7 Dead In WI Shooting

[Smokey D]

no, i'm saying if there had been nuclear war both the us and ussr would have been responsible, which hardly adds much to the "oh the communists were so evil".

I mean, they probably were but that wasn't the reason.

[RouteOne]

oh sure yeah both would be responsible but you said that the us would be responsible like it would only be the US's fault

[Ando!]

ron

normal people aren't motivated to argue that hitler wasn't that bad, comparatively speaking

do you have a crush on hitler or something

[RouteOne]

who the hell is saying hitler wasn't bad


you're being deliberately dishonest here

[suspect device]

haven't seen a good old godwin chat in a long long time

i'm guessing the bush years overshadowed a lot of that and consigned it to ancient history

[Ando!]

Originally Posted by Mr. Ron

who the hell is saying hitler wasn't bad

no one, I agree. you never said hitler wasn't bad per se

But what you did say, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is that stalin et al were also bad per se, and the amount to which they are bad per se perhaps exceeds the amount to which hitler was bad per se

smokey sort of debated you on the merits of whether that's actually true, and frankly I don't care that much

but what I meant was more of a personal question : why on earth did you feel compelled to make that point? (and obviously, i worded it kind of snidely and there was no need to accuse you of having a crush on hitler)

like, is it some combination of being annoyed at the popular notion of hitler as "the worst thing ever ever ever ever," smokey's general support of a large welfare state, something else?

nobody just busts out "yeah but the CCCP were bad too" in a vacuum.

[RouteOne]

why on earth did you feel compelled to make that point?

because in general, the public is largely ignorant of the death machine that was the soviet union and it's various foreign branches. The soviets and communism in general were massive sources of death and torment for hundreds of millions of people for many decades.


everyone knows about the nazis (well, they're actually really ignorant of them but they know they killed a bunch of jews), but hardly anyone outside of specific circles has even a clue as to how bad the soviets were. If nazism is the worst thing ever then communism is like half a centimeter behind it in terms of "bad". I mean do most people even know who the hell Stalin was in America? I wouldn't be surprised if 9 our of 10 people on the street knew who he was or what he did. Fuck most people can't even tell you who Benjamin Franklin was in America.

nobody just busts out "yeah but the CCCP were bad too" in a vacuum.

because communism/marxism is basically a popular meme to people

[Smokey D]

possibly I live in a different world, but it seems to me the USSR hardly gets a free ride in America.

[RouteOne]

They don't, but that is only because of "THEY'RE KOMMUNISTSTSTS", not the "holy shit they purposefully helped a famine that killed millions of people in peace time."

[Ando!]

yeah I think gulag/political killings/etc gets tossed around quite a bit actually

[RouteOne]

I'm willing to bet a lot on most common people not knowing what a gulag is


or what the holodomor was

[Smokey D]

I reckon most people know Stalin did awful things and killed lots of people, even if they don't know how exactly it happened.

[RouteOne]

Smokey very few people know what a the holodomor was, which *IS* a holocaust-level event. Why? I just don't get it.

[Ando!]

probably has quite a bit to do with the attendant historical circumstances of each

[Smokey D]

The main reason why is it was basically a soviet state secret for 50 years.

[fingers mccoy]

i do think far less people in america and britain care to know the extent of stalin's crimes vs hitler's

JEWISH CONSPIRACY etc

[Smokey D]

Probably because the the state didn't collapse before it did a good job hiding the evidence.

[fingers mccoy]

probs more to do with the nature of its atrocities

[Smokey D]

Probably, although the fact the NVKD would ship you out to the gulag for asking questions probably played a part too.