I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I’d rather hear about things that are actually happening.

    • Alsephina@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Stems from the black book of Communism which counts nazis killed by the Soviets, everyone killed by the nazis in the USSR, unborn children and even more absurd shit like that just to get to that number lmao.

      If we count shit like that, Capitalism has killed billions.

      • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
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        11 months ago

        Even using their numbers, if the choice is between 100 million people and every single living thing on the planet, communism sounds like a pretty good deal.

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Comunism always sounds like a pretty good deal. UNFORTUNATELY IT’S LEADERS ARE ALWAYS CORRUPT

      • zenitsu@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        If we count shit like that, Capitalism has killed billions.

        Only if you don’t adjust for functioning existence lmao.

        • brain_in_a_box@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          functioning existence isn’t counted for Communism in the Black Book, so it shouldn’t be for Capitalism.

            • brain_in_a_box@lemmy.ml
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              11 months ago

              I’d sure as shit rather live in China than India. I’d rather live in Cuba than Haiti, I’d rather live in Vietnam than Myanmar, I’d rather have lived in the USSR than the vast majority of Africa.

              Turns out, the only capitalist countries that communist countries didn’t do better than are the ones that got wealthy through centuries of brutal colonialism, exploitation, and slavery. Communist countries managed to develop in a fraction of the time, and with a fraction of the human misery, that it took places like the USA and Britain.

              • zenitsu@sh.itjust.works
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                11 months ago

                Ah yes, India, Haiti, and Myanmar. Definitely what people instantly think of when prompted for the average modern capitalist democracy rather than the us, uk, denmark, sweden, norway, germany, netherlands…cherry pick a bit harder and you might start making sense

                • brain_in_a_box@lemmy.ml
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                  11 months ago

                  Correct, other than extremely self-absorbed westerners who don’t know that the rest of the world exists and that non-white people are people too.

                  Cherry pick a bit harder and you might start making sense

                  You’re literally the one demanding that we cherry pick here, man.

                  • zenitsu@sh.itjust.works
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                    11 months ago

                    Those were your picks for the average capitalist democracy but I’m the one cherry picking? Lmao

      • rando895@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        The problem with these counts is there is no way of making them look good, like lives saved due to “x”. How many people lived because the Soviets managed to eliminate all famines in their territory after that? A huge feat given their relative frequency beforehand.

        And then you can blame countless deaths on capitalism, feudalism, slavery, but then do you normalize those numbers based on total world population?

        What about blaming AK-47s? The police?

        My point is that it’s a pointless metric that is only used to drum up support against some group of people, not a useful one for objectively understanding anything. It does away with all context, and replaces it with some inane number.

      • brain_in_a_box@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Except that the ‘higher estimates’ are the obviously nonsense ones that massively inflate the numbers. More than that, in no other context are famine deaths attributed to an ideology. If you were to count the famine deaths under capitalism, the number would be in the billions.

        Also no, in order to get to 100 million, Nazi soldiers killed by the Red Army, soviet soldiers and civilians killed by the Nazis, and hypothetical babies who were never conceived had to be used to pad the stats, so your claim that ‘your not far off’ is just you repeating the lie another time in the hope that people will believe it this time.

      • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        No they don’t.

        But you’re just proving the trope asked about in the original post.

      • dnick@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I think the point is that it’s difficult to attribute that to communism in any meaningful way where you’re comparing it to non-communism. Like if those 100 million people would have died anyway, how to do you say ‘it was communism that did it’ since maybe more would have died under the next most likely form of government that would have been in it’s place. How many people have died for Democracy, assuming that both world wars and countless other ones were fought to defend it.

        • zenitsu@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Like if those 100 million people would have died anyway, how to do you say ‘it was communism that did it’

          Ehhhh, because you can tie it directly to communist policies like collectivisation?

      • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Those 25 can easily be added by deaths in Cuba venezuela and many more dictatorships with the comunism propaganda activated