Loose labeling is a sign of loose thinking.
By: Michael Wade
Published: Aug 2, 2025
The terms “Nazi” and “Fascist” are so loosely used these days they are beginning to mean “someone I don’t like.” You’re far less likely to hear “Communist” as a slur. The fact that it has not attained the same taint as the others is worthy of study.
A few years after the end of the Cold War, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig and a friend were dining at a packed Moscow in-spot. When the friend joked that the restaurant was so opulent that they could have been in Beverly Hills, Haig responded, “This place has fewer Communists.”
And that brings me to a proposal.
At a time when there is a serious anti-Semitism problem on university campuses and a shocking number of people root for Hamas, our high schools and colleges need to devote more time and attention to what I’d call Totalitarian Studies. The Holocaust and the evil practices of Hitler’s regime obviously deserve more attention, but so does the wretched story of the communist countries.
Why? Because the horrific history of those regimes has often been given a pass.
Consider the description of Communism given by Britannica Kids, a publication of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Communism is framed as a rather benign system for sharing burdens and preventing poverty.
Its lengthy record of slaughter and oppression is neatly scrubbed.
Here’s an excerpt: “After World War II ended in 1945, the Soviet Union encouraged many countries in eastern Europe to set up Communist governments.”
Encouraged?
Think of all that is cloaked behind that mild word: occupation by the Red Army, oppression by the Soviet secret police, confiscation of property, the death of free speech, and the imprisonment and murder of political dissidents.
It’s hard to believe that blunder was done inadvertently.
“Soft on Communism” used to be a political description. Unfortunately, in many cases, it was an apt one. When President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire”, he received a sizable amount of criticism for his candor.
But he was right on target. The Soviet Union was evil, and it was an empire. And it killed millions of people. Combine the Soviet figures with the butchery of the Communist Chinese government and Communism easily holds the world record for its slaughter and oppression of human beings.
The fact that calling someone a Communist does not appear to have the same punch as its Nazi and Fascist counterparts makes one wonder about the amount and quality of the time given in grade and high schools to examining the real record of the Communist regimes.
I’m sure that the students are still reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, but are they given the roots of those novels?
Are they familiar with the purges depicted in Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler? Do they know about The Gulag Archipelago revealed in the book of that name by Alexander Solzhenitsyn or his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich? Have any of them or their teachers ever read Coming Out of the Ice by Victor Herman? Have they read Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag by Armando Valladares? Is there any mention of Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng?
Are they aware of the Soviet regime’s cold-blooded murder of the former Russian Czar, his wife, and their children while they were in Soviet captivity?
Do they know about the intentional famine that killed millions in Ukraine? Do they know what the Pol Pot regime did in Cambodia? Are they aware of what happened during the cultural revolution in China? [Do they even know that a totalitarian regime is in power in China?]
Some films, such as The Lives of Others, The Killing Fields, and Mr. Jones could be helpful teaching tools just as Schindler’s List and the extraordinary documentary, Shoah, should be part of Holocaust education.
James Clavell’s book and film The Children’s Story came out during the Cold War, but both are still timely.
Classes in Totalitarian Studies could explore the mindsets of ruthless totalitarian regimes and how monstrous things have been done by idealistic people striving to create and impose a utopia.
Contrasting the American Revolution with what happened after the revolutions in France, Russia, China, and Iran would provide powerful contrasts.
If that seems like a lot of work, here’s some good news: After a single classroom hour, the students would be far ahead of the editors of Britannica Kids.
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These omissions aren't accidental or an oversight.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been re-written, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been re-named, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” – George Orwell, "Ninteen Eighty-Four"
The aristocracy who control education understand that If people know too much about the reality of the previous revolutions, they'll be less likely to sign up for their next one.