Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
... there is some controversy over whether he had actually ever read Marx.
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Precisely. Reading the works of Marx, Marx/Engels and Lenin is a very serious, tedious and not overly entertaining task. At a detail level, it is mostly done by professional academic scholars; to a much-much smaller degree by students of philosophy and history. Communist ideals, in their most primitive transcription, sound attractive to many western left liberal intellectuals and some of them announce their liking of them without really understanding what lies beneath.
Trotsky was a monster, the literal co-creator of the red terror along with Lenin. Lenin was a bloody monster himself, having no respect for human life, property and law. But in many ways, Trotsky was much much worse. Hitchens calling himself a fan of Trotsky was posturing, most likely... Although, Hitchens appeared as a very dark and misanthropic individual in person. So, who knows, really...