Indeed it is surprising, but I think it's because communism wasn't put on trial when the Soviet Union collapsed. There weren't courts punishing gulag wardens and KGB officers for torture, murder, and everything else under the sun. Everything was forgiven for the sake of peace, but everyone learned the wrong lesson. Which is why when "nationalism" is mentioned, people think of Nazi germany, but when "socialism" is mentioned, today's youth especially wants to think of Sweden. The crimes of Nazi Germany are regularly mentioned in popular culture, but those of Communists not so much, though they're more contemporary, lasted much longer, and arguably affected a lot more people.
I think it's just that there were more communist countries in the last century. It's easier to dissociate communism from Stalin than Nazism (and Fascism) from Hitler. Also it's harder to link communism with genocide on an ideological level.
Communists slaughtered more people than Nazis (of course, not due to any virtue of the Nazis). Also, the current geopolitical situation is very different from the early or mid 1900s.
Ironically a better example of this would your own claim that focuses solely on the crimes of Nazism without any mention of Communist crimes. Since USSR was on the Allied side, Communism never quite turned into the embodiment of evil that Nazism has become. Due to this, today many academics are proud to call themselves Communists, whereas you would be hard-pressed to find any self-proclaimed nazis, at least in the mainstream of academia. All because history is written by the victors.
Exactly. Communists killed even more people than Nazis, but in modern Russia they still have a Communist Party. It's not the ruling party, more like a fringe party, but nevertheless it's supported by many Russians
it reminds me of Canada, which was in a state of martial law over a nazi insurrection of its parliament. of course, they werent nazis, but theyre in jail now just the same. its just never been fashionable for the western media to demonize canada the way it has "the communists"
I'm from Ukraine. In the 20-th century communists killed several of my relatives. I will never forget about that, and there're many million people like me all over the world.
I do observe tendency in modern world to white-wash communism, and cancel facts about crimes committed by communist regimes.
I know it sounds crazy and I don't have any evidence, but one possible explanation of the trend - Russia's or China's state-sponsored propaganda.
This is an incredibly important fact that is often downplayed.
We remember the Inquisition and the Vikings but they are small fry compared to Communists (and Nazis).
I'm not saying Communists are inherently evil - most of them are well meaning I think - but almost every single time it has been tried it has ended in genocide!
The one single exception I am aware of is the Israeli Kibbutz system.
Edit: communism has killed more people than nazism, probably because most people realize nazism is more or less pure evil while communism looks nice (edit:) on paper.
And I'm tired of people underestimating feloniousness of communism.
Just for your information: communism, as in Soviet Union, accounts for more victims than Hitler and nazism. They might not have built gas chambers, but trying to deliberately starve the whole nation (Ukrainian) to death isn't much better [1].
Unfortunately, at some point of WWII Stalin became US and UK ally, so still some political correctness prevents West to freely speak about communism and it's crimes.
So all things considered communism actually is "the worst thing ever" and nazism is a close second.
I don't understand why you are getting downvoted. Stalin killed millions of soviets.
All central and eastern european countries can testify how terrible it was when communists invanded their countries and took everything from them, including all posessions and freedom.
When my mother in law (who always lived in Slovakia) was in Belgium, we saw a guy with a soviet hammer and sickle t-shirt. She was shocked why anyone would freely wear something like that.
I'm pretty sure the guy just thought it was cool.
So my question to the downvoters: why are nazi's bad and communists not?
I find that a lot of people in the UK for example, completely misunderstand why communist countries have failed.
Yes you could say that's because of communism, but in practical terms these countries had way more problems than just being communist in the first place.
Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal. The ideology itself is violence. Talk about false equivalence.
As a person from an ex-communist country, whose family was killed by the communist government for being farmers I would disagree with that. So my question would be - why jail nazis but not communists?
There are plenty of countries without any communist history that are in much worse shape than either China or Russia, so this can hardly be a sufficient explanation.
Great comment. I learned something about a topic I'm not very familiar with.
I think it's possible that less attention is not the only reason Communism is tolerated more than Nazism. Nazism is much more inherently genocidal than Communism is. While the death toll for Communism is higher, it can be argued (and frequently is according to Wikipedia) that those deaths occurred under Communist regimes, but not because of Communism. So while some may wear a t-shirt with Che on it, they could be attempting to signal a Communist ideal that has never been implemented. While a t-shirt with a swastika on it, or worse, Hitler himself, doesn't leave much room to interpret anything other than racism, fascism, and ultimately genocide.
I also support improved education. Particularly body counts of states and their leaders, past and present. Especially for those that receive perhaps the least attention of all, Western democracies.
I find it strange that people proudly identify as "communists" without much stigma when the ideology was responsible for more death and suffering than national socialism. I guess it's a lot harder to remain ignorant of the Holocaust than of Stalin's purges.
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