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Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.
California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.
It all adds up.
On a per capita basis, I'll put Marxism up against the Crusades and etc. any day of the week, and people don't fire Christians either.
Ignoring for the moment the endless arguments about how many people were actually killed by Marxism vs other features of Marxist countries and their enemies, how many people are killed by capitalism and whether we're applying the same standards to those two accounting, what ideology gets the blame for the British empire and slavery and etc., I'm sure we're all sick of that debate.
Leaving all that aside, I think this idea you're applying of 'social acceptability of an ideology is/should be primarily determined by how many people it historically killed' is something you made up just now, and is neither how society ussually determines such things nor a good decision criteria to use abstractly.
Also, you know, McCarthyism, every backlash has its day in the sun.
I don't think it's necessarily a good idea, but it's what I assume most people use, because if you ask them why racism is bad, they'll say it leads to human rights abuses.
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