Why Isn't Communism as Hated as Nazism? | 5 Minute Video
Summary
TLDRThe script by Dennis Prager explores why the term 'communist' isn't as reviled as 'Nazi' despite the significant human suffering caused by communism. He attributes this to ignorance of communist atrocities, the unique horror of the Holocaust overshadowing others, the seductive language of communism, the lack of acknowledgment and atonement by former communist states, the fact that communists mostly killed their own people, and the left's view of World War II as a 'good war' against fascism. Prager calls for recognition of communism's evils and learning about its victims.
Takeaways
- 📚 The script addresses the question of why the term 'communist' is less commonly used as a term of revulsion compared to 'Nazi' or 'fascist', despite the significant human suffering caused by communist regimes.
- 🤔 It suggests that widespread ignorance about the history of communism contributes to its lesser-known negative reputation, especially because the left, which dominates academia, often does not teach the evils of communism.
- 🔍 The Holocaust is highlighted as a unique and unparalleled act of evil, which has overshadowed the scale of deaths caused by communist regimes, leading to a worse reputation for Nazism.
- 📖 The script argues that communism is often associated with appealing theories, unlike Nazism, which is inherently linked with heinous ideologies, influencing how intellectuals perceive and write about their histories.
- 🇩🇪 Germany's thorough examination and atonement for the evils of Nazism contrasts with Russia's and China's lack of similar acknowledgment for the atrocities committed under communism, affecting how these histories are perceived globally.
- 🏛 The script points out that communist regimes primarily killed their own citizens, which is considered less noteworthy by 'world opinion' compared to the murder of outsiders, as seen in the case of the Nazis.
- 🌏 It notes that the left views World War II as the last 'good war' against Nazism and fascism, not extending this view to conflicts against communist regimes, which affects public perception.
- 🗣️ The speaker, Dennis Prager, emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and learning about the victims of communism to counteract the ignorance and moral confusion surrounding its history.
- 🏛️ The script criticizes the continued veneration of communist figures like Lenin and Mao, suggesting that this reverence hinders a full recognition of the crimes committed under their leadership.
- 📈 It implies that the left's reluctance to condemn communism as it does Nazism contributes to a skewed understanding of 20th-century totalitarian regimes and their impacts.
- 🌱 The final message is a call to action for good people to educate themselves about the atrocities of communism, to honor the memory of its victims and to seek a more accurate historical narrative.
Q & A
Why are the terms 'Nazi' or 'fascist' more commonly used to describe evil individuals or regimes, compared to 'communist'?
-The script suggests that this is due to widespread ignorance of the communist record, the left's reluctance to loathe communism, and the dominance of the left in academia which leads to less teaching of communism's history.
What is the significance of the Holocaust in shaping the perception of Nazism compared to communism?
-The Holocaust is considered unparalleled
Outlines
🔍 The Underrated Horror of Communism
This paragraph delves into the question of why the term 'communist' is not as reviled as 'Nazi' or 'fascist,' despite the extensive human suffering caused by communist regimes. It points out that ignorance about the history of communism, the left's reluctance to condemn it, the unmatched evil of the Holocaust, and the intellectual appeal of communism's theories contribute to its lesser infamy. The paragraph also contrasts the German acknowledgment of Nazi atrocities with the lack of similar recognition for communist crimes, particularly in Russia and China.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Nazi
💡Fascist
💡Communist
💡Holocaust
Highlights
People often use terms 'Nazi' or 'fascist' but rarely 'communist' to describe evil, despite the massive human suffering caused by communism.
Communism has resulted in the deaths of over 90 million people and the enslavement of entire nations, yet it doesn't have the same negative reputation as Nazism.
Reason 1: Widespread ignorance of communism's history, as the left tends to overlook its evils and academia rarely teaches about it.
Reason 2: The Holocaust carried out by the Nazis is
Transcripts
When people describe particularly evil individuals or regimes, why is it that they use the terms
“Nazi” or “fascist,” but almost never “communist?”
Given the unparalleled amount of human suffering communists have caused, why is “communist”
so much less a term of revulsion than “Nazi?”
Communists killed 70 million people in China, more than 20 million people in the Soviet
Union (not including about 5 million Ukrainians), and almost one out of every three Cambodians.
And communists enslaved entire nations in Russia, Vietnam, China, Eastern Europe, North
Korea, Cuba and much of Central Asia.
They ruined the lives of well over a billion people.
So, why doesn’t communism have the same terrible reputation as Nazism?
Reason Number 1: There is, simply put, widespread ignorance of the communist record.
Whereas both right and left loathe Nazism and teach its evil history, the left
– and I’m talking about the left, not traditional liberals like Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy –
has never loathed communism.
And since the left dominates academia, almost no one teaches communism’s evil history.
Reason Number 2: The Nazis carried out the Holocaust.
Nothing matches the Holocaust for pure evil.
The rounding up of virtually every Jewish man, woman, child, and baby on the European
continent and sending them to die is unprecedented and unparalleled.
The communists killed far more people than the Nazis, but never matched the Holocaust
in the systemization of genocide.
The uniqueness of the Holocaust and the enormous attention rightly paid to it have helped ensure
that Nazism has a worse name than communism.
Reason Number 3: Communism is based on nice sounding theories; Nazism isn’t.
It’s based on heinous sounding theories.
Intellectuals in general – including, of course, the intellectuals who write history –
are seduced by words – so much so, that they deem actions as less significant than words.
For that reason, they haven’t focused nearly as much attention on the horrific actions
of communists as they have on the horrific actions of the Nazis.
They dismiss the evils of communists as perversions of “true communism.”
But they regard Nazi atrocities (correctly) as the logical and inevitable results of Nazism.
Reason Number 4: Germans have thoroughly exposed the evils of Nazism, have taken responsibility
for them, and have attempted to atone for them.
Russians have not done anything similar regarding Lenin's or Stalin's horrors.
To the contrary, Lenin, the father of Soviet communism, is still widely venerated in Russia.
And as regards Stalin, as University of London Russian historian Donald Rayfield puts it,
“People still deny, by assertion or implication, Stalin's holocaust.”
Even less so has China exposed the greatest mass murderer and enslaver of them all, Mao Zedong.
Mao remains revered in China.
Every Chinese currency note has his picture on it.
Until Russia and China – and Vietnam, and Cuba, and North Korea – acknowledge the
evils their countries committed under communism, communism's evils will remain less known than
the evils of the German state under Hitler.
Reason Number 5: Communists murdered mostly their own people.
The Nazis, on the other hand, killed very few fellow Germans.
“World opinion” – that largely meaningless and amoral term – deems the murder of members
of one's own group far less noteworthy than the murder of outsiders.
That’s why, for example, blacks killing millions of fellow blacks in Africa elicits
almost no attention from “world opinion.”
And Reason Number 6: In the view of the left, the last “good war” was World War II,
the war against German Nazism and Japanese fascism.
The left does not regard wars against communist regimes as “good wars.”
For example, the American war against Vietnamese communism is regarded as immoral, and the
war against Korean communism – and its Chinese communist backers – is simply ignored.
Until the left, and all the institutions influenced by the left, acknowledge how evil communism
has been, we will continue to live in a morally confused world.
In the meantime, all good people owe it to the victims of communism
to learn what happened to them.
Even worse than being murdered or enslaved is a world that doesn’t even know that you were.
I’m Dennis Prager.
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