Systematic slaughter/enslavement of innocent people on a intercontinental scale that continued for generations or some government/military officials get merced and some of them might have been innocent. I don’t even understand the equivalence this person is going for
A lot of the people killed in the purges were definitely innocent, that was even the contention of Stalin. That was why he purged Yagoda and particularly Yeshov.
If we simply take for granted that all of them are innocent (and many were, probably most, but there were also real threats) then this is still not as bad as what America did, so it’s such a strange thing to say.
It’s so weird for an anticommunist to say that the killing of people who, if they were innocent, were dedicated and loyal old bolsheviks is worse than genocide. I mean thanks for putting the value of communist lives so high I guess.
Wait so the soviet union is worse because some of the violence targeted their own leadership?
In the mind of the liberal, horrors being inflicted upon the masses is never as bad as the same being inflicted upon even a handful of elites.
named NPC vs Commoner
Notice how all the things they listed (Native genocide, slavery, etc.) are things that happened to racial minorities.
White supremacy is the black hole at the center of liberal thought: not directly observable, but made apparent by how all of their other ideas orbit around it.
i love this quote who said it
Me
White supremacy is the black hole at the center of liberal thought: not directly observable, but made apparent by how all of their other ideas orbit around it.
This goes so hard and it’s incisive enough to reveal a deeper, hidden truth. You should be proud of writing it.
The Soviet Union avoided a civil war with those purges. The US did not avoid a civil war. Perhaps purges are a greater good? Purging some officials to save millions of people from a war sounds like a good trade to me.
Side note, it’s always deeply suspicious to me when a person expresses anger at the actions that prevented a Soviet Union civil war right before ww2. The soviet union saved the world from nazism and had a civil war occurred I doubt the outcome would have been the same.
The US not purging(violently or otherwise) the confederates after the civil war lead directly to Jim Crow etc
lincoln should’ve hanged more (all) confederates and fewer (none) natives.
The Soviet Union avoided a civil war with those purges. The US did not avoid a civil war. Perhaps purges are a greater good? Purging some officials to save millions of people from a war sounds like a good trade to me.
It is a good trade, but (large parts of) the purges were still a mistake. They weren’t carried out as they should have been, and a huge number of innocent people were purged and/or killed. As others have pointed out in this thread, Stalin himself agreed with this.
I’m well aware of the excesses I’m just not inclined to give anything but a passing hand-wavy criticism about them when the alternative was lebensraum.
Trolley problem: Stalin’s purges exactly as they were vs Hitler’s extermination of every ethnic and religious minority in Europe alongside everyone that wasn’t cishetero and the entire disabled population
I choose the purges every single time. Zero hesitation. Anyone that does not is a nazi, along with anyone that claims these two are remotely comparable.
If faced with the same scenario would I hope it’s approached better today? Yeah sure. But I’d still do it again exactly as it was in order to defeat fascism.
I agree with you, but as communists, that’s not the choice we’re presented with going forwards.
If faced with the same scenario would I hope it’s approached better today? Yeah sure.
This is what I mean. The past cannot be changed, but we can learn from it.
But I’d still do it again exactly as it was in order to defeat fascism.
No two situations are the same, and with the benefit of hindsight the Soviet Union has given us, I think we’ll be able to tackle the problem better next time.
The liberal in the OP screenshot is just doing nazi apologia, you are correct.
The only context in which this conversation ever happens is a liberal doing nazi apologia and showing that they are more opposed to communists than they are to nazis. They’ll claim we’re as bad as nazis while simultaneously refusing to ever visit China, Cuba etc. The very claim is either a denial of nazis being genocidal monsters or a belief that we are.
I refuse to entertain that they’re speaking in good faith.
The only context in which this conversation ever happens is a liberal doing nazi apologia and showing that they are more opposed to communists than they are to nazis.
We can and should (and communists, including Stalin himself when Yezhov was prosecuted, have) also be having this conversation amongst ourselves. Many were prosecuted and killed who were, according to the party itself, not guilty. This means that mistakes were made which can be learned from.
I refuse to entertain that they’re speaking in good faith.
You’re right, they’re not.
We should have actually done it more carefully. We should unironically learn from how capitalists did Red Scare and McCarthyism, because they managed to do it much more efficiently.
prevented
Same with prevented genocides. It’s hard to gauge those really prevented (like the potential wars if post WW2 resettlements in Eastern Europe did not happened) but even those that were actively stopped by communists are many times more than whatever bad they did.
Even taking this at face value, genocide and slavery are surely magnitudes worse than military and government purges
But worse than a giant spoon?! 😱
Hell even take those two off the table and the segregation and apartheid is still worse than anything the Soviet Union did
“I can excuse genocide and slavery, but I draw the line at killing soldiers”
No, instead we leave our aristocratic slave owning class intact so they can infest our social and political institutions with far right influence and make movies where we portray them as cool dudes who just made a bit of an oopsie by trying to create a pro-slavery successionist state.
lol post revolution, you have to purge. Liberals love to try and co-exist with Nazis.
Even the American founders understood this, people who picked the losing side in the Revolution who weren’t killed during the war were generally driven off to Canada.
Does this lady realize she’s arguing that internal power struggles are worse than genocide?
in the liberal mind violence on the in-group is worse than violence on the out-group (unless it’s DV, which is a property crime at most)
Hey, quick question, how are government purges worse than genocide, slavery, and apartheid?
This feels like the kind of truly horrible person that picks one meaningless trait to delude themselves into thinking they’re a good person. Like:
“Yeah, I may drive drunk, sell dangerously cut drugs to kids, and torture small animals…but at least I never leave my trash bins out too long!”
i may give fentanyl to toddlers but i put the grocery cart in the corral
“i’m just really interested in world war 2!”
My “I just like the way the uniform looks” shirt is causing a lot of questions already answered by the shirt.
Ukrainian soldier wearing homemade SS uniform with ☠️ ☠️ ☠️ ☠️ because the canon single ☠️ was not enough
It wasn’t a purge, it was a “Red Scare” and “McCarthyism”
Are we sure they aren’t saying this ironically? That’s gotta be the only reason for as outlandish a statement as that
Jumps from the purges to the “Holodomor”, then back to the “Russian people”.
Behold, an amerikkkan “historian”.
Well thanks for the confirmation
