Indeed, everybody except me is a ideologue with whom at least 2 academics and a reddit poster disagree. I, on the other hand, am always right, of course!
Additionally, as a jew, I was raised on an ironclad ideological assertion that the holocaust was the worst thing people have ever done to each other, and no genocides have or will ever rival it. I'm keenly aware that there is a vested interest in maintaining that view [0], even if it is not true (many academics say that an equal, perhaps greater number died in The Holodomor, for example – not that that need be true for the two to be compared).
Take your own link, for example: it describes David Katz, a holocaust scholar, who commented, "Snyder flirts with the very wrong moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin". This is just a dude saying his opinion, even though a moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin is not, in fact, "very wrong".
(Again I cannot reply to the comment below, but my point is not that I am not ideological; of course I am. But Snyder is also extremely ideological and uses his history to push a very particular kindideologues of politics, which is ironic given the context of the thread. )
(Adding another edit since I can't reply! But again, I don't understand why my interlocutor cannot understand that both sides can be ideological and that one needs to take that ideology into account when evaluating claims. Snyder is one such ideologue who consciously seeks to minimise Polish and Ukrainian collaboration with the Holocaust and claim that Jewish Soviet partisans fighting the Nazis were "criminals", see: [1] for examples (also an ideological source--of course--but some of the quotes from Snyder are really quite damning. ))
Your entire reply to my post, from beginning to end, is 1 sentence, quoted below for posterity (before subsequent edits anyways, I can't keep track of all your changes made after this reply):
> Stalin is very, very, very different from Hitler
We see that you're literally ideologically repeating, almost verbatim, an ideological opinion, while complaining that someone else is an ideologue. Thus, your comment is extremely ironic given the context of this thread and your prior complaints. Indeed, you are the only one who appears to be the ideologue, and so all we have to go on as far as Snyder, are the naked, unsupported assertions of an ideologue.
Sure, stalin is very, very, very different from hitler, just like an isosceles triangle is very, very, very different from a scalene triangle. Any 2 different things in the universe are different by definition, and "very" is nebulous, therefore your logic also means that anything can be described as "very, very, very different" from everything else. A truly meaningless statement.
In short, the evidence presented indicates that Snyder is not an ideologue, and there aren't actually any issues with what Snyder is saying, only ideologues who either disagree with what he says or don't like that he's saying it.
That's preposterous. Hitler intentionally created extermination camps, which targeted "Bolsheviks" above all. He then forced his armies on a bloody rampage into Russia, where he overextended and was defeated, after violently murdering millions.
There is a dominant thread of anti-intellectualism that lumps virtually all WW2 deaths as "victims of communism". This is total nonsense, obviously, promoted by neo-Nazi and Nazi sympathizer groups.
Stalin likely killed more of his own people than Hitler did if you count artificial famines, which I do. This shouldn't be surprising because Stalin was in power for longer and had a greater degree of unchecked power over the Soviet Union than Hitler ever did. Of course, many of the people murdered by either regime weren't actually communists.
> There is a dominant thread of anti-intellectualism that lumps virtually all WW2 deaths as "victims of communism". This is total nonsense, obviously, promoted by neo-Nazi and Nazi sympathizer groups.
That's not what I'm doing and I'd advise you to review the HN guidelines, particularly the one that reads, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
> Lecturing about "good faith" in the same comment that equates (extreme) economic mismanagement with intentional mass murder. Spare us the sanctimony.
The 'assume good faith' guideline pertains to our fellow HN posters, not stalin.
As far as I know, it's totally ok to conclude stalin was not acting in good faith when he killed millions of undesirables.
Additionally, as a jew, I was raised on an ironclad ideological assertion that the holocaust was the worst thing people have ever done to each other, and no genocides have or will ever rival it. I'm keenly aware that there is a vested interest in maintaining that view [0], even if it is not true (many academics say that an equal, perhaps greater number died in The Holodomor, for example – not that that need be true for the two to be compared).
Take your own link, for example: it describes David Katz, a holocaust scholar, who commented, "Snyder flirts with the very wrong moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin". This is just a dude saying his opinion, even though a moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin is not, in fact, "very wrong".
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_uniqueness_debate