Andrew Murray

Andrew Murray is a prominent British anti-war campaigner and admirer of Stalin.

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The chairman of the Stop the War Coalition[1] and a member of the Communist Party of Britain, Murray has been criticised for a 1999 Morning Star editorial in which he argued, in essence, that the west has committed crimes against humanity as well so therefore Stalin doesn't deserve as much criticism as he gets:

Next Tuesday is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Josef Stalin. His career is the subject of a vast and everexpanding literature. Read it all and, at the end, you are still left paying your money and taking your choice. A socialist system embracing a third of the world and the defeat of Nazi Germany on the one hand. On the other, all accompanied by harsh measures imposed by a one-party regime. Nevertheless, if you believe that the worst crimes visited on humanity this century, from colonialism to Hiroshima and from concentration camps to mass poverty and unemployment have been caused by imperialism, then [Stalin’s birthday] might at least be a moment to ponder why the authors of those crimes and their hack propagandists abominate the name of Stalin beyond all others. It was, after all, Stalin’s best-known critic, Nikita Khrushchev, who remarked in 1956 that “against imperialists, we are all Stalinists”[2]

This is essentially whataboutism and the not as bad as argument fallacy, although he also seems to allude to the My enemy's enemy argument fallacy.

He has also called for solidarity with North Korea[3] and has been accused of barring Communist organisations from the Stop the War Coalition if they criticise the government of Iran.[4][5]

References
  1. http://www.newstatesman.com/node/145159
  2. http://socialaffairsunit.org.uk/digipub/index2.php?option=content&do_pdf=1&id=12
  3. http://web.archive.org/web/20031210230502/http://www.communist-party.org.uk/articles/2003/march/10-03-03.shtml
  4. http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=5731
  5. http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=377
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