Some discussion threads lately, including those deleted from above due i would imagint to being progressively more non-pc have railed at the evils of fascism and the BNP (not necessarily the same thing), but is it not correct to state that Stalin and Pol Pot were more evil than Hitler?
They certainly killed more people both percentage wise and per capita and dragged their respective countries into much longer lasting pits of doom than that which happened to Germany or Italy, and were unarguably both more indiscriminate in their terror and in their repression of both the individual or the intellectual.

There is an element of pointlessness in debates such as this but what the hell I'll comment anyway.

The period in Soviet Russia up to Stalins death is hardly edifying to seriously understate the situation. If you compare the situation in the Soviet Union after Stalins death the Nazis are undeniably a more brutal regime. If you compare the Soviets back yard (ie. the area it controlled contiguous to it) it compares favourably with the situation in americas equivalent area (ie. central america). And if you consider the case of Pol-Pot, would he have been able to rise to power without the intense area bombing undertaking by the Americans aswell as political interference in Cambodia? To view all these things purely under the rubric of communism only explains part of the story, they have to be viewed in their historical context. Nazi Germanys paricular variety of monstrosity was conducting industrial scale genocide against Jews and Gypsys and a barbaric war in the east against the Slavs. Stalin barbarism was a result of an intensely brutal drive to industrialise at the expense of the peasantry coupled with his intense paranoi: would that have happened without external threats?

Communism and Socialism (the only thing I know for sure of the difference between the two is that every explanation of the differences is different): they have their achievements, aswell as their black stains. One wonders where you would rather have lived out the last fifty years Cuba or Guatemala? Cuba has the highest marks for many social indicators in the whole of Latin America. Russia/Soviet Union has hardly improved in the years since the end of Communism and if you take life expectancy as a important indicator of well-being it is certainly much worse (it fell around 10 years after the fall of communism). Venezuala, while hardly an orthodox communist regime, have a leader and governing movement that have definitely been influenced by Communism/Socialism and have very definite successes in improving the lot of their population. This is true for a number of leftist regimes in Latin America. Communists were often the most active defenders of their countries under Nazi Germany. Communists were also active in many colonised countries in the movements to gain independence. A big problem that communism/socialism has had is that is they have rarely been left space to peacefully develop where the potential has been there in such places as Chile, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, Vietnam. So Communism/Socialisms record is mixed. It has had its moments of totalitarian brutality, but it as also had its achievements. What facisms achievements (besides Italian trains suposedly running on time) are I cannot think. Hitler may have well solved unemployment but only by the keynesian effect of massive re-arming, as worked in USA during WW2 and Britain. Facism involved both Italy and Germany in a War that certainly after 1941 they were never going to win, and the aim (certainly for Germany) was to imperialise the Slavic east in the most brutal manner imaginable as an explicit policy.

S Wood is right on all counts. Fascism, at least in its German variant was worse in one key respect: it systematically victimised and sought to liquidate ethnic and religious groups on the sole grounds of their ethnicity / religion. I wouldn't choose to live under either, but forced to choose, I'd find the Nazis even more odious than the 'comrades who were wrong'.

[Deleted by the author on 5 Sep 2009 21:37 BST]

Communism is essentially a form Facism anyway, whatever the media or academia try to tell you. When "the masses" own the means of production but "the state" claims to speak for them, "the state" is really the owner of everything, and no-one is at liberty to question the few in charge of it. This is allowed in such states to continue by the fostering of a strong nationalistic, ethnic or religious identity wherein dissidents are outcast and turned into a "foreign" enemy. Such thinking can still be seen in the mainstream today, whenever a politician describes actions as "unpatriotic", "un-American" 0r "blasphemous".

Red or Blue, Left or Right- these are but myths and distractions constructed to win money, fame, votes, and ultimately power.

I disagree with R.Vigoureux on the grounds that communism and facism are the same, and while there is some truth in his last sentence it is a bit simple as a description of the reasons or reality of either communism or facism.

My main objection to Nick Griffin and his party is that they are a bunch of c*nts as were Hitler and his crowd. By all account Churchill was a c*nt as well. Wether Stalin was a bigger c*nt I couldn't say but he certainly was a c*nt. I speak as I find, nd I find the whole lot of them and some of the smart-arses posting in the w*nkfest above to be a bunch of c*nts.

H.L.Williams are you trying to make R.Vigoureux look like an intellectual? I have never associated any of the figures you cite with the slang word for female genitalia? Perhaps you care to eloborate?

It might be worth noting the rather different roles played by Hitler and Stalin in World War Two.
It is generally accepted that Hitler started this war, which resulted in the deaths of some 50 million people.
It is also generally accepted that the Soviet forces were responsible for defeating the vast majority of Hitler's divisions.
Fascists started the war; communists put an end to it.

Vigoureux argued 'Communism is essentially a form [of] Fa[s]cism anyway...'
This is very wrong. Under fascism (both recognised regimes) the masses didn't own the means of production, as you claim. In fact economic exploitation increased massively - productivity was forced up, wages were forced down, workplace unions were banned, and that is before we get into the forced labour camps.
More differences:
Communism is internationalist, fascism is nationalist.
Communism is materialist (in a philosophical sense), fascism is idealist.
In communism all social progress is the result of historical dialectic, in fascism it emanates from Geist ('spirit', and usually a racial one at that).
Communism is a political movement of the proletariat, fascism is a political movement of the petty bourgeoisie allied to capital.
They are in many, many ways rank opposites.

Trotsky said something on the lines of "the end justifies the means only when something justifies the end." This, I think, pretty much sums up whether you think communism is worse than fascism. If you do not accept the communist ideal of equality and freedom from exploitation as being worthy of working towards, you are not likely to cut any communist any slack. If you think that it is an aim that society should be working towards then your argument with Stalin, Mao etc is whether they used the correct tactics to get there.

The aim of Nazism was a permanent hierarchical dictatorial system with healthy aryan males at the top, and everyone else in subordinate roles all the way down to sub-humans who only needed to be exterminated. I personally prefer to have Stalin wading through rivers of blood to get to a workers' paradise than Hitler getting his way with VWs and Strength through Joy holidays.

Communism is a very good idea carried out extremely badly whereas Fascism was a very bad idea carried out very well.

Communist states trick the population, cover up actions and lie about policies and the way they are carried out (post-revolution china). Fascism, generally is open with its policies and although can be equally horrific is less deceptive (Nazi Germany / Italy)

So, HP, you'd rather be dead than deceived (or red).
But your story does not hold up. Fascists lied and deceived their way to power everywhere. And our own home grown fascists, in the National Front, played a neat game of deceit, with one message (the esoteric) for party members and another (the exoteric) for the general public they sought to sway. So they kept the Jew-baiting and overt racism for the faithful, and spread lies about immigrants to the public.

A few points:
1) Both German "National Socialism" and Italian "Fascism" were heavily influenced in ideology, methods, and organisation, by Leninist Bolshevism ("Communism"), which pre-dated them.
2) In terms of damage to human society, Leninist Bolshevism, which gave rise to Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot, etc., was orders of magnitude more destructive than National Socialism. Along with many more dead, the historic national cultures of Russia, Ukraine, China, SE Asia, E. Europe, were almost completely destroyed and have yet to be restored. This is a great, great loss.

Riverboy exaggerates on all counts. Certainly there are similarities in organisation and methods as there are between any organised movement operating in a hostile context (eg. Tsarist Russia, China prior to 1949). But it is highly dubious to suggest that there is much in the way of ideologial similarity between Facism and Communism.

Regarding damage to human society, there have been many guilty parties in the past Century but none exceeds the explicit monstrosity that was Nazi Germany - that single regime unleashed more human suffering than any other single regime in history.

Riverboy also speaks of the historic national cultures of "Russia, Ukraine, China, S.E. Asia, E.Europe" as if they were oasis of peace and tranquility which they quite clearly were not. With regards to S.E. Asia it is quite clear from examining the history of that region that the United States was the leading actor in visiting death and destruction. It is doubtful that Pol Pot would have came into power without prior American actions including the "secret" bombings of an increasing amount of the eastern half of Cambodia towards the end of the Vietnam War. It is also open to speculation what effect those murderous attacks had on the mentality of the Khmer Rouge. Eastern Europe is another interesting case, hardly an example of peace and tranquility prior to the 2nd world war - endemic anti-semitism, authoritarian regimes, etc. While not suggesting that Cold War era Eastern Europe under Soviet hegemony was some sort of utopia - far from it - but in comparison to Central America and parts of Latin America (who bear a roughly equivalent relation to the U.S. as Eastern Europe to the Soviets) they certainly were.

Throughout this discussion there seems to be something missing, the misdemeanours of Capitalism. Plenty of massacres on occasions genocidal (Native Americans, Australian Aborigines), cultures destroyed left, right and centre not to mention slavery, wars, racism, etc.

"Fascists started the war; communists put an end to it."

Nonsense. It was Soviet collusion with Hitler that made the Second World War last longer than it needed to. Had the Soviets made plain they would declare war on Germany if she invaded Poland (as Britain and France had done) it is doubtful if Germany would have gone through with it. Even if Germany still went ahead with the invasion the defeat of Germany in 1939 or 1940 would have been far more likely than in 1940 when the Soviet Union was allied to the Nazis. The actual result was that Stalin was happy for Germany to conquer Europe, and he invaded part of Poland himself, but was caught by surprise when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and led to death on a massive scale. Notice how the British Communist Party in 1940, when Britain was fighting for its very existence in the Battle of Britain, was condemning the war. What a bunch of traitors.

Communism and Fascism are really just as bad as each other and they are in no way better than each other! I can back this up by reminding to you that both Communism and Fascism repress freedom of speech and regularly punish any dissidents who stray too far away from the party line. As well as that both Fascism and Communism generally centralise and control their nation's economy and are generally are anti-privitization, although their are certain exceptions in Fascism (Nazi Germany allowed privitization). Many communist nations now allow privitzation (for instance the People's Republic of China and Vietnam) as this is the only way in which to improve their economies!
Therefore I hope you can see that neither Fascism and Communism are any different from each other and although at face value they appear very different, if you look deep within they are both the same. We must also remain extremely vigilant and not give our support to Fascist (far-right) or Communist (far-left) parties as it has been proven in history that both ideologies are inhuman and ultimately fail!

Has Mr L.Anderson-porter, the begetter of this discussion, not any further comments to make?

There has never been a truely communist state. The Soviet Union was not truely communist. If you study Marx, Engels or Trotsky to name but a few you will see exactly why... but I'll start you on your way.

There was never, ever supposed to be a "leader myth" attached to Communism. No figureheads, no leaders, no supreme leaders, no "Chairman", no "Premier", no Stalinesque figure. Marx stated the power should be handed down and depend on community co-operation.

There are many MANY other reasons why I am disgusted by the way in which Communism is taught to people in this day and age, as if it has ever been given the chance to truely grow.

The problem is not with the theory of Communism, the problem is, as always, with the people who implemented it. Greedy, self-serving megalomaniacs, and a mindset I, and a fair few critics of Western Capitalism, and probably even Karl Marx if he were alive today, would attribute to the kind of world we live in, and have lived in since the end of feudalism and the beginnings of this all consuming system we call "Capitalism".

Hilarious! Truly highbrow piece of debating. If H Williams has a strong grasp of irony is unclear...

agreed. the whole left/right political spectrum is flawed. the difference between obama and bush, for instance, is purely cosmetic. likewise the difference between labour and the tories. 99.9% of policians believe that they have the solutions to life if only they could comandeer enough power to implement their plans. the focus then of politicians is how to further centralise control. the political spectrum in my opinion should measure the size of government relative to the private sector. the right being fascism, socialism, communism, monarchy. the left would consist of anarchists and at the center we would have a republic where government is adequately restrained to protecting natural law and the rights of its citizens

.......in agreement with Vigoureux that is.

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A barely coherent comment? Of course there are some differences between Obama and Bush, not enough by far, but Obamas efforts to improve the Healthcare system in the U.S. with regard to widening its coverage is an improvement that would mean a hell of lot to many people in the U.S. Bush would NEVER even contemplate that option.

I'm not sure what the reviewer is measuring by the size of the private sector, but I suspect its basically a Neo-Liberal arguement, perhaps robhdg might care to elaborate, and while he's at it he might explain a little about what "natural law" and the "rights of citizens" are?