this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
231 points (96.0% liked)
Memes
56846 readers
505 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's amusing to me how so many people hate communism in places that would have been wiped off the map by the nazis if it wasn't for communist resistance.
They battered the nazis then built a shit load of housing for people to live in. Bastards!
That's why a bunch of people were excited for the Soviets to come, because they were excited to be liberated from the Nazis! Now, the Soviets also sucked, so yeah, in fact they were bastards as well. Beating up the Nazis is good but doesn't give you a free ticket for commuting horrific crimes. Building apartments is not really one of those crimes though. It's really not so crazy to hate both Nazis and Soviets
Putting the Soviets and Nazis on the same level is plainly ridiculous to the point that in many cases it constitutes a form of holocaust denial(or trivialisation).
This. Equating purges, holomodor whatever with the literal holocaust (that western leaders like Churchill were ignoring when first told of hitlers plans) is straight up a form of holocaust trivialization, to me it’s a form of holocaust denial. People don’t often equate the war crimes of the Japanese empire with the Nazis like they do with Soviets for some reason (that some reason being that Japan mainly carried out their crimes against China, also a socialist country at the time)
The term Holomodor was coined in the late 1980s by Banderite fascists for the specific purpose of equivalating the early 1930s famine with the Holocaust. That’s why one shouldn’t propagate the term’s usage.
Thanks. Idek how to spell it. I may be not be formally educated but I am American so I have an excuse
Hating two things is not the same as putting them at the same level, and I mean to do no such thing. I don't think you would claim that hating a lesser evil in addition to a grater evil is an example of trivialisation.
What would make you hate a force for decolonization and workers' rights?
The key error made by people in your position, and I know this because it used to be my position, is thinking that the foggy soup of tropes and cliches pounded into us from birth by western media in any way approaches a scientific or unbiased assessment of an entirely different way of organizing society and human life than the one whose propaganda we grew up immersed in (and whose existence has caused a mass extinction event).
The bane of my own habits.
True at the most basic level in the same vein of saying 2 things can be bad. Yes it is possible for 2 things to be bad but no one who ever says this ever means it in that way it is nothing but thought terminating cliche if not expanded upon. The same is true here leaving out the other major ideological power of the time leads the framing to the implication that it sits above the other 2 evils (who are then equatable in comparison).
Even if you didn't mean to the way you chose to frame your comment clearly implies some level of equation between the soviet nondescript horrific crimes and the Nazis in comparison the the capitalist powers who are absent from your comment.
Again on a base level this is true but in the framing of your comment there is clearly a level of equation (even if unintentional).
I enjoy how my very existence is counter-proof, but I do appreciate that you we're exaggerating and I shouldn't interpret you quite that literally.
I get that you call it thought-terminating, I understand that you would want a more detailed explanation from me, and sorry for not bothering to give one. My goal is not to argue with you, you have not convinced me that I have equated the two and I am not ready to spend the time to convince you of the opposite, I just want to say that I don't identify with the accusation.
What "horrific crimes" did the soviets commit? Free healthcare and education? You're making it seem like they were equivalent to the Nazis.
Guaranteed housing. It genocided the landlords.
I'm not sure if my phrasing was unclear or if that many people actually consider hating two things with equating them. Either way, I did not mean to equate them, just to state the reasonability of hating both!
The horrific crime at the top of my mind when writing my comment was the Katyn massacre.
Katyn is interesting because the method of execution was widespread among the Nazis and unheard of among the soviets, NKVD included, and that German ammo was found on the gravesite, with manufacturing dates indicating that the soviets could not have committed the massacre. The Nazis "find" the site and then the narrative crops up that the soviets committed it, but the evidence found points to the Nazis.
Personally, I can't think hating the first worker state is reasonable, especially not in the same breath as one of the most extremely genocidal bourgeois dictatorships in history. Even if the Soviets were responsible for Katyn, there is still such a wide gulf between the two. The Soviets were ultimately a progressive force around the world.
Thinking, for no reason, about the Wikipedia page for the Korean War where it says that massacres were committed by both sides. As evidence for this, it cited some DPRK killing at a hospital during the war (~100 dead) with the Bodo League Massacre carried out by the South Korean dictatorship that kicked off the war in the first place (~60,000-200,000 dead).
But you know, the smart thing to do is to hate both sides for their violent ways.
Liberal false consciousness is fucking pernicious.
Not to mention the Jeju Island Massacre and the later Gwangju Massacre. The workers in the ROK have what they do manage to have despite the chaebol and US semi-colonization through incredibly bloody resistance struggles and militant trade unionism. The DPRK already won much of that simply by not being in the colonized half of Korea.
I'm well aware of the disagreements about who's responsible, my impression was very much that the evidence points towards the Soviets, but I won't pretend to be knowledgeable enough to argue it with you.
Excuse me for bringing up both the Nazis and the Soviets in the same breath, I'm sure you see how follows from the premise of the original meme. I don't want to downplay any progressive effects on the world that the Soviets have, for me good simply does not cancel out evil but coexists confusingly alongside it. The Soviets have done enough bad for me to hate the whole even if there's plenty of good in there, and I don't blame other people or nationals of invaded countries for doing the same.
This is actually a common misconception that is maintained and spread for obvious reasons. The "official" version relies on everyone already accepting it as true and proceeding from there.
The reality is that there is EXACTLY ZERO evidence that Soviets did it and all evidence is compatible or strongly suggests German guilt. All the "evidence" the proponents of Soviet guilt cite is either circular citations or proven forgeries.
You can read an exhaustive analysis of all relevant evidence here:
https://archive.org/details/the-mystery-of-the-katyn-massacre-the-evidence-the-solution-grover-furr-2018
The book is structured such that Chapter 1 already presents the full argument, then the next few chapters scrutinize the unimpeachable evidence in detail, and then the next few present some secondary and confirmatory evidence.
It's not about good and evil, it's about what class benefitted. There's no such thing as "good" or "evil," that's not how the locomotive of history moves forward. Instead, history progresses alongside the class struggle. The reason I defend the Soviet Union, and so many socialists do as well, is because it is the first socialist state where workers became the new ruling class. I don't pretend the Soviet Union was perfect, but I don't hide my intention to support the working classes taking control the way the soviets did.
Put simply, the Soviet Union made the lives of their own workers and peasants much better, and supported national liberation movements the world over as well.
HORSESHOE THEORY LET'S GO BABYYYYYYYY
Oh now it makes sense why they push horseshoe theory so much!