Soviets and Nazis — which were worse?
The Nazis were evil, killing millions of human beings, and they have universally and properly 
properly condemned for their horrors.
The Soviets were also evil, killing more millions than the Nazis did, yet they have not been universally condemned. The Soviets have been attacked by libertarians, conservatives, and moderates as a great lesson in evil — but not by the political left. (Alan Kors here takes them to task for this abdication of moral responsibility.)
In part this makes sense: When socialism was in power in Russia, China, and many other places, leftists were widely admiring of those regimes. So it’s understandable that after-the-fact shame would lead them to denial and avoidance. And younger leftists are likely to believe that socialism is moral in theory despite its practical failings, so they will want to cut Stalin and Mao some slack.
But Sidney Hook offers a philosophical explanation — that by egalitarian standards the communists were more moral than the fascists even though the communists killed more people:
“When I confronted them with the evidence that Stalin had unjustly killed more Jews than Hitler, which was true at the time, 
they retorted that he was killing them not as Jews but as dissenters. Since in this respect the Jews were being treated equally with others, that was more important in their eyes than the alleged injustices of their executions” (Out of Step, p. 353).
So a thought experiment. Which of the following regimes is worse?
* Regime A kills 5 Jews, but it doesn’t kill non-Jews.
* Regime B kills 6 Jews, but it also kills 6 non-Jews.
By the principle of individual rights, both are evil and Regime B is worse.
By the principle of equality, Regime B is better.
Question: Is Hook right that this is actually how leftist egalitarians think, or are the leftists in his anecdote engaged in bad-faith avoidance?
Update: I just came across this post by Professor Lester Hunt: “Nazism or Communism: Which is More Evil?”
Related:
Marxism = Nazism (another datum).
Heidegger, anti-humanism, and the Left.
Chipotle Mexican Grill versus egalitarianism.
18th-century Russia as egalitarian paradise.
[Chart image source: R. J. Rummel's Democide site.]
Tags: Alan Kors, egalitarianism, German history, Joseph Stalin, Lester Hunt, Mao Zedong, R.J. Rummel, Russian history, Sidney Hook
Posted these comments on Facebook; thought I’d share here as well. The egalitarian claim is wrong. The Soviets were plenty anti-Semitic and where killing Jews because of their Jewishness as well. And a thought on why Nazis tend to beat out the Soviets on the evil scale: The Germans were supposed to be an enlightened modern people. So the shock of the Germans engaging in mass murder, using the technology and knowledge of the modern age to do it, strikes us so much worse. And maybe the world sort of expected this kind of thing from the Russians.
Question: Is Hook right that this is actually how leftist egalitarians think
Yes. The Left’s most fundamental premises are epistemological subjectivism, moral relativism, and egalitarianism (which is supported by altruism although in a secular Comtean form). Egalitarianism is the sine qua non of Leftism. You can be a non-egalitarian collectivist; ie a Conservative. But if you reject egalitarianism then you are by definition not a Leftist.
Non-discrimination and equality of results/outcomes are a secular religion to Leftists. And as you have pointed out Stephan, Post-modernism demonizes the white, heterosexual, Christian male. Today’s Left directs massive amounts of hatred against white straight males (just look at TV commercials for this - Google up ‘the golden rule of TV commercials’). If you even so much as challenge egalitarianism in a way that the Left does not approve they will DESTROY you.
Notice how 10 1/2 years after 9/11 there has not been ONE anti-Jihad blockbuster action movie. There were about 5 of them between 1993 and 2000; the best of which was ‘Executive Decision’. (Today there may be Muslim terrorists but they are never moral agents who are evil in and of themselves. They are always being used by agents of greater evil which is invariably Capitalists, oil companies, the CIA, etc.)
Also, an ESPN commentator made a statement about that Asian basketball player on the Knicks using the expression a “chink in the armor” and he was fired because of it. Think about what that says about the evil of the Left. “Chink in the armor” or “niggardly” are now expressions that you can lose your CAREER for because they SOUND like racial epithets. Talk about radical subjectivism.
This holds in politics as well. The Left hates Pinochet because he was too associated with America and capitalism. But the Left loves Castro and Chavez and any other Leftist dictator. The Left will ALWAYS love Leftist dictators because they are trying to implement egalitarianism by force and Leftists love, love, love egalitarianism. They don’t care if it is implemented by force or by vote as long as it is implemented. Look at the OWS movement. That is a trial Leftist TOTALITARIAN movement and it has the backing of ALL Leftists and “liberal” media.
The Left is EVIL. They make today’s conservatives look benevolent by comparison and conservatives are not liberty advocates. Only the Randians and the better libertarians are.
Leftists claim they are “compassionate.” Their “compassion has left millions dead during the 20th century. The left condemns the Nazis only because the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
To your question: do not know the people in Rummel’s anecdote, but certainly people I’ve argued with have claimed to think that it was worse for a Jew to be murdered for being Jewish than for being middle-class.
(I’m a lefty egalitarian myself, but do not see the point of arguing about whether one serial killer is somehow objectively better than another.)
From Rafe Champion: “Many people on the left are clearly in denial about the evil of communism. This is demonstrated by the contempt they show for the people who fought the good intellectual fight during the cold war and the respectul reception they give to autobiographies of communists and ex-communists. Imagine who they would treat the memoires of nazis!”
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2012/01/23/peter-craven-leftoid-of-the-week/
Rafe Champion
Jean-Francois Revel wrote the definitive book on this subject: “Last Exit to Utopia” in English, “La Grande Parade” in the original French.
Subtitle: “The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era”
Revel says “there are two sorts of totalitarian systems.” “The first is the kind whose ideology is … ‘direct’. Hitler and Mussolini always made it plain that they despised democracy, freedom of expression and culture, political pluralism and independent unions. … Supporters and adversaries of this category of totalitarianism find themselves right from the start on one side or another… Communism differs from direct totalitarianisms in that it has recourse to ideological dissimulation: it is mediatized by Utopia (to use a little Hegelian jargon). … Communism promises abundance and engenders misery; it promises liberty and imposes servitude [etc., etc.] … Yet many believers will persist in accepting [these] contradictions because Utopia is always located in the future. … The most efficient form of totalitarianism, the only socially presentable kind and the longest lasting, was not the kind that worked Evil in the name of Evil, but the kind that worked Evil in the name of Good.”
Revel explains that “the ‘hypernesia of Nazism’ turns attention away from the ‘amnesia of Communism’”.
Revel recounts a conversation between Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter in a Vienna cafe. Weber is dismayed, knowing the 1917 Bolshevik revolution will lead to destruction, deprivation, and death. Schumpeter is excited about the 1917 revolution in Russia; it’s a “perfect laboratory experiment” in socialism and will prove its futility. “As an economist, Schumpeter believed that economic failure amounted to refutation. But the sociologist knew that Utopia is never refuted.”
Fascists are rightly abhorred and condemned for what they did. Marxists are judged by their intentions. Of course, any sane objectivist or libertarian understands that both are contemptible for both their intentions and their actions.
Enjoyed this lengthy comment, Bob. Thanks.