Comment by briandear
9 years ago
Communists killed multiple millions more. Yet Fidel Castro had world leaders at his funeral. The anti-Jewish progroms of the Soviet Union happened yet protesters who carry hammer and sickle flags aren’t treated with the same vile contempt as those who carry Nazi flags.
Che Guevara’s face is plastered across all manner of pop culture and products yet that face represents communism and for some reason, it’s culturally acceptable?
Communism as an ideology doesn't have racism as a cornerstone. It's just that it's very easy for people who want to do that to sieze power. Karl Marx never wrote in his manifesto that whole ethnic groups should be eliminated because white Germans are superior.
Racism and genocide is at the heart of Nazi ideology. It is steeped in the ideas of racial superiority. This is why their symbols are culturally unacceptable: they literally mean "I am better than the Jews therefore they should die".
...which means (or, at least is should mean) absolutely nothing.
Both Nazi and Communist regimes have killed staggering amounts of people in horrible and brutal ways. They're both repulsive.
Like, who really cares whether your ideology has hate as a cornerstone if you still commit genocide by starvation and throw millions in gulags to die? "Oh man, I'm dead but at least they didn't hate me while they slowly starved me to death!"
I think you're mistaken. That's like saying we should attribute blame for Islamist terrorism to Islam itself. They're Muslims right? Wrong. Just because someone does horrible shit in the name of a cause does not mean the cause itself is at fault.
Communisms fault is that it's far too utopian in practice and easy for someone like Stalin to hijack the process leading to what you describe. In fact, communism as defined by Marx looks nothing like what the Soviet Union was.
I am a democratic socialist. The USSR was a socialist republic. Do I support what the Soviet union did because I'm a socialist? Hell no! Do I support Nazism because they were called the National Socialists? No and I reject any association of that nature. It's flat out wrong.
Nazism, on the other hand, is pretty clear. Non-whites are vermin and must be exterminated. It's their ideology and if you fly their flags you support that view. It isn't a case of association because a bad actor was affiliated. It matters because it is rotten to the core. It matters because of intent.
Karl Marx never intended for millions to starve in gulags. There is no mention of this and it isn't communist by definition. Genocide was Hitler's intent and it is Nazism by definition.
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I really want to upvote you but this
...which means (or, at least is should mean) absolutely nothing.
won't let me.
I think there have existed communist-like experiments that kind-of worked.
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Were there any real pogroms in the Soviet Union - the closest that I'm aware of was the Doctors Plot but that ended pretty much as soon as Stalin died. Indeed a common accusation of White forces was that the Bolsheviks were Jews.
Edit: Note that I am not seeking to defend the Soviets here - just questioning whether antisemitism was actually part of their ideology.
Many groups had real problems in the Soviet union.
Yes, not arguing with that, just that those weren't directly driven from Communist ideology as they were with the Nazis.