Where the Gestapo Was Not As Bad As What's Coming

The irony here must not be missed. Solzhenitsyn compared the KGB to the Gestapo, and the Gestapo was preferable. Who in their right mind would accuse the great author of The Gulag Archipelago of violating Godwin's Law? Why, it is more than likely to come from a kneejerk "conservative" talk-show host like Hugh Hewitt. Of course, I'm sure he'd deny it. Does it matter not that I've heard him indiscriminately invoke Godwin more than once? Of course it matters. So I want my readers to remember this passage so that the next knee-jerk Godwin charger is met with this upside his head.

They understood that the cases were fabricated, yet they kept on working year after year. How could they? Either they forced themselves not to think (and this is in itself means the ruin of a human being), and simply accepted that this was the way it had to be and that the person who gave them their orders was always right . . .

But didn't the Nazis, too, it comes to mind, argue the same way?¹

1. There is no way of sidestepping this comparison: both the years and the methods coincide too closely. And the comparison occurred even more naturally to those who had passed through the hands of both the Gestapo and the MGB. One of these was Yevgeny Ivanovich Divnich, am emigre and preacher of Orthodox Christianity. The Gestapo accused him of Communist activities among Russian workers in Germany, and the MGB charged him with having ties to the international bourgeoisie. Divnich's verdict was unfavorable to the MGB. He was tortured by both, but the Gestapo was nonetheless trying to get at the truth, and when the accusation did not hold up, Divnich was released. The MGB wasn't interested in the truth and had no intention of letting anyone out of its grip once he was arrested.

Here in Chapter 4 of Gulag, Solzhenitsyn is telling us about the Soviet interrogation bureaucracy. And in his comparison, the Nazis were more humane than the Soviets. Yet, today, we have fellow Americans who still refuse to recognize imminent threat. The man in the White House has associated with Marxists and Islamists throughout his early, formative years, and they refuse to call him a Marxist even as he pushes policies that herald major damage to private (non-crony) enterprises everywhere in this nation.

Were Hewitt or Medved, or any of the rotters, to accuse Solzhenitsyn of violating Godwin's Law, I could hear the old man laughing at their buffoonery: "Yes, you morons. The Soviets were worse. And so would be the man whom you refuse to categorize properly as a fascist/communist/Statist puppet."

Let me make this crystal clear.

"The MGB wasn't interested in the truth and had no intention of letting anyone out of its grip once he was arrested."

Much like Eric Holder with George Zimmerman.  

At the risk of being too Jeremiad, maybe this post ought to be subtitled. "Or George Zimmerman, the first victim of the New Gulag Archipelago."