Would he? By modern estimates and not the Conquest numbers made before the CIA documents and USSR archives were available, would Stalin be sitting up with Mao? Even then, most of Mao’s “death toll” were due to extreme incompetence, such as telling his soldiers to kill birds who were eating rice, which led to an overpopulation of bugs who ate far more rice.
I fully acknowledge that Stalin was a piece of shit. However, the USSR ultimately did provide for their people and people were generally hopeful. The Nazis were committing genocide purely for the sake of it, Stalin was murdering to keep the USSR going against what he feared were counter revolutionaries. One is evil, one is paranoid and dangerous.
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 already explained that he was paranoid and dangerous, but he wasn’t killing out of pure malice and evil like Hitler with the Jews and other genocide victims. There’s a clear difference between those.
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
That’s certainly a hot take and certainly one most people would heavily disagree with.
Hitler killed people based on ethnicity to promote a master race and based on political affiliation. Stalin killed people based on paranoia and political affiliation. These are not equivalent. Plus, Hitler killed far more people per-Capita.
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
That’s a weird way of pushing Nazi apologia. Not saying it’s intentional, I really don’t think you’re a Nazi, but by equating Hitler and Stalin you’re semantically trying to equate a paranoid leader who genuinely had anti-communist reactionaries after him amidst the people he killed with a person who orchestrated mass ethnic cleansing on racial grounds and no actual evidence, to a much higher degree per Capita than the former.
By doing so, this is essentially Nazi apologia and anti-Communist rhetoric, holding Communist states to a stricter standard than fascist ones.
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.
Would he? By modern estimates and not the Conquest numbers made before the CIA documents and USSR archives were available, would Stalin be sitting up with Mao? Even then, most of Mao’s “death toll” were due to extreme incompetence, such as telling his soldiers to kill birds who were eating rice, which led to an overpopulation of bugs who ate far more rice.
I fully acknowledge that Stalin was a piece of shit. However, the USSR ultimately did provide for their people and people were generally hopeful. The Nazis were committing genocide purely for the sake of it, Stalin was murdering to keep the USSR going against what he feared were counter revolutionaries. One is evil, one is paranoid and dangerous.
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 already explained that he was paranoid and dangerous, but he wasn’t killing out of pure malice and evil like Hitler with the Jews and other genocide victims. There’s a clear difference between those.
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
That’s certainly a hot take and certainly one most people would heavily disagree with.
Hitler killed people based on ethnicity to promote a master race and based on political affiliation. Stalin killed people based on paranoia and political affiliation. These are not equivalent. Plus, Hitler killed far more people per-Capita.
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
That’s a weird way of pushing Nazi apologia. Not saying it’s intentional, I really don’t think you’re a Nazi, but by equating Hitler and Stalin you’re semantically trying to equate a paranoid leader who genuinely had anti-communist reactionaries after him amidst the people he killed with a person who orchestrated mass ethnic cleansing on racial grounds and no actual evidence, to a much higher degree per Capita than the former.
By doing so, this is essentially Nazi apologia and anti-Communist rhetoric, holding Communist states to a stricter standard than fascist ones.
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.