Left is good, right is wrong. Why?

In Berlin on Tuesday I managed to grab an hour between a long lunch and a considerably longer dinner to visit the newly opened Memorial to the Dead Jews of Europe. Set over a vast plot on the corner of Behrenstrasse and Eberstrasse (in the shadow, quite literally, of the Brandenburg Gate and the Adlon hotel) the monument has to be one of the most impressive sights anywhere in modern Europe. Beyond the pointed significance of its location and design (thousands of concrete slabs of varying heights placed on an undulating base) it is the scale that is most overwhelming. The fact that the German authorities were willing to allocate such an enormous piece of prime real estate to this courageous and worthy (and necessary) project is proof once again of how Germany has done more than any other country in history to atone for the sins of its past.

It is all the more astonishing then that the same German government that commissioned the memorial feels itself unwilling (or unable) to step in to stop the destruction of a similar monument a kilometre or so up the road at Checkpoint Charlie. Here, a smaller but no less important monument consisting of a replica Berlin Wall and 1,000 black crosses commemorates those East Germans killed fleeing the horrors of life in East Germany. Alas the real estate the monument stands on is treasured, and, unable to pay the rent, the small, independent Checkpoint Charlie Museum that erected the monument faces eviction. Despite ongoing pleas from members of all Germany”s political parties for the government to buy the site and preserve the monument, it has so far refused to do so, citing the prohibitive cost (tens of millions of euros). While I wish not to accuse the German government of placing the victims of Nazism ahead of those of Socialism, I do wonder what would happen if the situation of the monuments was reversed.

It also got me thinking about the vast differences between how we now historically look at Nazism and Fascism, on the one hand, and Communism and Socialism on the other. To me, any totalitarian ideology that insists on the subjugation of the individual to the state is as bad as any other. Yet to others it appears to not be so.

At least once a week, perhaps more often, I will see a young Romanian wearing a tee shirt with the Cyrillic letters CCCP and the hammer and sickle motif emblazoned on it. I have nothing against this: I am a libertarian, I believe in the right of freedom of expression, including the right to be offensive. But let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw a Romanian youth (or anyone for that matter) wearing a tee shirt (however ironically) with a swastika on it? What would your reaction be if you did? It”s odds on you would feel a hell of a lot more indignant than the cool, ironic fashion dude wearing the CCCP shirt. Now, the last thing I want is for the swastika to become an acceptable fashion icon. But I feel that the hammer and sickle represents a similar evil and deserves similar levels of contempt. That it doesn”t is puzzling, especially in this part of the world.

On the other side of the world British entrepreneur Richard Branson was last week photographed dancing the samba with some attractive Cuban dancers at a party in Havana to celebrate the launch of a Virgin Airways route from London to Havana. The photograph was all over the UK newspapers. In the summer of 1989 I worked for a brief time as a temp at an office above South African Airways on London”s Oxford Circus. There were daily scuffles and fights as pickets tried to stop people buying their tickets to Cape Town or Johannesburg. There certainly weren”t any samba parties to celebrate the launch of new routes, I can tell you. And yet the difference between Castro”s Cuba and Apartheid-era South Africa is…?

You want another example? Che Guevara. A good looking and charismatic cold-blooded mercenary who helped Castro hoist Socialism on Cuba – which wasn”t even his own country – before thankfully dying while trying to bring about another bloody revolution in his own Bolivia. Hero of students the world over, his photo adorns posters and tee shirts everywhere. And General Pinochet? You know, the Chilean chap who saved South America from the communists? Seen him on any tee shirts lately? Thought not.

Want another one? What about the world of sport? In 1985 a large number of English cricketers caused worldwide uproar – and were consequently suspended from international cricket – after playing cricket matches in South Africa. That same year the England football team played matches in Ceausescu”s Romania and Honecker”s East Germany. There was no uproar, and there were no suspensions.

Have I made my point? Almost certainly, and I apologise for labouring it. But it puzzles me how the left-wing apologists for people like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Guevara and the rest have so utterly won the argument. Perhaps no one wants to defend Hitler: you can hardly blame them; how can you defend the indefensible? I simply find it extraordinary that people will – to this day – defend his left-wing counterparts. And most astonishing of all is that in Berlin, not far from the memorial to the Jews, and close to the soon-to-be destroyed memorial to the victims of East German socialism, is a wide avenue named for the man who in many respects gave birth to the Berlin Wall in the first place: Karl Marx.

Craig Turp is the publisher of In Your Pocket City Guides.