Was he Russian?
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Mao's an interesting one, he's still viewed largely favourably in China - still on their money, and most Chinese will say that he did more right than wrong.
On the other hand a LOT of people were killed. A very lot.
The numbers usually include the millions who died in the great famine (like 30-50 million I think), which while undoubtedly a direct result of the changes that were made as part of the "great leap forward" and being taken in by the charlatan Lysenko, it is difficult to know whether Mao was actually aware of the famine or the extent of it, as all the regions still were reporting grain surpluses for fear of being reprimanded.
So definitely their fault, but how can you compare that to sending 6 million people to be executed in gas chambers?
China's whole history is ridiculously brutal. The death toll in their conflicts, genocides and uprisings make most European conflicts look like a walk in the palk (untl the 20th C)
1 Mao 49-78 million deaths
2 Stalin 23 million
3 Hitler 17 million
4 Leopold II of Belgium 15million
5 Hideki Tojo 5 million
6 Ismail Enver Pasha 2.5 million
7 Pol Pot 1.7million
8 Kim Il Sung 1.6 million
9 Mengistu Haile Mariam 1.5 million
10 Yakubu Gowon 1.1 million
In the last 40 years of Queen Victoria's rule there were tens of millions of deaths from man made (trade policy led) famines in India. The numbers are disputed and sometimes the timeframe slips to 1880-1920, but I am confident that over 15 million Indians (that is pre-partition India - The Raj) died of starvation and disease directly caused by the actions of imperial administrators. That is from one part of the British Empire over just a few decades.
Absolutely Jon. During the British brutal colonial rule of Queen Victoria, 165 million excess deaths in India between 1880 and 1920. This figure is larger than the combined number of deaths from both World Wars, including the Nazi holocaust. But hey, never mind, send her victorious, happy and glorious …
Is that really true? The population of India was about 200 million in 1880 and rose to 250 by 1920, so how did three quarters of the population die in 40 years and another 200 million spring up? I’ve no doubt things were brutal in many places, they still are now but doesn’t seem to add up.
This thread is like Godwin's law in reverse!
[QUOTE=fingers;5508831]https://m.economictimes.com/news/ind.../102696431.cms[/QUOT
between 60 and 165 million , or something, just making numbers up
We've been expecting the new Hitler to come from a Far-Right party.
Is it the fluffy lefty Greens we should be keeping more of an eye on?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/g...lors-qftnppdz7
Michael Palin's series on Nigeria highlighted similar points and is well worth a viewing.
While religion is often aired as the key cause of such loss of life and/ or dignity, atheism reigns supreme, certainly throughout the 20th Century. It's interesting that atheists routinely urge that the Nazis were Christian, invoking Christianity to justify their horrors. This is false. Nazism and fascism never held themselves out as Christian enterprises. More particularly, Hitler himself despised Christianity. He saw Christianity as “meek” and “flabby” and sought to destroy it “root and branch”. He bemoaned why Germany was “stuck” with “feeble minded” Christianity and preferred other “strong-arm” systems. Hitler’s writings and speeches are so full of passages dripping with contempt for Christianity that to argue he was Christian is like arguing George Washington fought for the British during the Revolutionary War.
The same article continues:-
5 uncomfortable facts atheists need to hear
The most common argument is that atheism is not an ideology; it merely reflects the absence of faith in religion. They just don’t believe in God. Why can’t we please leave them alone?
But it turns out they don’t want to leave you alone. On social media most atheists are bizarrely vocal about their contempt for Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Judaism, for their beliefs. They believe these religions frustrate progress. They argue with great passion that we’d be better off if we just eradicated God once and for all. Godless regimes have always sought the eradication of God with passionate zeal, deadly efficiency on a mass scale, and unspeakable cruelty.
Such thinking is an ideology. Such “non-belief” has devastating consequences. Not believing in God is like not believing in seat belts. Or better yet: it’s like not believing in the police, the judiciary, medicine or fire stations. You don’t have to believe in them, but living in a world without them has consequences:-
Not least the top five on a list already mentioned in this discussion - all atheists:-
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,00 people murdered
Jozef Stalin (USSR 1932-39 only) 15,000,000 people murdered
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000 people murdered
Kim II Sung (North Korea 1948-94) 1.6 million people murdered
Tito (Yugoslavia 1945-1987) 570,000 people murdered
I think the takeaway here is that whether it's religious fanaticism, atheism, left wing extremism, right wing extremism, colonialist expansionism, protectionism, European, Asian, whatever it is, the ability to commit evil transcends it all.
Why doesn't this great all powerful fella called God you keep going on about use his power to improve the condition of the human heart and make it less depraved ?
Of course you will come up with the usual it's up to us humans etc etc .....the usual Christian get out clause when they are challenged on the power .....or lack of .....of the big man
God does nothing about the depravity and evil nature of humans of course because God ....who you lot say created humans
.....doesn't exist
If Stalin had been a nice guy and wiped out Christianity by educating people how stupid it all is instead of by mass murder he would have been more popular
There has been so much verbal rubbish talked about a myth by its deluded followers that its more than OK for others to comment on its stupidity
The churches and other worship places are free to practise so it's more than reasonable for the rest of society to discuss its validity