Richard Fernandez:
“…On the other hand progressives are compassionate by definition. Thus when conservative cruelty saves multitudes it creates a logical problem. If Italy’s policies are evil it must be not because they save lives but because Salvini’s motives are impure. If holding out the lure of European residence to Africans causes drowning it is still compassionate because … it simply is.
That is because atheistic Marxism is founded to an extraordinary degree on the absolving power of good intentions. When CIA agent Felix Rodriguez asked a captive Che Guevara why he executed so many by firing squad in Cuba, Guevara explained that “we only put to death foreigners” When Rodriguez retorted that “you’re not a Bolivian … you are a foreigner” Che was defiant, saying Rodriguez couldn’t possibly understand the reasons for revolution. The difference apparently was philosophical. Che killed the side of compassion while Rodriguez did it in the name of cruelty. . . .
The solution of the Woke to the Problem of Evil was simply to stipulate the Left was moral and the Right was cruel and that was the end of it. The difficulty even a brilliant writer like Hobsbawm faced is what happened when the facts disagreed. How, socialists wondered, can self interest produce good? Why are Amerca’s poor fat and driving cars while socialism’s blessed are starving in darkness? How could the virtuous fail?
Tis witchcraft! Or akin to it. To salvage the theory of ‘capitalist cruelty ‘ vs ‘socialist kindness’ ideologues have resorted to the mechanism of exploitation. According to that theory the Woke fail because capitalism is stealing from socialism. It’s all the fault of saboteurs, capitalist wreckers and CIA plotters. Yet even there the facts betray them. Socialism can only survive and only temporarily by expropriating from non-socialists, and in the end by stealing from everyone. Once there are no more capitalists, socialist redistribution stops working. The Venezuelan example is embarrassing for that precise reason…”