• xkyfal18@lemmygrad.ml
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    7 months ago

    Correct. Also, the 100m number is literally fake. IIRC, it can be traced back to that shitty piece of CIA propaganda “the black book of communism”.

    That number factors in deaths that have nothing to do with Socialism, such as:

    • Nazis killed in WW2;

    • People that died of famines that weren’t even caused by Socialism (multiplied by a certain number because they could’ve had children) and old age (comrade grim reaper, Joseph Stalin’s 2nd in command!!!);

    • Soviet Union: Everyone that died due to the famine after the Russian Civil War + those who died during the Siege of Leningrad and during WW2.

    • Execution of Nazi collaborators and chaos instigators;

    • Blatantly making up a few million deaths just to get to the 100 million mark (iirc it was between 5m-15m);

    • China: The few famines that happened throughout the history of the PRC (China used to have famines once every few years for millennia until the Communists took over);

    I’m sure other comrades can give a much more detailed answer, but the 100 million claim is insane (and I’m pretty even historians, Marxist or not, disregard it).

    • olgas_husband@lemmygrad.ml
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      7 months ago

      iirc they put basically every death that happened under socialists countries, even natural causes such as old age that you mentioned, and diseases, and boy oh boy, 100 years of colonization, rural and illiterate china did have a lot of diseases, a lot of people was dying from easily preventable or diseases that were eradicate in capitalist center.

      and as you mentioned, people that never existed in the first place, used a wacky population growth chart for china, that didn’t come to reality, so they counted this as victims too.

      • BakedBeanEnjoyer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        people that never existed in the first place, used a wacky population growth chart for china,

        Yeah, if you executed a nazi not only were they counted as a casualty but also the 4 children, and the 16 grandchildren they would have were counted as well.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        7 months ago

        The fact they estimate the number of victims of the last famine in China with a wildly wide margin of 15-60 million, with official number being the minimal one already tells you how bullshit that is.

    • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.ml
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      7 months ago

      Don’t forget the White Army! You would think that anticommunists would feel at least a tinge of shame or concern for honoring violent antisemites alongside infants who died from famine, but nope, it doesn’t bother them at all.

      When I was editing Leftypedia, my most popular page was the one responding to the ‘100 million deaths’ meme. Somebody griped about how I did not include a less inaccurate death toll for communism, so I gave that my best shot. That was the worst mistake that I made there. The anticommunists who saw that page ignored everything but the less inflated total that I proposed and they whined about it. Finally I just took it out because they wouldn’t stop missing the point.

      This is my favourite reply:

      Even so, it still raises a very important question: why would any state kill so many people?

      Why would the Nazis kill so many people… oh wait… can we even do that?

      Why not? What is wrong with asking that? Isn’t determining criminals’ motives necessary for, you know, crime prevention? What good is consecrating an atrocity to the point where we aren’t allowed to even speculate on its exact causes?

      Carelessness like that is one of the reasons why I usually don’t bother trying to reason with anticommunists.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        One of the most important skills is knowing when the person you’re talking to is irredeemable. That point where even if you got through to them and they heard and understood you loud and clear, it wouldn’t matter because they’re genuinely an evil person on the inside. It’s hard to accept but some people can genuinely only be cured with the 82nd element.

        It can be hard to tell, some people really are just deeply sick, but aren’t truly evil. That’s why I always prod for their humanity, even when all evidence shows they don’t have any. You never know… Some people really are in deep, and while I might not be able to save them I can at least plant a seed which will give them a chance to find redemption when they’re ready.