For the past couple of weeks your faithful correspondent (apparently because he has a masochistic nature) has been reading biographies of Communist dictators. Specifically, Joseph Stalin and Mao-Tse-Tung (or as he is called at the Manor, Mousey Dung). In the reading of these biographies this writer has realized that Adolf Hitler had no monopoly on being a very bad man. In fact, yours has come to the conclusion that while the Austrian was a very bad man, Stalin and Mao may have been worse men.
Please know that this writer has no truck with Nazism. Several of his elder relatives fought against the Germans in WW II and hated the Nazis and taught their progeny to hate the Nazis) until their dying days. One uncle not only despised the Nazis, but he, because of his experience in Europe, hated the Russians and the Soviet Union. It must be remembered that during the War the United States and the President, the silly and often foolish Franklin Roosevelt, referred to Joseph Stalin as Uncle Joe because he was fighting the Germans, The awful Walter Duranty reported for the New York Times that there was no man-made famine in Ukraine during the 1930s while, there was, in fact, an awful famine that resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people. The press lied in saying that Stalin was just a mild Socialist somewhat like a 1960s Swede. And during the Chinese Revolution the government and press more supported Mao than it did Chaing Kai-Shek because Chaing was considered corrupt and a bounder while Mao was considered a man of the people. The press and government neglected to mention that, while Chaing was a bit of a self server, his troops fought the Japanese while Mao's troops fought Chaing's troops whenever they could. Chaing was a crook, to be sure, but he was a crook in the way that a mild dictator is a crook; he wanted to live the big life with a lot of toys and money. He never oppressed his populace as is evinced by Taiwan where he set up his government after he left Mainland China.. Mao was a crook in a much different way.
Let's look at the three men. Hitler was a monster because of his racism. He believed, or pretended to believe that Jews were undermining the German and Western culture. He used an old European fear of Jews and institutionalized it. He hated Poles and Russians because they represented the East. For him the East was a source of grief. When Hitler went on his killing spree he had The Other killed. All Jews, whether German or not, were The Other. He was, in his own mind (or for the benefit of the anti-Semitic Germans which were raised by him) basically exterminating a sort of termite. Bad thinking? Yes. Evil thinking? Yes. Should we spit, pee or poop on a swastika every time we see it? Of course. Hitler and Nazism are major cooties and should always be remembered and their memories shat (please forgive the vulgarity) upon.
Now we come to out allies in the War.
Stalin is responsible for more than 10 million deaths of Russians, Georgians and Ukrainians during his reign. These deaths are not war related deaths. They are deaths that are the result of intentional famines, massacres, forced labor and assassinations. Stalin was killing his own people for his own benefit. The man pretended to be a Bolshevik, but he lived like a grandee. He had more than a few vacation houses and held parties, many of them drunken routs, while the average Russian was wearing cardboard shoes, eating nothing but turnips to survive and having to use communal toilets in apartment buildings. Stalin regularly killed his own people. He regularly terrorized his own people. He indoctrinated his own people that Hitler never could.
Mao followed Stalin's example. Mao was not interested in defeating the Japanese. He was interested in using his power. He had a stable of female entertainers for his sexual pleasure and lived the life of a horny ReillyDuring his reign more than 20 million people died from famine because Mao considered the export of agricultural goods more important than feeding his own people. Mao wanted an industrial China and was more than willing to sacrifice the lives of millions to attain it. If a local official said to Mao that people in an agricultural area said that people were starving to death because of Mao's policies Mao would say that if the people worked harder there would be more food to eat. Then the official would be jailed and executed, Mao used terror in a way that Stalin never could. And the oddest thing is that Mao always spoke a Chinese dialect that was not common in China. He never learned to speak Mandarin, but he managed to establish a cult of personality unlike any other ever seen.
When Kim Il-Sung was considering invading South Korea both Stalin and Mao encouraged him to do so. Stalin wanted to test his weapons. Mao wanted to extend his influence in Asia. The result was the deaths of thousands of Koreans, Chinese and Americans. Kim wanted to end the war in 1951. Both Stalin and Mao wanted him to continue with the war. The result was more deaths and the fact that the borders of North and South Korea did not change. Kim took the Mao road to governance i.e., the people serve the state and the leader of the state. The citizens of the state mean nothing. The state is all as long as Kim was living big. And the curse of that adherence has resulted in the awful Doughboy Kim Jong-Un.
And it keeps descending to Fidel Castro and his lackey Che Gueverra (a psycho-murdered if there ever was one), The Shining Path Guerrillas in Peru, Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein (more Stalinist than Arab nationalist) and the Khmer Rouge. All of these groups have followed the Stalinist/Maoist path. Ask your self what governments has followed the Hitler path?
This writer remembers when it was popular for people in the United States to wear Mao pins (almost all Chinese in Communist China) band to have copies of Mao's Little Red Book. There was the chant of "Ho! Ho! Ho! Che Minh!" at anti-Vietnam War rallies. Images of Che Gueverra were, and are still, considered the "thing" despite the fact that the man was a stone killer of the worst sort. But, if then, if one showed up weaving a swastika flag or wore a swastika patch one was considered a hater or an outlaw biker.
It makes no sense. All of the above men were bad. No one of them was worse than the other. But, for some reason, Hitler is considered the non plus ultra bad guy despite the fact that compared to Stalin and Mao he was a piker.
It makes one wonder about the state of popular culture and contemporary education.
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