Why are the Crimes of Stalinism Overlooked?

[heydaralon]

A lot of European intellectuals especially in France, were extremely resentful of American forces in Europe. There was talk of "Coca Cola Colonization." Many of these French intellectuals went on to become Stalinists and then Maoists. I guess they didnt get the memo that Marxism does quite a bit of colonization of its own. Thats why I kind of dislike French culture. Their intellectuals were often eager embracers of fascism. When that didnt jive well after WW2, they made a jump over to the far left. And they still acted like they had the moral high ground over America. Give me a break. I read somewhere that foreign support for Mao in the West was at its peak during the Great Leap Forward when tens of millions of peasants were starving to death. To be a French intellectual you have to wear a beret, and swallow the semen of a mass murdering authoritarian systen.

[Smitty-48]

Now, just to be clear though, on SACEUR and the NATO CoC, not all forces of NATO member countries are under NATO command at all times, NATO members "activate" specific units to be under NATO command, so the whole Canadian Army was not under the command of NATO CENTAG back in the day, only 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group was activated at all times, and as such, we were under American command, and we were employed as the "fire brigade", quick reaction force for the American Corps commander, main role was to launch counterattacks to plug any holes which opened up in the American lines.

So right now we have a Battlegroup in Latvia, and that formation has been "activated" to NATO Allied Command Europe, and those Canadians troops there, are reporting to SACEUR, but just them at this juncture. That NATO force in the Baltic's is the "tripwire", in the event of war, they would have to fall back to the Vistula, at which point, Canada would likely reactivate 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group around that Battlegroup, and task that to what would become NATO 1st Army HQ in Warsaw, and as things progressed, we would acitivate the entire 1st Canadian Division (Mechanized) and send them to reinforce within 120 days, depending on how badly things were going at the front, the Russians would more likely just stop and hold at the Polish border with 1st Guards Tank Army, once they had secured Kaliningrad, I don't see them going further than that.

[Fife]

[Kazmyr]

HARDBASS INTENSIFIES

[Montegriffo]

Popular man in America in 1943
Great lyrics if you've never heard it before, Robert Wyatt did a version of it back in the eighties.

[Ex-California]

[BjornP]

As compared to the crimes of Hitlerism/Nazism? This is clearly a multifaceted problem, but do you think it had more to do with America's role in the Cold War (politicizing America's Containment policy etc.) or the association with Liberals - Socialism - Communism?

Here is a good talk with author of Gulag, Anne Applebaum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoO08EbT6zQ

Only actual, Soviet or Maoist-supporting Communists actively sought (and still seek) to excuse, diminish, or get people to overlook the atrocities of the USSR, China, Cuba or Khmer Rouge. When they don't simply reject the facts of what Communist regimes have done to their own people since their inception, they will argue that the purge of "counter-revolutionaries" was justified in the same way that some Western nations, or Latin countries, purged their countries of Communists as a domestic threat.

Besides those relatively few active obfusciation attempts based on ideology, though, I think there's a simpler explanation for why the killings of Stalinism (and Leninism) or Maoism are overlooked:

They're not as documented , especially visually, as the Nazi war crimes.

Compare to how many people are aware of the Armenian genocide, or the Rape of Nanking. The Nazis took their own photos, filmed their own movie reels, and meticulously documented the extent of their crimes in writing. And I'm not arguing simply that it's the amount of evidence that makes people zoom in on Nazi crimes as opposed to Soviet or other Communist killings. Nope. It's really the form of the source material.

Most people don't take the time to read through mountains of Nazi documentation. It's the videos, the photos, the audio-visual sources. People generally absorb history better if they have something to look at. There's a reason it is historical museums and not historical archives that attract most historically interested visitors, after all.

If, upon the fall of the Soviet Union, the archives been opened and photographic and video evidence of Soviet mass murder, executions, torture, etc. come to light, then you may today see Soviet killings in the same light as Nazi war crimes. That didn't happen because either they did not film, photograph and/or document their killings and torture to the extent the Nazis did, or they simply destroyed anything that existed.

There is also the difference between Soviet and Nazi war crimes and killings, that the Soviets - especially Stalin and the people under him - murdered people on a mass scale because they thought they had done something illegal, some crime against or attempt to subvert the ideal social order. The Nazis murdered people because they thought that the people they murdered were something illegal, that by their existence they subverted the ideal social order. The Soviets may murder the mother and father of a young child, but then they'd get the child adopted. The Nazis threw Jewish infants in with their parents because the goal was the destruction of an entire people, not simply someone who had acted in a wrong way.

The Soviets killed more people and over a greater expanse of time, and especially under Stalin, no one was safe in the culture of paranoia that surrounded him and his underlings. Number of killed people is not enough to declare something a crime. An airstrike against a terrorist target may kill twenty civilians. That doesn't mean the acts of the government of the United States of America is worse than the crimes of a serial killer who only tortured, killed and ate nineteen innocent civilians.

[DBTrek]

There is also the difference between Soviet and Nazi war crimes and killings, that the Soviets - especially Stalin and the people under him - murdered people on a mass scale because they thought they had done something illegal, some crime against or attempt to subvert the ideal social order. The Nazis murdered people because they thought that the people they murdered were something illegal, that by their existence they subverted the ideal social order. The Soviets may murder the mother and father of a young child, but then they'd get the child adopted. The Nazis threw Jewish infants in with their parents because the goal was the destruction of an entire people, not simply someone who had acted in a wrong way.

That's an awfully creative interpretation of things. Tell it to the kulaks. They weren't doing anything illegal, their crime was "owning property". Not all that different from the Jews "crime" of owning banks in Germany. The only real differences I see is Stalin didn't purge along ethnic lines, and most of his attributed kills were achieved through starvation rather than state run annihilation facilities.

[BjornP]

That's an awfully creative interpretation of things. Tell it to the kulaks. They weren't doing anything illegal, their crime was "owning property". Not all that different from the Jews "crime" of owning banks in Germany. The only real differences I see is Stalin didn't purge along ethnic lines, and most of his attributed kills were achieved through starvation rather than state run annihilation facilities.

Was there no confiscation of British royal or noble property during the American revolution? If not, would such an act by the new state have been wrong, in your opinion?

[Speaker to Animals]

It's okay. We are slaughtering your entire family because of your economic class rather than your race. We're not as bad as Hitler!