Mr. Jones And The Lies Of Communism (And Communist Tools)

“Good morning. My name is President Taft and this is my brother-in-law Lee Harvey Oswald. This is the 35th season of our Oscar-winning radio series Prune Farming in the Ukraine.” – Penn and Teller

What sound did Stalin make when he drank water?  GULAG, GULAG, GULAG

Some subjects for these columns seem to select themselves.  An example is today’s topic – the movie Mr. Jones.  Mr. Jones came out in 2019, and I had never heard of it until the screen saver on my television said I could watch it for free even though it did not feature James Spader.  Or was that why it was free, because it was Spader-less?

I was already familiar with the titular (12-year-old me snickered) character of Gareth Jones.  I was actually sort of shocked that this film was made.  It was released in 2019, and is a very anti-communist film, showing that the Soviet Union was totalitarian and homicidal in a way only exceeded during Mao’s China in the twentieth century.  The fact that anyone was putting money down to fund a film, especially in 2019, that was this anti-communist surprised me.

The subject of the film is Gareth Jones’ discovery and reporting of the Holodomor.  I know that many of you are already familiar with the Holodomor, but a brief recap is required for context for those that aren’t familiar with it.  The Holodomor was, essentially, the Soviet government giving the farmers of the Soviet Union a “going out of business” sign so he could create collectivized agriculture.

No Leftist idea is so bad that Justin won’t try it again.

Lenin had tried to corral the farmers, but he discovered fairly quickly that the Revolution doesn’t run on good intentions, and had to back off.  Farmers were allowed to farm so that the Revolution could be fed.  But after Lenin died, Stalin took over and decided to make a “kinder, gentler” nation.

Just kidding.  Stalin started purging right and left.  And as poor as everyone in the Soviet Union was, a hardscrabble farmer (wink) that made a few extra bushels of grain was considered very wealthy.  They called them Kulaks.  Who was a Kulak?  Well, anyone with just a little more than the average peasant.

So, Stalin decided to go to war against his own people.  He mobilized factory workers, gave them guns, and sent them out to root out the real enemies of the revolution.  Keep this in mind when you hear about the war on farmers in Canada or the war on farmers in the Netherlands.

How does one get rid of millions of farmers but not starve the rest of the nation?  Take all of the food the farmers have.  All of the food.  From all of the farmers.  Then let them die.

I guess they won’t be having any Holland Oats anytime soon. 

Yup, that was it.  That was the strategy.  And it worked.  Bodies were collected on a regular basis, and all across the Soviet Union, millions died.  Many were shipped off to the GULAG system, too.  This is yet another reason the Soviet Union wasn’t the inspiration for many theme parks.

This is where Gareth Jones comes in – he was a British writer/reporter who talked himself into the Soviet Union, and talked himself into visiting the Soviet countryside, specifically in the Ukraine.  What he saw wasn’t good – it was exactly the mass starvation that I wrote about in the paragraph above.  If only he had read that, he could have saved himself some time and a whole lot of trouble.

But the main reason we know about the Holodomor is that Gareth Jones wrote about it.  He told the outside world, so we owe him.  The movie, Mr. Jones, depicts this journey across the Ukraine in a pretty unfaithful way – meant to shock the viewer, and also meant to particularly show that Ukraine was the victim.  In reality, Ukraine was hit particularly badly, but millions of farmers across the U.S.S.R. outside of the Ukraine were also treated in a similar fashion.

But it will be different this time, right?

That’s one of the beefs that the Jones family had with the film – Jones never ate nor witnessed the items on the menu that the film depicts.  They were also a bit miffed that they felt that his memory was used to be anti-Russian, rather than anti-Soviet.  You can see a bit more here (LINK) on how the family felt.  In one sense, it looks like this movie was made not because of the anti-Soviet theme, but because of the anti-Russian propaganda value.  Maybe because of Trump and muh Russia collusion?

Who can say?

But one other thing to note is that the Soviets aren’t the only bad guy – there’s another:  Walter Duranty.  Walter Duranty is one of the scummiest people to have ever lived.  The fact that he enjoyed a life of power and debauchery was only part of it.

For an example of how degenerate Duranty was, he was best buds with Aleister Crowley.  They did magic together as well as drug-fueled orgies with participants of all varieties.  This, of course, made him the perfect hire for the New York Times©.  Duranty wrote such a glowing portrait (“there is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be”) that he received a Pulitzer Prize® for his work denying the Holodomor.  Duranty’s writing about the Soviet Union was influential in getting the Soviets accepted and into a cozy sleeping bag with FDR.

Some things never change . . . .

So, given that his hands are stained with the blood of literally millions of farmers, you can understand that this is probably one of the few times this sentence has ever been written in the English language:  In retrospect, Duranty’s drug-fueled pederasty might be the nicest line I can write about him.  Oh, wait, he’s dead.  That’s something positive I can write about this vile leach that stained the lives of millions.

In the movie Mr. Jones, Duranty is depicted as just the depraved greasy worm I sketched above, so it’s got that going for it.  And the family of Gareth says they got his character spot-on, that’s two for two of the main cast.  Oddly, they have Jones meeting George Orwell, when in fact during all of Gareth Jones’ life Orwell was still an avowed socialist who had yet to become disillusioned by fighting with the commies in the Spanish Civil War and there’s zero evidence the two ever met.

Overall, the movie made $2.8 million at the box office, so unless they made mad bank from Blockbuster™ rentals, they ended up losing lots of cash.  Again, it was an art-house anti-commie movie released into the woke world of 2019.  What did they expect?

My birds were stuck together.  I took them to the vet – he said he couldn’t help – it was toucan fusing.

So, do I recommend it?  Dunno.  It wasn’t bad.  I probably wouldn’t watch it again because it’s a “one-time” movie and did not have James Spader in it.