And why would anyone care about Albert Einstein’s view on Lenin? An obvious fallacious appeal to authority, and not even a very smart one.
That’s if this is even true.
Einstein is a jewish that lived through the Russian revolution and lived in Germany during the rise of Hitler before his escape to the US. As far as period accounts he’s as good as you’re gonna get, and I don’t know about you but I don’t think we’re going to find a more intelligent person alive during that period but if you want to give examples that aren’t nazis or people that said nice things about nazis I’m certainly open to them.
And he was an extremely active leftist politically during the period. You should read his essay, Why Socialism? It’s a good introductory piece for people.
Also something of a smart man.
Page 14 of the 260 page FBI file on him states the following:
Not even Stalin himself is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international groups to promote this “preliminary condition” of world revolution and ultimate anarchy, as Albert Einstein.
Those files are a fun read, do recommend them. Available on the FBI vault here.
So…yeah, a naked appeal to authority. Einstein was nigh-unmatchable in his field, but that doesn’t mean his intelligence was applicable to every other field. In fact, one of the worst things you can do is consider an expert in one field an automatic ‘authority’ in others.
Imagine when someone points out you’re being illogical by using an appeal to authority and you respond by… doubling down on an appeal to authority. That’s some Marx-tier dialectical thinking there, comrade
Comrade, I appreciate your willingness to engage, but we’re materialists, not followers of the Great Man theory.
While there are many commendable actions Einstein took as a political activist, I imagine you’re not going to defend this xenophobia.
It’s fine if you included the Einstein quote in there as a note to end on, but it shouldn’t be your argument, since honestly, Einstein’s political views shouldn’t mean more solely on the basis of breakthroughs in physics (despite what Einstein claims). I would instead have frame challenged their comment to point out that the US claims to be such a “democratic utopia” but is definitely an “authoritarian dictatorship” itself. Maybe follow up with a quote about how any of the countries that didn’t do something succumbed to the US’ anticommunist efforts
