6 ms·

Read the communism page. Does it mention the hundred million plus dead because of communism? Only "Excess deaths"...

Const-me 6y ago
I'm from Ukraine. In the 20-th century communists killed several of my relatives. I will never forget about that, and there're many million people like me all over the world. I do observe tendency in modern world to white-wash communism, and cancel facts about crimes committed by communist regimes. I know it sounds crazy and I don't have any evidence, but one possible explanation of the trend - Russia's or China's state-sponsored propaganda.
- garbagetime 6y ago
  If it sounds crazy AND you haven't any evidence - why bring it up?
  - Const-me 6y ago
    Because I don’t know other possible explanations of the observed phenomenon. Do you?
    - klibertp 6y ago
      Authoritarian regimes tend to commit atrocities. Unchecked power tends to lead to abuse of power. This is true regardless of what ideology helped the regime take root. Recognizing this fact is not whitewashing anything. To give you a less personal (to you) example, the Islamic State of Irak and Levant filmed and uploaded executions of hundreds of people, and killed many, many more people off-screen. They have "Islam" in their name. Should the page about "Islam (religion)" put ISIL front and center, despite them existing for less than a 1‰ of time Islam existed, and having similarly little adherents in comparison to global population of muslims?
      - Const-me 6y ago
        I dunno man, communism is different. About 25% of the world population are Muslims, roughly 25% of modern countries are predominantly Muslims, yet as you wrote in the comment, ISIL is a small percentage in both space and time. For communist countries, these atrocities seem more like a rule than an exception. Soviet Union, countries of Eastern Block in 20-th century, China – they all did horrible things. Wikipedia’s articles about fascism and nazism do mention war crimes and genocides, rightfully so. Yet Wikipedia’s article about communism does not. They do have two links in the “Related topics” section, but other links in that section aren’t particularly related, they also link to capitalism and trade union there.
        klibertp 6y ago
        There's a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... in the See also section of Communism article... EDIT: I see it's probably the same link you saw in Related topics, so it's mentioned twice on the page. Should it be mentioned in the text of the article? I don't know. There's similarly no mention of crussades on the Christianity page.
        Const-me 6y ago
        The “nazism” article has links to night of the long knives and holocaust in the very first section. The “communism” article links to the mass murders from the very last page, in an article about 10 pages long. Looking at the edit history of that article, I see the edits to change that are systematically reverted: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&type=revision&diff=1010679793&oldid=1010665304 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&type=re...
        klibertp 6y ago
        Ok, I'm not going to defend that, you might be right that the great leap forward or the great famine should be mentioned. The only defense I can think of is that neither is central to the ideology of communism, while holocaust arguably was central to nazism. But, I'm not an editor, and I agree omitting it looks a bit suspicious. I wouldn't object to writing something like "aside from theory of communism, most communist governments practiced [links to police-state, mass killings, etc. here]" into the summary.
    - garbagetime 6y ago
      It doesn't sound crazy to me in the first place that Communist China is whitewashing the history of Communism.
  - sqqqqrly 6y ago
    Ummm, free speech. Feel free to ignore. Mao arguably murdered more humans than anyone else in history. Read a book or two.
    - garbagetime 6y ago
      > Feel free to ignore. Isn't the point of free speech that the merits of ideas get challenged? The merits of the argument: 1. P is a crazy idea 2. There is no evidence for P C. Therefore P are few and far between. > Mao arguably murdered more humans than anyone else in history. Read a book or two. We're talking about Soviet and Chinese Communism (and their offshoots). Both of these forms of Communism have had great results as well as terrible. Looking at China now and comparing it to China before Communism I see development that is nothing short of astonishing. Or even just over the last four decades. I don't know how many have been saved by increased standards of living, access to healthcare, and general governmental competence, but I do know that the number is very high. Compare this to a country which has not been under Communism: India. How many have died due to lack of development, lack of access to healthcare, governmental incompetence, etc.?
      - kwertzzz 6y ago
        > "Russia's or China's state-sponsored propaganda" I do not think that this is a crazy idea at all [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
      - helloworld11 6y ago
        Maybe you'e a communist by ideological persuasion, in which case nothing I say will sway you, but insofar as China is concerned, the country entered extraordinary levels of general development and increases in human development (well-being) explicitly after it left behind Maoist communism from the 1980's onwards. Prior to that, Mao's policies of classic communist rigidity were a demographic, social, economic and human disaster. As for India, it has many of its own bureaucratic problems without having to be a communist state, true, but to claim that this in any way legitimizes communist social management is absurd. If my family gets sick and some of them die of neglect in my house, it doesn't make my neighbor who outright starved and murdered most of his family any less reprehensible. In any case, India too saw large increases in human development as it left behind pseudo-socialist policies and embraced a more market-friendly form of governance during the same time-frame as China..
- sqqqqrly 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing a difficult part of your family history. This should never be forgotten. I have several friends that grew up in Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland. All of them have horror stories. All left their homes to escape communism.
klibertp 6y ago
Read the Joseph Stalin or Chairman Mao page, see that they do mention millions of deaths because of them. And before you ask, no, the connection between Stalin and communism is highlighted in the article, it's not like anyone tries to hide it. I'm not saying there's no bias on the Wiki, but it manifests in interpretations and wording choices, the facts are generally there. At least in the articles about history, which I read regularly. As an example, read the page on George Washington and you'll see he recommended a total war against indigenous people of America, "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible". It's downplayed, explained away in all kinds of ways, but the fact is there.
qiqing 6y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the definition of excess deaths means they're not literally counting every person who died, including from old age or car accidents, but theoretically attributable to a cause. For example, researchers can measure excess deaths in 2020 compared to the previous year and find a gap between that and confirmed covid deaths in every country. For example, if the caretaker of a child or disabled or elderly person was suddenly hospitalized without time to find a substitute, and they didn't survive due to lack of care.
Twixes 6y ago
I'm no fan of communism but the number 100 million+ is also engineered the other way around, and includes various awful parts of history only tangentially related to communism, like the Soviet Union's high WW2 death toll. "Excess deaths" is in this case strictly factual.

I'm from Ukraine. In the 20-th century communists killed several of my relatives. I will never forget about that, and there're many million people like me all over the world. I do observe tendency in modern world to white-wash communism, and cancel facts about crimes committed by communist regimes. I know it sounds crazy and I don't have any evidence, but one possible explanation of the trend - Russia's or China's state-sponsored propaganda.

garbagetime 6y ago
If it sounds crazy AND you haven't any evidence - why bring it up?
- Const-me 6y ago
  Because I don’t know other possible explanations of the observed phenomenon. Do you?
  - klibertp 6y ago
    Authoritarian regimes tend to commit atrocities. Unchecked power tends to lead to abuse of power. This is true regardless of what ideology helped the regime take root. Recognizing this fact is not whitewashing anything. To give you a less personal (to you) example, the Islamic State of Irak and Levant filmed and uploaded executions of hundreds of people, and killed many, many more people off-screen. They have "Islam" in their name. Should the page about "Islam (religion)" put ISIL front and center, despite them existing for less than a 1‰ of time Islam existed, and having similarly little adherents in comparison to global population of muslims?
    - Const-me 6y ago
      I dunno man, communism is different. About 25% of the world population are Muslims, roughly 25% of modern countries are predominantly Muslims, yet as you wrote in the comment, ISIL is a small percentage in both space and time. For communist countries, these atrocities seem more like a rule than an exception. Soviet Union, countries of Eastern Block in 20-th century, China – they all did horrible things. Wikipedia’s articles about fascism and nazism do mention war crimes and genocides, rightfully so. Yet Wikipedia’s article about communism does not. They do have two links in the “Related topics” section, but other links in that section aren’t particularly related, they also link to capitalism and trade union there.
      - klibertp 6y ago
        There's a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... in the See also section of Communism article... EDIT: I see it's probably the same link you saw in Related topics, so it's mentioned twice on the page. Should it be mentioned in the text of the article? I don't know. There's similarly no mention of crussades on the Christianity page.
        Const-me 6y ago
        The “nazism” article has links to night of the long knives and holocaust in the very first section. The “communism” article links to the mass murders from the very last page, in an article about 10 pages long. Looking at the edit history of that article, I see the edits to change that are systematically reverted: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&type=revision&diff=1010679793&oldid=1010665304 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Communism&type=re...
        klibertp 6y ago
        Ok, I'm not going to defend that, you might be right that the great leap forward or the great famine should be mentioned. The only defense I can think of is that neither is central to the ideology of communism, while holocaust arguably was central to nazism. But, I'm not an editor, and I agree omitting it looks a bit suspicious. I wouldn't object to writing something like "aside from theory of communism, most communist governments practiced [links to police-state, mass killings, etc. here]" into the summary.
  - garbagetime 6y ago
    It doesn't sound crazy to me in the first place that Communist China is whitewashing the history of Communism.
- sqqqqrly 6y ago
  Ummm, free speech. Feel free to ignore. Mao arguably murdered more humans than anyone else in history. Read a book or two.
  - garbagetime 6y ago
    > Feel free to ignore. Isn't the point of free speech that the merits of ideas get challenged? The merits of the argument: 1. P is a crazy idea 2. There is no evidence for P C. Therefore P are few and far between. > Mao arguably murdered more humans than anyone else in history. Read a book or two. We're talking about Soviet and Chinese Communism (and their offshoots). Both of these forms of Communism have had great results as well as terrible. Looking at China now and comparing it to China before Communism I see development that is nothing short of astonishing. Or even just over the last four decades. I don't know how many have been saved by increased standards of living, access to healthcare, and general governmental competence, but I do know that the number is very high. Compare this to a country which has not been under Communism: India. How many have died due to lack of development, lack of access to healthcare, governmental incompetence, etc.?
    - kwertzzz 6y ago
      > "Russia's or China's state-sponsored propaganda" I do not think that this is a crazy idea at all [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
    - helloworld11 6y ago
      Maybe you'e a communist by ideological persuasion, in which case nothing I say will sway you, but insofar as China is concerned, the country entered extraordinary levels of general development and increases in human development (well-being) explicitly after it left behind Maoist communism from the 1980's onwards. Prior to that, Mao's policies of classic communist rigidity were a demographic, social, economic and human disaster. As for India, it has many of its own bureaucratic problems without having to be a communist state, true, but to claim that this in any way legitimizes communist social management is absurd. If my family gets sick and some of them die of neglect in my house, it doesn't make my neighbor who outright starved and murdered most of his family any less reprehensible. In any case, India too saw large increases in human development as it left behind pseudo-socialist policies and embraced a more market-friendly form of governance during the same time-frame as China..
sqqqqrly 6y ago
Thank you for sharing a difficult part of your family history. This should never be forgotten. I have several friends that grew up in Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland. All of them have horror stories. All left their homes to escape communism.

klibertp 6y ago

Read the Joseph Stalin or Chairman Mao page, see that they do mention millions of deaths because of them. And before you ask, no, the connection between Stalin and communism is highlighted in the article, it's not like anyone tries to hide it. I'm not saying there's no bias on the Wiki, but it manifests in interpretations and wording choices, the facts are generally there. At least in the articles about history, which I read regularly. As an example, read the page on George Washington and you'll see he recommended a total war against indigenous people of America, "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible". It's downplayed, explained away in all kinds of ways, but the fact is there.

qiqing 6y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the definition of excess deaths means they're not literally counting every person who died, including from old age or car accidents, but theoretically attributable to a cause. For example, researchers can measure excess deaths in 2020 compared to the previous year and find a gap between that and confirmed covid deaths in every country. For example, if the caretaker of a child or disabled or elderly person was suddenly hospitalized without time to find a substitute, and they didn't survive due to lack of care.

Twixes 6y ago

I'm no fan of communism but the number 100 million+ is also engineered the other way around, and includes various awful parts of history only tangentially related to communism, like the Soviet Union's high WW2 death toll. "Excess deaths" is in this case strictly factual.