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Jewish World Review July 5, 2013/ 27 Tamuz, 5773 Mandela makeover By Greg Crosby
When he finally does go, he will be hailed by the Left as one of the greatest men the world has ever known. Movie stars and other pop celebrities will be calling him nothing short of a saint. For decades the man has been revered in the media as a freedom fighter and liberator. Obama has very recently compared him to George Washington. But, as someone once said, facts are stubborn things. Most things in life are not purely black and white (Sorry about the word play). Mandela is beloved by the Left because he fought against capitalism and the white man. Towards that end, Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. He was a member of the South African Communist Party. He co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, a terrorist organization that killed civilians, including children. Fast food outlets and supermarkets were favored targets. In addition to terrorist bombings, the military wing of the African National Congress tortured and executed suspected government agents. Post-apartheid South Africa is ruled by the ANC and the South African Communist Party. The ruling ANC defines itself as a "disciplined force of the left." But when he dies, you won't be hearing anything about this part of the man's legacy.
Populist leader Julius Malema and the ANC's youth wing are demanding that white-owned land be turned over to black South Africans and this incites the barbarous murders. This is the legacy of Nelson Mandela. Through the years, Mandela's pals included communists and dictators like Fidel Castro, Moammar Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein. His public statements have always been critical of western democratic countries, the USA in particular, while praising communistic regimes and dictatorships. Check out these few examples in his own words: When he and his wife traveled to Cuba in 1991 to celebrate the communist revolution with Castro, he said, "Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro... Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom, and justice. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious imperialist campaign designed to destroy the advances of the Cuban revolution. We too want to control our destiny... There can be no surrender. It is a case of freedom or death. The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people."
Mandela, in a September 2002 interview in Newsweek, shared his opinion on the Iraq war situation and said, "You will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace." In February 2003 he was reported as saying, "if there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America...Iraq produces 64 percent of the oil in the world. What Bush wants is to get hold of that oil." (By the way, his Iraq stat is bogus. Iraq produced about 5 percent.) But Mandela's views have always been anti-American and pro-Communist from the very beginning. In his book "The Struggle is My Life", a collection of his writings, there's this, in a piece dated 1958: "...the people of Asia and Africa have seen through the slanderous campaign conducted by the U.S.A. against the Socialist countries. They know that their independence is threatened not by any of the countries in the Socialist camp but by the U.S.A., who has surrounded their continent with military bases. The Communist bogey is an American stunt to distract the attention of the people of Africa from the real issue facing them, namely, American imperialism. (pp 76)" Keep these facts in mind when Mandela passes away and you see crowds gathering in the streets, flowers stacking up in piles ten feet high, and you hear speeches from dewy-eyed world leaders lauding Mandela's life. Yes, Mandela was a revolutionary figure but not all revolutions are equal. Napoleon was a revolutionary, as was Lenin, as was Mao. When it comes to revolutionaries, I don't know if Mandela is another Mao, but he is certainly no George Washington. Not even George Washington Carver.
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© 2008, Greg Crosby |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||||||||||
