Sean McMeekin’s latest book ends with an unexpected prediction – a resurgence of communism. McMeekin argues that the strict population control methods implemented amidst the Covid pandemic, such as the pervasive ‘social distancing lockdown’, closely mirror those techniques used by previous communist states. He contends that the heightened death estimates were significantly inflated to alarm the western population into sacrificing their personal liberties, leading to a more widespread acceptance of measures typically associated with the Communist Party of China’s oppressive tactics.
McMeekin points out increasing restrictions on dissenting views, referencing the recent freezing of bank accounts intended to financially assist Canadian truckers protesting lockdown measures. He posits that such repercussions may soon be implemented towards people expressing views that contradict the majority standpoint of the Western social and governing elites over wider issues. These controversies could range from climate change and migration to racial, sexual orientation or gender identity matters.
Nonetheless, despite McMeekin’s conclusion echoing distinct right-wing conspiracy theories, the substantive content of his book adheres more to conventional commentary. The text provides an engaging read, often evoking a zealous 1950s American postgraduate student eager to appeal to his anti-Communist educator – a perspective distinctly lacking an examination of the anti-Communist witch hunts.
McMeekin’s fast-paced narrative guides the reader on a comprehensive journey through the origins and development of communist philosophies, tracing seminal events and figures from the French Revolution and the works of Marx and Engels, through the upheavals of Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution, right up to the modern global consequences of communist policy in countries like Poland, Nicaragua, and Cuba, and events like Gorbachev’s Glasnost, Tiananmen Square, and the sweeping changes of 1989.
In Julian Baggini’s book “How the World Eats”, he debates the current state of the global food system, arguing that it desperately needs repair. The text does have its inefficiencies, such as repeated information and a sometimes tiresome conversational tone. For example, it redundantly emphasises Maxim Litinov’s Jewish faith and playfully refers to Gracchus Baubef’s faction as ‘spiced-up Jacobin’. Furthermore, the narrative insists Marx was an information addict, who initiated his passionate discussions about workers’ revolution in 1843.
McMeekin’s main standpoint seems to be that communist regulation surpasses all other governance forms, requiring firm military control and intensely armed security services operating under tight party supervision. The text focuses primarily on tyrants and oppressors, but it downplays communism’s allure to regular men and women.
The narrative neglects to mention those communists ready to risk their lives to rally African American farmers, or Belfast-based activists who united Falls and Shankill to protest against unemployment in the winter of 1932. What about the communists who masterminded the extensive strike against the removal of Dutch Jews by Nazis in Amsterdam, February 1941? Behind communism’s history, beyond treachery and ambition, there was also bravery and self-denial. The ideology offered more than just a solution for inequality; it proposed a society governed by the working class. These are the reasons why it was labeled a ‘soviet’ by workers who seized their factory in Bruree, Co Limerick, in 1921, declaring that their aim was to produce bread, not money. This was simply one out of 200 parallel cases in Ireland during that period.
In McMeekin’s view, Bolshevism’s success is exclusively reliant on martial might, neglecting the ‘revolutionary essence’ which served as a warning to ex-British Prime Minister Lloyd George, about the unsettling spirit pervading Europe in 1919. It seems the impression being cast is that Western naivety and incompetence facilitated communism’s rise, with a few exceptions of CIA-induced overturns. On the whole, the opposition to the ideology seems lukewarm.
The level of White terror unleashed in response to the Bolshevik uprising is often downplayed, particularly when taking into account the loss of over 10,000 “reds” in Finland alone, following the nation’s civil war. Furthermore, the involvement of more than a dozen armies from the Allied nations in Russia is frequently downplayed. McMeekin’s assertions underline the significant impact of Bolshevik economics on Ukrainian Jews; however, he omits to discuss how the majority of barbaric pogroms in Ukraine were conducted by forces opposing communism. He does, however, mention this characteristic of the counter-revolution in Hungary.
Though accurate accounts of the victims of communist terror are meticulously outlined, the widespread violence infused by anti-communists is often overlooked. McMeekin neglects to acknowledge that many capitalist advocates viewed fascism as an appropriate response to the perceived threat of communism prior to World War II, or that post-war Western states were willing to back authoritarian governments or dethrone democratic ones to suppress it. There is scant spotlight on events of death squads and disappearances in El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, East Timor, among others. The anti-communist crackdown in Indonesia is referred, but the magnitude of the brutality, with victims numbering around 500,000, is understated. Similarly, Pinochet’s coup is downplayed.
According to McMeekin, these incidents were public relation disasters for the West, implying that, regardless of the outcome, the Soviets triumphed in terms of public perception. He rightly points out the anti-Semitic undertones of Stalin’s cruelties, but fails to touch on the common assumption among right-wing factions between the World Wars that communism was exclusively a Jewish conspiracy. The statement made by British spy chief Basil Thomson in 1919 that “Bolshevism is an international movement steered by Jews” lent weight to a sentiment also embraced by Winston Churchill, among others. As illustrated by Paul Hanebrink in A Specter Haunting Europe (2018), this belief served a pivotal role in rallying local support for Nazi genocide across Eastern Europe from 1939 to 1945. The exclusion of this theory from a history of international communism appears peculiar.
McMeekin attributes Franco’s coup in Spain to an escalating situation of uncontrolled strikes, property confiscation, assaults on religious buildings, and widespread lawlessness. This is how the right-wing in Spain rationalised the coup, yet most historians would dispute this as Franco’s main reason. He also claims the republican government in Madrid were mere tokens of Moscow, a claim that conflicts with the bulk of the evidence.
Franco’s forces’ massacres, highlighted extensively by Paul Preston in The Spanish Holocaust (2013), have been omitted by McMeekin. However, he does grudgingly accept the significant Soviet role in defeating Hitler post-1941 and acknowledges that the Red Army’s arrival was perceived as a ‘liberation’ by many Eastern Europeans. He counterbalances this by focusing on the American military support that boosted the Red Army’s advance and the atrocities committed by this army as they moved west.
Despite a nod to present-day far-right conjecture in his conclusion, McMeekin’s book primarily offers a standard anti-communist narrative. It does not delve into discussions of socio-political movements. As a result, British communism is condensed to the Cambridge spies rather than the Fife miners or the Stepney textile workers who in 1945 elected communist MPs. McMeekin sees communism as inevitably associated with coercion used to further state dictatorship, failing to investigate other possible outcomes.
Nevertheless, as Mark Hayes has suggested, adopting the words of Primo Levi, isn’t it conceivable to think of a communism without concentration camps? (Whereas, envisioning fascism without such camps is impossible.) Yet, it’s undeniable that McMeekin does tell the reality of the show trials, the gulags, mass disappearances, persecution of ethnic minorities, personality cults and the enormous human toll of Stalinism and Maoism.
It’s a paradox that remains pertinent today, just as it was in the 1930s, how individuals can stand nobly against tyranny in one context whilst condoning it in another. There are still those who try to legitimise the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, or minimising the purges. Certain communists commend Putin (despite his antipathy to the Bolsheviks) on the grounds that his resistance to Nato makes him a “progressive”. China’s extreme capitalist authoritarian regime is excused by others as a requisite phase on the way to socialism.
For some left-wing elements, the status of the actual working class in these societies is relegated to accommodate geopolitical larping. This was calamitous in the 1930s; presently, it’s a mockery. However, in a world that is physically ablaze and a democratic West poised to endorse a blatant genocide, the failings of communism may appear far-removed to many, especially those in the global south. McMeekin’s biased critique is insufficient to sway those who don’t already concur with his views.
Dr Brian Hanley, a Teaching Fellow in 20th Century Irish History at Trinity College Dublin, is the most recent author of The Impact of the Troubles on the Republic of Ireland, 1968-79: Boiling Volcano? (Manchester University Press, 2018).
Recommended further reading includes Out of the Ghetto by Joe Jacobs (Phoenix Press, 1991), a memoir of a Jewish East-Ender charting his experiences with poverty, communism, and anti-fascism against the backdrop of a general strike and the great depression.
Navigating the Zeitgeist by Helena Sheehan (Monthly Review Press, 2019) recounts her journey from a working-class Irish American background in Philadelphia through the New Left, Official Sinn Féin, to the Communist Party. She elucidates the appeal of worldwide communism even amidst its contradictions.
Eve Rosenhaft’s Beating the Fascists? (Cambridge University Press, 2008), discusses how, in the final years of the Weimar Republic, unemployed Germans were likelier to back the Communist Party rather than the Nazis. She goes on to scrutinise working-class Berlin’s subculture, where socio-political divisions among the workforce sabotaged the battle against Hitler, but where the Nazis proceeded with caution, even post assuming control.