Remembering Paul Hollander, a great scholar who saw through the propaganda techniques of totalitarians

You need ideology to commit large scale evil. - Paul Hollander

Paul Hollander, October 3, 1932 - April 9, 2019

The scholar Paul Hollander passed away on April 9, 2019 at his home in Northampton, Massachusetts. I had the honor of meeting him on November 8, 2017 after he gave a presentation on a panel titled, "The Bolshevik Revolution and the Establishment of the Soviet Union" which was part of a series of panels under the title: "Reflections on a Ravaged Century" an event organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He was a good and kind man who took the time to answer some of my questions.


Totalitarians whether Nazi or Communist have a track record of effectively using tourism, athletic events, and academic exchanges to present their regimes in a way that historically legitimized them and covered up their hostile objectives often with disastrous results not only for their own countries but the international community as a whole. 

 An excellent accounting of these practices and their impacts on national and international politics is found in Paul Hollander's book Political Pilgrims that should be required reading for anyone traveling to Cuba, China, North Korea, Venezuela, or Vietnam. His book has had a great influence on me, and I look forward to reading his other works.

Requiescat in pace