Good article. As I've said a thousand times if I've said it once, why is it that even though the nominal "fascists" in Hitler's Germany called themselves "National Socialists", nobody believes them??? They were complete amatuers at killing compared to our "friends" (at least NPR's friends) the Communists, easily responsible for over 100 million deaths, and likely as many as 250 million!
“in sum, the communists probably have murdered something like 110 million, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987. Of course the total itself is shocking. It is several times the thirty-eight million battle-dead that have been killed in all this century’s international and domestic wars. Yet the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone—one communist country—well surpasses this cost of war.”I think this meme is helpful ...
While Churchill called Russia a "Riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma", China is at least as inscrutable. Of all the modern states, it is really more Fascist than anything -- strongly nationalistic, lots of government deals and control of supposedly "private" companies that indeed have some level of autonomy. That is the core of Fascism ... some big players make a lot of money, investors ostensively "own" companies, people own real estate, cars, etc, yet the CALL themselves "Communist".
It also sounds like in China the main mark of Socialism ... the massive "safely net" is threadbare at best. China is too interested in getting wealthy -- something either Communists or Socialists at least claim to eschew. The thing they DON'T eschew is POWER ... so if they get it, they KEEP IT!
Socialist policies, moreover, are always going to fail because it is impossible for central planners efficiently to allocate capital, goods, and services across a large economy. Socialism, after all, was always a political doctrine and never a plausible economic theory. When there arose shortages of food or housing or military equipment—when socialist policies failed—leaders were faced with a choice of admitting failure and abandoning the socialist path or doubling down on their policies and preserving their power. It was in their nature to choose the latter course, and thus to press forward with more extreme measures, which typically involved the identification of scapegoats and counter-revolutionary elements as causes of failure. From here it was but a few steps to the catastrophic outcomes described above: show trials, terror famines, mass starvation, cultural revolutions, “killing fields,” and democide.To some extent, the whole class of "isms" ... Communism, Socialism, Fascism, are death worship ideologies that discount human creativity, ingenuity, and growth. ("The Creator" is not somebody they worship) They are about dividing up a basically fixed pie, and inevitably create an increasingly powerful central government that forces adherence to a set of economic rules "for the good of all". Naturally, the "dear leader", central bureaucracy and military have to be a good deal more "equal" than the rest of the population. The elite goes about "preserving their power" to the detriment of the many.
Much as in "Avengers Infinity Wars", half the population may need to die "for the good of all", ALL depends on your meaning of ALL, and for the elite, the "all" is very small!
The answer to why Socialism is not a "hate crime" is that in a godless entropic accidental universe, killing even 9/10ths of the people may well be judged to be "the good" by "the few". To the extent that anyone even thinks or cares about such an abstract concept in a cult of meaningless universal death -- the cult of "secular humanism".
