[OFB Cafe] Chris's Politics...

[saki]

Derek Broughton wrote:

> I'm not sure I quite agree that's true, but it's really quite simple - Hitler 
> killed 6 million people, many of whom had relatives on this side of the pond.  
> Stalin killed (maybe) 10 million (the numbers being really fuzzy), and nobody 
> ever really figured out who he was targeting or why - and the victims didn't 
> have many relatives here.  It was just never so obvious to us.

We clearly share the position. I'd never thought about it in North 
American (i.e. USA) terms but rather in North Atlantic terms because of 
that shared basic view. However, I can see your point, and the 
difference. Here in Europe very few supported the Fascists in comparison 
to those who were supporters of Marxism/Leninism in one form or another, 
so "Nazi" stays a hate term more than fifty years after the end of the 
Second World War.

After that War, of course, the USSR was still nominally an ally, and 
Uncle Joe, like Uncle Sam, a good guy. Your figure of 10M Russian deaths 
seems a little on the low side, and does not, obviously, take into 
account the unknowable deaths in Communist China, and other communist 
states.

I am very much against any form of totalitarian rule, and find it 
interesting that the two very different routes to such government in the 
20th Century should be regarded so differently. If civil deaths (as 
opposed to international warfare deaths) as a result of such governments 
is the criterion then communism is way ahead, but, such is the world, it 
has a better press!

Is it that there are far more on the left who incline towards 
totalitarianism in the name of "the people", than there are on the right 
who incline toward it in the name of "the State" or "the Race"?

But your view from America is interesting: do you mean that an 
"isolationist" pattern of not being over-concerned until it affects the 
USA directly causes the difference in perception? Or am I misreading
what you mean?

Terence