Monday, September 27, 2010

Can a Stalinist experiment go right?

One of the more bizaree ledes I've come across in recent memory is from The Independent, a left-leaning paper in England. David McNeill writes a "special report" on "Face to face with the world's most repressive regime."

The lede is: "Pyongyang is the showcase capital for a Stalinist experiement gone horribly wrong."

What exactly would be a Stalinist experient that went right?

This is comparable to some Right-wing paper discussing a "Nazi experiment that went horribly worng." The idea that this has gone "horribly wrong" implies that there is a kind of Stalinism, or by implication, Nazism, that could get it right. If a Right-leaning newspaper had said something similar of Adolph's regime would it be overlooked? But then the Left has always had a fondness for Uncle Joe.

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