Happy Victims of Communism Day! [May Day]

[Lucille]

When I was in grade school in IL back in the 70s, they held a May Day school celebration every year. We made May Baskets (symbol of feminine fertility) and danced around the Maypole (phallic symbol). I checked the local paper and they're still doing it. Frickin' neopagan commies.

Victims of Communism Day
http://www.volokh.com/2013/05/01/victims-of-communism-day-5/


Today is May Day. Since 2007, I have advocated turning this date into Victims of Communism Day (though I should note that I didn’t invent the idea). In my very first post on the subject, I outlined the rationale for this step:


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 regimes. 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. I suggest that May Day be turned into Victims of Communism Day….

http://www.volokh.com/2012/05/02/alternative-dates-for-victims-of-communism-day/


No amount of historical revisionism can overcome the reality that Communist regimes not only “attempted” but actually succeeded in “coopting” May Day. For many decades, it was and is the main holiday of international communism. Many of those who continue to celebrate it today are either communists themselves of sympathetic to communism. Just as there were and are non-Nazis uses of the swastika, there are non-communist uses of May Day. But that does not overcome the overwhelming totalitarian associations that have arise with both.

[heavenlyboy34]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkEBmmqK198&playnext=1&list=PL9ADC7ABD0C34 A00D&feature=results_main

[Lucille]

William Banzai and the Limerick King celebrate May Day: MaY DaY, May DaY, MaY DaY!!! (http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-05-01/may-day-may-day-may-day)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8322/8019338332_fed44a7a09_b.jpg

This chart makes it perfectly clear
How Klepto-Marxism is here
Both Parties make good
A reverse Robin Hood
So peasants get poked in the rear

Lots more at the link.

Related (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-american-pravda/):


We always ridicule the 98 percent voter support that dictatorships frequently achieve in their elections and plebiscites, yet perhaps those secret-ballot results may sometimes be approximately correct, produced by the sort of overwhelming media control that leads voters to assume there is no possible alternative to the existing regime. Is such an undemocratic situation really so different from that found in our own country, in which our two major parties agree on such a broad range of controversial issues and, being backed by total media dominance, routinely split 98 percent of the vote? A democracy may provide voters with a choice, but that choice is largely determined by the information citizens receive from their media.

Most of the Americans who elected Barack Obama in 2008 intended their vote as a total repudiation of the policies and personnel of the preceding George W. Bush administration. Yet once in office, Obama’s crucial selections—Robert Gates at Defense, Timothy Geither at Treasury, and Ben Bernake at the Federal Reserve—were all top Bush officials, and they seamlessly continued the unpopular financial bailouts and foreign wars begun by his predecessor, producing what amounted to a third Bush term.

Consider the fascinating perspective of the recently deceased Boris Berezovsky, once the most powerful of the Russian oligarchs and the puppet master behind President Boris Yeltsin during the late 1990s. After looting billions in national wealth and elevating Vladimir Putin to the presidency, he overreached himself and eventually went into exile. According to the New York Times, he had planned to transform Russia into a fake two-party state—one social-democratic and one neoconservative—in which heated public battles would be fought on divisive, symbolic issues, while behind the scenes both parties would actually be controlled by the same ruling elites. With the citizenry thus permanently divided and popular dissatisfaction safely channeled into meaningless dead-ends, Russia’s rulers could maintain unlimited wealth and power for themselves, with little threat to their reign. Given America’s history over the last couple of decades, perhaps we can guess where Berezovsky got his idea for such a clever political scheme.

[Lucille]

Robert Higgs (http://blog.independent.org/2013/05/01/happy-may-day/):


It’s May Day—International Workers’ Day—a time for us to celebrate the workers of the world, who, as Marx told us, had nothing to lose but their chains and therefore would inevitably mount a worldwide revolution to throw off the hated capitalist system that had forged their chains. But something happened on the way to the workers’ socialist revolution—a great many things, in fact, including World War I, which proved that the workers’ devotion to their nation-states was much deeper than their devotion to their comrades in the working classes of other countries.

Moreover, in some industrial countries, especially the USA, the socialist workers’ movement never took deep root, and whatever impetus it had spilled over into other political causes and movements and was thereby dissipated and dispersed. Hence arose the question stated by a leading German sociologist (and very bad economist) Werner Sombart in the title (as translated into English) of his 1906 book Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? Sombart’s answer, at bottom, was “roast beef and apple pie.” That is, the hated capitalist system in the USA had delivered most workers such a comfortable standard of living that they considered socialist revolution a stupid idea and wanted nothing to do with it.

This, oddly enough, was basically the correct answer, although much more complex answers can also be (and have been) given, especially in the great work by Aileen Kraditor, The Radical Persuasion, 1890-1917. To put Sombart’s conclusion in modern American terms, I would not make reference to the well-fed workers’ roast beef and apple pie, or even to the sumptuous servings of cheap delights dished out by Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell, but rather to monster pickups, big-screen TVs, and refrigerators full of Bud. American workers have a thousand times more interest in the Super Bowl game than they have in the overthrow of capitalism (if such we continue to call the fascist monstrosity that now sits astride our politico-economic order).

Happy May Day, comrades.

[Petar]

Great idea, and great observations about the pagan rituals.

And further, wasn't the Bavarian Illuminati founded May 1 1776?

[Lucille]

Obama Declares May Day, the Communist Holiday, as Loyalty Day for America
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?413013-Obama-Declares-May-Day-the-Communist-Holiday-as-Loyalty-Day-for-America


For Immediate Release
April 30, 2013
Presidential Proclamation -- Loyalty Day, 2013

LOYALTY DAY, 2013

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

In the centuries since America broke from an empire and claimed independence, our people have come together again and again to meet the challenges of a changing world. We have reinvented our cities with advances in science and reformed our markets with new understanding of the forces that guide them. We have fought for freedom in the theater of war and expanded its reach during times of peace. We have revamped and recovered and remade ourselves anew, mindful that when times change, so must we. But with every step forward, we have reaffirmed our faith in the ideals that inspired our founding. We have held fast to the principles at our country's core: service and citizenship; courage and the common good; liberty, equality, and justice for all.

This is our Nation's heritage, and it is what we remember on Loyalty Day. It is an occasion that asks something of us as a people: to rediscover those ageless truths our Founders held to be self-evident, and to renew them in our own time. We look back to Americans who did the same, from generation to generation -- citizens who strengthened our democracy, organizers who made it broader, service members who gave everything to protect it. These patriots and pioneers remind us that while our path to a more perfect Union is unending, with hope and hard work, we can move forward together.

Today, we rededicate ourselves to that enduring task. We do so knowing our journey is not complete until the promises of our founding documents are made real for every American, regardless of their station in life or the circumstances of their birth. Progress may come slow; the road may be long. But as loyal citizens of these United States, we have the power to set our country's course. Let us mark this day by pressing on in the march toward lasting freedom and true equality, grateful for the precious rights and responsibilities entrusted to each of us by our forebears.

In order to recognize the American spirit of loyalty and the sacrifices that so many have made for our Nation, the Congress, by Public Law 85-529 as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day." On this day, let us reaffirm our allegiance to the United States of America, our Constitution, and our founding values.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2013, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.

[FrankRep]

Wow, Obama.

Obama Declares May Day, the Communist Holiday, as Loyalty Day for America
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?413013-Obama-Declares-May-Day-the-Communist-Holiday-as-Loyalty-Day-for-America