Kent SU Back Stalin For Elections

Do you find your SU elections exciting? No, well nobody usually does. However, Kent Union are feeling the heat today after they launched their election season with a poster of Marshall Stalin.

What possessed them to do that? It seems that its ok to a glorify a tyrannical dictator who killed 62 million people, over 40,000 every single week on average. I'm not sure about you but I wouldn't want to celebrate that. Indeed Stalin was the most brutal dictator in all of human history committing mass genocide against Jews, Tartars and many other races. This is the man who without any mercy willingly sacrificed 20 million people to collectivise Russian agriculture. Stalin held captive 4-6 million people in Gulags, most of whom had done nothing wrong except come into the cross hairs of the Soviet state. Stalin destroyed Russia and helped make many people's lives a misery throughout the 20th century.

This begs the question of why Kent Union wished to celebrate such an awful man? Are they trying on that inappropriate left-wing 'coolness' of backing 'revolutionaries'? Perhaps they are sending a propaganda signal to Kent Uni students to follow their dear elitist leaders and vote for the same old left-wing unionists who do nothing but moan about government cuts whilst drinking champagne? Or maybe there are some closet Communists as officers and this is a signal for the revolution?

On another point about this poster why is it telling you to be ready for the 'campus takeover'? The Kent Union elections are not going to be more important than the October Revolution of 1917. I'm not apathetic to voting, I always do take part. But the choice of candidates at any SU elections are poor to say the least. They are all left wing, all wanting to keep the status quo and all just standing to get a well paid sabbatical. Perhaps the SU officers will one day become civil servants who put road blocks to any change and don't care about anyone in the country apart from themselves. Revolution, ha.

Parody of the Kent Union logo may be more like fact, made by @Strawb3rryShort on http://accentofevil.co.uk/.

Anyway I think that Kent Union should take down these offensive posters. Stalin is not cool he's an oppressive dictator and he will never be funny even if you put some googly eyes over him.

We'll keep you updated on what Kent Union has to say.

Update

Well Kent Union have come back with a very weak excuse to put a mass murderer on a poster. They say that the posters were designed 'to promote and spark discussion' about their campus takeover. So essentially they were going out their to spark controversy which sort of shows they have a poor moral compass. Kent Union have admitted however that 'The material is not aimed at aligning the organisation with any particular political campaign or party'.

The poster itself is apparently a mix of  'a Film poster for Red Monarch, depicting an image of Stalin with a tomato squashed against his nose; and also the “New Labour, New Danger” advertising campaign created by M&C Saatchi'.

With the design I can see how these two are mixed together but the reasoning to do that, other than to spark controversy seems rather flimsy. Kent Union says that want 'to set out to profile one of the “Campus Takeover” events – to show the power of cartoons in politics, as the open lecture about The Power of Cartoons relates to (PK008 Medway Campus 1pm-2pm).' Personally I think we can call bullshit on that last part.