Disortion

Some segments of the mainline conservative press are filing in behind the alt-right to support Sean McMeekin: Powerline, National Review. These are, perhaps, emboldened by the Guardian. For fear of dis-serving my readership, of which faithful souls Google will acknowledge one person in Portugal and maybe some Algerians; I give you a contrary opinion.

I only have the one, tonight: Geoffrey Roberts at The Irish Times. I'd give you David Aaronovich at the Times of London too but they're paywalled (although I can probably beg a reader to send that over). Anyway those fine Gaels accuse their fellow Celt McMeekin of disorting (sic) the history.

Do forgive my descent into gotcha-poasting. Roberts had attempted his own, by quoting further from a Stalin quote which McMeekin quoted in part. The Irish Times is, I'd argue, insulting its own readership: by assuming that said readership trusts the word of the Vozhd.

Roberts thinks that relentless anti-communism has led McMeekin into his flaws. I tend here, perhaps ironically, with Vox Day that, yes, "communism" is a bugaboo to the Right as is "capitalism" to the Left - or "fascism", or "racism", or "whiteness" - an idle bandying about of names, designed to cast out one's opponents to the outer darkness.

To that end I am unsure, despite that "SEE? SEE!?!" comment about the Stalin quote, that Roberts has even identified flaws, beyond aligning against Koba The Dread more than Roberts should like. Take this paragraph:

According to McMeekin, it was Stalin who goaded the Japanese to invade Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. He says the Soviet campaign for collective security against fascist aggression was a sham, as was Moscow’s support for Republican Spain during its civil war. Then, in 1939, Stalin engineered an Anglo-French-German war over Poland. Allied to Hitler, Stalin overplayed his hand by refusing to deepen his pact with the Nazi dictator. That disastrous miscalculation almost led to the Soviet Union’s defeat in 1941, says McMeekin, but Stalin’s bacon was saved by western military aid, the crucial source of all subsequent Soviet victories over Hitler’s armies.

Where is Roberts' rebuttal? For that matter, where is Roberts even quoting McMeekin? Roberts in his paraphrases is even less fair to McMeekin than McMeekin was to Stalin - this man is in John of Damascus territory. That is not a compliment. (There's content about 1943 in Roberts' review as well although I'll admit, I haven't got this far into McMeekin's book, so I must reserve judgement on that. 1943 wouldn't matter to my main concern anyway, which is the Icebreaker hypothesis, all about the lead-in to 1941.)

Even Roberts has to agree that ol' Dzhugashvili murdered Poles and deported suspicious elements as in, all the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Germans. But... eggs, omelettes; Uncle Joe saved us from Hitler. Mind you, Hitler thought he was saving us from Uncle Joe. GROG TRIBE ROOL, GRUG TRIBE DRULE

At least Roberts does not libel this professor at Bard College of being a "pseudo-historian" as Max Parry has done. Although that might just be because McMeekin was holding back. And/or because Roberts' publisher doesn't want to get sued.

I see in Roberts' review an implicit threat. Nice career you have there, Sean.