Stalinist backwater

As you may or may not be aware, yesterday North Korea announced the death of communist dictator Kim Jong-il. For seventeen years, he ruled a country that has one of the worst human rights records in the world, and by any measure is the world's worst persecutor of Christians. Its 25 million people live in starvation and are denied basic freedoms. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are held in prison camps.

Its bedfellows like China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam also have human rights issues, but they have pragmatically adopted a somewhat less totalitarian expression of communist ideology. North Korea holds the distinction, for want of a better word, of being the world's sole remaining hard line communist nation. 

The video clip you see here is from Fascist Jackboots Shall Not Trample our Motherland, a 1941 Soviet propaganda cartoon from shortly after Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, complete with English subtitles. At 0.44, the caption reads, "fascism brings massive destruction, starvation, and death to hundreds of thousands and millions of people!"

That was true and not just propaganda. We can now note with hindsight and a touch of irony that under the rule of Lenin, Stalin, and their successors, until it all imploded in 1991, the people of the Soviet Union suffered in much the same way. Communist rule was no more just than that of National Socialism. In other words, "We don't need the Nazis to oppress our people. We're already doing a fine job of that on our own."  It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics, but communism's death toll has been astronomical. Sadly, millions of voiceless and powerless North Koreans continue to suffer.