Emma Goldman Quotes
… perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.
Emma Goldman, 1869-1940, Writer and Reformer, My Disillusionment with Russia, 1923
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Writing about President George Washington:. Bache, a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was jailed under the Sedition Act for his writings against the government.
Lenin, Uritsky, and other Bolshevik leaders were attacked in 1918. Lenin was wounded but Utrtsky died, and this triggered the attacks on the other Russian factions by the Bolsheviks known as the “Red Terror.”
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, there was a vicious civil war and the Communists governed ruthlessly not even pretending to follow the democratic principles that they had espoused before they can to power. This was a typical intellectual rationalization of a dictatorial behavior that lasted until the fall of Communist Russia. However, at this time most supporters thought that things would soon change. They only got worse culminating in Stalin’s atrocities. The Bolsheviks were the ruling communist party in Russia.
War between England and Germany had just commenced. The last sentence refers to the fact that Hitler had recently signed a peace pact with Stalin to everyone’s surprise as Hitler told the German people over and over that Russia was Germany’s biggest enemy. The pact was only a ruse on Hitler’s part to delay Russia’s entry into the war. Hitler broke the treaty and invaded Russia a little later.
1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. This turned out to be one of the worst predictions in political history.
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Trotsky grew disillusioned with the Communist Party Direction (see {634717})and went into exile in Mexico where he was murdered under orders of Stalin.
Paine had been imprisoned in France for his political writings. After inspiring the nation in the Revolution, he was not a very popular figure in America, being regarded as an atheistic, rabble-rouser. The President distanced himself from the situation and did nothing to secure Payne's release.
This quotation is noteworthy because he is one of the only Judeo-Christian theologians who hold that the ends justify the means. Even most politicians do not believe this.
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
