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I think that while Stalin is rightfully reviled, Hitler and his movement set a new cultural standard for evilness. Whenever we (as a culture) want to drive home the fact that something (e.g. abortion, factory farming, enforced political correctness) is maximally evil, the metaphors we reach fore are not "Stalin", "KGB", "political commissar" and "Holodomor" (a word which chromium does not even recognize), but "Hitler", "SS", "Gestapo" and "holocaust".
To be fair, the Nazis worked really tirelessly to earn the top spot on the evil assholes list. At the end, I do not think that popular culture dispassionately decided that Stalin might have killed more people, but Hitler managed a higher rate and should thus get the first prize. It was probably more that Hitler went to war with most of the Western world, so there was already a rather strong sentiment against him by the time the magnitude of his evil became common knowledge. "Turns out that the guy against whom we have been fighting one of the most bloody wars in history and who has been painted as a villain by our propaganda was actually also murdering people at a rate of a few trains a day, so if anything our propaganda painted him too flattering."
By contrast, Stalin died in 53, way before peak cold war. Subsequent propaganda focused on the USSR in general, not their dead worst leader ever. And of course there were plenty of sympathizers to downplay his atrocities.
It's totally normal for people to describe shit they think as evil as 'kgb', though. You're correct that people call their political opponents Hitler more than Stalin, but there's always been a token of axiomatic evil in figurative speech- it used to be the biblical pharoah(like from Exodus). Hitler's portrayal during WWII was actually rather buffoonish more than outright evil; the Japs on the other hand...
Now why Hitler gets the title rather than Tojo, that might just be the dominance of Jews in Hollywood. I can remember old folks using terms like 'banzai' to refer to crazy evil, but that was more specific to the crazy part. I can definitely remember, quite recently and by younger people, Stalin used as a metaphor for totalitarian evil. But Hitler definitely takes the generic spot.
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I think they were both pretty equal in evil. The reason that Stalin gets a pass is that it makes an absolute mess of the moral certainty that the postwar order created. We were allies with Russia, and im not sure that the Allies would have won without Stalin and his war machine. If the war had remained a one front war, it’s possible that some form of Nazi German Empire would have survived. It was only because Russia was involved that we won, and thus talking about Holodomor and Gulag systems (which were absolutely as evil as any of the German labor camps) becomes a bit of a hagiographic problem. Stalin being known to be equally as ruthless would turn the story sideways. Which is a problem because the postwar mythological narrative of Liberal Western Globalist order is “we defeated the worst thing that had ever existed. Thus we have the moral right to rule over everything.” And furthermore it gives the new order a moral certainty— evil looks like Hitler, evil looks like straight armed salutes, arm bands, and speeches in big stadiums and big red flags.
Now they were obviously both evil and killed millions and committed genocide of people into the millions of people. But I don’t think the way the mythology works in th3 modern world works for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it turned things that used to be considered okay into evil simply because they’d been used to evil ends. Nationalism and patriotism are usually good things, they hold people together to build a country. It works in China. They think being Chinese is good and favor things that benefit China.
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This is an interesting phrase; it's accurate at the surface level, and also revealing in its accuracy upon scrutiny. It is more than evident that Hitler and his movement set a new cultural standard for evilness.
Cultural.
...Personally, I simply note that, by my standards, many and perhaps most people fail this particular test of humanity, and downgrade my understanding of humans and human society accordingly. The way leftists talk about fascists and fascism is, to me, a reasonably accurate working hypothesis of what most of you out there, the population in general, are really like. Maybe you can be reasoned with, or coerced. Maybe you need to have fire dropped on your cities in industrial quantities. Time will tell, and we all have it coming in the end.
Maybe I'm tired and not understanding correctly, but your use of the collective 'you' is reading to me as linking to both the perpetrator and victim of firebombing alike- or possibly both, as in someone deserving firebombing.
Might I ask you to reword this for clarity?
In the above statement, "You" is a generalized label for the people who have internalized the belief that "Naziism set a new cultural standard for evil". It seems evident that this is a considerable portion of the general population.
You, Dean in particular, are doubtless familiar with Progressive discourse about "fascists" and "fascism". I expect you are also familiar with the sort of person who believes that the North was far, far too lenient with the South in the American Civil War, and expresses the wish that far harsher measures had been employed to eradicate the scourge of slavery and the ideology that gave rise to it. The way such discourse frames "fascists" individually, the structures of "fascism" generally, and the lessons it draws from the aftermath of the American Civil War are reasonable analogues to how I regard the aforementioned considerable portion of the general population.
Such people have learned nothing of consequence from the disasters of the 20th century, and it seems likely to me that they will consequently repeat and thus suffer those disasters again in this century. Nothing has changed. This should not be surprising. Humans inevitably human.
"We all have it coming" should be self-explanatory. I also am a human, and am not sufficiently righteous to reasonably claim exemption from the Dresden treatment.
Thank you for providing an elaboration at request. (And that is a sincere thank you. An ! would feel flippant, but the gratitude is meant.)
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