Response help

[Random_Guy]

I need help for a response.
I've been discussing communism with a bunch of apolitical people. They keep mentioning Stalin and Pol Pot as examples of communism being inherently evil and that it will never work. I say the usual Russia/Cambodia under Stalin/Pol Pot was not true communism blah blah blah. And these guys responded with " I bet I can find some neo-Nazis who will claim that Germany under Hitler wasn't real Nazism"
Here's the thing. That response really stumped me hahaha I kept thinking "Shit! they got me!:laugh: I didn't know what to respond. How do you reply to that!??
Perhaps me not knowing much about Stalin or Pol Pot didn't help either with my "lack of response." :rolleyes: All I know is under these dictatorships there was mass killings which is my reason for claiming Russia/Cambodia was not communist. Plus the whole communism will not exist under a "state"

[Os Cangaceiros]

"Nazism" isn't an ideology in the same way that communism is.

Perhaps they meant fascism.

[Comrade Krell]

I wouldn't bother myself, and since they are as you say 'apolitical' and as such ignorant on such matters it's not worth going into refuting the bourgeois lies about Stalin because that would take a long time etc. As for Cambodia, that's simple enough, Pol Pot and the Khmer never claimed to be communist, in fact they were reactionary primitivists who wanted to take Cambodia backwards pre-industrialization into some primitive communal agrarian life. You might want to remind your friends that it was Vietnam, a socialist state, that overthrew the Khmer Rouge when it discovered about the genocide and arrested and tried those behind it.

Pol Pot *never* claimed to be communist, and only made quasi-communist overtures when seeking help from the Chinese government.

"We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not "belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina." --Ieng Sary, second-in-command of the Khmer Rouge.

[Janus]

Start with these:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/high-school-commie-t22370/index.html (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../high-school-commie-t22370/index.html)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/frequently-discussed-topics-t62635/index.html (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../frequently-discussed-topics-t62635/index.html)

[Raúl Duke]

I need help for a response.
I've been discussing communism with a bunch of apolitical people. They keep mentioning Stalin and Pol Pot as examples of communism being inherently evil and that it will never work. I say the usual Russia/Cambodia under Stalin/Pol Pot was not true communism blah blah blah. And these guys responded with " I bet I can find some neo-Nazis who will claim that Germany under Hitler wasn't real Nazism"
Here's the thing. That response really stumped me hahaha I kept thinking "Shit! they got me!:laugh: I didn't know what to respond. How do you reply to that!??
Perhaps me not knowing much about Stalin or Pol Pot didn't help either with my "lack of response." :rolleyes: All I know is under these dictatorships there was mass killings which is my reason for claiming Russia/Cambodia was not communist. Plus the whole communism will not exist under a "state"

Pol Pot and Stalin did not make the communist manifesto nor defined communism initially...there were communists before them that had different ideas of what communism was about.

Nazism is the ideology of the german Nationalist Socialist party, specifically when Hitler was in charge. Hitler already wrote his aims in Mein Kampf which became somewhat the foundation for his party's ideology. A nazi disavowing Hitler than would be an oxymoron.

[Luís Henrique]

Take them to the actual content of the ideologies.

What would a Nazi claiming that Nazi Germany wasn't "actual Nazism" argue? In what would Nazi Germany differ from the "ideal" Nazi society?

It is completely different from the situation of Communism. Even Stalin would agree that the Soviet Union was not Communist under his rule; and there are objective parameters that can be checked. Communism would be a classless society - but there were classes in the Soviet Union; Communism would be a stateless society - but the Soviet Union was a State; Communism would be a moneyless society - yet the Soviet Union had its own currency, workers earned wages, and all products were distributed via market, as commodities. Challenge them to make a similar checking of Nazi Germany against Nazi ideology...

Luís Henrique

[Dros]

First, all Nazis love Hitler and the Third Reich. I've lurked on enough fash sites to know this.

Secondly, I'd start by researching the history of the USSR and Cambodia. You will find that the USSR wasn't nearly as bad as everyone claims it was. And you'll find that a lot of things people say about Pol Pot aren't true, although he wasn't a Communist and he was crazy and "bad" (in whatever way you want to concieve of that).

Lastly, that argument doesn't prove anything. You can just say "So what?" Ask them to show that Cambodia was an objectively socialist society and to prove that Pol Pot was ideologically aligned with Marxism beyond just waving a red flag. They won't be able to.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

There are multiple questions you can throw back

- Assuming Pol Pot was "bad" (which he was), how does America rank since its bombing campaign over Cambodia killed close to a million innocent people?

- If communism is inherently bad due to the Soviet Union, is capitalism inherently bad due to America and its intervention in Latin America, Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa, and the Middle East?

- What is communism?

- What is capitalism?

[Random_Guy]

Hey thanks for the help guys. Very informative, I learned a lot.
Thanks again

.....and sorry for bumping this thread.

[mikelepore]

They keep mentioning Stalin and Pol Pot as examples of communism being inherently evil and that it will never work. I say the usual Russia/Cambodia under Stalin/Pol Pot was not true communism blah blah blah.

Words like socialism an communism imply that the people are exercising democratic control of the political and economic institutions. The people in the regimes of Stalin and Pol Pot did not have democratic control. Anyone over twelve years old should be able to understand that immediately. After we indicate this to adversaries in a debate, and they still assert the opposite, they are pretending. Sometimes they pretend just to waste our time, to divert us from using our time to make other important points about how capitalism is the major cause of all social problems, and how a better system can be established by intelligent organization.