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Sankara took power in a military coup himself. While he led positive reforms such as literacy and vaccination campaigns, he also banned trade unions and the fre

Sankara took power in a military coup himself. While he led positive reforms such as literacy and vaccination campaigns, he also banned trade unions and the free press. His Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and Popular Revolutionary Tribunals engaged in torture, execution and arbitrary detention. It’s hard to find unbiased accounts of his rule, as anti-communists tend to ignore his achievements while communists have practically declared him a saint, but I’d take hagiographic accounts of the man with a grain of salt.

cuteboy19 5y ago
Modern liberal democracy could not have existed without Napoleon. Yet you don't see liberals venerating him as a saint or anything. It's puzzling why communists insist on canonizing every dictator that happens to use a red flag.
- lucian1900 5y ago
  We don't. Stalin and Mao both made mistakes, the common assessment is ~70/30. Sankara and Castro made fewer mistakes. All led movements that drastically improved the lives of millions of workers and that is why they are held in high regard. The problem is that most of us live under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, otherwise called liberal democracy. It's hard to have an objective assessment in the face of constant and pervasive anti-communist propaganda. Even you used the term "dictator", which is simply not supported by historical fact. On the other hand, there's not much point to propaganda for or against Napoleon.
  - thematrixturtle 5y ago
    "Three parts bad, seven parts good" is the official Chinese Communist Party line on Mao's legacy. A neutral assessment would not be so positive.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      Considering liberalism (and thus capitalism) is currently dominant, who would make such a neutral assessment? [edit] Also, it's Communist Party of China.
      - nradov 5y ago
        In theory tenured academic historians are supposed to be able to make neutral assessments regardless of which political theory is currently dominant. Whether that's true in practice is a matter of opinion.
      - thematrixturtle 5y ago
        You're welcome to examine pretty much any economic or health metric for China during and after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and draw your own conclusions. My own unscientific view was that while Mao did an OK job unifying the country and (to some extent) fighting off the Japanese, pretty much everything he did after the founding of the PRC was varying levels of disastrous.
  - nradov 5y ago
    [flagged]
  - snowgrove 5y ago
    Subjecting your population to multiple genocidal events seems worse than 70/30 to me. Many leaders who we hold in middling esteem have managed not to murder tens of millions of their own people.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      That's the dominant liberal propaganda, yes. It doesn't necessarily match the historical record, especially in different countries. The same propaganda holds Churchill in high esteem despite the Bengal Famine and his general enthusiasm for imperialism and sympathy for fascism. There's a reason there are people with the first name "Stalin" in India, but Churchill is overwhelmingly hated.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    I think it's pretty insane how communists refer to any contradictory fact as propaganda.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      We don't, we just use the term accurately: information spread with the purpose of convincing. It doesn't have to be incorrect, lots of propaganda is entirely accurate. We label our own efforts as propaganda, too. The dominance of capitalism in most countries is not disputed. Is it far-fetched that capitalists would like to maintain their rule through ideology as well? The effects are readily apparent when comparing newspapers, school curriculum, public announcements, etc. from countries that disagree even slightly.
  - _ktx2 5y ago
    "Made mistakes" is some very careful language on your part. To then follow that up with "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, otherwise called liberal democracy" is fairly deceptive. Personally speaking, I don't think capitalism, socialism, or communism are inherently good. The only way any of them work is by mixing traits of others and regulation. Given that, they're all pretty arbitrary.
- baud147258 5y ago
  > Modern liberal democracy could not have existed without Napoleon. Maybe I've got a few blind spots there, but didn't Napoleon took power by a military coup against a nominal democracy? And I don't really see what he did that would lead to the creation of modern democracy: after his defeat France went back to a monarchy and I don't think any of the countries he invaded became democracies either during or after the French occupation.
  - ABoredBirb 5y ago
    See Code Napoleon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code He ruled like a monarch, but he reformed and liberalized the society itself and spread those ideas throughout Europe during his conquests. His rule was ended, but the reforms could not be undone by any monarch.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > Maybe I've got a few blind spots there, but didn't Napoleon took power by a military coup against a nominal democracy Coup yes, military kind of ( based on his military successes, but it wasn't executed by troops), against a nominal democracy - not at all. However the Napoleonic Code Civil and the many reforms he enacted in France ( administrative, educative) which were also spread, alongside the revolutionary ideals, abroad wherever he conquered, significantly impacted Europe. It's generally accepted that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars ushered the new era of nationalism, liberalism and political thinking ( including Marxism, because Karl Marx was inspired by the French Revolution and this type of event figured prominently in his thinking). Pinning it all on Napoleon would be falling for the Great Man fallacy, but he certainly contributed a lot.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Coup yes, military kind of ( based on his military successes, but it wasn't executed by troops), against a nominal democracy - not at all. The Directory was a multimember executive of a nominal democracy, so, no, the upthread description was entirely accurate. (The Directory wasn't itself directly elected, but then neither are a number of executives, individual or group, in democratic republics.)

cuteboy19 5y ago

Modern liberal democracy could not have existed without Napoleon. Yet you don't see liberals venerating him as a saint or anything. It's puzzling why communists insist on canonizing every dictator that happens to use a red flag.

lucian1900 5y ago
We don't. Stalin and Mao both made mistakes, the common assessment is ~70/30. Sankara and Castro made fewer mistakes. All led movements that drastically improved the lives of millions of workers and that is why they are held in high regard. The problem is that most of us live under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, otherwise called liberal democracy. It's hard to have an objective assessment in the face of constant and pervasive anti-communist propaganda. Even you used the term "dictator", which is simply not supported by historical fact. On the other hand, there's not much point to propaganda for or against Napoleon.
- thematrixturtle 5y ago
  "Three parts bad, seven parts good" is the official Chinese Communist Party line on Mao's legacy. A neutral assessment would not be so positive.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    Considering liberalism (and thus capitalism) is currently dominant, who would make such a neutral assessment? [edit] Also, it's Communist Party of China.
    - nradov 5y ago
      In theory tenured academic historians are supposed to be able to make neutral assessments regardless of which political theory is currently dominant. Whether that's true in practice is a matter of opinion.
    - thematrixturtle 5y ago
      You're welcome to examine pretty much any economic or health metric for China during and after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and draw your own conclusions. My own unscientific view was that while Mao did an OK job unifying the country and (to some extent) fighting off the Japanese, pretty much everything he did after the founding of the PRC was varying levels of disastrous.
- nradov 5y ago
  [flagged]
- snowgrove 5y ago
  Subjecting your population to multiple genocidal events seems worse than 70/30 to me. Many leaders who we hold in middling esteem have managed not to murder tens of millions of their own people.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    That's the dominant liberal propaganda, yes. It doesn't necessarily match the historical record, especially in different countries. The same propaganda holds Churchill in high esteem despite the Bengal Famine and his general enthusiasm for imperialism and sympathy for fascism. There's a reason there are people with the first name "Stalin" in India, but Churchill is overwhelmingly hated.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  I think it's pretty insane how communists refer to any contradictory fact as propaganda.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    We don't, we just use the term accurately: information spread with the purpose of convincing. It doesn't have to be incorrect, lots of propaganda is entirely accurate. We label our own efforts as propaganda, too. The dominance of capitalism in most countries is not disputed. Is it far-fetched that capitalists would like to maintain their rule through ideology as well? The effects are readily apparent when comparing newspapers, school curriculum, public announcements, etc. from countries that disagree even slightly.
- _ktx2 5y ago
  "Made mistakes" is some very careful language on your part. To then follow that up with "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, otherwise called liberal democracy" is fairly deceptive. Personally speaking, I don't think capitalism, socialism, or communism are inherently good. The only way any of them work is by mixing traits of others and regulation. Given that, they're all pretty arbitrary.
baud147258 5y ago
> Modern liberal democracy could not have existed without Napoleon. Maybe I've got a few blind spots there, but didn't Napoleon took power by a military coup against a nominal democracy? And I don't really see what he did that would lead to the creation of modern democracy: after his defeat France went back to a monarchy and I don't think any of the countries he invaded became democracies either during or after the French occupation.
- ABoredBirb 5y ago
  See Code Napoleon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code He ruled like a monarch, but he reformed and liberalized the society itself and spread those ideas throughout Europe during his conquests. His rule was ended, but the reforms could not be undone by any monarch.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Maybe I've got a few blind spots there, but didn't Napoleon took power by a military coup against a nominal democracy Coup yes, military kind of ( based on his military successes, but it wasn't executed by troops), against a nominal democracy - not at all. However the Napoleonic Code Civil and the many reforms he enacted in France ( administrative, educative) which were also spread, alongside the revolutionary ideals, abroad wherever he conquered, significantly impacted Europe. It's generally accepted that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars ushered the new era of nationalism, liberalism and political thinking ( including Marxism, because Karl Marx was inspired by the French Revolution and this type of event figured prominently in his thinking). Pinning it all on Napoleon would be falling for the Great Man fallacy, but he certainly contributed a lot.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Coup yes, military kind of ( based on his military successes, but it wasn't executed by troops), against a nominal democracy - not at all. The Directory was a multimember executive of a nominal democracy, so, no, the upthread description was entirely accurate. (The Directory wasn't itself directly elected, but then neither are a number of executives, individual or group, in democratic republics.)