It seems like you are saying that something like Nazism is inherently evil but that something like Communism, while evil, has some "good" points worthy of distinguishing it from Nazism. I tried to point out that Nazism had many, if not most, of the same "good" points…
If you want to try to come up with different examples for your points, feel free, but as they stand, the examples you provide are distinctions without a difference.
I will try to come at this from a different angle, and perhaps my original examples will become clear. Some time ago I read Fear No Evil, by Nathan Sharansky. A great book, one of the most inspiring that I’ve read in my life. It describes how Sharansky was imprisoned by the USSR on false charges, when his real crime was nothing more than a desire to emigrate. Though he was tortured by the Soviets, and the evil of the system is more than clear, I was struck by the how successful Sharansky was at manipulating it, and by the fact that he did survive until his eventual release. He was able to do this because the system was fundamentally hypocritical – at the same time that it was practicing evil, it was preaching good. In an unhypocritically evil system, like Nazi Germany, he would have just been killed – without the need to make excuses.
Eventually the Soviet system imploded under the weight of its own hypocrisy – with a little help from Ronald Reagan and the United States – in a way it was a victory of the Soviet Union too.
Posted by David Boxenhorn at May 16, 2004 04:38 PMI haven't read the book so I can't comment on it directly. But let's not forget, Hitler was responsible for probably around 12 million civilian murders, while Stalin alone (ignoring other Soviet leaders) was responsible for at least TWICE as many. Communism preached good all along, and had many people ("useful idiots" as Lenin referred to them) covering for all the misdeeds. Look at Walter Duranty reporting for the NY Times in the 1930's that there was no famine and no one was dying.
Hitler even learned from Stalin's example (and not the other way around) that he could get away with mass murder and the rest of the world would look away.
The only difference is that by the 1970's the Soviet Union was mostly, but not entirely a spent force. Reagan knew it, but most other people didn't.
It's very like that had Nazism survived until then too, its own ferocity would have slowly withered just like in the Soviet Union, as people wearied of the poverty and mind-numbing nature of the regime.
I think a case can be made that evil for a good cause is worse than evil intent. My distinction comes from trying to understand the human dynamics; not from trying to say one kind is better or worse.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at May 19, 2004 11:17 AM Permalink