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cberg
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15 Jan 2015, 12:20 pm

Just how antithetical is it for me to consider humanism as the potential culprit here? Venerating one's own lifestyle too much all too often leads to contempt of different ones. Governments and clerical zealots don't record death tolls.


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15 Jan 2015, 4:41 pm

Socialism
Where do I begin? (is unable to find a place to start without seeing 7 and 8 figure death tolls).



blunnet
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25 Jan 2015, 5:01 pm

Christians claim that soviet communism (and of course they were atheists) killed more people than the Inquisition. Is that correct?



Humanaut
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25 Jan 2015, 5:37 pm

blunnet wrote:
Christians claim that soviet communism (and of course they were atheists) killed more people than the Inquisition. Is that correct?

Yes, by a relatively large margin according to academic sources listed on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes



The_Walrus
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25 Jan 2015, 6:12 pm

cberg wrote:
Just how antithetical is it for me to consider humanism as the potential culprit here? Venerating one's own lifestyle too much all too often leads to contempt of different ones.

That isn't what humanism is.

Anyway, if we're going to use "socialism" to include Stalinism and Maoism, then we may as well use "authoritarianism" to include Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism... that might even beat out capitalism's death toll! Though in fairness to capitalism, it has also saved more lives than most ideologies (only empiricism could really match it).



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26 Jan 2015, 12:39 pm

Quote:
What Ideology Have Killed Most People?

Communism.


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slenkar
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26 Jan 2015, 12:59 pm

Not only has socialism killed millions of it's own citizens,
All the european and russian deaths of ww2 could be blamed on National Socialism

Although National Socialism is thought to be right-wing because of it's racial component it is all about government control of every aspect of the German's lives which is left-wing/socialist.

Stalin starved to death 1 million ukranians by collectivizing their farms



cberg
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26 Jan 2015, 5:25 pm

I suppose I usually consider myself an empiricist, albeit entirely susceptible to situational bias. I'll admit that was a stretch of humanism's definition, since some view it as religion and others philosophy. Implicating communism here seems like a greater stretch in definitions though. Nationalism is what you're all really thinking of.


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The_Walrus
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27 Jan 2015, 7:38 am

slenkar wrote:
Not only has socialism killed millions of it's own citizens,
All the european and russian deaths of ww2 could be blamed on National Socialism

Although National Socialism is thought to be right-wing because of it's racial component it is all about government control of every aspect of the German's lives which is left-wing/socialist.

Stalin starved to death 1 million ukranians by collectivizing their farms

National Socialism has no relationship to Marxist philosophies.

Controlling every aspect of citizen's lives is authoritarian, not left-wing. Mussolini and Franco were certainly not left wing, but also no libertarians. As less extreme examples, George W. Bush or Tony Blair or Theresa May. Contrastingly, there are plenty of left-wing libertarians - Clement Atlee, FDR, Nelson Mandela...



luan78zao
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27 Jan 2015, 8:59 am

Statism, in all its forms. Every ideology which denigrates the individual and exalts the collective, the masses, the People, the Volk, ends up in slavery and bloodshed.


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Humanaut
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27 Jan 2015, 9:04 am

The_Walrus wrote:
Controlling every aspect of citizen's lives is authoritarian, not left-wing.

Leftism, as a broad generalization, encompasses authoritarianism in many forms, e.g. communism and different variants of authoritarian socialism. National Socialism has much in common with traditional leftism, and modern variants of the latter is even sharing anti-Semitic traits with the former, in addition to economic and social similarities. National Socialism is merely a nationalistic variant of authoritarian socialism, and does not stand in opposition to left-wing policies. Quite the contrary. The quarrel between nazis and other socialists is analogous to territorial disputes between criminal gangs.



slenkar
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27 Jan 2015, 9:43 am

yes, another similarity is the 'cult of personality' in Germany and Russia which elevated their leaders to god status.

apparently this has been done in many countries most of them socialist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality

I think George Bush tried to create one for himself but wasn't able to use the full resources of the state, (to put his face on posters etc.) so it was mostly a failure...except for some dumb people.



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27 Jan 2015, 10:03 am

The type of idolatry with some Obama supporters in 2008 looked just like Nazi Germany's of Hitler. Labels like Messiah, The One, and videos of people chanting his name were prime examples. When I was in high school in 08 particularly with black teachers they had huge posters of him in the classrooms and would not stop talking about him. If you were against Obama you were cast out as a racist by students, bullied, and some of the teachers would go crazy on you.
There was nothing of that magnitude happening with Bush.



AspieUtah
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27 Jan 2015, 10:18 am

Democide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide .

262 million deaths by government in the 20th century alone.

Beware the state.


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drh1138
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27 Jan 2015, 10:52 am

Humanaut wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Controlling every aspect of citizen's lives is authoritarian, not left-wing.

Leftism, as a broad generalization, encompasses authoritarianism in many forms, e.g. communism and different variants of authoritarian socialism. National Socialism has much in common with traditional leftism, and modern variants of the latter is even sharing anti-Semitic traits with the former, in addition to economic and social similarities. National Socialism is merely a nationalistic variant of authoritarian socialism, and does not stand in opposition to left-wing policies. Quite the contrary. The quarrel between nazis and other socialists is analogous to territorial disputes between criminal gangs.


Not saying I don't have a poor opinion of socialism in general, but Strasserism (the left-wing of the Nazi party) effectively ended after the Night of the Long Knives. After 1934 Nazi Germany certainly wasn't a free enterprise capitalist economy, but it was awfully corporatist.



slenkar
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27 Jan 2015, 8:43 pm

AntDog wrote:
The type of idolatry with some Obama supporters in 2008 looked just like Nazi Germany's of Hitler. Labels like Messiah, The One, and videos of people chanting his name were prime examples. When I was in high school in 08 particularly with black teachers they had huge posters of him in the classrooms and would not stop talking about him. If you were against Obama you were cast out as a racist by students, bullied, and some of the teachers would go crazy on you.
There was nothing of that magnitude happening with Bush.


That sounds like a bad high school experience.

With Bush, his supporters just trusted him unquestioningly which was bad also.