Why Doesn't Communism Have As A Bad A Name As Nazism? (Its Leftist Apologia Stupid Alert)

Townhall.com ^ | 3/24/2009 | Dennis Prager

[goldstategop]

Why is it that when people want to describe particularly evil individuals or regimes, they use the terms "Nazi" or "Fascist" but almost never "Communist?"

Given the amount the human suffering Communists have caused - 70 million killed in China, 20-30 million in the former Soviet Union, and almost one-third of all Cambodians; the decimation of Tibetan and Chinese culture; totalitarian enslavement of North Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russians; a generation deprived of human rights in Cuba; and much more -- why is "Communist" so much less a term of revulsion than "Nazi?"

There are Mao Restaurants in major cities in the Western world. Can one imagine Hitler Restaurants? Che Guevara T-shirts are ubiquitous, yet there are no Heinrich Himmler T-shirts.

This question is of vital significance. First, without moral clarity, humanity has little chance of avoiding a dark future. Second, the reasons for this moral imbalance tell us a great deal about ourselves today.

Here, then, are seven reasons.

1. Communists murdered their own people; the Nazis murdered others. Under Mao about 70 million people died - nearly all in peacetime! - virtually all of them Chinese. Likewise, the approximately 30 million people that Stalin had killed were nearly all Russians, and those who were not Russian, Ukrainians for example, were members of other Soviet nationalities.

The Nazis, on the other hand, killed very few fellow Germans. Their victims were Jews, Slavs and members of other "non-Aryan" and "inferior" groups.

"World opinion" - that vapid amoral concept - deems the murder of members of one's group far less noteworthy than the murder of outsiders. That is one reason why blacks killing millions of fellow blacks in the Congo right now elicits no attention from "world opinion." But if an Israeli soldier is charged with having killed a Gaza woman and two children, it makes the front page of world newspapers.

2. Communism is based on lovely sounding theories; Nazism is based on heinous sounding theories.

Intellectuals, among whom are the people who write history, are seduced by words -- so much so that deeds are deemed considerably less significant. Communism's words are far more intellectually and morally appealing than the moronic and vile racism of Nazism. The monstrous evils of Communists have not been focused on nearly as much as the monstrous deeds of the Nazis. The former have been regularly dismissed as perversions of a beautiful doctrine (though Christians who committed evil in the name of Christianity are never regarded by these same people as having perverted a beautiful doctrine), whereas Nazi atrocities have been perceived (correctly) as the logical and inevitable results of Nazi ideology.

This seduction by words while ignoring deeds has been a major factor in the ongoing appeal of the Left to intellectuals. How else explain the appeal of a Che Guevara or Fidel Castro to so many Left-wing intellectuals, other than that they care more about beautiful words than about vile deeds?

3. Germans have thoroughly exposed the evils of Nazism, have taken responsibility for them, and attempted to atone for them. Russians have not done anything similar regarding Lenin's or Stalin's horrors. Indeed, an ex-KGB man runs Russia, Lenin is still widely revered, and, in the words of University of London Russian historian Donald Rayfield, "people still deny by assertion or implication, Stalin's holocaust."

Nor has China in any way exposed the greatest mass murderer and enslaver of them all, Mao Zedong. Mao remains revered in China.

Until Russia and China acknowledge the evil their states have done under Communism, Communism's evils will remain less acknowledged by the world than the evils of the German state under Hitler.

4. Communism won, Nazism lost. And the winners write history.

5. Nothing matches the Holocaust. The rounding up of virtually every Jewish man, woman, child, and baby on the European continent and sending them to die is unprecedented and unparalleled. The Communists killed far more people than the Nazis did but never matched the Holocaust in the systemization of murder. The uniqueness of the Holocaust and the enormous attention paid to it since then has helped ensure that Nazism has a worse name than Communism.

6. There is, simply put, widespread ignorance of Communist atrocities compared to those of the Nazis. Whereas, both Light and Left loathe Nazism and teach its evil history, the Left dominates the teaching profession, and therefore almost no one teaches Communist atrocities. As much as intellectuals on the Left may argue that they loathe Stalin or the North Korean regime, few on the Left loathe Communism. As the French put it, "pas d'enemis a la gauche," which in English means "no enemies on the Left." This is certainly true of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban Communism. Check your local university's courses and see how many classes are given on Communist totalitarianism or mass murder compared to the number of classes about Nazism's immoral record.

7. Finally, in the view of the Left, the last "good war" America fought was World War II, the war against German and Japanese fascism. The Left does not regard America's wars against Communist regimes as good wars. The war against Vietnamese Communism is regarded as immoral and the war against Korean (and Chinese) Communism is simply ignored.

Until the Left and all the institutions influenced by the Left acknowledge how evil Communism has been, we will continue to live in a morally confused world. Conversely, the day the Left does come to grips with Communism's legacy of human destruction, it will be a very positive sign that the world's moral compass has begun to correct itself.

[goldstategop]

The reason Communism remains fashionable is due to leftist apologia. There is no similar leftist apologia for Nazism and fascism. The odds the Left will ever acknowledge Communism's crimes against humanity and its record of human immiseration and wholesale denial of freedom are slim to none.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Talisker]

Number 6 alone is enough - the Leftists run the educational and media systems, and use them to block widespread knowledge of the evils of communism. And it’s not an accident - it’s the reason they’re there.

[BellStar]

Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?

Title needs a Fix up. Mods can do it.
Great Article!

[goldstategop]

Yep. And intellectuals are in love with the words and the sound of them. That is why all the bright people adore Obama.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

I know... I should proof-read LOL. FR still has no editing tools like on other forums. I guess no one wants us to clean up a mistake.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[SierraWasp]

It's because Communism has become a comedic expression. It is high time we change it to become even more acurately descriptive and call it COMMONISM!!! (as in Tragedy of The Commons)

Communism is now Communitarianism and is dominated by aging Community Organizers who have been glorified and elevated to POTUS!!! (Poor Old Tired-out Useless Socialist)

[elk]

I’m sorry, did you say, “Obamunism”, Mr. Prager?

[television is just wrong]

as a child, we prayed every night to protect us from the communists.

communism is evil.

[SierraWasp]

Ha ha ha!!! Same difference, right???

[Nateman]

Stalin and his useful idiots were happy with National Socialism, that is until the USSR was invaded. Then Stalin created the myth, still widely believed, that they represented two different sides of the political spectrum.

Another reason why you see many more evil Nazi than Commie movies: Stalin had his men killing scripts before they were produced. CAIR is doing the same thing today.

[LaMudBug]

Calling people Nazi and/or Facist eminates from the Frankfurt School and the concept that was created called “Critical Theory”. That is where the use of these phrases has come from.... Do a Goggle...

[tcrlaf]

Last night on KOS, some moron wrote a diary on how GREAT the Hungarian Socialist Revolution of 1919 was, and wouldn’t it be GREAT if it happened here???

Of course, this MORON never actually STUDIED the Hungarian Socialist revolt of 1919, also known as THE RED TERROR, he just swallowed what he read on a Marxist website whole.

I LOVE how MORONS that say, “Wouldn’t it be GREAT to live under SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM?!”, have never actually LIVED under Socialism/Communism, while those that have, will defend Democray at ANY cost...

[Cobra64]

Millions died fighting communism, and Americans elected one. Go figure...

[FBD]

Fascism and Communism/Socialism
For many decades, the leftists have been propagating the false dichotomy that the choice confronting the world is only: communism or fascism—a dictatorship of the left or of an alleged right—with the possibility of a free society, of capitalism, dismissed and obliterated, as if it had never existed.

“The Presidential Candidates 1968,” The Objectivist, June 1968, 5.

[Some “moderates” are trying to] revive that old saw of pre-World War II vintage, the notion that the two political opposites confronting us, the two “extremes,” are: fascism versus communism.

The political origin of that notion is more shameful than the “moderates” would care publicly to admit. Mussolini came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Italy. Hitler came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Germany. It is a matter of record that in the German election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis—with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.

It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?” into “Which kind of dictatorship?”—thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).

That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory—that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state—that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders—that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique—that fascism is not the product of the political “right,” but of the “left”—that the basic issue is not “rich versus poor,” but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government—which means: capitalism versus socialism.~ Ayn Rand

“‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing,”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 180.

[Kent C]

Here’s the answer:

Left = Communist

[rawcatslyentist]

They obviously have reading difficulties, as they ALWAYS miss the second word in national SOCIALIST party

[muir_redwoods]

Never forget (and please always assert) that Nazism is national socialism. Socialism is socialism whether it is the Fabian, National, International, Soviet or creeping variety.

[RoadTest]

Good question, good points and a good article!

History is written by the winners of its conflicts, even if the losers were right and the winners were wrong.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

Here’s the answer: Left = Communist

No, that's not the answer!

Left = totalitarianism

That's why I say, Communist, Nazi, close enough, same thing.

[Tolik]

Dennis Prager

... 2. Communism is based on lovely sounding theories; Nazism is based on heinous sounding theories.

Intellectuals, among whom are the people who write history, are seduced by words -- so much so that deeds are deemed considerably less significant. Communism's words are far more intellectually and morally appealing than the moronic and vile racism of Nazism. The monstrous evils of Communists have not been focused on nearly as much as the monstrous deeds of the Nazis. The former have been regularly dismissed as perversions of a beautiful doctrine (though Christians who committed evil in the name of Christianity are never regarded by these same people as having perverted a beautiful doctrine), whereas Nazi atrocities have been perceived (correctly) as the logical and inevitable results of Nazi ideology.

This seduction by words while ignoring deeds has been a major factor in the ongoing appeal of the Left to intellectuals. How else explain the appeal of a Che Guevara or Fidel Castro to so many Left-wing intellectuals, other than that they care more about beautiful words than about vile deeds?

... 6. There is, simply put, widespread ignorance of Communist atrocities compared to those of the Nazis. Whereas, both Right and Left loathe Nazism and teach its evil history, the Left dominates the teaching profession, and therefore almost no one teaches Communist atrocities. As much as intellectuals on the Left may argue that they loathe Stalin or the North Korean regime, few on the Left loathe Communism. As the French put it, "pas d'enemis a la gauche," which in English means "no enemies on the Left." This is certainly true of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban Communism. Check your local university's courses and see how many classes are given on Communist totalitarianism or mass murder compared to the number of classes about Nazism's immoral record.

Nailed It!
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