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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28928 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Even the Communist elites had it worse than Capitalist elites under Communism, and it's more of a common knowledge that Communism was bad for everyone in general. That's why it doesn't need as much suppression.

The notable problem with Communism is not that it made people generally poor. The problem is the vast amounts of rape, torture, hideous murder, rampant slavery, mass starvation, occasionally intentionally induced, and the general pattern of systemic efforts to mutilate the souls of those unfortunate enough to be held in its thrall. The fact that you have bypassed these to argue for common knowledge that Communism is bad because even elites weren't as rich as westerners rather underlines the point.

Communism is in fact a conflict theory. It is in fact predicated on making things good for Communists, and is explicit that this should come at the expense of non-communists, who are to be exterminated without mercy. It cannot even be argued that "non-communist" was a category one chose for themselves; communists routinely assigned the label on the basis of who your family was, and even on ethnicity when convinient.

I firmly believe that the left is evil, and am baffled that others are confused on this point. Certainly there has never been an empire more evil than Communism.

Certainly there has never been an empire more evil than Communism.

Nazi Germany, Pol Pot, Japanese Empire, Aztecs are strong contenders.

One of those four was part of the Communist empire, and another allied with them to initiate wars of aggression.

Still, "among the most evil empires in history" is far more fitting than "Certainly there has never been an empire more evil than Communism."

How many of them lasted as long, or held so many in thrall, or caused so much damage, or brought us so close to much, much worse?

I stand by my original statement. The nazis lasted twelve years, and roughly the same for the Japanese empire. The communists held power for nearly a century, and ruled something like a third of the whole world for roughly two generations, killing and brutalizing an absolutely staggering number of people in that time.

Note that "empire more evil than" is distinct from "caused most damage overall". Unless you go with some strict variant of ultrautilitarianism.

Aztecs killed far less people, but they remain strong contender to be more evil. Maybe in a quite tragic way as they actually believed own religion.

Similarly, nazi Germany is in my opinion more evil than USSR.

If you count overall damage and count all communists as one competitor, then yes they caused most damage overall.

Aztecs killed far less people, but they remain strong contender to be more evil. Maybe in a quite tragic way as they actually believed own religion.

In what way are they "more evil"?

Similarly, nazi Germany is in my opinion more evil than USSR.

Why?

I would consider deliberate mass murder combined with being an oppressive corrupt empire as worse than treating cretinous well intended idea too seriously and predictably becoming an oppressive corrupt empire.

Germans entirely deliberately planned to oppress/murder others, as a goal. While Russians were more selective (a bit) and it was not entirely whole point. I guess that puts Aztecs also above Third Reich for me.

Not sure where to put Mao, this level of murderous incompetence and tyrany is quite unique and whole class by itself.

(not that I rate USSR high, just a bit above Nazi Germany and Aztecs)

Communism involved large amounts of deliberate mass murder, and large amounts of mass rape and torture as well. Nor was this some aberration of Stalin or Pol Pot; Marx himself explicitly endorsed mass murder of "others" as a goal in the founding documents of the movement. It was, as you say, the explicit plan from the start.

Describing Communism as "taking cretinous well-intentioned ideas too seriously" is exactly the sort of thing the OP was describing.

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