u/DrippinUncHo - originally from r/GenZhou
See sources in footnotes below. This post is an attempt to recreate the black book of communism using not ridiculous sources, then comparing the results with the equivalent of an anti-communism death count. A revision of the black book of communism is presented first, then a new book of anti-communism, with a quick overview of fascism and capitalist-imperialism at the end.
Three things to note:
-
The idea here is to beat them with their own framing, even if it sucks. The same methodology is used, find good sources and delegate the responsibility of all deaths with applied reasoning.
-
This is only a record of active losses, eg. Deaths from activities such as violence and man-made famines. It doesn’t account for passive losses due to the structure of imperialism. Sufficient to say, communism have been astronomically better than any other system in mitigating these. The comparison between India and China, where an amount equal to the great famine perish every 8 years due to capitalism in India, exemplifies the horrific record of capitalist passive deaths in the periphery. They must be remembered. But that’s not what we’re trying to keep track of here.
-
We’re unfortunately unable to rid ourselves of structural biases in these historical records. All the material used here is subject to capitalism, because of funding mechanism, because of the system that deploys reporters and researchers, powers that can silence, amplify, legitimize, or ignore voices. The class allegiance of this system inevitably leads to an outcome of lopsided historical records. It should therefore be kept in mind that continuous critical research will likely file down the numbers of victims of communism and adjust upwards the numbers attributed to capitalism.
A slightly gray book of communism
People’s Republic of China: 11,662,310 [1]
-
landlord campaign: 200,000
-
Campaign to suppress the counterrevolutionaries: 712,000
-
the great famine: 10,350,000
-
Cultural revolution: 400,000
-
4th July incident. 300
-
Falun gong crackdown: 10
Chinese civil war: 600,000 [2]
DPRK: 178,080 [3]
- wartime context.
Vietnam: 15,000 [4]
Khmer Rouge: 1,400,000 [5]
- understood in context of imperial aggression so traumatic can only be compared to the Hutus.
Afghanistan: 562,000. only partial responsibility [6]
Eastern bloc: 5,903. Must be weighted w. the righteousness of defascistization. [7]
Peru: 18,320 [8]
-
shining path: 17,600
-
TARM: 720
Somalia: 50,000. Context of civil war [9]
Ethiopia: 280,000 [10]
-
200,000 manmade parts of famine
-
50,000 villagization. context of civil war
-
30,000 red terror. context of civil war
Interwar Europe: 1,434 [11]
USSR: 5,337,900 [12]
- 714,000
Of which: 20,000 subject to arbitration in context of dekulakization-collectivization.
Of which: 681,700 are subject to arbitration over the still debated purges.
Of which: 12,300 are intermittent, and above.
Of which an unknown number constitutes legitimate verdicts to common crimes.
-
4,600,000 of which share of responsibility is disputable.
-
22,400 Poland
-
1,500 Mongolia
Republican Spain: 37,843. Must be understood as partially survivalist measures [13]
Malaysia: 1,865 [14] The same applies to the rest of the list.
Philippines: 9,800 [15]
Colombia: 35,000 [16]
Salvador: 3,750 [17]
====
20,261,362
Mao and Stalin are usually used as emblems of the total evil of communism. Outside Mao and Stalin, the death toll is (11,662,000 and 5,337,900)
= 3,261,462
A PITCH-BLACK BOOK ON ANTI-COMMUNISM
KMT: 5,138,000 [1]
-
5,110,000 wartime
-
28,000 on Taiwan
South Korea: 2,856,494 [1]
-
34,574 terror
-
2,821,920 wartime
Vietnam: 3,800,000 [2]
Cambodia: 600,000 [1]
Laos: 62,000
Indonesia: 3,000,000 [3]
Timor: 200,000 [4]
Yugoslavia: 3,008 [5]
Peru: 30,000 [1]
Interwar Europe: 46,971 [1]
Russia: 24,000,000 [6]
Spain: 595,000 [7]
Angola: 805,000 [8]
Malaysia: 9,998 [1]
Philippines: 33,200 [1]
Colombia: 227,197 [1]
Salvador: 71, 250 [1]
Nicaragua: 40,000 [9]
Guatemala: 200,000
Condor: 90,000 [10]
Granada: 93
Turkey: 5,000 [11]
Iraq: 5,000 [12]
Iran: 62,000 [13]
Thailand: 6,054 [14]
Zimbabwe: 20,000 [15]
Mozambique: 1,000,000 [16]
European theatre of WW2: 41 786 686 [17]
==
84,693,051
(42,906,365 outside the war)