Communism: everyone should be equal.
Nazism: everyone who is not us should be exterminated.
The execution of those ideologies on both sides was catastrophically bad, and anyone subscribing to either ideology today is a moron. Extremes don't work, but all told, I have way more sympathy for the intent behind communism.
Communism: everyone should be equal,
and if you don't believe that then you will be jailed, tortured, starved or shot.Nazism: everyone who is not us should be exterminated.
Agreed on the subscribing to either ideology. History has proven they are both appalling and evil.
Seattle has only statue of Lenin in America in Fremont. It's a doozy. So maybe they get a pass. Maybe they'll get pissed if someone tries to tear it down. It's actually pretty cool.
@theconsul
So Lenin gets a pass on butchering, enslaving and torture?
Far as I'm concerned all the little nazi brats can eat shit and die.
Indeed!
Now I got to go and kill me some tequila worms that are having at my pines.
One comparison: hammer & sickle is in the logo of at least a dozen legitimate political parties around the world; not so with the swastika.
@Elvis, what constitutes legitimate?
Does a rewrite of history mean we ignore the barbarism of communism and the resulting millions of deaths?
The Soviets did a great job at marketing their ideology into the mainstream on a global level. Because one of it's goals was to "equalize" and remove class barriers do the ends justify the means? The hammer and sickle represent an evil that is no less than the swastika. The Nazis got more style points on their butchering of millions. The Soviets perhaps weren't as offensive (and not nearly as efficient) because their goal
seemed more egalitarian. What we ended up with is a general perception that communism isn't as bad. The ethnic cleansing by Stalin and co. was horrific. How can honestly as decent human beings not recognize that the systematic starving of millions was genocide? The Holodomor was real.
http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/hessay.htm http://www.holodomorct.org/ Perhaps because the full disclosure didn't happen until the 90's the general public doesn't have a full understanding of the terrible atrocities committed by the Soviets?
Some still argue the ethnic cleansing and starvation committed by the Soviets wasn't real....just like there are those that don't believe in the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people. The New York Times had a famous reporter that help spread the lies and I believe he even won a pulitzer. To this day the NYT has not expunged Walter Duranty from their wall of "fame." Counterpunch reads like some neo-Nazi trope trying to discredit history.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/03 ... cist-lies/I'm having a hard time getting my head around how communism gets a pass by some folks. How can a person be angry and disgusted by the demonstration of Nazis and the KKK but carry the banner of what represents another grotesque ideology?
Admittedly, when in high school I wrote a paper on communism and lacking even a moderate sense of history came away with the pop culture belief that communism wasn't such a bad thing. It's taken myself years of reading and overcoming indifference (at times) to realize most forms of government are pretty fu*cked up and inhuman. I think a lot of us would agree on that. I'm being honest that it is easy to be lied to and believe whatever narrative the writes of history books want us to believe. It's harder work to overcome years of being programmed by the media, crappy education and such. It still is challenging understanding how one can protest the evils of one ideology and it's evil outcome but excuse or still glorify another. It's almost as if sometimes we're faced with something shitty and while repulsed by it we look for an alternative and don't realize it's just another turd with a different smell.
In my OP I didn't clarify enough that it's not so much about flags themselves, it's about what those icons represent. In general I'm really tired of the flag waving and any nationalistic hoo ha. It especially gets old around Memorial Day and July 4.
Thanks all for your comments and sharing.