Amerikan quota of anti-communism: multiply by 10 by Web Minister, mim3@mim.org After editor Mark Kramer wrote to MIM to admit that there were several decimal misplacements in the "Black Book of Communism," MIM conducted an investigation of the French edition of the book. We found 11 figures with misplaced decimals in the English edition China chapter, conveniently affecting all the most important numbers in the China chapter and the whole book when it comes to calculating a death toll of communism. The 11 misplaced decimals can be considered the Amerikan quota of anti-communism, because they were not in the French edition (at least not the Robert Laffont Pocket edition). What it means is that it is possible to take the largest numbers in the accusations against us communists--blow them up by a factor of 10--then spread them in the United $tates in English through Harvard University Press, and nobody out of over a thousand reviewers will notice except for MIM, for a period of over a year. The book came out in 1999 and errors were not acknowledged until February 26, 2001. This is what we mean by the anti-Amerikan quota of anti-communism. The Europeans have to be careful: whatever they say over there will be multiplied by 10 by the time it gets here when it comes to anti-communism. MIM found Australians already discussing the "Black Book" and we raised our campaign, to which a die-hard reactionary on the Internet in the Usenet newgroup for Australians called "aus.politics" said, "Your (sic.) the dishonest one, ther eroor (sic.) was in printing, not calculation." MIM then replied with the following quote: "Just weeks after The Black Book of Communism was published, in late October 1997, the volume's two most distinguished contributors--Nicolas Werth, a historian of the Soviet Union, and Jean-Louis Margolin, a China expert--angrily repudiated the editor Stphane Courtois in a series of interviews and articles published in Le Monde. The scholars were infuriated by Courtois's introductory screed indicting international communism for "crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity" and characterizing fellow travelers as "common prostitutes." Worst of all, they complained, Courtois had not permitted them to see the introduction prior to publication. On October 31, Werth and Margolin were quoted in Le Monde excoriating Courtois for effacing "the historical character" of communism and for vastly inflating the number of deaths that occurred under it."(1) We spelled out that "in other words, we are criticizing Margolin and Margolin has already in turn criticized Courtois who came up with the 100 million nonsense. So the errors are the following: 1) The calculations were repudiated by Werth and Margolin, who wrote the Soviet and China chapters. 2) We at MIM in turn said even Margolin had gone way too far and English editor Mark Kramer has had to admit some errors so far." The die- hard reactionary did not get it, so someone else repeated the same thing. Then, the die-hard said it was only a printing error. So yet again, someone explained that there are separate errors--both printing errors and calculation errors. This is typical of die-hard reactionaries, but what is valuable is that MIM knows that some people "do get it" when they see a debate on the Internet--even if they are not participating themselves. In any case, the point is that the reactionaries are using this book and the post-modernist climate in academia to take up the neo-Nazi offensive. They are all comparing the 100 million figure Courtois used (which includes deaths of Axis invaders in addition to fictional deaths over a period of 72 years) and the 25 million Nazi caused deaths (which does not even count all the World War II casualties caused by the Nazis and only covers 12 years in fewer countries.) On the Usenet newsgroups since 2000, there have been 328 messages mentioning the "Black Book of Communism" excluding our own. The range of groups includes talk.politics.guns to co.general to soc.culture.vietnamese. Readers can check on this for themselves by going to my-deja.com (now owned by Google) and doing an advanced power search for the phrase "Black Book of Communism." The book is also getting heavy mention in standard political groups like alt.politics, alt.politics.usa and alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater. A Google search for "Black Book of Communism" comes up with 1,360 hits. In contrast, while the Maoist Internationalist Movement has been on the Internet much longer, our name occurs on only 380 web pages. Sifting through the reviews, we find all the major bourgeois propaganda organs like the Wall Street Journal, New Republic and NPR radio--all speaking in remarkable unison.(2) It is important that we communists understand this phenomenon--the unison of the bourgeois media and academia on this subject and it is important that we not underestimate the propaganda offensive of the neo-fascists. Major institutions such as the Catholic Church have joined the fray on behalf of neo-fascism. The fact that none of these web pages or major media reviews caught any substantial errors in the book is indicative of what kind of reviewers have influence in the French and English-speaking imperialist world. Because of the ignorant and reactionary nature of common reviewers, we call on our readers who like web-surfing, typing and discussing to post MIM articles and excerpts, available on our website all over the Internet to counter the neo-fascist offensive. MIM articles are especially effective in response to discussions already under way. People who do not mind signing my- deja.com's legal masochism created by Google for accounts can post to Usenet groups. Another place to get free Usenet access is http://news.interbulletin.com . There are also countless forums hosted by web pages. MIM material may be distributed anywhere on the Internet. Please just include a reference to our web site. We recommend that Internet surfers try to use the most security they can and post anonymously if they are going to be communist and not just dissident. People who use search engines on the Internet and Usenet can have their pick of political topics to discuss and enemies to beat back. MIM's web page also has search engines, so it is possible to find the exact response you need to spread to counter the reactionary offensives. Notes: 1. http://www.linguafranca.com/br/9911/shatz.html 2. A nice list of these uninformed reviews can be found at: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/lelivrenoir.htm . Short style reviews can be found at: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/reviews/COUBLA_R.html