by A.T. Meininger

Created on: November 17, 2009

No, the question is a false dichotomy. Both Hitler and the holocaust were important parts of history. However, they receive too much weight compared to other events and I have an idea why that is.

It's said that the victors write history, and while that's true it's also important to know the how and why. In my own experience I've heard of Hitler and the holocaust when I was 7 years old. I heard of Joseph Stalin when I was 15 and in 9th grade. There is a reason for this. It's not that I couldn't have obtained knowledge of Communist gulags, it's that I just wouldn't. At the time I was a mold of clay in the public education system. The fact that 6 million Jews were killed is shouted the whole world over, and yet they only accounted for half the people who were killed in the holocaust. Should we assume that the Jewish people are more important than the gays, foreigners, mentally retarded, political dissenters, and everyone else who was killed? I think they deserve some magnitude in the equation. By the numbers, however, 12 million isn't nearly as many as 20 million under Stalin or 30 million under Mao Zedong. Suppose the numbers get confusing: Stalin himself said that "the death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic". Numbers have a way of de-personalizing tragedy. When put in perspective it's millions and millions of families and friends being torn apart (imagine if everyone but you in your village was sent off to die in prison) by ruthless dictators under the benevolent ideal of Communism.

Let's look at the evil of Communism-forgiveness that goes on today. Walk into a trendy clothing store and you can actually find a red hammer and sickle shirt for sale. Why does the same store sell anti-swastika merchandise? Better yet, whom are the misguided youth that buy that garbage? The store wouldn't sell those clothes unless they had a market to sell to (ironically, they're being sold which is a capitalistic action). Whom are the youth getting information from?

The idea of socialism in America goes way back to the turn of the 20th century. The academics of the time were fooled into believing that Communism (or at least socialism) is a great idea. The Fabian socialists were very smart people who figured that if you implement an education system that promotes their goals, it will work for years into the future. I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory and I welcome anyone willing to challenge me to research critical theory.

The unions of America became more powerful, and the idea of unionizing against business became mainstream in America. World War II was fought alongside the U.S.S.R. and American manufacturing helped Stalin win his war against Germany. Now that we won World War II and Stalin was on our side, let's turn a blind eye to his gulags. Let's turn a blind eye to massive famines in China, and the problems of Southeast Asia. Sure, we fought Korea in the 1950s Vietnam in the 1960s (countries that were perceived as too weak to damage America). But we only fought them militarily, never philosophically or intellectually.

In turn, to this day, our American professors churn out the same stupid socialist garbage in their lectures as they have for decades. No new philosophy or history is discovered. The idea of Hitler and the holocaust is incredibly scary, but Mao Zedong and Stalin were just kind of kooky and irrelevant. This is what overemphasizing Hitler and the holocaust does. The problem isn't comparing Hitler to the holocaust, it's comparing what happened in Nazi Germany to the much worse slaughter in the Red countries: and that it's taught that way because of American socialism-apologists.

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