"Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”
From a new series of dictator-themed greeting cards, just in time for the holidays!
Quote of the Day: Stalin on Gratitude
"Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”
From a new series of dictator-themed greeting cards, just in time for the holidays!
German Joys 
This reminds me of some very sad, desperate and wasteful marketing campaigns for classic literature that I had the misfortune to work on in a past life…
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Would you like to tell us more, Joanna? Love to hear, actually.
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Oh I don’t know Astron, gold embossed quotations on creamy tinted paper, gifty editions, all in the name of the Brand.
My own series would prob be inspired by Germaine Greer and Agnes Varda and instead of gentlemanly cards would consist of crumpled knickers or some such. I haven’t brainstormed yet and I don’t have the capital necessary to start a business in any case.
I prefer longer quotes in any case, such as this by Zizeck:
Even in the most violent phases of the Leninist dictatorship, when those who opposed the revolution were brutally deprived of their right to (public free) speech, they were not deprived of their right to silence: they were allowed to withdraw into inner exile. […]For Stalinism, however, even such silence resonated too much. Not only were masses of people required to show their support by attending big public rallies, artists and scientists also had to compromise themselves by participating in active measures such as signing official proclamations, or paying lip-service to Stalin and the official Marxism. If, in the Leninist dictatorship, one could be shot for what one said, in Stalinism one could be shot for what one did not say. This was followed through to the very end: suicide itself, the ultimate desperate withdrawal into silence, was condemned by Stalin as the last and highest act of treason against the Party. This distinction between Leninism and Stalinism reflects their general attitude towards society: for the former, society is a field of merciless struggle for power, a struggle which is openly admitted; for the latter, the conflict is, sometimes almost imperceptibly, redefined as that of a healthy society against what is excluded from it—vermin, insects, traitors who are less than human.
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ps: whoops I meant Zizek, typo; and when can we start referring to Andrew as Andrew Hávamál?
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Ah yes, Leninism, the human face of reasoned terror. There’s no Lenin but Lenin, and Zizek is his prophet. …and why shouldn’t such noble case have groupies, too, even if lacking capital to go into business–it’s the thought, or lack thereof, that counts.
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