Tag: news

Today is May Day. Since 2007, I have advocated using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. I outlined the rationale for this proposal (which was not my original idea) in my very first post on the subject:

May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their [authority]. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so….

Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events promote awareness of the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government domination of the economy and civil society.

While communism is most closely associated with Russia, where the first communist regime was established, it had equally horrendous effects in other nations around the world. The highest death toll for a communist regime was not in Russia, but in China. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward was likely the biggest episode of mass murder in the entire history of the world.

November 7, 2017 was the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the establishment of the first-ever communist regime. On that day, I put up a post outlining some of the lessons to be learned from a century of experience with communism.  The post explains why most of the horrors perpetrated by communist regimes were intrinsic elements of the system. For the most part, they cannot be ascribed to circumstantial factors, such as flawed individual leaders, peculiarities of Russian and Chinese culture, or the absence of democracy. The latter probably did make the situation worse than it might have been otherwise. But, for reasons I explained in the same post, some form of dictatorship or oligarchy is probably inevitable in a socialist economic system in which the government controls all or nearly all of the economy.

While the influence of communist ideology has declined since its mid-twentieth century peak, it is far from dead. Largely unreformed communist regimes remain in power in Cuba and North Korea. In Venezuela, the Marxist government’s socialist policies have resulted in political repression, the starvation of children, and a massive refugee crisis—the biggest in the history of the Western hemisphere. The regime continues to hold on to power by means of repression, despite growing international and domestic opposition. The struggle for freedom in Venezuela is continues even as I write these words.

In Russia, the authoritarian regime of former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin has embarked on a wholesale whitewashing of communism’s historical record. In China, the Communist Party remains in power (albeit after having abandoned many of its previous socialist economic polcies), and has recently become less tolerant of criticism of the mass murders of the Mao era (part of a more general turn towards greater repression). In the West, only a small minority advocates communism. But many more tend to downplay its evils, or are simply unaware of them.

In a 2012 post, I explained why May 1 is a better date for Victims of Communism Day than the available alternatives, such as November 7 (the anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia) and August 23 (the anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact). I also addressed various possible objections to using May Day, including claims that the date should be reserved for the celebration of labor unions.

But, as explained in my 2013 Victims of Communism Day post, I would be happy to support a different date if it turns out to be easier to build a consensus around it. If another date is chosen, I would prefer November 7; not out of any desire to diminish the significance of communist atrocities in other nations, but because it marks the establishment of the very first communist regime. But I am more than willing to endorse almost any other date that could command broad support. Unless and until that happens, however, May 1 will continue to be Victims of Communism Day at the Volokh Conspiracy.

NOTE: Much of this post is adapted from last year’s Victims of Communism Day post.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was hit with a 50-week prison sentence in a British court on Wednesday for jumping bail.

In 2012, Assange faced allegations of sexual assault, with Sweden requesting he be extradited to that country. As a result, Assange successfully sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he stayed until Ecuadorian officials got tired of harboring him and revoked his asylum last month. British police quickly took him into custody.

“By entering the embassy, you deliberately put yourself out of reach, whilst remaining in the U.K.,” Judge Deborah Taylor said in court Wednesday, according to Sky News. “You remained there for nearly seven years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country.” His stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy cost British taxpayers 16 million pounds (about $21 million), Taylor said, as police had to continuously monitor the building until last month. “It’s difficult to envisage a more serious example of this offense,” Taylor said.

Swedish prosecutors have since dropped the assault charges against Assange. But as The New York Times notes, it’s possible they could reopen the case now that he’s no longer confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange’s efforts to seek asylum “undoubtedly affected the progress of the Swedish proceedings” regarding the sexual assault allegations, Taylor said, according to The Washington Post.

But to hear Assange’s attorney tell it, the whistleblower skipped out on his bail because he didn’t want to be extradited to the U.S. The WikiLeaks founder is perhaps most well-known for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also been accused of working with the Russian government to release thousands of Democratic National Committee emails prior to the 2016 presidential election.

Assange “was living with overwhelming fear of being rendered to the U.S.,” his lawyer, Mark Summers, told the court, the Associated Press reported. Assange was worried U.S. authorities might send him to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which is normally reserved for terrorists, Summers said.

In a letter that Summers read to the court, Assange expressed regret for some of his actions. “I apologized unreservedly to those who consider that I have disrespected them by the way I have pursued my case,” he wrote, per the BBC.

“I did what I thought at the time was the best and perhaps the only thing that could be done—which I hoped might lead to a legal resolution being reached between Ecuador and Sweden that would protect me from the worst of my fears,” the letter added. “I regret the course that this took; the difficulties were instead compounded and impacted upon very many others.”

But Taylor wasn’t buying it. “Whilst you may have had fears as to what may happen to you, nonetheless you had a choice, and the course of action you chose was to commit this offense,” she said.

So what comes next for Assange? On Thursday, he’ll be in court again. This hearing could determine whether he’s extradited to the U.S., where federal prosecutors have charged him with helping to crack a password stored on government computers in order to access classified information back in 2010.

The organization Assange founded, meanwhile, doesn’t think he’s getting a fair shake. “Julian Assange’s sentence is as shocking as it is vindictive,” the group wrote on Twitter following his sentence. “We have grave concerns as to whether he will receive a fair extradition hearing in the UK.”

For more Reason coverage of Julian Assange, you can click here.

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Dissatisfied with media coverage of the results of his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote a letter to Attorney General William Barr in late March expressing frustration that Barr’s four-page memo to Congress summarizing Mueller’s findings “did not fully capture [their] context, nature, and substance.”

That’s according to The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the letter on Tuesday. The Post did not publish the letter in full, which means we are relying here on their interpretation of a letter that supposedly complains about Barr’s interpretation of Mueller’s report. From The Post:

The letter and a subsequent phone call between the two men reveal the degree to which the longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president. Democrats in Congress are likely to scrutinize Mueller’s complaints to Barr as they contemplate the prospect of opening impeachment proceedings and mull how hard to press for Mueller himself to testify publicly.

At the time Mueller’s letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said that Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.

Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote the previously undisclosed private letter to the Justice Department, laying out his concerns in stark terms that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

According to The Post, the two men talked on the phone after Barr received the letter, and this conversation was friendlier in nature.

Barr is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Barr previously testified that he didn’t know whether Mueller supported his conclusions.

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“Camille Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color,” reads a recent student-created petition calling for the firing of the legendary art critic whose views on gender and sex have occasionally offended the modern progressive left. “UArts: you are disrespecting your students and putting them in danger. Do better.”

This is hardly the first time Paglia has endured such calls. When her first book, Sexual Personae, was published in 1990, faculty members at Connecticut College compared it to Mein Kampf. At the time, it was intellectually curious students who defended the book.

Now the situation is largely reversed, notes The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf.

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The situation in Venezuela may be reaching a climax: Embattled dictator Nicolas Maduro had plans to flee the country but was convinced by Russian forces to stay, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Tuesday. Maduro disputes this. According to NPR:

U.S. officials have been characterizing the situation in Venezuela as nearing its endgame, and opposition leader Juan Guaidó called for the “final phase” of the uprising Tuesday in his attempt to remove Maduro from power. But Venezuela’s military handily stamped out pockets of resistance, and despite word from American officials that key Maduro allies are abandoning him, the country’s defense minister proclaimed his continuing loyalty. More than 50 countries support Guaidó’s claim to power.

QUICK HITS

• Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has appeared on video for the first time since 2014. The self-proclaimed caliph acknowledged ISIS’s loss of territory in Iraq and Syria but promised “there will be more to come after this battle.”
• Japan has a new emperor.
• Plymouth State University must pay $350,000 to an adjunct professor it fired for testifying in defense of a woman facing sexual assault charges.
• Jacob Wohl’s brilliant political strategy, in his own words: “make shit up.”
• Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) accused of violating the separation of church and state with “He is Risen” Easter post.
• The trailer for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie is the stuff of nightmares.

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