While the vast majority of Americans are rightfully repulsed by the Nazi swastika, too few are disgusted by the hammer and sickle. Both symbols represent hatred, oppression, and death and deserve equal scorn.
Richard Mason at the Foundation for Economic Education:
Why the Hammer and Sickle Should Be Treated Like the Swastika
Why do we treat two equally bloody ideologies in such starkly different ways?
If someone were to ask you to think of either extreme of the political spectrum, odds are you would immediately picture a swastika at one end and a hammer and sickle at the other. Regardless of your views on the left-right paradigm or whether or not you subscribe to horseshoe theory, we (rightfully) tend to perceive fascism and communism as the standard ideologies of the extreme.
As such, many of us would also feel rather uneasy seeing those two symbols. Upon seeing a swastika, we are immediately reminded of the evils of the Nazi regime and are accordingly repulsed. To publicly display the logo is even a crime in many European countries. We understand how abhorrent the ideology is and treat it accordingly with disrespect and disgust.
But how do we react to the hammer and sickle? I don’t have to write an article explaining the millions of deaths that occurred at the hands of communist regimes; like the Holocaust, the gulags of the Soviet Union and killing fields of Cambodia are widely known.
Yet journalists in the UK openly and proudly advocate communism. Statues of Karl Marx are erected. Even in the US, historically one of the most passionately anti-communist states in history, there is a statue of Vladimir Lenin in the northwestern city of Seattle.
So why exactly do we treat two equally bloody ideologies in such starkly different ways?
“Real Communism Has Never Been Tried!”
The answer may lie the in misperceptions of virtue. Nazis, rightfully, are seen as hateful and vicious because their ideology is built around the idea that one group is superior to the other. It is an inherently anti-egalitarian ideology, a violent belief that was put into practice only once by those who devised it.
As such, there is no justifiable way a fascist could argue ‘That wasn’t real Nazism.’ The same is not true for communism.
On the contrary; we see this argument all the time. Those on the far-left have a whole umbrella of communist styles, from Stalinism to Anarchism, Maoism to Trotskyism, or even just classic Marxism. Since Karl Marx never implemented communism himself, the leaders of communist states always have that get-out-of-jail-free card. Any shortcomings, tragedies, or crises a communist regime faces can always be blamed on a misapplication of Marx’s infallible roadmap to utopia.
Conveniently, communists can always detach themselves from the horrors of the past. They can paint themselves as pioneers of an ideology that simply hasn’t had the opportunity to flourish (‘Real communism has never been tried!’).
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