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.
This 999999999 times over. Straight up Communism has been responsible for more deaths than Nazism. Both are bad ideologies for different reasons. The fact that many give communism and countries that still espouse its values (IE: China) a pass, while condemning Nazism are showing a very big double standard. Of course it becomes utter hypocrisy when a large group of (progressives) condemn Nazi's while wearing their communist logos, idealizing communist leaders etc.. Often many of them have never lived in or set foot in a communist country.
With the recent trend of banning speech you don't like/agree with under the guise of hate speech the west has opened up pandora's box for a similar thing. Sure what some people may say can be utterly repugnant, but what is happening today is similar in many ways to what happened with communist regimes. A few powerful individuals set the tone (replace the government with big tech and the media), they get the masses to do their bidding via propaganda, eliminating dissenting opinions (IE: Bans for things such as stating scientific facts on Twitter etc..) and crushing anybody who dissents from the narrative. The power goes to a few, and human nature in the form or greed, desire for power, ego etc. takes over in the leadership class.
It hasn't gotten to the point of murder in the west (yet), but looking at the progression it has already ratcheted up to violence.
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.
Communist death tolls are mostly due to economic mismanagement, whereas the Nazis were intentionally exterminating people. Obviously many people were killed in the gulags, but that number is far smaller than the numbers killed in Nazi death camps or in the famines which resulted from the aforementioned mismanagement.
True but misleading. The deaths caused by communism were not a direct result of communism, they were the result of a corrupt Communist Party exerting will. Similarly, the vast majority of death caused by Religion was due to corrupt religious figures exerting their power, not a core function of the religion.
Nazis, on the other hand, carried the ideals that led to the holocaust as a core component of the ideology, i.e. the purity of race and country. You wouldn't have the holocaust without the Nazis.
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.
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.
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.
If we were to apply your argument equally, Nazis and Communists would both be deplatformed
I disagree fundamentally with your definition of communism as presupposing mass-murder. Also your comparison with Nazis as somehow equivalent is extremely troubling.
That extreme communist states have indulged in mass-murder (like many christian states, democratic states, tyrannical states, etc before them) doesn't mean it is an ideology of mass-murder, and it's extremely disingenuous to suggest it is.
I don't see how you'd equate communism and nazism. But whether they are the same or not how did you come with 100 million deaths for which the communism is responsible?
Communist purges kill those with counterrevolutionary beliefs. Nazi purges kill all minorities. As an ideology, communism does not require purges (e.g. Cuba has nothing on Pol Pot or Stalin) but Naziism requires it. I find both bad but I find Naziism far, far worse.
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?
Communism killed over 100 million lives during the past century. I know, I grew up in communist Romania and people were thrown into a van off the street for saying the wrong thing. The communist approach is literally as violent as Hitler's
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
Communism has executed exactly 0 people. Communism is just an economic system, don't confuse it with the totalitarian dictators who may have used it. America has murdered, tortured, and committed genocide and terrorism against countless people, but that's not directly related to the economic system.
Capitalism has been responsible for slavery, sweatshops, child labor, pollution, etc. On the other hand, it also brought us the iPhone, so it's not all bad ;)
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.
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