RIP Nelson Mandela

The tone of this post, and the previous one you linked to, might be a little much, but what are the lies? What are the smears?

The rightwingwatch.org post you linked to didn't even refute any of the claims in the article it highlighted.

Mandela was an incredible person. He was strong and fearless. He led his nation well, and avoided the kind of bloodshed we've seen when other oppressive regimes have fallen.

I'm not sure why Mandela (or someone like James Connolly) can't be considered a hero, while also recognizing he was essentially a communist.

When you're looking to institute a revolution, communism is an appealing ideology.

When you say something like this, it's hard to claim you're anything other than sympathetic to Communism:

“From its earliest days, the Cuban Revolution has also been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of the vicious imperialist-orquestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gain made in the Cuban Revolution. … Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro.”

 

How do we know any of it is true?
How can anyone argue that South Africa is not better off now because of Mandela?
Why the idea that he was the real racist?
The stuff about dogs and how he was a murderer sound bogus to me.

 

I'm still not sure what you think is a lie or smear.

This guy comes at it from a very Conservative, religious perspective. He objects to some of his policies, that are basically mainstream liberal policies.

Now you can disagree with him, but it's no smear to say what Mandela supports.

And, you know he was speaking figuratively when he said, "he set his dogs on us," right? He was talking about the tax audit his group was subjected to.

 

South Africa's commies say Mandela was one of them:

 

And, he certainly was a leader in a armed struggle against his government, that included the planting of bombs:

Now, considering the regime he was fighting, it might be hard to criticize the actions he took.

But, it's neither a smear nor a lie to mention it either.

It doesn't change who he was, or what he accomplished. We don't have to whitewash history (no pun intended) to make our heroes look better. We've tried to get away from that here, when discussing folks like Washington & Jefferson. Why engage in it with Mendela?

 

OK, but the guy is also making the case that South Africa was better under apartheid. He quotes somebody saying he could be imprisoned for hiring a white person and just takes the guy's word for it, making no effort to see if there actually is such a law.
He makes it sound like the whites in the country are in danger of being killed off or that they're the new second-class citizens, but that's not true.
There's also the realty that Joseph Farah, the author of the first WND column, is only where he is now because he either couldn't hack it as a real journalist or he discovered there's more money to be made by telling uneducated bigots what they want to hear.
And as far as Communism goes, so what? This isn't 1950's New York. Seeing commies everywhere looks a little ridiculous.
You want something to refute Farah's claims? How about this:
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=2326984

 

And apparently some of Ted Cruz's supporters don't care much for Cruz's praise of Mandela, either.

http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/ted-cruz-slammed-mandela-tribute

 

They must be a hoot at funerals. "Well, I'm sorry he's dead, but you know Larry was kind of annoying, didn't eat very well - and he had that DUI back in college."

 

Yeah, except these assholes feel the need to compare Mandela to the kind of tyrants that he spent his life fighting.

 

Skip past the first 0:28 of kids shouting at the camera for the good stuff.

 

There certainly are some folks taking glee in pissing on his grave. I don't think that's necessary. It would be less necessary if folks like Smallpotatoes knew and understood the man's entire story, and if news organizations were willing to tell it.

There's very little to be embarrassed about. Yes, he founded and led the military wing of the ANC. Yes, he resorted to violence. Yes, he was a communist.

But, he was also fighting a brutal, racist government.

If I were to take issue with him, or you, it would be that he did not fight tyrants his whole life. He embraced folks like Castro and Gaddafi.

 

A thoughtful look at the issue:

Bill Keller in the Times: Nelson Mandela, Communist http://nyti.ms/1dXbm1B

The news excited some critics and historical revisionists, who claimed it exposed the A.N.C. as a Stalinist front. (“ ‘Saint’ Mandela? Not So Fast!” exulted one right-wing blog.) It probably stirred a sense of vindication among Americans who endorsed their government’s Cold War support of the fiercely anti-Communist apartheid regime. Professor Ellis is no apologist for white rule — he occupies a university chair in Amsterdam named for another hero of the South African resistance, Archbishop Desmond Tutu — but he contends that the affiliation with the Communists shaped the A.N.C.’s ideology in ways that endure, ominously, to this day.

“Today, the A.N.C. officially claims still to be at the first stage ... of a two-phase revolution,” Ellis told me in an email exchange. “This is a theory obtained directly from Soviet thinking.”

Indeed, the remnants of Communist protocol and jargon — “comrades” and “counterrevolutionaries” — live on in the platform and demeanor of South Africa’s ruling party. My own perspective on this question, shaped by covering the Soviet Union from 1986 to 1991 and South Africa from 1992 to 1995, is respectful of scholarship, but also wary of its limits. Both in Gorbachev’s Russia and in transitional South Africa, I realized that what people profess at party plenums and codify in party records is not always a reliable guide to what they will do, or even what they actually believe.

But Mandela’s Communist affiliation is not just a bit of history’s flotsam. It doesn’t justify the gleeful red baiting, and it certainly does not diminish a heroic legacy, but it is significant in a few respects.

First, Mandela’s brief membership in the South African Communist Party, and his long-term alliance with more devout Communists, say less about his ideology than about his pragmatism. He was at various times a black nationalist and a nonracialist, an opponent of armed struggle and an advocate of violence, a hothead and the calmest man in the room, a consumer of Marxist tracts and an admirer of Western democracy, a close partner of Communists and, in his presidency, a close partner of South Africa’s powerful capitalists.