the use of my money to fuel the immorality of indiscriminate resource wars in countries we have little understanding of or respect for.
History will also show consumerism, the offspring of capitalism, to be on the wrong side or morality and environmental reason given the fact that we live on a planet with finite resources.
I make no apologies for Bethune. Communism, like capitalism, sounds good on paper; although neither has proven to live up to theory. I believe, and hope, we are still evolving to a more egalitarian society that honours people and planet. That will require a shift of priorities away from the self to a more holistic philosophy.
A good place to start is by following the Bioneers in the link below.
http://www.bioneers.org/
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers"
Thomas Pynchon
If this is being on the wrong side of history on this continent, being on the right side must be absolutely ecstatic.
Change is in the wind, and it will probably incorporate a blend of both ideologies.
I hope that one of President of the Treasury Board Clement's advisers or servants briefs him on your analysis, perhaps while he is being rickshawed to his next pork-announcement.
I extend similar well-wishes to Stephen Harper who has been swallowing a lot of principles lately.