Hey folks!
I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.
Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.
However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.
Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.
I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.
If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.
Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576
Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!
Now let’s be clear. I was talking death counts. And I do believe that the Nazis were worse. I saw Auschwitz and Birkenau camps and those are sights that I will never forget. I get chills just remembering it. So please do be cautions who you call holocaust denier.
But we are still comparing two evils here. One is greater, one is lesser. But “lesser” evil doesn’t necessarily mean the evil was small.
optimistically prison reform and eventually abolishment would be the best course of action altogether. There’s really no shades of grey in stating that the penal system as we’ve known it through out history has been and currently is a barbaric institution of vindictive cruelty by man against their fellow man. That said, i’ll return to the comparison you’re making and emphasize again you’re making a false equivocation between the two. It would be more accurate to compare the former Soviet penal system to the American penal system than it would be to compare the former Soviet penal system to the former Nazi German genocide camps. There were no Soviet Auschwitz Concentration Camp, no Soviet Birkenau Concentration Camp, no Soviet Sisak Concentration Camp, no Soviet Salaspils Concentration Camp, no Soviet Vyritsa Children’s Concentration Camp, etcetera and so forth down the list of monstrous acts perpetrated by the nazi regimn. That is what I mean by saying you’re perpetuating the double genocide theory an thusly perpetuating holocaust denialism. When you make a throwaway sentence such as ‘Afaik Stalin is resoposible for more deaths than Hitler. Hitler had concentration camps, Stalin had gulags. Neither was much better than the other.’ you do the footwork of the neo-nazis on their behalf while you yourself may think and believe otherwise. I think you’re an intelligent and a kind person. I just want to ask you to think twice before making such throw-away comments in our increasingly reactionary rightist world that we’re unfortunately existing in.
There seemsn to be a misunderstanding. What I tried to say wasn’t “Hitler is not bad, because Stalin was also bad”. What I tried to say is Hitler was bad and so was Stalin. Each in their own way. And neither of them should be glorified.
You’re still engaging in false equivocation that ultimately lessens the crimes of the fascists. Let’s try putting it in a different manner: Hitler was bad and so was FDR. Each in their own way. And neither of them should be glorified.
A completely ridiculous statement yet both countries engaged in targeted ethnic campaigns that unjustly interred sections of their populations in concentration camps. Sure FDR helped defeat nazi Germany and free people from nazi concentration camps akin to Auschwitz and Birkenau, but glorifying him undermines his own crimes against humanity.
Hitler and FDR both had concentration camps. Hitler and Churchill both stole food and caused mass famines among the ethnic peoples they occupied. Hitler and Mościcki both benefited from the Munich betrayal and partitioned Czechoslovakia amongst the vultures of Central europe. So on and so forth a list of completely ridiculous statements that falsely equivocate the actions of fascists with that of capitalist countries thus ultimately lessening the magnitude of the crimes they perpetuated.
This is exactly what it comes off as whenever someone engages in false equivocation of the crimes of the fascists.
Quoting Thomas Mann,
You’re repeating nazi propaganda deliberately created to be holocaust denial so honestly fuck how you feel about yourself. If someone has a robust and well supported reason to call you a holocaust denier why the fuck would you respond with a hollow ‘how dare you’
Do self crit
You will note I never denied nazi crimes in any of my comments. I just don’t deny communist crimes either.
You are right, the USA and the UK were the lesser evil compared to the Nazis, but we should never forget their crimes against humanity, just as we should never forget the flaws of the Soviets, still, the USSR was the lesser evil in the Cold War.
Glad we are clear on that, not sure why you brought up Nazi apologist talking points before like:
It’s important that you visit memorials erected to in the memory of the Victims of Communism, sometimes there are hundreds of names there. I once checked a near one, and decided to google some of the names of the people the evil russkies took to the Gulags. It’s so weird how often they were Axis soldiers accused of heinous war crimes! But Axis soldiers could never! Must have been fabricated!
edit:
These real people are on actual Victims of Communism (VoC) websites, and after just 5 minutes of searching, I found the crimes they were tried and found guilty of.
Case 1
In 1942, he was appointed district leader in the Budapest District XII organization of the Arrow Cross Party, and from October 15, 1944, he served in the armed party service. Between November 28, 1944, and January 14, 1945, he participated in the apprehension, robbery, assault, and unlawful execution of several hundred people considered Jewish in District XII of Budapest and on the Buda bank of the Danube.
Case 2
From June 1942 to January 1943, he served as the deputy commander of the 101/5 forced labor company. On the Eastern Front, he treated forced laborers cruelly and ordered his subordinates to do the same. Through his intervention, the so-called “leper section” was created, to which only sick forced laborers were assigned. He was dissatisfied with their work performance, so he denied them food and medical care. As a result of his actions, only 22 out of the company’s 260 personnel survived.
Case 3
Following the Arrow Cross takeover, he became a party serviceman and then deputy to Géza Horváth, the IX district party leader. However, Illés exercised the actual power in the district. He decided the fate of the people brought into the district Arrow Cross house. He interrogated the persecuted under severe abuse and then, under the pretext of transporting them to the ghetto, gave the order for their execution. On December 19, 1944, he conducted a raid on St. Stephen’s Hospital with several party servicemen, from where they abducted 40 people and handed them over to the party servicemen of District II, who executed them on the banks of the Danube. All valuables were taken from the people brought into the Arrow Cross house, of which Illés kept a record. On one occasion, he had a cartload of stolen goods transported from the house at 39 Lónyai Street.
We don’t have such monuments over here. But I know for a fact that communist regime in my country inprisoned or persecuted also members of the nazi resistance movement as well as soldiers fighting the nazis abroad. I have no issues with actual nazis getting punished for what they did.