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3 points

15 days ago

I encourage you to, again, read history books, rather than taking any one person’s word for anything. The thread I linked has references posted as well, so you can check the original sources yourself if you question their validity. In order to be a Marxist, it is critical that we learn to separate fact from fiction, and part of that is recognizing that we all have implicit biases. We should not fear searching for more truth. Stalin certainly wasn’t a saint, and I am not making him out to be one. I believe you are over-correcting and making critical errors in judgement because of it.

I highly recommend the short, 8 minute article “Tankies” by Roderic Day, hosted over on Red Sails. For more in-depth reading, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo is a good historical critique of Stalin that focuses on taking a critical stance towards Stalin and contextualizes him.

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GrammarPolice@lemmy.world

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-1 points

15 days ago

We believe that Stalin and Mao were committed socialists who, despite their mistakes, did much more for humanity than most of the bourgeois politicians

And i stopped reading there. I don’t consider causing the deaths of 20 million people to be “doing more for humanity”. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Marxism. There’s something wrong with the people that believe it however.

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3 points

15 days ago

You freely admit to being unfamiliar with Socialist history, and yet are unwilling to even finish a short article? It’s 8 minutes long, if you refuse to read things you don’t agree with without doing the due research to overcome them you doom yourself to blindness.

Seriously, read the full article or you’ll never be able to genuinely understand anything you don’t already agree with. Better yet you could read the history book, but if you can’t be trusted to read an 8 minute article I fear you’re simply fine with never even daring to let your preconveived notions be challenged by historical and archival evidence.

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GrammarPolice@lemmy.world

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-1 points

15 days ago

I think I’ll pass. This is like a Nazi coming up to me and suggesting i consider Nazism because it focuses on national and racial pride. Sounds like a good idea on paper right?

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3 points

15 days ago

See, equating Communism with Nazism is fascist apologia and perpetuates Double Genocide Theory. This is something you desparately need to correct, if nothing else, because it is a common form of Holocaust minimization. Since you’re already under the mistaken impression that Communists and Nazis could ever be in the same category, you definitely need to read Dr. Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Fall of Communism. Your refusal to read has taken on direct forms of fascist apologia, unintentional as it may be, and if not for me (as I assume you have no respect for me) then you must do it for yourself.

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GrammarPolice@lemmy.world

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-1 points

15 days ago

You just keep recommending more books I can’t help but laugh. I used to have respect for you, but it has somewhat waned as of the last hour or so. I even finished that Politzer book.

Also, my comparison is based on how ready both sides are to trivialize the atrocities committed by them.

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3 points

15 days ago

Hey, kudos for finishing Elementary Principles of Philosophy! credit due where credit is due, it’s a phenomenal book and hopefully you understand Dialectical and Historical Materialism more.

Anyway, the core of the matter is that the historical evidence I have seen based on a combination of reading historical books, reading primary sources, and more have led me to have what I believe to be a different understanding of events in both qualitative and quantitative degrees. As an example, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-aggression pact. This was a strategic pact made because the USSR tried to align with the west against the Nazis prior to it in order to save Czechoslovakia, but the West denied and sacrificed it, hoping the Soviets and Nazis would kill each other off. It wasn’t an alliance, but a means to force the allies to later join the war.

You admit to having no understanding outside Wikipedia articles, which means you have some serious digging to do.

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