Communism

As to government forms, yes, in the immortal words of Winston Churchill: "Democracy is the worst form of government; apart from all the others".
Personally I lean towards a more socialist way, with state help for the poor/unemployed/disabled/sick/elderly/etc, but that might just be that I grew up in that environment.

 

Both are examples of the belief that pain and blood will appease the god(s). Aztecs certainly didn't just sacrifice their POWs, they thought little of their own life as well, as long as they could by dying please the gods and ensure a good afterlife - same as the flaggelants.

About the governments, democracy and "a more socialist way" can be perfectly mixed and they really do work out to the happiness of most. Examples are many Scandinavian countries as well as (to a lesser extent) the Netherlands. Unfortunately the current flow of politics is towards budget cuts and the greatest field for budget cuts is social support fees.

 

But flagellants and the (comparatively) few Aztec sacrificees were willing victims. How would you feel if a bunch of Belgians invaded Holland, captured you, then with great ceremony sliced you open and ripped out your still-beating heart?
Would your dying thought be: "oh joy, they've sacrificed me to the glorious Sun God", or "I say, how nasty of them"?

Flagellants also did not consider death to be the ideal way to go - that is suicide, and naughty. Extreme pain, filth & poverty, yes. :roll:
Stupid, stupid, stupid people :roll: Why do I bother defending them?

Yes, I agree. See also late 1940s/1950s Britain.

 

Well, that's not the same. If the enemies of the Aztecs made any Aztec POWs their fate would have been the same; anybody falling into the hands of the enemy in that time and place didn't expect anything other than to be sliced open.

Did you know by the way that a trained Aztec priest could de-heart a person in 18 seconds?

 

I would point out that external attacks on the Aztec Empire were few between the time when they initially overthrew the tribe they were underlings of, and the arrival of the Spanish. Internal rebellion, yes, lots, because nobody likes having their family split up, their sisters becoming concubines, being moved to a different part of the Empire, and having their god changed...
And were the Aztec's neighbours all as bloodthirsty as the Aztecs?
Does anybody know?
The tribes taken over by / destroyed by the Aztecs we do not know about, as the Aztecs deliberately destroyed their history.
Actually, they were quite an effective Empire. If it were not for various portents/prophesies, and the Spanish arriving, they might well still be going...

 

Human sacrifice was practised by all meso-american societies, but I think none brought it to a level like the Atztecs.
There are reports that on one several thousands of prisoners were sacrified.
Generally this practise seemed to increase since Montezuma was emperor.

The worst ennemy of the Atztecs was the city of Tlaxcala, which eventually became an ally to Cortés.
They to are said to have sacrified atztec prisoners, which is hardly surprising as they had the same gods as the Atztecs.

 

Exacttly-and the Tlacalanas hatred of the Aztcs was so fiirce that shortly after Cortes landed they became his alies-and Tlascala was (and still is) very close to MExico City...

 

I dont see how the Anarcho-Syndicalists can be considered the far right of the left political spectrum.. There were not that many victims during the Spanish conquest of Mexico co-however, one of the Blackamoors which the Spaniards brought with them to the New World was infected with small-pox, for which the Amerindians had no resistance, having never been exposed to this disesase, and that took a most sveral tollof the population..Human sacrifice did not begin with Moctezuma, but had been the practice under many of his predecessors...

The theory of Communism, as set down by Karl Marx did not specify murder or atrocities, but it did prescribe revolution, and revolution ussually brings about killings of the opposition. The intellectual precursors of the Russian Revolution of 1917 were actually the Jacobins, revered by the Communists , who adopted many of their practices were ( the reign off terror, political commissars attached to the armies, etc.) However when writing the Communist Manifesto, Marx 's revolutionary program was aimed at Germany, not Russia, a land which he considered too backward to effect such a revolution,. Lenin, however, tought that Russia coud by-pass the stages of social development undergone in Germany , hence the birth of Marxism-Leninism...again, "Verba, non res"-for the reign of terror in Russia did not begin with Stalin-but with Lenin...

P.S. l did not discard the democratic system of govrnment, l said that one may argue that all political systems,( including the democratic plutocracies of the West) are evil-but a better oone has not yet been invented ...