Books November 2010
Blood-dimmed tide
A review of Yeats and Violence (Clarendon Lectures in English) by Michael Wood.
Modern prophets of revolution invented brutal slogans to justify their use of violence in order to change the world and begin a new order of justice and peace. Lenin defined a “Who,” the few active tyrants, and a “Whom,” the many passive victims of violence. Mao declared that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” and seized power by killing millions of his own people. But, as George Orwell revealed in Animal Farm, revolution almost inevitably leads to totalitarian terror: new and more vicious dictators replace the old oppressors and increase the suffering of the perennial victims. The ruthlessness of Stalin and...
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