Yup. The only reason Stalin and Mao aren't universally considered the worst mass murderers of the 20th century, if not history, is tough competition from another totalitarian - Hitler. I get contrariarism. I agree there's PLENTY to criticize in the West. But please. Why whitewash mass murderers? - ThreadSky

jmkorhonen.fi • 117 days ago

Yup. The only reason Stalin and Mao aren't universally considered the worst mass murderers of the 20th century, if not history, is tough competition from another totalitarian - Hitler.

I get contrariarism. I agree there's PLENTY to criticize in the West. But please. Why whitewash mass murderers?

Reposted from Faine Greenwood

Why am I so mean about tankies specifically? Well, I know a number of Ukrainians and Syrians and Cambodians (and I reported on the Khmer Rouge War Tribunal) and I have some feelings about apologists for those who mass murdered their families.

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daphnedaulton.bsky.social•117 days ago

Meanwhile, millions of people are denying that we are on the brink of global fascism.

minimallycrazy.bsky.social•117 days ago

Lotta people want the mass murder to be an incidental feature of the utopian project when in reality the utopian project was pretty incidental to the states created, which absolutely loved doing mass murders.

jmkorhonen.fi•117 days ago

Can’t break a few eggs without making an omelette!

minimallycrazy.bsky.social•117 days ago

The most successful remaining 'Communist' states are successful because they abandoned more than a pretense of communism and went balls out ethnonationalist, a rough and bitter pill to swallow if you're a communist

alemppu.bsky.social•117 days ago

I would disagree. China never abandoned Marxism-Leninism and communist project and the scary thing is that it would not work but that they could make it work.

minimallycrazy.bsky.social•117 days ago

China hasn't *abandoned* Marxism-Leninism, but at this point it's Han nationalist with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist characteristics

tft.io•117 days ago

Better hats.

neurospike.bsky.social•117 days ago

And Hitler didn’t kill near as many. Of not for all the Russian propaganda about the Nazis the US consumed, the world wouldn’t have gotten as confused about history’s top 10 monsters.

mickhalsband.bsky.social•117 days ago

What about the Belgians in Congo.

mickhalsband.bsky.social•117 days ago

Or Churchill in Bengal

jmkorhonen.fi•117 days ago

Imperialist mass murderers, the lot of them. (Though I must admit that I know less about Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine than I should before making such a judgement, but the aforesaid is probably a decent approximation anyway.)

Whitewashing any of their crimes isn’t really a great look.

mickhalsband.bsky.social•117 days ago

Not to troll but rather to say human life was equally worthless to the “west” as it was to the “east”, and arguably still is

jmkorhonen.fi•117 days ago

By and large that used to be the case. Imperialists have never cared much about their conquered subjects.

But it’s a stretch to claim there isn’t any meaningful difference these days. Exhibit A: the appalling indifference of the lords of the Kremlin to the suffering of their _own_ soldiers.

mickhalsband.bsky.social•116 days ago

Compared to?

jpkrat.bsky.social•117 days ago

Well, there is also the little fact that Stalin and Mao didn't end up on the losing side of the war. Winners writing history and all that...

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