The double standard of extreme left vs right

A young woman named Ash Sarkar responded smugly during a recent interview with Piers Morgan, 'I'm a Communist, you idiot.' The fact that this young woman's comment was actually lauded by certain sections of the media says a great deal about the double standard with regards to extreme political views in Western society. Can you imagine anyone defending her if she had said, 'I'm a Nazi?'

Another example of the double standard occurred when it was revealed a few months ago that British Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had accepted payments for information he provided to a Czech intelligence agent when Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc. Corbyn denies that he knew the Czech diplomat was an spy but he didn't deny that he repeatedly met with the agent or that he received payments from him. It seems incredible that Corbyn hasn't stepped down or been sacked by his party, but of course he is in good company as a number of the senior leadership of the British Labour Party such as John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, are openly Marxist. Imagine the reaction if a leader of the Conservative Party was exposed as a Nazi.

It is acceptable to be a Marxist but not a Nazi despite the fact that the former creed is responsible for more human misery and a greater death toll over a much longer period than the latter. There has been precisely one Nazi regime since the philosophy was developed (even Mussolini's Fascists were not Nazis) whereas there have been dozens of Marxist regimes and the horrific consequences of that philosophy are still evident in places like North Korea today. Nazism wrecked havoc for twelve years and killed perhaps 20 million people whereas Marxism has been practiced somewhere in the world for a century and is estimated to have been directly responsible for over 100 million deaths. How many people need to die at the hands of Marxist regimes before people accept that it is just as abhorrent as Nazism?

The reason for the double standard is the moral pretence of Marxism - that is, it is carried out in the name of the collective good. 'From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs' is its motto, which sounds noble until you appreciate that to make it work you have to hold a gun to the head of the person of ability. The person holding the gun is the sole judge of who has needs and who is not using their abilities with sufficient diligence, and the threat of violence must be realised in order to maintain the pretence that the system is working for the greater good.

Modern Marxists claim that true Communism has never been practised but those who make such claims display an incredible arrogance. They are implying that they could usher in the utopia that the misguided Stalin and Mao couldn't. Of course, in reality these naive fools who think their Communism would be the benevolent ideal would be merely the next in line for the firing squad. Even in exile Trotsky was not safe from Stalin's bullets.

Violent repression isn't a bug of Marxism, it is a feature, and you have to wilfully blind not to see it. The media is complicit in this wilful blindness every time they use the expression 'extreme' or 'far' to describe the right-wing without using the same adjectives in respective of those with similar views on the left. I support the right to hold and express any political views, but I detest the hypocrisy of a media that labels even the mildest views on the right 'Fascist' while fawning on extreme leftists who promote what is arguably the most genocidal political system in history.