Groupthink, Party Unity, and Willful Ignorance

There were a few moments where Bernstein really lost my sympathy, and his discussion of party identity and dissidence (pg. 136-138) in which he explains that though he was mostly private about his identity as a Communist outside of party meetings, and didn't spout his beliefs in public, within the meetings there wasn't a lot of dissent, either especially where foreign policy was concerned: "Whatever line the Soviet Union took, we followed. It seemed only right. The Russians had suffered more than anyone (thirty million dead in the war) and they 'Knew the Way.' We questioned what was happening there, but always within the context of their suffering, their terrible struggle to build the first socialist state in a world that had tried from the beginning to destroy them. This was not always easy." In reference to anti-Semitism and the treason trials, Bernstein says they "smacked of frame-up but felt I had not enough evidence to be sure." Some left the party but most stayed, "facing the growing attacks from the outside."

It's a little disturbing to realize that the demonization of the American Communists partly gave them the justification to continue to support the Soviet Union despite the rumblings of human rights abuses within the country going back to before World War II. Maybe the idealism that Bernstein describes as the core force for the American party prevented him and his fellow party members from looking too closely, but either way, Stalin's actions were directly counter to the Communist tenets Bernstein defends so vehemently. To dismiss that contradiction because of the polarized political attitudes of one's own country is understandable, but also disappointing and cowardly.

It is hard not to see the echoes of this kind of behavior within the American Zionist movement in response to the abuse of the Palestinians, or the American government's attitude towards the Taliban before the war in Afghanistan. Adversarial relationships always simplify these positions to an illogical place where we rotate enemies and overlook our allies' faults, but never actually stop the policies we seek to condemn.