this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Are we really still "both siding" this?
You have one side stating that the current social and economic systems cause a lot of people to suffer and die in poverty - maybe we could change the those systems so that the world becomes more fair and fewer people suffer.
While the other side basically says: people we don't like shouldn't exist. Let's make their lives more miserable.
And you think those two positions are the same?
Let's be fair here, they're probably talking about the properly far extremes. The Nazis and the communists both killed millions and caused a lot of suffering last century. Horseshoe theory and all that.
Obviously the far left you typically encounter online doesn't tend to be authoritarian-communist-regime levels of far left, but I feel like people are being a little to hostile to the idea that extreme in general are pretty bad things.
We should always be suspicious when someone starts both-sides'ing Nazis and Communists. Only one side was killing Nazis, after all.
And yet events like the Katyn Massacre come to mind.
Yes, war crimes are bad, but you are a sick puppy, or hopefully just very mistaken, if you think that or any other Soviet atrocities puts the USSR on par with Nazi Germany.
Just because I only referenced on item doesn't mean there aren't millions more souls attributable to the USSR. The USSR easily cost more lives in Poland than Hitler/Nazi's did. Not just because of WW2... but because of the mass murder committed for the next 40 years under USSR rule.
I'm first generation American. My grandfather taught me exactly how it was under Communist rule. I'm far from mistaken and have literally dozens of phone numbers I can call to get a first hand account of it all going all the way back to WW2.
Uh huh, and how many of those "victims of communism" were actually some of the worst people in the world at the time, like Czarists and Nazis? Sorry your grandfather is bitter that he didn't get the dacha he wanted or whatever.
Considering that my grandfather was an officer in the polish navy... You're barking up the wrong tree buddy. He would have been "blessed" by the communist government to hold his position. He would be "privileged". And still holds the USSR as literally the worst thing he's had to live through. Imagine that.
But keep making assumptions about stuff you clearly know nothing about nor have lived through.
Edit: Forget the fact that even though my Grandfather would have been "privileged". Many of my family weren't... They were murdered and sent to Siberia to be forgotten. I literally have names... of people who were directly related to me. But come back and tell me they were the worst in the world... My family came from nothing and did nothing in the grand scheme.
Sorry that your family had a bad time. It's still wild that you don't think the Nazis were incomparably worse.
You cannot use “incomparably” and “worse” in the same sentence. Worse designates a comparison between two things. Meaning one is inferior to the other. If by worse we are talking about murder (because this is what the conversation was pointed to), let’s look at the numbers: Hitler - roughly 20 mil including soviet civilians Stalin - Roughly 45 million Mao - Roughly 40 million (in a 4 year period) Ongoing Uyghur genocide in modern day Communist China - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037 MINIMUM 500K in camps with an estimated 12 million persons who identify in that group. Obviously the government isn't going to actually disclose the REAL numbers.
You can indeed describe something as incomparably worse when it is so bad that a comparison doesn't make sense or there's no point to making one. I really don't think I'm the one who's out of line here.
Anyway, the whole "victims of communism" trope you're invoking is just embarrassingly facile. The numbers are contrived and no consideration is ever given to the terrible conditions out of which the various revolutions came or the horrible forces they were subsequently up against, let alone comparative conditions in the so-called free world. Everyone who ever lived and died in a communist state is a crime against humanity, but whenever someone dies in the US because they had to choose between medicine and rent it's their own damn fault. Give me a break.
All the deaths from labor camps and non-conforming parties is facile?
The way the VOC people count them, yes. They include Nazis as victims for goodness sake. You can't take it seriously.
I just look at numbers. Once you start discounting certain human lives over others, it all becomes dangerous.
You're the one discounting lives. The murder rate for the Holocaust was at least 1.25 million per year and they had plans to keep going. The dubious allegations in the Black Book of Communism don't even come close to that kind of efficiency and completely discount the lives saved by having defeated the Nazis, which would not have been possible without the USSR's incredible sacrifice. It's one thing to have resentment for communism. It's just incredibly messed up to say that it's as bad or worse than Nazism.
You do realize what side the USSR was on at the beginning of the war right? Stalin and Hitler wanted to be allies. I arbitrate they are equally horrible, yet you are defending a communist dictator.
Calling the relationship between those countries an alliance is a big stretch. For all its leniency towards Germany during the interwar period, you'd have to call the US an ally to Germany as well, nevermind its infamously conciliatory treatment of the Nazis after the war (ie Operation Paperclip and the relatively rapid abandonment of denazification in West Germany). Furthermore, the US did not begin actually fighting the Nazis until after the USSR, and not until they were compelled by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Regardless, we know what the Nazis did while they were in power and, as I previously cited, we know what they were going to do if they had prevailed. The fact is that after about four decades of Soviet rule, the Poles and other Eastern European peoples still exist and have thrived in comparison to the ethnic cleansing and extermination they would have faced under a victorious Nazi regime. Anyone whose family actually had an unfairly difficult time under the USSR has my condolences, but at least you're still around to express your resentment!
How reasonable of you. Critical thinking skills provide a person the ability to hold two competing notions in their head. One does not need to win out for critical thoughts of the other to remain. I get annoyed that everyone wants things to be black and white (e.g. Dems good GOP bad). It’s not that simple and we need to stop trying to reduce it to such polar language. The left also has corruption. The corruption in the left has also lead us to this precise point in history. The democratic party was heavily dishonest with primaries during the last Clinton campaign. They intentionally squashed and targeted other democratic candidates.
I wish we would stop ignoring all the problems just because it doesn’t suit a narrative that one side is good and the other is bad. It’s not that simple. One is absolutely worst than the other, but they both need each other to exist. People need to stop pretending like left shit don’t stink. It does because it is also shit. The left is not at all exempt from corruption. All humans are susceptible to corruption, especially humans in positions of power. Views taken to any extreme are almost always bad.
There is a reason that the black and white false dichotomy mindset is upheld. It destroys any possibility of nuance and keeps people from seeing the common ground in the middle. So the status quo just continues with minimal improvement.
'people we don’t like shouldn’t exist' .. you mean like, landlords? People who oppose the Great Leap Forward? Does 'gulag' sound familiar?
Communism on paper sounds great. But in reality, over and over again, communism has lead to the deaths of millions.
No, both positions are obviously not the same, but they are not polar opposites either. Both extremes are bad.