[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!

[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)

[television is just wrong]

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

communism is evil.

[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...

[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.

[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!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

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[kAcknor]

A most excellent piece.

Saved & forwarded to others.

[Inwoodian]

And perhaps the number one reason is that the Left consider themseves to be much smarter than the rest of us. For them to face up to the evils of Communism would mean that they were totally wrong about everything in foreign policy since the 1930’s. Same goes for education, judicial fiat, crime...

[SJackson]

IMO number 1 suffices.

1. Communists murdered their own people; the Nazis murdered others.

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. Using the Russian example, if they don't acknowlege the gulags for what they were, thus don't prosecute the persecutors, there's not much than can be done.

[BroJoeK]

"The reason Communism remains fashionable is due to leftist apologia. There is no similar leftist apologia for Nazism and fascism."

Extraordinarily good points, well said. Thanks!

In 1939 the world's great dictators -- Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin -- teamed up to conquer Europe, then the world. And they could easily have succeeded, except that one of the three was insane, and in two years turned on his ally Stalin, in order apparently to impress his enemy, Churchill. It didn't work.

But Hitler's now obvious insanity has prevented anyone not equally insane from saying good words about him. By contrast, Stalin's brutal sanity continues to win grudging admiration, even from people who hate him. I.e., "Yes, he was a devil, but he was our devil," say some in the Left.

The Right of course (that is, our right) will not defend dictators under ANY circumstances, whether they call themselves International Socialists, National Socialists, Fascists, or something else. Dictatorship is dictatorship, and we hate them all -- until, as in 1941, it becomes a matter of life & death. Then: which is the lesser evil, or at least the more distant threat?

In 1941 Hitler's threat was clear and immediate -- he declared war on the US, and sent U-boats to sink more American ships than the Japanese had at Pearl Harbor. At the same time, Americans could see no threat from "Uncle Joe" Stalin. It was seen as a no-brainer.

[Billthedrill]

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

This in company with the prevalence of the left in academia and the communications media is probably the biggest reason. More specifically, the part of communist theory that has an enduring appeal to adherents is its insistence that it is the means to universal human actualization. Nazism promised that actualization only to the members of the "Aryan" race (and still owes an apology to real Aryans who are neither blond nor beasts).

It's attractive because it's an easy-to-understand descriptive sociological model that incorporates three of the baser of human passions: envy and sadism and the sheer delight of destruction. It provides moral sanction for the adolescent "if you are dissatisfied, lash out!" approach to human relationships. It is cleverly evil where Nazism was merely brutally evil. To one who is murdered for politics the distinction is rather academic.

[kellynla]

“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.”

Yea, well someone tell Prager there are two chances of that happening...slim & none and “Slim” just left the building.

After more than 40 years of Leftist/Socialist/Communist indoctrination in American colleges & universities and with HALF of Americans dependent on the government for their livelihood; it's no wonder America & Americans are in the mess we're in.

Who says “Communism is dead.”

[Pontiac]

The Communists killed far more people than the Nazis did but never matched the Holocaust in the systemization of murder.

In a rare (for me) instance of descent from Mr. Prager’s opinion I will say that at least in a sense he is wrong here.

Although the Nazis may have set up a much more elaborate system of murder with their extermination camps the Soviets far out did them in the scale of their extermination.

Where the Nazis set up elaborate rail schedules to export their undesirables to camps to meet their deaths in centralized death factories, the Soviets turned the entire country of the Ukraine in to a death camp.

Perhaps the Nazis plan was more complex out of necessity because they were selective in who they wished to murder. But because Stalin wished to murder an entire country there was no necessity to transport the victims to a central location of extermination.

That being said Stalin’s murder of Ukrainians was every bit as systematic in his method of starving the bread basket of Eastern Europe.

The biggest advantage to Stalin’s wholesale murder was that he could quarantine his concentration camp and so limit the number of witnesses. This permitted Stalin to deny the Ukrainian holocaust for many years.