this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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To invoke Bill Burr: why don't Stalin's kills count? He'd be sitting up at the top of the scoreboard with Mao if you counted them.
Political murder isn't inherently better than ethnic murder. Stalin and Hitler both murdered out of malice, the fact that you're clearly more comfortable with political murder shows a dangerous bias
Killing "counter-revolutionaries" was just Stalin putting a different label on whatever enemies he wanted killed. It's no different. Because the USSR was ostensibly a revolutionary and progressive government they just used more palatable phrasing and staged sham trials, but it amounts to the same.
I would actually argue the opposite. Hitler and Stalin both clearly killed out of paranoia or something approximating it. Hitler didn't just hate the jews, he thought they were involved in a collective conspiracy to take over the world. He had a hero complex, and he thought he was saving the world. Stalin was more worried about personal immediate danger, so you can see why he made those close to him out to be the "other" rather than some minority collective
I don't think that contradicts what I said. I also don't think it's a particularly hot take, Hitler was very open about his conspiratorial ideas about the Jews, it's a huge aspect of what motivated his desire to take them out in favor of his people, his master race. The ideas don't contradict, they go together like peanut butter and jelly
It is not promoting Nazi apologia to suggest Hitler thought the Jews were in a conspiracy to take over the world. How could you possibly interpret that as apologia? Do you deny this is true? He literally did that, it's an important piece of his history.
I also didn't equate them. You're confusing comparison to equalization. People can compare things, that's allowed. Stop conflating the two things, I did not equate them, and it's okay to make comparisons. Saying they were similar in one aspect does not suggest they were equivalent in all aspects. That's just such a vastly different thing, and it's a thing I didn't do.
What standards do you think I'm holding communism to differently than fascists? How did your brain go from equating Hitler and Stalin, to holding completely different standards towards the states they ruled? I didn't even mention Communism or Nazism or how they function in my comment, it was about Hitler and Stalin as individuals.