Posted on 03/23/2009 10:30:58 PM PDT by 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.
Check the spelling again:
Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterparei.
Note that I added to Praeger's #1 Add to that the fact that, unfortunately, successor governments in nations like Russia, and governments in China and Cuba, acknowledge no particular abuses of human rights. Like it or not to this day Russia doesn't acknowlege their responsibility, much less that of those involved, and Poland didn't even discuss the issue for over 4 decades. Yes, I know why, but that's why the outrage is missing.
That's pretty harsh Einstein.
At least I don't think Nazis are "right wing"
Not that they were good people. They did harm and had the potential to do more, but they didn't leave behind the millions dead that Stalin did, and the worst that the dictators did occured at Hitler's order.
Put Hitler and the Nazis back in the mix and most people probably would say that they were worse, even though the total body count of the Communists was greater. Prager's right about the reasons, but maybe he misses something.
Some people may tell you that the Communists' theories were "beautiful" and Hitler's "ugly." But the dirty secret is that the Nazis fascinate in a way that the Communists don't.
Stalin comes across as a murderous bureaucrat and Hitler as a titanic psychopath. People get bored with the bureaucrat and (if the History Channel is any indication) keep wanting to know more about the psychopath.
Look, you're the one that contested my answer to the actual question. You tried to 'make yourself right' despite misunderstanding my answer, and then giving an irrelevant 'lesson' - one that is obvious to anyone paying attention that there's no difference between the communist and nazis, but that wasn't what the question was asking.
I even, graciously 'gave you the point' on both being totalitarian, but you couldn't leave it at that. No, you had to demonstrate to all that bothered reading how stubbornly ignorant you really are. Do you really want to go on digging your own hole?? Be my guest. Have a nice life.
Don't worry about my ignorance, part of my family (German) died at the hands of the Nazis.
For a noob, you're kind of a rude DB.
Well, you've almost figured it out. In the article, the Left _was_ the media, (and from their point of view, which was the viewpoint from he was writing, it is just the Left), but I really didn't expect you to know that after the first response where you clearly didn't understand what I meant and why.
Don't worry about my ignorance, part of my family (German) died at the hands of the Nazis.
What? A 'sympathy play' now? What's that have to do with your ignorance in following a simple string of questions and answers?
For a noob, you're kind of a rude DB.
Only after it became clear that your only purpose in life was to prove yourself right regardless of the facts. And your rude remark is typical troll-like projection. Now _I'm_ rude since I pointed out that you were wrong initially. lol. You're the one who felt compelled to say I was wrong. Then when I tell you that you were and why, then I'm "rude". What? Was that your way of 'being nice' to a newbie? Get a life, after you get out of the hole you're still digging.
I was going to let this go but I can do layups for days. Perhaps the Franken and Coleman situation will be finished before us.
Well duh.
Are the Nazis on the left?
Hopefully no one else is following this since it would be a waste of time. And I’m going to be especially frank here. I will give you that you are making an effort now by at least going back and looking over the thread and picking out from my second reply, the ‘I even, graciously, ‘gave you the point’...’. I could think that perhaps you’re going toward some ‘reconciliation’ but then you have to add the ‘Well duh’ comment.
Rock, when I said I’d give you the totalitarian point, I _could_ have said ‘Well duh?’ to you, but I didn’t. I threw in a smiley in my ‘Yes it is’ comment. There was no intent to be rude.
Now, you ask: “Are the Nazi’s on the left?”
I could say ‘No’ or that there is no left and right because it is a bogus scale, then you could say - see we agree! and end all of this. But where the Nazis are, on a bogus 2 dimensional scale was not the original question I was answering to the OP. IOW, this has nothing to do with where the communists and nazis are on that scale - that was an irrelevancy that you entered into this thread via my answer, and I am not going to agree for the sake of ‘not being rude’ or being civil in your eyes. I don’t care what you think of me.
Again, the reason why Communists don’t have as bad a Name as Nazis is that (in their terms, not ours) The Left media is Communistic. Which was and still is my answer. You can agree with that or not.
On _your_ irrelvant point (valid in any other context other than the OP question) that the Communists and Nazis on the false 2D scale are right next to each other, I, as I acknowledged in my second reply, agree with you. Here’s a fuller handling of that view posted by me a few weeks ago post #28:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2204289/posts?page=28#28
I _can_ see that if you had not read the linked article in this thread and had not seen the question that was posed and only saw my reply, that you might post a reply ‘correcting me’. But I can’t see that once I gave you an explanation, you continuing to push your point.
I'm sure it's irrelevant to the question posed and I'm sure you're still digging. Pretty sure you'll continue ignoring that fact.
What fact?
The fact that what you asked is irrelevant to the OP's question.
What’d I ask?
So, are they?
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