Oliver Stone plans to rehab Hitler’s, Stalin’s reputations – at the expense of America’s

Ugly liberal moral relativism strikes again:

TCA — Director Oliver Stone’s upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries “Secret History of America” promises to put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler “in context.”

“Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

“Stalin has a complete other story,” Stone said. “Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect … People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII … I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.”

The controversial director’s 10-part documentary series for Showtime promises to focus on events that “at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history of the last 60 years.” Subjects in “History” include President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

“You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate,” Stone said during the show’s trailer, which promised to put historical villains “in context.” “I don’t want to put out conventional History Channel product where it’s easy to like it.”

The floor is yours, Don Surber:

The Scorekeeper thinks that by β€œin context,” Stone likely means blaming America. He is a tad confused, telling Hibberd: β€œStalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy β€” these are people who have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history.”

Stalin, Hitler and Mao combined to kill 100 million to 250 million people. As far as I can tell, Joe McCarthy’s big crime was to kill a few bottles of booze and expose the fact that we had communists working in our government. This is what moral equivalency brings society: Killings tens of millions of people in the name of communism is the same as calling someone a communist.

Madison Conservative adds:

Now, I’m assuming that it will fall flat on its face in terms of spiking any kind of debate. Even though the β€œprogressive” movement has long since ascended into the fantasy grove of kittens, rainbows, and cars that run on flatulence, it would be a stretch to expect them to rally behind easily the most common response to β€œWho was the most evil person of the 20th century?”. Then again…some of them look up to Mao. Still, what will likely happen is that it will get little attention, and if you bring it up to an average liberal, they won’t even have heard of it. However…is it beyond the pale to imagine Noam Chomsky or Gore Vidal bringing this up? After all, to them, George W. Bush is a war criminal. Liberal intellectuals spent a decade drawing comparisons between Bush and Hitler. Drawing contrasts between them that they consider favorable to the latter? It’s not only plausible, it sounds like an assignment for a college class.

Perhaps this is the ultimate outing for liberals. Let’s see how many of them come out of the closet.

From what we’ve seen of the far left before in supporting the likes of Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro, I can hardly wait.

Newsbusters’ Lachlan Markay reminds us that Stone’s not the first Hollyweird director who has recently tried to reinvent history – and he won’t be the last:

Stone is not the only leftist trying to peddle an uber-liberal history–via Hollywood–to our nation’s schoolchildren. Marxist academic Howard Zinn recently teamed up with Matt Damon, a host of other A-list personalities, and the History Channel to propagate a socialist take on American history–dubbed “A People’s History of the United States”–in American schools and universities.

The “People’s History” teaches that America was founded as–and remains–a racist, sexist, xenophobic bastion of white aristocrats, who exploited minorities and immigrants for their own gain–you know, that familiar Hollywood refrain.

The book on which the series is based, which shares the same title, unsurprising ignores the countless successes of American capitalism, touts Maoist China as a shining example of a “people’s government,” and fails to mention in its recap of American history Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, or Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate. Nowhere in the book will readers find the names Alexander Graham Bell, Jonas Salk, or he Wright Brothers. The book does include the supposedly important stuff like the My Lai massacre, though it leaves out small details like the Normandy Invasion of June 1944.

Zinn and Stone twist history to fit their own radical political views–the same crime they accuse their opponents of and tout as the reason their works are necessary. Of course Hollywood has been producing this sort of dribble for years. But when such work is considered a history in the, you know, factual sense of the term, and when it is taught to students as such, it must be exposed for the revisionist political nonsense that it is.

Amen.

Cross-posted to Right Wing News, where I am helping guestblog for John Hawkins on Sundays.

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