Conquer Club

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

mrswdk wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

Not a valid comparison.

inb4 20m people starved hurr durr

mrswdk wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

Not a valid comparison.

Endgame422 wrote:

mrswdk wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

Not a valid comparison.

inb4 20m people starved hurr durr

In the context this was written in it certainly is a valid comparison. That was about people's names that could be offensive. Not about who is better/worse as a person, or about the related politics you want it to be. The point was people could be offended by Mao references on this site and here you are,offended.

tzor wrote:

mrswdk wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

Not a valid comparison.

A totally valid comparison ... at least for Stalin.

Oh and it's 45 not 20.

But are we just talking numbers or are we talking about exterminations in concentration camps? Hitler killed on race and Stalin killed on social status. Are we talking about failed economic policies or a deliberate attempt to keep food from going to people (by stealing all of the food) resulting in them starving to death? (this the case with Stalin.) I think I can make a very good case for Hitler and Stalin being relatively equal (and the only reason why we don't treat them equal was that Stalin got a "GET OUT OF JAIL FREE" Card from Churchill for being on the right side (in the end) of WWII).

mrswdk wrote:

tzor wrote:

mrswdk wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

Not a valid comparison.

A totally valid comparison ... at least for Stalin.

Oh and it's 45 not 20.

But are we just talking numbers or are we talking about exterminations in concentration camps? Hitler killed on race and Stalin killed on social status. Are we talking about failed economic policies or a deliberate attempt to keep food from going to people (by stealing all of the food) resulting in them starving to death? (this the case with Stalin.) I think I can make a very good case for Hitler and Stalin being relatively equal (and the only reason why we don't treat them equal was that Stalin got a "GET OUT OF JAIL FREE" Card from Churchill for being on the right side (in the end) of WWII).

Oh, yah. I just meant the inclusion of Mao in that post. Stalin and Hitler did fairly comparable things.

BigBallinStalin wrote:Why separate them from national socialism?

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.

Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

Mr Dikötter is the only author to have delved into the Chinese archives since they were reopened four years ago. He argued that this devastating period of history – which has until now remained hidden – has international resonance. "It ranks alongside the gulags and the Holocaust as one of the three greatest events of the 20th century.... It was like [the Cambodian communist dictator] Pol Pot's genocide multiplied 20 times over," he said.

Between 1958 and 1962, a war raged between the peasants and the state; it was a period when a third of all homes in China were destroyed to produce fertiliser and when the nation descended into famine and starvation, Mr Dikötter said.

His book, Mao's Great Famine; The Story of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, reveals that while this is a part of history that has been "quite forgotten" in the official memory of the People's Republic of China, there was a "staggering degree of violence" that was, remarkably, carefully catalogued in Public Security Bureau reports, which featured among the provincial archives he studied. In them, he found that the members of the rural farming communities were seen by the Party merely as "digits", or a faceless workforce. For those who committed any acts of disobedience, however minor, the punishments were huge.

State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.

Mr Dikötter said that he was once again examining the Party's archives for his next book, The Tragedy of Liberation, which will deal with the bloody advent of Communism in China from 1944 to 1957.

He said the archives were already illuminating the extent of the atrocities of the period; one piece of evidence revealed that 13,000 opponents of the new regime were killed in one region alone, in just three weeks. "We know the outline of what went on but I will be looking into precisely what happened in this period, how it happened, and the human experiences behind the history," he said.

Mr Dikötter, who teaches at the University of Hong Kong, said while it was difficult for any historian in China to write books that are critical of Mao, he felt he could not collude with the "conspiracy of silence" in what the Chinese rural community had suffered in recent history.

mrswdk wrote:The vast majority of the starvations were accidental,

mrswdk wrote:The vast majority of the starvations were accidental, caused by Mao's misguided policies (which led to a huge food shortage) rather than deliberate persecution. That's why the GLF only lasted 3 years: Mao realized he was messing up and abandoned it.

Also, you can't just lump all local government activity into a column labelled 'Mao'. Every time a black kid gets shot by a psycho cop in America, is that 'Obama'?

Also, 45m sounds big but at the time was approximately 4% of the entire country (I'm assuming a population of 1b). That isn't an astonishingly large number of people to do in a nationwide famine.

Long live Grandpa Mao

muy_thaiguy wrote:

mrswdk wrote:The vast majority of the starvations were accidental, caused by Mao's misguided policies (which led to a huge food shortage) rather than deliberate persecution. That's why the GLF only lasted 3 years: Mao realized he was messing up and abandoned it.

So, we'll just "Whoops! My bad!" And everything is okay? That's like someone running over a person in the middle of the street while they were on the phone and saying "Whoopsie, my bad guys!" and driving off without anything happening (but on a much larger scale). Was it intentional? No, but does that absolve them of killing the person? Somehow, I don't think so.

my_thaiguy wrote:

MrSWDK wrote:Also, you can't just lump all local government activity into a column labelled 'Mao'. Every time a black kid gets shot by a psycho cop in America, is that 'Obama'?

Except Mao was a dictator, an absolute ruler. Obama, as much as people criticize him, has no where near that power and can only do so much because a lot has to go through Congress and the Supreme Court. Apples to oranges.

wai_mai_guy wrote:

MrsWdk wrote:Also, 45m sounds big but at the time was approximately 4% of the entire country (I'm assuming a population of 1b). That isn't an astonishingly large number of people to do in a nationwide famine.

Line up 45 million people in a single file line. I think you would be convinced that it is quite a large number of people.

tzor wrote:

mrswdk wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

Not a valid comparison.

A totally valid comparison ... at least for Stalin.

Oh and it's 45 not 20.

But are we just talking numbers or are we talking about exterminations in concentration camps? Hitler killed on race and Stalin killed on social status. Are we talking about failed economic policies or a deliberate attempt to keep food from going to people (by stealing all of the food) resulting in them starving to death? (this the case with Stalin.) I think I can make a very good case for Hitler and Stalin being relatively equal (and the only reason why we don't treat them equal was that Stalin got a "GET OUT OF JAIL FREE" Card from Churchill for being on the right side (in the end) of WWII).

chang50 wrote:

tzor wrote:

mrswdk wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:If the Hitlers on the site are forced to change their name, the various Stalins and Maos should be forced to change theirs.

Not a valid comparison.

A totally valid comparison ... at least for Stalin.

Oh and it's 45 not 20.

But are we just talking numbers or are we talking about exterminations in concentration camps? Hitler killed on race and Stalin killed on social status. Are we talking about failed economic policies or a deliberate attempt to keep food from going to people (by stealing all of the food) resulting in them starving to death? (this the case with Stalin.) I think I can make a very good case for Hitler and Stalin being relatively equal (and the only reason why we don't treat them equal was that Stalin got a "GET OUT OF JAIL FREE" Card from Churchill for being on the right side (in the end) of WWII).

The Soviets were slightly more than just being on the right side of wwii..the Red Army primarily defeated the Wehrmacht so unless Churchill and Truman intended to stab them in the back after their heroics and sacrifice I fail to see where Stalin was given a get out of jail free card by anyone.

mrswdk wrote:

muy_thaiguy wrote:

mrswdk wrote:The vast majority of the starvations were accidental, caused by Mao's misguided policies (which led to a huge food shortage) rather than deliberate persecution. That's why the GLF only lasted 3 years: Mao realized he was messing up and abandoned it.

So, we'll just "Whoops! My bad!" And everything is okay? That's like someone running over a person in the middle of the street while they were on the phone and saying "Whoopsie, my bad guys!" and driving off without anything happening (but on a much larger scale). Was it intentional? No, but does that absolve them of killing the person? Somehow, I don't think so.

There is a big difference between causing deaths by accident and causing deaths by deliberate extermination (e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Bomber Harris, the Manhattan Project).

my_thaiguy wrote:

MrSWDK wrote:Also, you can't just lump all local government activity into a column labelled 'Mao'. Every time a black kid gets shot by a psycho cop in America, is that 'Obama'?

Except Mao was a dictator, an absolute ruler. Obama, as much as people criticize him, has no where near that power and can only do so much because a lot has to go through Congress and the Supreme Court. Apples to oranges.

In many (probably most, possibly 'all') cases, local cadres pretended food production was just fine, even when they were falling behind and failing to grow sufficient crops. Central government (i.e. Mao & Friends) levied more food than the rural areas could afford to give, but only because they had no idea they were taking too much. Once the information trickled through, the GLF was abandoned and Mao apologized.

mrswdk wrote:

muy_thaiguy wrote:

mrswdk wrote:The vast majority of the starvations were accidental, caused by Mao's misguided policies (which led to a huge food shortage) rather than deliberate persecution. That's why the GLF only lasted 3 years: Mao realized he was messing up and abandoned it.

So, we'll just "Whoops! My bad!" And everything is okay? That's like someone running over a person in the middle of the street while they were on the phone and saying "Whoopsie, my bad guys!" and driving off without anything happening (but on a much larger scale). Was it intentional? No, but does that absolve them of killing the person? Somehow, I don't think so.

There is a big difference between causing deaths by accident and causing deaths by deliberate extermination (e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Bomber Harris, the Manhattan Project).

my_thaiguy wrote:

MrSWDK wrote:Also, you can't just lump all local government activity into a column labelled 'Mao'. Every time a black kid gets shot by a psycho cop in America, is that 'Obama'?

Except Mao was a dictator, an absolute ruler. Obama, as much as people criticize him, has no where near that power and can only do so much because a lot has to go through Congress and the Supreme Court. Apples to oranges.

In many (probably most, possibly 'all') cases, local cadres pretended food production was just fine, even when they were falling behind and failing to grow sufficient crops. Central government (i.e. Mao & Friends) levied more food than the rural areas could afford to give, but only because they had no idea they were taking too much. Once the information trickled through, the GLF was abandoned and Mao apologized.

Mao may have been one of the greatest leaders who has ever lived but even he had to delegate some of the workload when it came to running a country of 1billion people.

wai_mai_guy wrote:

MrsWdk wrote:Also, 45m sounds big but at the time was approximately 4% of the entire country (I'm assuming a population of 1b). That isn't an astonishingly large number of people to do in a nationwide famine.

Line up 45 million people in a single file line. I think you would be convinced that it is quite a large number of people.

2dimes wrote:

mrswdk wrote:The vast majority of the starvations were accidental,

Oops-a-daisy.

TA1LGUNN3R wrote:"Branded with hot metal...?" How else do you brand things?

The Racist Diplodocus wrote:There was no starvation in the big coastal cities or in the far north, where most people were loyal to Mao.