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[–] 12 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I dunno, 20 million deaths really goes a long way to cancelling out any of that good shit.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago*

    Well those kinds of figures were calculated after the fact (and may or may not include WW2 casualties, of which the USSR had more than every other allied nation combined I believe), so I dunno if I'd be so confident.

    Trump was already arguably responsible for tons of COVID deaths. And then USAID related deaths. And there will be more related to antivax policy. And there will be more once the concentration camps close and we are able to assess the real damage. Etc etc.

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  • [+] -13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

    20 million is a vast overestimation for how many deaths he was responsible for.

    The actual number of executions and other deaths resulting from the purge is about 700000, many of those were probably actual criminals. The number of deaths under GULAG during his leadership is uncertain, but definitely under a million, many also actual criminals. About 4-6 million died due to a mismanaged famine triggered in some part by his idiotic agricultural policies, but this is on the edge of "responsible for". That's about it when it comes to peacetime deaths he was involved in.

    Was it bad? Sure, it was fucked up, he's the second worst leader of USSR after Gorbachev. But he's not as bad as many western propaganda sources will have you believe, and I'd argue trump is worse overall.

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  • [+] 3 points 5 days ago (1 child)
  • [+] -7 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    We're currently comparing two world leaders, one who oversaw a rapid industrialization of a country and lead it to victory against nazis and did a bunch of awful shit leading to millions of deaths, and another one who did like 1 maybe good thing and will also lead to millions of deaths. Both are bad, one is worse.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    But your goal is to launder murderous psychopathy because you like the end goal

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  • [–] -4 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    My goal is to advance humanity past capitalism which will obviously destroy human civilization in a few decades if not stopped. I used to be an anarchist but now IDGAF how we end capitalism, as long as it is replaced by anything even slightly better, including soviet-style socialism - lesser of two evils and all that. Thus I will correct western propaganda intended to make the worst soviet leader look even worse than he actually was. I am not disputing that he was overall bad, merely pointing out that the 20 million figure is a vast overestimation, and making a comparison against a currently existing capitalist world leader who is causing a similar amount of damage with none of the achievements.

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  • [+] 2 points 5 days ago (1 child)
  • [–] -5 points 5 days ago*

    What a disingenuous strawman argument. I never said I particularly liked Stalin or soviet-style socialism, merely that they are better than trump and capitalism respectively. By your logic I can parade around claiming that TrickDacy is a big fan of trump. Now u go away, the block button is right there if material reality is too offensive for your lemmy feed.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 days ago (1 child)
  • [–] -4 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    What is the metric you're using to claim that trump is better than Stalin? If it's "human suffering caused" as approximated by total excess deaths caused by the government's policies during time in office, trump will probably be worse just on account of being the leader of a US empire enforcing worldwide capitalist extraction for 6 years now.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago

    You're a fucking dumbass. Not only are downplaying and deliberately underestimating Stalin's atrocities (700,000 "guilty criminals") you're blatantly lying about Trump's effects, as terrible as he is, it is not even remotely close.

    Sheer fucking stupidity.

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