Joseph Stalin would have to have been drunk to call the U.S. “healthy,” and to have complimented America’s patriotism, morality and spiritual life. Even then, it would be unlikely. Why does this quote keep circulating?
This has been floating around Tea Party and other shallow venues for a while, but I’ll wager Stalin did not say it:
“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: Its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”
I can’t find any source for it; it’s mostly quoted on right-wing sites where people marvel over what a prophet Stalin was. All requests for a citation in five or six different forums I’ve checked, are unanswered. Nothing like it appears at the often-checked Wikiquote. The Stalin Archive holds nothing close to the claimed quote.
Perhaps more telling: Is it likely that Joe Stalin ever would have called the U.S. “a healthy body?” Stalin was of a school that claimed capitalism was diseased, and America was infested with a soon-to-be terminal case. If he called America “diseased” by patriotism and religion, it would be consistent with other statements, but his calling America healthy for patriotism and spiritual life, it’s inconsistent with other claims he made, about America and about capitalism (see Stalin’s 1929 remonstrance to the U.S. Communist Party, for example).
So, Dear Readers, my request to you: Can you offer the source of this quote, Joseph Stalin or not?
Why would a false claim from Stalin get such a life on the internet?
Update, March 15, 2012: I’m calling this one: It’s a bogus quote. Joseph Stalin didn’t say it. Not as many comments here as e-mails and comments on other discussion boards and Facebook — no one has come even close to anything like the line above from Stalin. No source quoting the line even bothers to give a decade, let alone a year, a location, and a citation that would pass muster in a sophomore high school English class. Tea Partiers, you’ve tried to twist history again — stop it.
Update March 1, 2013: If you’re checking in here studying for a DBQ for an AP class, please tell us in comments, which AP class, and what city you’re in. Thanks.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
This dude is already Stalin chicken!… he is under the spell of the 4 Stages Of Subversion… but lucky that he is in a godly nation [moralist], where God, our prayers [spiritual life] and our freedom of individual [moralist] still our force, our truth and our way of living, where many around the world desires for a place to move to, learn from or simple envy, hate and wanting to own. but our living God, who love USA will not allowed that these nuts dismantle our country.
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And on Valentine’s Eve, 2016, Ben Carson pushed the Bogus History version. Oy.
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To quote:
Funny, I’d argue that you conservatives think Stalin is a hero.
After all..you’re the ones who have made this statement true:
And your party is the one willing to let people suffer and die due to hunger, homelessness and lack of health care…everyone from man, woman and child.
Apparently the only freedom you pseudo fascists believe in is “The freedom for the middle class and the poor to die”
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To quote: . . . if I don’t pay the fine I will have my assets seized, if I resist I will be arrested, if I resist arrest I will be killed. That is what the government is “giving” it’s people.
prove where it says that in the actual law.
And if you guys have such a problem with an insurance mandate then why in God’s name did you come up with the idea 20 years ago?
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At FunnyJunk, nospyonme said:
Bulls***. The founders, and all of our leaders, and our legal system, assume most people will happily comply with wise laws. Most laws cover civil matters — no criminal penalties. The vast majority of criminal laws provide fines only; a tiny portion allow jail; a minuscule portion of US criminal laws allow execution as a penalty.
Once a law is passed, if it’s a good law, most people will simply comply, and we go happily along building a greater nation.
If you don’t have health insurance (doesn’t have to come from healthcare.gov), you will be taxed. Not fined, taxed.
Are you in Colorado, or Washington? Man, you need to lay off the dope — your paranoia is way out of control.
Under the Affordable Care Act, if you don’t pay the tax, you get a letter saying you owe the money. The law specifically disallows asset seizures for non-compliance; there is no criminal penalty, so you can’t be arrested.
Clearly you don’t understand the law. Your paranoid worries run exactly the opposite of what the law says.
I didn’t know you could die of Drama Queen syndrome.
Bad news: If you’re hoping the federal agents will come kill you because you don’t sign up for ObamaCare, you’re going to be stuck on your doorstep waiting for black helicopters and SWAT teams that will never come.
Lay off the dope for a while, see if that helps. Maybe for the rest of your life.
(Good news is that ObamaCare covers mental illnesses, such as overpowering paranoia. You could get help under any insurance plan.)
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Hitler’s orders were written down — the path of his treachery is well established. Who told you otherwise?
If you think showing hoaxes on Stalin’s views makes one a fan of Stalin, perhaps you should read some real history. Gullibility is generally the result of ignorance, but ignorance is a disease that is readily treated, with good information.
Manners, to avoid making false accusations, may be something else.
In the meantime, it is still true that Stalin did not say what the Tea Partiers claim. As you note, both Hitler and Stalin are known for their enormous false tales — why would anyone want to join that company?
If you’ve got a citation, the source of Stalin saying what is alleged, provide the link. Why would you want to even be in the company of people who tell falsehoods?
P.S. — you totally missed the point of my selection of THAT photo of Stalin? History, man. You need to read it, and study it.
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Hitler had 6 million Jews murdered. Why can’t we find one single shred of evidence that he ordered even one murder? Perhaps he didn’t write it down…..
If Stalin is your hero you must be a big fan of forced famine, forced labor camps, concentration camps and the murder of 20 million people. He made Hitler look like a chump beginner.
Your education has extended beyond the boundaries of your intellect
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I mean he didn’t say it.
When someone offers a quote from a figure in history as notorious as Joe Stalin, either the provenance is known, or it’s bogus.
There is a Moscow snowball’s chance in Dallas in August that it’s a verifiable quote, but no more chance than that.
Melissa, the source of the claim figures into this, too. Tea Party people are all about polemic, and not much on accuracy. If a Tea Partier claims something, you should assume most of the claim is bogus. They claim to be experts on the Constitution, but then led the national groans against the census — apparently overlooking the Constitution’s requirement that the census be taken. This is another case where the smell of error is strong. How better to indict something they don’t like than by claiming that Joe Stalin said it, you know? On the other hand, you’ll never see a Tea Partier offer Mao’s accurate quote, about political power growing out of the barrel of a gun, in their hasty and often historically wrong claims about the Second Amendment.
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Pretty odd how a made up quote is implemented to pin point accuracy. Do you mean he didn’t say it? Or you don’t have it on tape? Or do you mean to say that you have all things Stalin EVER SAID and you’re able to prove he never said it?
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so what if he didnt say it ? he most assuredly would have if he had thought of it. and in a way it is indeed prophetic as far as i am concerned. that is pretty much what has happened to America over the last ~50 years. who really cares where it came from or if it is totally made up to fit the circumstances. seems fairly accurate to me
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Thanks. Catherine Sherman called that to my attention yesterday. Entertaining stuff. Not on a scale of putting wholesale lies in the mouth of Joe Stalin to indict American politics, but interesting nevertheless. Working on it now.
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I know you’re big on getting quotes right Ed. Any response to this?
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/03/obama-hits-predecessor—-rutherford-b-hayes/1?csp=34news#.T2Nza_Xh-So
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Brilliant! I agree. I regret the loss.
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Wow, I wrote a really really clever commentary on this, then put in my name and address and submitted it, forgetting that I had to LOG IN on WordPress beforehand — not that their interface mentions such a requirement — and was politely informed that I would have to log in in order to use that name. Of course, my posting was irretrievably lost.
FYWP with a chainsaw.
Not your fault. Mine, in fact, because I KNOW that I must always drag my draft text to a safe place before attempting to post anything anywhere, but it’s late and I didn’t. I just have to gripe when someone is wrong on the Internet — or, as in this case, right — and then my brilliant prose gets wasted. At least no one can challenge my claim that it was brilliant.
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[…] […]
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Sounds fake.
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Something Stalin actually did write:
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The Internet Archive has about 14 volumes of Stalin’s collected works — I can’t find the quote there. Can you?
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Joseph%20Stalin%22
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