Paul Hollander, From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship

Excerpt

It is a little noted fact about our so-called progressive age that more people have been murdered by their own governments in times of peace than in all of the foreign wars of the last two hundred years combined. According to the authors of the Black Book of Book of Communism, Marxist regimes alone were responsible for killing 100 million of their own citizens during the twentieth century. Such grim calculus becomes all the more remarkable when we recall that the wars of modernity have been some of history’s bloodiest. What does such criminality against one’s fellow citizens say about an era widely celebrated for the birth and spread of liberal democracy, the nearly universal acceptance of human rights, and the rapid advancements in the sciences and material comfort? It is not enough to point out that most of these crimes were carried out by non-democratic, non-Western, and illiberal regimes. Atrocities of such scale and magnitude cannot take place or go unpunished unless others are unwilling to stop them. What prevented morally responsible powers in the West from doing something -- anything -- on behalf of so many helpless victims? According to Paul Hollander, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, no small share of the blame lies at the hand of intellectuals. How can that be? …