Leftist hypocrisy.

Radical leftists (communists, Marxists, progressives) tear their hair over the enslavement of Negroes. What they will not do, however, is concern themselves with the enslavement -- and murder -- of hundreds of millions of people under communism in the last century.

They would rather choke than admit that slavery was an integral part of communist regimes. Or, for that matter, that the sine qua non of the slave trade was African chiefs selling their own people to Muslim slave traders, who already had centuries of practice carrying off European whites to slavery in Arab lands.

Ditto for any kind of non-Western imperialism. The Western variant was base, horrid, vile, cancerous, and destructive of idyllic, authentic local orders (built on mountains of skulls). Not one word, however, about Muslim, Zulu, Mongol, Chinese, or Red Indian imperialism.

Jason P. below has distilled the thinking of leftists to its vital essence:

Mr. Green writes a thoughtful review [of the movie "12 Years a Slave"]. I, too, wonder about the obsession over slavery that ended 150 years ago. I suppose I could think about the subjugation of my ancestors under Ottoman rule, which ended 190 years ago. But I rarely have.

What seems to be lost in this retrospective is that we are losing our liberty today, as paternalistic government takes over our lives. This “old southern slavery” retelling seems to be a distraction from the new serfdom that is spreading over our land like weeds on a dying civilization. I can’t help thinking that the left isn’t opposed to slavery; it’s just opposed to the fact that some people are free.

What makes the left apoplectic and vicious is any instance of a human being making a free choice about his personal life or voicing a true opinion about any public matter. In their view, free choices and true words spring from depraved hearts filled with greed, racism, sexism, homophobia, and a love of plastic shopping bags.

Once humans transit into the ranks of government, however, their hearts and minds are purified from all baseness, their IQs rise by 20 points, and they become fit to guide the masses in the true path. Can there possibly be any doubt about this leftist pipe dream?

Comment by Jason P. on “12 Years a Slave” — Portrayal or Propaganda? By Paul Green, Gates of Vienna, 11/14/13.