Friday, May 1, 2009
Of course I'm not in favor of these types of laws for the US, but I do enjoy reading about people who understand the dangers of the far left as well as the far right: Poland 'to ban' Che Guevara image
The iconic image of Che Guevara found adorning students' walls and t-shirts across the world could be banned in Poland under a government proposal to outlaw materials that incite "fascism and totalitarian systems".
Poland's equality minister, Elzbieta Radziszewska, wants to expand a Polish law prohibiting the production of fascist and totalitarian propaganda so that it includes clothing and anything else that could carry an image related to an authoritarian system.
Anybody found guilty could face a two-year prison sentence.
Radziszewska said that the proposed amendment to current legislation "would help organisations fighting racism".
The proposal, which could see the faces of some of the leading lights of communist history such as Lenin and Trotsky removed from t-shirts and flags, reflects a Polish view on communism far different from the rose-tinted and romantic images often found in the West.
After experiencing 40 hard years of communism, as well as the horrors of Nazi occupation, few Poles have qualms equating under law the inequities of Nazism and communism.
"Communism was a terrible, murderous system that claimed millions of lives," said Professor Wojciech Roszkowski, a leading Polish historian and member of the European parliament.
"It was very similar to National Socialism, and there is no reason to treat those two systems, and their symbols, differently. Their glorification should be prohibited."
He added communism had accounted for the slaughter of thousands of Poles in the Katyn Massacre while its gulags had consumed countless millions of victims...
I have been wickedly tempted to go spend the $$ needed to have a custom t-shirt made. One with a picture of Yezhov. You know, Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, Stalin's secret police chief, the one whose work on the Great Purge was so diligent that the period was called the "Yezhov era" (Yezhovschina). He's just as worthy of admiration as Dr. Guevara is.