LengAwaits
If he didn't wanna look bad he shouldn't have sent a person he believed to be a hitman $300,000 to murder someone.
I'm not a communist or a socialist, nor did I write the quote.
ETA:
After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified, and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[717][718] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[719][720][721] some 390,000[722] deaths during the dekulakisation forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[723] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[724] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[725] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Death_toll
The population of the USSR in 1924 was ~124m. The population of the USSR in 1952 was ~186m. This gives us a percentage of 2%-1% of the population.
The revolutionary war saw ~1% of the colonies' population dying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
There was a 58% population decline from 1800 to 1890 of natives in what is now the United States of America. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_States
What a ridiculous position. You honestly believe that all socialists and/or communists want to kill the rich and the landlords?
Or is that just a convenient strawman you've created?
Communism commits evil when it goes wrong; fascism commits evil when all goes to plan. No one, not even Stalin, ever became a communist in order to do evil, whereas that's the whole point in becoming a fascist. - Julie Burchill
I think I understand where you're coming from, and we're beginning to circle back around to what caused me to engage here in the first place. Someone that breaks with western orthodoxy surrounding Mao's leadership, and discusses any good things that may have come from his reign, is at risk of being labeled a "tankie", which then serves as the justification for dismissal. They have pushed back against a "nonfalsifiable orthodoxy" (to borrow a phrase from Parenti) in an effort to engage with the nuance of history and perhaps expose another's internalized propagandization.
A historian would necessarily want to look at the complete spectrum of Mao's deeds and legacy, without the need to create a dualistic value judgement in the process. Wholly good? Wholly evil? We tread toward the realm of the propagandist in this desire to oversimplify. No lessons are learned in refusing to engage with opposing opinions, we simply affirm of our own self-righteousness and entrench ourselves deeper into nonfalsifiable orthodoxies.
There are people who celebrate ~~Adolph~~ Adolf Hitler. This is absurdity to anyone who values human life. Only through the exchange of ideas, however, will I have any hope of understanding why an individual might believe such a thing; Only through that understanding can I engage with them using the dialectical method. Often it turns out that these people are edge-lords arguing in bad-faith for a laugh, just kids trolling out of boredom. If, however, the person seems willing to engage genuinely, and if I've the time and inclination for such engagement, then perhaps we both might come away with a better understanding of the world and people around us. I do want to understand neo-nazis, because only in that understanding can I formulate persuasive arguments against their specific positions, perhaps in time leading to an attenuation of such beliefs in society.
Perhaps these Mao apologists you've met believe that, as Julie Burchill put it:
Communists may have killed more people than fascists, but we're still not as bad. Communism commits evil when it goes wrong; fascism commits evil when all goes to plan. No one, not even Stalin, ever became a communist in order to do evil, whereas that's the whole point in becoming a fascist.
As for what I believe... I'm still in the process of pinning that down.
I'm not presenting it as the only correct view to hold. I'm explaining my thoughts, and engaging with you in an effort to expand my understanding while allowing my beliefs to be challenged; I apologize if I came across as attempting to bludgeon you with my righteousness. That was not my intent.
What you've said here is all perfectly fair, and is a great example of the ways in which the paradox of tolerance (something I like to discuss, as is clear to anyone who checks my post history) is so subjective and squirmy.
To use your example and further the discussion at hand, why might someone venerate Mao Zedong despite his many failures, and why does doing so make a person unworthy of respect?
That's certainly your prerogative. Personally, I like to engage with as broad a selection of opinions as possible in an effort to avoid being propagandized. I try to not allow my respect, or lack thereof, for a conversational partner to allow me to retreat to a bubble of like-minded opinions. Only by engaging with a diverse range of opinions can I hope to arrive at a nuanced view of the world. Of course, you do need to be adept at recognizing when you're engaged in bad-faith discussion.
One can listen critically to an argument without having to immediately make up one's mind.
I see this less as a dichotomy and more as a spectrum, with some labels being far more useful to civil discourse than others.
The word "tankie" itself is a thought terminating cliche that allows people to presuppose a complete understanding of another person's worldview, without engaging in the nuance of their actual position.
It should come as no surprise that the term alone clears the bar for "strawmanning" in some people's minds.
When we do that it gets hand-waved away as "TDS" or some equally trite nonsense.