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[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

but authoritarian communist governments have repeatedly tortured and killed millions through starvation and gulags

[–]allie[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

I don't believe that. Though they have imprisoned spies, moles and counter-revolutionaries.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It's historical fact. USSR, Pol Pot, many more.

[–]allie[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Tell a lie often enough, convincingly enough, and people will begin to believe it. I think we've been lied to.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

You honestly think the millions of people who died in the USSR and under Pol Pot are a hoax? Are you serious?

[–]allie[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Alright. I'll fire up my desktop with all the references on it.

[–]allie[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Pol Pot was a CIA asset. The main reason he was put in power was to stop Vietnam from invading Cambodia and taking it over. They felt Pol Pot just wasn't someone who could have been a leader, long term .

There are allegations that the United States (U.S.) supported the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in order to weaken the influence of Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Southeast Asia. Details of alleged U.S. actions that benefited the Khmer Rouge range from tolerating Chinese and Thai aid to the organization (Henry Kissinger) to directly arming the Khmer Rouge (Michael Haas). The U.S. government officially denies these claims, and Nate Thayer defended U.S. policy, arguing that little, if any, American aid actually reached the Khmer Rouge. However, it is not disputed that the U.S. voted for the Khmer Rouge and the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK), which was dominated by the Khmer Rouge, to retain Cambodia's United Nations (UN) seat until 1982 and 1991, respectively. Furthermore, an investigation by the United States Department of State acknowledged that U.S. material support for the Khmer Rouge's CGDK partners indirectly benefited the Khmer Rouge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge

Personally I've never seen or read anything that I found particularly convincing. But regardless, true or not, that blood is on our hands.

Imperial Russia had famine after famine. The royals were never much interested in stopping them except seize the food and force the prices up and further enrich themselves. After the Revolution there were two famines. One was going on at the time of the revolution in 1917 and was part of the reason for the revolution. They also had another in the 30s. The only other famine the USSR had. They did a much better job than Imperial Russia.

Tauger, Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-33

Certainly Stalin was a monster who killed or imprisoned many of his old comrades who he thought might be able to displace him. But there's no evidence of any mass murders of the people.

Another reply follows.

[–]allie[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The history of the millions of people who were allegedly incarcerated and died in the labour camps of the Soviet Union and as a result of starvation during Stalin's time.

But where in fact do these stories, and these figures, come from? Who is behind all this?

The following article shows us where these stories of millions of deaths through hunger and in labour camps in Stalin's Soviet Union originated and who is behind them. There is a direct historical link running from: Hitler to Hearst, to Conquest, to Solzhenitsyn.

The Ukraine and other regions of Eastern Europe needed to belong to the German nation so that they could be utilised in a 'proper' manner. According to Nazi propaganda, the Nazi sword would liberate this territory in order to make space for the German race.

The conquest of the Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union would necessitate war against the Soviet Union, and this war had to be prepared well in advance. To this end the Nazi propaganda ministry, headed by Goebbels, began a campaign around a supposed genocide committed by the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, a dreadful period of catastrophic famine deliberately provoked by Stalin in order to force the peasantry to accept socialist policy. The purpose of the Nazi campaign was to prepare world public opinion for the 'liberation' of the Ukraine by German troops. Despite huge efforts and in spite of the fact that some of the German propaganda texts were published in the English press, the Nazi campaign around the supposed 'genocide' in the Ukraine was not very successful at the world level. It was clear that Hitler and Goebbels needed help in spreading their libellous rumours about the Soviet Union. That help they found in the USA. http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9912/lies.htm

SOVIET HOLOCAUST: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right By Jeff Coplon Originally published in the Village Voice (New York City), January 12, 1988.

Tauger, Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-33

The Soviet Famine of 1931-33: Politically Motivated or Ecological Disaster?

In a talk sponsored by the Center for European & Eurasian Studies at UCLA on May 5th, Wheatcroft also challenged previous estimates of the number of people who died during the famine. His conclusions are based on statistical analysis of demographic and economic data, gathered while working among a large group of Western, Russian, and Asian scholars analyzing a vast collection of formerly secret Soviet documents, to be published in 6 volumes, entitled Tragediia Sovetskoi Derevni (The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside). These volumes contain extensive evidence that this was a Soviet-wide famine, and the data presented here permit a more accurate assessment of the human tragedy.

Two articles by Tauger , "The 1932 Harvest and the Soviet Famine of 1932-1933," Slavic Review, Spring 1991, and "Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933, Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, June 2001, present evidence that the famine resulted directly from a poor harvest, a harvest that was much smaller than officially acknowledged. He argues that this small harvest was in turn the result of a complex of natural disasters that [with one small exception] no previous scholars have ever discussed or even mentioned.

On Measuring "Famine" Deaths : Different Criteria for Socialism and Capitalism?

It would be instructive to look at how exactly this estimate of massive "famine deaths " has been arrived at by the ever busy Western liberal scholars, which estimates have then been assiduously spread by them and by others to discredit socialism and praise the bourgeois press (thereby, incidentally, ensuring a very good press for themselves).

Russian famine of 1891–92: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1891-2

On November 17, 1891 the government asked the people to form voluntary anti-famine organizations. Leo Tolstoy, the most famous volunteer blamed the Tsar and the Orthodox Church for the famine. The Orthodox Church actually banned peasants from accepting his charity as they had excommunicated him. The future Tsar Nicholas II headed the relief committee and was a member of the finance committee three months later, while the Tsar and Tsarina raised 5 and 12 million roubles respectively. Alexander III's sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth also raised money by selling peasant crafts in bazaars. Nicholas II said, "A great honor, but little satisfaction ...I must admit I never even suspected its [finance committee's] existence".[6] The zemstvos got 150 million roubles from the government to buy food, but were only allowed to lend to peasants who could repay them and were therefore the least needy. Starving peasants had to eat raw donated flour and "famine bread", a mixture of moss, goosefoot, bark and husks.

And even while the people were starving grain was being exported.

From the report of the king for 1892 (especially the poor and the poor harvest) year: "Only from crop failure deaths of up to two million Orthodox souls." According to the laws of that time in the statistics only include those who read the burial service in the Orthodox churches, and the evidence on the number of deaths of "foreigners", the Old Believers, "atheists" not at all. But it is clear to any normal person that's even in the same province Vjatskoj side by side with the Russian peasants, and has long lived on the same land worked conservatives, "foreigners" like "unbaptized mordvy and Votyaks." Catholics were a result of mortality, but the data in the general report is not submitted.

At their worst the Soviet didn't do a worse job than the czars and usually better. You can't kill off millions without people knowing. In Chile and Argentina mothers wandered around with posters of their children pictures, looking for them and that was just some tens of thousands of murders. Bodies don't evaporate. There are remains from thousand of years ago. Even when people are put through camps like the Nazis did, some always survive. And there are pictures, testimony of guards, reports etc. There are pictures of the Nazis smiling over the pits of thousands of corpses. There are no such pictures from Russia. True, spies and counter-revolutionaries went into gulags and camps. But hundreds of thousands? Millions? Where are the bones. They dig up intact Mammoths from Siberia. If millions were killed their bodies would still be there. It's just lies.

Some of these links may no longer work. But I have the articles saved so can post them.

Edit: The Wall of text is always offputting but truth often cannot be delivered in a single blurb.