May First Update

For John, BLUF:  We really do need to acknowledge that we supported a mass murder during WWII, the Big One.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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"Victims of Communism Day"

By Ilya Somin, in The Washington Post, on 1 May 2016.

The three biggest Communist mass murderers: Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.

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Quoting from the article:

Today is May Day.  Since 2007, I have defended the idea of using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day.  I outlined the rationale for this proposal (which is not my original idea) in my very first post on the subject:

May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists.  But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their [authority].  I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined.  We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day.  It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny.  And May Day is the most fitting day to do so….

Someone I know noted:

It is interesting that far right political movements are forever tied to Hitler's murders.  Far left political movements rarely if ever have to answer for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc... or, for that matter, for China, Venezuela, or Cuba today.  In particular, Social Democratic parties are somehow immune from the observation that the greatest criminal movement in the history of the world was born from a majority vote regarding the control of the party newspaper of Russian Social Democrats.

Just saying.

Regards  —  Cliff