Media double standard when it comes to Nazi vs. Communist crimes

By Aussiegirl

No memorials are raised to the millions of nameless victims of communism, no museums commemorate their fate. Not one of the perpetrators of the Stalinist mass murders has stood trial for their manifest crimes against humanity. They are conveniently forgotten, but we do so at our peril, because whereas Nazism is dead, Marxist-Leninism is alive and well and working actively with radical Islamofascism to bring down the West.

Media Monitor - Nazis and Reds: The Media Double Standard - October 14, 2005

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post is one of many journalists who have written about Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter who died recently. Wiesenthal was determined to find the Nazis who had survived the Nazi regime and had fled to escape justice. His commitment and dedication deserve our praise. Tragically, Fisher's paper shows no similar determination to identify and uncover the adherents of communist totalitarianism, a system that according to The Black Book of Communism has killed as many as 100 million people in the 20th century. What does this tell us about the double-standards, bias and dishonesty of our press?

On the occasion of the September 24 "anti-war" march in Washington, D.C., some of the communists were visible but others were not. Those who tried to maintain some degree of anonymity operated under the cover of front organizations such as International ANSWER. But basic research could have determined, for example, that the national coordinator of ANSWER, Brian Becker, was a Workers World Party operative. Those out in the open included other members of the Workers World Party, who maintained a literature table near the rally site where they sold copies of the works of V.I. Lenin.

This may show that our media consider communism somehow fundamentally different than Nazism. Reporters may consider Nazism reactionary and communism revolutionary. This attitude reminds me of the comment made by Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post decades ago when the communists were trying to take over Central America. The guerrilla groups were regarded by the press as the "good guys," she said.

For many in the press, Nazis were bad but communists somehow were good. It's true that these two ideologies fought during World War II. But they came to blows, as history shows, not because they were different but because they were essentially the same. Investor's Business Daily noted, "…all the century's great mass murders—Mao Zedong (65 million), Stalin (25 million), Hitler (21 million), Pol Pot (2 million)—were communists or socialists." Both Nazism and communism were also designed to bring the whole world under their dominance. The U.S. quickly understood that fact after the end of World War II, after the U.S. had entered into a temporary alliance with Soviet Communism against Hitler and the Nazis. The Cold War ensued, as the Soviet Union expanded into Eastern Europe. The communists took China, and South Korea-and later South Vietnam-came under attack. In the 1980s, the communists made their move for control of Central America.