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Great comment. I learned something about a topic I'm not very familiar with. I think it's possible that less attention is not the only reason Communism is tole

Great comment. I learned something about a topic I'm not very familiar with. I think it's possible that less attention is not the only reason Communism is tolerated more than Nazism. Nazism is much more inherently genocidal than Communism is. While the death toll for Communism is higher, it can be argued (and frequently is according to Wikipedia) that those deaths occurred under Communist regimes, but not because of Communism. So while some may wear a t-shirt with Che on it, they could be attempting to signal a Communist ideal that has never been implemented. While a t-shirt with a swastika on it, or worse, Hitler himself, doesn't leave much room to interpret anything other than racism, fascism, and ultimately genocide. I also support improved education. Particularly body counts of states and their leaders, past and present. Especially for those that receive perhaps the least attention of all, Western democracies.

the_third_wave 4y ago
The reasoning behind "allowing" Communism while "shunning" Nazism is a product of the way these subjects are treated in schools, media, politics and entertainment. It is not difficult - nay, very easy - to see the parallels between the ideologies but they are presented in a different light: Communism is "basically good but difficult to get right", Nazism is "pure evil and can only lead to death and destruction". It is just as easy to turn these narratives around since national socialism is but a variation on international socialism which - according to doctrine - is the precursor to Communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat needs a class enemy just as much as the "volk" - German for 'people' - needs an enemy to blame for all its misfortunes. It can easily be said that Hitler just did not do national socialism right just like Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and the Kim dynasty and Castro and all the others did not do international socialism right. There is just as much room for a budding national socialist wearing a T-shirt with "Blood and Soil" on it to claim that he only means the best for his folk, that the Third Reich went wrong when they saw the Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals and handicapped and Slavs and Negroes and unemployed as the enemies of the "volk" who needed to be eradicated - this time things would be done right. He would be just as wrong as the budding international socialist/Communist who makes that claim in defence of his shirt bearing a "Communist and proud of it" [1] banner. These ideologies belong in the same dust bin of history, "tried & failed disastrously - avoid" but somehow they are not. This needs to change and it needs to change sooner rather than later given the resurgence of Communism as somehow being a viable ideology. [1] https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Communist-and-Proud-of-It-by-Buddhuu/14795933.IJ6L0.XYZ https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Communist-and-Proud-of-I...
- tejohnso 4y ago
  > It can easily be said that Hitler just did not do [Nazism] right just like Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and the Kim dynasty and Castro and all the others did not do [Communism] right. I'll assume we can stay focused on Nazism and Communism, rather than any precursors to complicate things. In that case, I don't see how the above statement can be right at all. According to Wikipedia, communism is all about common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, allocating products to everyone in the society. That sounds very fair, admirable, equitable. Further, it involves the absence of social classes, money, private property. Lack of social classes seems especially appealing to an anti-harm, equality ideologue. Nazism on the other hand is associated with fascism, dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, and racism. These are directly linked to aggressive, harmful mindsets. I mean, it's pretty clear that an ideology that promotes racism is going to lead to problems. So do you disagree with that? Is that an example, or result of how these subjects are treated in schools, media, politics, and entertainment? > The dictatorship of the proletariat needs a class enemy Admittedly, I had no idea what this meant until looking into it just now, but it seems this is further deviating from the main point of Communism vs Nazism since it is not quite Communism. I don't really understand why you're bringing precursors into the discussion if it's very easy to see parallels between Nazism and Communism. We should be able to talk about them directly and leave out precursors. The Che t-shirt guy is not championing precursors to Communism in this discussion, he's championing Communism, which doesn't have inherent animosity as part of its ideology.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    > According to Wikipedia, communism is all about common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, allocating products to everyone in the society. That sounds very fair, admirable, equitable. It doesn't at all. I mean the infantile view of it maybe, in the same way that someone who promises you that their magic snake oil will cure cancer sounds great. Clearly it can't work though, right? Someone has to decide what is fair, someone has to take things from people, someone has to decide who gets it. Is it fair to take from someone who is more productive and give it to someone who is less productive? It's both no and yes depending on the situation and depending on who you ask. So some people will be unhappy, and so there need to be deciders, enforcement, and now you have classes. So much for the classess utopia. A proportion of your most productive people who view the deciders and redistribution as unfair will want to leave for a society that better values their contributions, so now you need to place controls on them leaving to prevent a spiral. Another proportion of the highly productive and effective people will try to change the system to one that better values their contributions, so now you have to cease democracy and disallow political opposition. So you have a paranoid police-state dictatorship. It seems almost inconceivable that a communist society can remain stable and productive without this oppression. At that point, the gulags and genocides follow quite naturally. This all follows from pretty basic obvious principles about human behavior, nobody should even need to look at history to see this. But when you do look at history, it has been proven out again and again from USSR to Cambodia to North Korea to China to Ethiopia. And yet the way it's presented, those failures and atrocities were some kind of aberration and not representative of real communism. Which is totally false, akin to arguing that WWII and the genocide of Jews and other undesirables wasn't true Nazism and that we really should give Naizsm another try (and another few dozen tries after that). These atrocities were directly caused by communism. They are the true communism.

the_third_wave 4y ago

The reasoning behind "allowing" Communism while "shunning" Nazism is a product of the way these subjects are treated in schools, media, politics and entertainment. It is not difficult - nay, very easy - to see the parallels between the ideologies but they are presented in a different light: Communism is "basically good but difficult to get right", Nazism is "pure evil and can only lead to death and destruction". It is just as easy to turn these narratives around since national socialism is but a variation on international socialism which - according to doctrine - is the precursor to Communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat needs a class enemy just as much as the "volk" - German for 'people' - needs an enemy to blame for all its misfortunes. It can easily be said that Hitler just did not do national socialism right just like Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and the Kim dynasty and Castro and all the others did not do international socialism right. There is just as much room for a budding national socialist wearing a T-shirt with "Blood and Soil" on it to claim that he only means the best for his folk, that the Third Reich went wrong when they saw the Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals and handicapped and Slavs and Negroes and unemployed as the enemies of the "volk" who needed to be eradicated - this time things would be done right. He would be just as wrong as the budding international socialist/Communist who makes that claim in defence of his shirt bearing a "Communist and proud of it" [1] banner. These ideologies belong in the same dust bin of history, "tried & failed disastrously - avoid" but somehow they are not. This needs to change and it needs to change sooner rather than later given the resurgence of Communism as somehow being a viable ideology. [1] https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Communist-and-Proud-of-It-by-Buddhuu/14795933.IJ6L0.XYZ https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Communist-and-Proud-of-I...

tejohnso 4y ago
> It can easily be said that Hitler just did not do [Nazism] right just like Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and the Kim dynasty and Castro and all the others did not do [Communism] right. I'll assume we can stay focused on Nazism and Communism, rather than any precursors to complicate things. In that case, I don't see how the above statement can be right at all. According to Wikipedia, communism is all about common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, allocating products to everyone in the society. That sounds very fair, admirable, equitable. Further, it involves the absence of social classes, money, private property. Lack of social classes seems especially appealing to an anti-harm, equality ideologue. Nazism on the other hand is associated with fascism, dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, and racism. These are directly linked to aggressive, harmful mindsets. I mean, it's pretty clear that an ideology that promotes racism is going to lead to problems. So do you disagree with that? Is that an example, or result of how these subjects are treated in schools, media, politics, and entertainment? > The dictatorship of the proletariat needs a class enemy Admittedly, I had no idea what this meant until looking into it just now, but it seems this is further deviating from the main point of Communism vs Nazism since it is not quite Communism. I don't really understand why you're bringing precursors into the discussion if it's very easy to see parallels between Nazism and Communism. We should be able to talk about them directly and leave out precursors. The Che t-shirt guy is not championing precursors to Communism in this discussion, he's championing Communism, which doesn't have inherent animosity as part of its ideology.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > According to Wikipedia, communism is all about common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, allocating products to everyone in the society. That sounds very fair, admirable, equitable. It doesn't at all. I mean the infantile view of it maybe, in the same way that someone who promises you that their magic snake oil will cure cancer sounds great. Clearly it can't work though, right? Someone has to decide what is fair, someone has to take things from people, someone has to decide who gets it. Is it fair to take from someone who is more productive and give it to someone who is less productive? It's both no and yes depending on the situation and depending on who you ask. So some people will be unhappy, and so there need to be deciders, enforcement, and now you have classes. So much for the classess utopia. A proportion of your most productive people who view the deciders and redistribution as unfair will want to leave for a society that better values their contributions, so now you need to place controls on them leaving to prevent a spiral. Another proportion of the highly productive and effective people will try to change the system to one that better values their contributions, so now you have to cease democracy and disallow political opposition. So you have a paranoid police-state dictatorship. It seems almost inconceivable that a communist society can remain stable and productive without this oppression. At that point, the gulags and genocides follow quite naturally. This all follows from pretty basic obvious principles about human behavior, nobody should even need to look at history to see this. But when you do look at history, it has been proven out again and again from USSR to Cambodia to North Korea to China to Ethiopia. And yet the way it's presented, those failures and atrocities were some kind of aberration and not representative of real communism. Which is totally false, akin to arguing that WWII and the genocide of Jews and other undesirables wasn't true Nazism and that we really should give Naizsm another try (and another few dozen tries after that). These atrocities were directly caused by communism. They are the true communism.