I’ve read about the atrocities committed by Stalin, Mao and others quite a few times along with seeing documentaries about them. Many of today’s students are not exposed to history about the Nazi atrocities or the other atrocities.
Imagine a specific attempt to exterminate all Christians on the planet or to exterminate all east Asians or sub-Saharan people as designated by race. That was the difference between what the Nazis tried to do and what communist tyrants did to political subgroups of their own people.
Then their was the so called Spanish loyalists who murdered tens of thousands of catholic priests and nuns during the Red Terror during the Spanish Civil War.
We never hear about those.
We never hear about the millions of Christian Armenians killed by Turks during that ‘holocaust’.
Or the millions of Cambodians killed by Pol Pot in the name of Marxism
But a 90 something secretary we have to persecute.
But the inattention paid to this young woman, and the monumental white-washing of the man who slaughtered her, troubles me greatly to this moment.
There has to be a first. After that the killings come more easily.
Imagine a specific attempt to exterminate all TRUMP VOTERS on the planet. Inapt, yes, but hardly unthinkable.
Although I think your point does come into play, everyone needs to remember a little better that Stalin didn’t just target “political subgroups” of his own people. Look at the atrocities he committed specifically against the Ukrainian people in the Holodomor (millions dead), as well as his specific targeting of Jews and Poles.
I think one reason for the very different ways in which Nazis vs. Communist genocides are treated has to do with the Nazis being portrayed as right-wing (even though they were openly socialist and had “socialist” in their party name), while most historians in the West come from a left-wing background influenced heavily by Marxist scholarship reluctant to focus on of the evils of Marx-based Communism.
“Imagine a specific attempt to exterminate all Christians on the planet or to exterminate all east Asians or sub-Saharan people as designated by race. That was the difference between what the Nazis tried to do and what communist tyrants “
Communists did the same thing. And succeeded in murdering even more than the Nazis.
We think the Nazis were worse because we are familiar with the victims and were involved in stopping it.
But Chinese landlords and Ukrainian peasants are a lot more distant to us.