IF communists have a reputation for anything, it is seriousness. (And if you have seen old photos of Karl Marx, you know that he did not smile much.) But at the Brecht Forum, a community center on West Street where revolutionaries and radicals gather daily to ponder and to pontificate, they also play. (Smiles abound.)
Yes, without any authority to ship people off to gulags to reeducate them through the joy of forced labor and starvation rations, these revolutionaries and radicals play games along with their earnest and serious discussion.. Just like real people! The writer was charmed off his/her feet:
While Mr. Balagun waved me out the front door, I imagined Marx’s ghost floating in the hazy light of the evening, watching over the poker players. Behind his famous thicket of a beard, I could almost see a grin.
This is from the New York Times, of course.
A reputation not for mass murder and oppression, as history would indicate. No, communists have a reputation for "seriousness" according to the Times reporter. To be fair, there is an audience here for that rot.
When I read about these proto-thugs gathering freely in a free country, I can almost see a gun--pointed at us, of course. Because that's the way they roll.
