(November 12, 2015 at 11:51 am)abaris Wrote:(November 12, 2015 at 11:33 am)Ben Davis Wrote: Didn't Hitchens refer to it as a Necrocracy? Lorded by the deceased Kim Il Sung as the Supreme Leader, I think that's very apt.
I never read anything by Hitchens, Dawkins or Harris and didn't pay them much attention. But this seems to be right. But a strong factor is also the pseudo religious and mythical elements woven into their ideology. They attribute all the Kims with being born at holy Korean sites and several mythical or heavenly signs surrounding their birth. So it's more on the lines of religious savior figures than actual dictators.
With all the personality cult surrounding Hitler or Stalin, they never did something like that. Their narrative was a person coming being born into the masses and to tirelessly working towards the wellbeing of the pople. Stalin was repeatedly called "friend of the people" or "daddy Stalin". Hitler was called "the people's chancellor".
Hitchens was absolutely far from valuing any type of closed state where speech was silenced. I'd say when you equate God and heaven to a "celestial North Korea", I don't see how you can paint any differences between Hitler and Stalin. They were just as full of propaganda and frowned on dissent and there was no freedom anywhere close to what the west is used to. Again, it's like claiming stabbing someone to death makes them less dead than shooting them to death. They were all monsters.
