The Spectator

Letters: the horror of communism

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A kick up the assetocracy

Sir: While it was heartening to see Fraser Nelson take a stand against the ‘assetocracy’ (11 September), it made for a depressing read too. As a millennial, voting Conservative today feels increasingly like an act of social charity. Something done at my own economic expense to shield my fellow citizens from the negative impacts of the alternatives. Should I continue to vote for my values, or should I vote for my own self-interest? For all the hypothetical benefit of a society run by a party that believes in the virtues of liberty, free enterprise and our national institutions, for young people the value proposition of a Conservative government is woeful. Ever higher property prices. Tax rises: not on the vast wealth that the young are unable to build themselves, but on earnings that have barely risen in a decade. And does any millennial believe the triple lock will still exist by the time they reach retirement?

The young have selflessly upheld their end of the social contract during the pandemic, curtailing their freedoms despite the marginal risk to their health to save the elderly. Endless subsidy to the assetocracy is a poor way to repay the favour.

James Sean Dickson

London E20

Totalitarian horror

Sir: As a long-ago graduate in Russian, and having immersed myself in Soviet literature ever since, I applaud James Bartholomew’s mission to educate our younger generation in the realities of communism (‘Tales from the Gulag’, 11 September). I was alarmed when so many young people declared their intention of voting for the far left at the last election. Read about the Mandelstams and Anna Akhmatova; look up Irina Ratushinskaya, Zhores Medvedev: the list is endless. (Mr Bartholomew might like to read Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov.) Youthful idealism is one thing, but supporting the idea of a political system that murdered, tortured, exiled or terrified tens of millions of people simply for having different opinions or believing in God — that’s entirely another.

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