Martin Amis: Comparing Stalin & Hitler [CC]

Author Martin Amis points out the similarities between dictators Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler.

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[absolutelyfookinnobody]

If you killed your kid and ate them to survive. Then you didn't survive. There is no way someone is coming back from that

[kamuelalee]

Comparing the two: Hitler was a monstrous murderer; Stalin was a monstrous, monstrous murderer.

[markstanton]

Who's to say that Hitler didn't have perfectly normal sexual tastes (remember them?).
He could well have been quite a romantic old fool for all we know.

[robertwilliams-mvok]

I assume he is drunk. This is complete nonsense.

[VladWFPReviews]

Having parents who survived the Ukrainian famine, which included cannibalism and many horrors, hearing a privileged Westerner saying Stalin "had to do it" is, frankly, revolting

[lsobrien]

I'm not sure Howard Stern's new hair colour does anything for him.

[sagarm]

Stalin is understandable? I do not understand a man who forced his loyal and close comrades into false confessions at courts and the destroy them. Even harder is to understand that he destroyed the best and brightest of his country - army officers, scientists, engineers, writers and artists - to such an extend that Russia found it hard to defeat even a small Finland. Stalin had 10 million Ukrainians starve to death, 2 million shot during the purge and jailed 20 million in Gulags of Siberia and Arctic (out of a total Soviet population of 200 million) and you find this also normal?

[gergeharris]

Novelists make poor historians and opinion is not knowledge and never will be!!!

[Arjmm]

It's quite interesting that somehow Stalin is rightfully held accountable for his crime despite fighting Nazis but somehow Churchill doing the same things Stalin did is somehow hailed as a hero.

[solb]

Amis actually imagined Hitler having sex and he probably got aroused.

[JK-brmu]

Dull, what a boring angle to take to talk about Hitler vs. Stalin.

[gregzeng]

Hitler's sexuality seems within the boundaries of normal human sexuality to me. Obsessive- compulsives can be very narrowly focussed that other "normal" interests are ignored.
Having a non- human companion of any sexuality is okay also,

[danielgreene]

Forget the political philosophy. Both were dictators who killed.their opposition a d both wanted world domination. Both stressed being a part of the country and puttimg it first whether you call it the motherland or fatherland. One ran all the commerece while one regulated all the commerce. Both claimed a love for commoners while livinv and flaunting a life of excess in all aspects.

[jessebarnes]

I agree with his analysis of Stalin, which a lot of people get wrong. Stalin was a sincere ideologue, not hungry for power for its own sake. Even the Terror, while extreme and certainly influenced by his own personality, can be entirely explained by his Marxist ideological commitment, by doctrine AND his belief in anti-socialist conspiracy by internal enemies and capitalist countries, his desire to replace communist officials with ideological trainees of his own, and his belief in his duty and competence above all others to realize the socialist vision.

I don’t agree with Amis on Hitler. Hitler too was a sincere ideologue, and his was no less a real and fleshed-out ideology than communism. Biological racism (and antisemitism based on belief in races with different, biologically instilled natures, as well as based on the perception that the Jews were behind Marxism, for whom it was a tool to destroy the German racial nation) was and is a real ideology. Amis seems to dismiss it as nothing more than an excuse for barbarism rather than a set of ideas to which people might subscribe to and be sincerely motivated by.

[nautika]

compare to Stalin is very hard i think only Temujin or Timur

[markfrancis]

who could understand ( I can't) running through the wholesale, class divided slaughter of the first War and what it could do to one.
yea, the guy was bad ... and ?

[davidallen]

I love how people show hate for everyone can tell they admire him so much.

[sagarm]

Intellectuals are so much concerned about human life and dignity. But why are they completely indifferent to the fact that Marxism is an ideology which attach scant regard for these? Do not these intellectuals feel ashamed when they justify Marxist atrocities? When Stalin kill, it is matter of ideological necessity. But if Hitler kills then it is atrocity!

If one can consider Marxism as an ideology, then what prevents one from recognizing that Nazism is also an ideology? Stalin exterminated peasantry using famine to further his ideological goal. Hitler exterminated Jews to attain his ideological goal also. But why is it that our left leaning intellectuals refuse to see that it was millions of innocents who had caused none any trouble who were ill treated and murdered? - be they victims of Hitler or Stalin

Communism is filth. Anyone who have taken pain to read Marx would be struck by the fact that he is a deluded person with non sensical destructive ideas. How could anyone see sense in Marxian claims that State will whither away and that humans will one day live in live sharing and caring for all times to come! Does this not betray a complete disregard for human nature?

It is a matter of surprise that millions of fools, for over hundred years, around the world, fell for Marx's rhetoric which had no root in human reality. I do not understand why intellectuals like Amis show the courage to tell the plain truth that Marxism is non-sense and those who found it attractive are either fools or criminal elements. And history have shown it again and again that Marxists are essentially a bunch of criminals who use veneer of an ideology. Do you doubt my claim? Then please note the fact that Marxists never came to power with support of majority and also --- do note that Marxists cannot rule without secret police, prison camp, mass murder and slave labor.

[James-nlfu]

Very amusing. A vegetarian?. Hitler never told lies(did he?) Stalin had to?... oh dear this guy must be really "British"

[rouranjuan]

Complete success has to do with piety and chastity and the accumulation of quantitative strength and aura of color