There’s a reflex in our culture–especially online–to flatten political history into a moral binary. You’re either on the side of the good guys or the monsters. In this simplified universe, to admire Lenin or Che Guevara is to place yourself in the same camp as those who admire Hitler. That comparison isn’t just historically false, it’s intellectually lazy.
Let’s draw a clear line, shall we?
Admiring Lenin or Che is not the same as admiring Hitler. It’s important to understand why, especially if we want to engage in political conversations that go beyond slogans and settle into substance.
Their goals were fundamentally different.
Hitler’s ideology was rooted in racial supremacy, conquest, and genocide. His vision required extermination. It was designed around hate. There is no version of Hitler that isn’t a fascist or a mass murderer.
By contrast, Lenin and Guevara operated under a radically different vision, however flawed. They saw themselves as liberators, fighting systems of exploitation and imperialism. Lenin wanted to smash the czarist monarchy and capitalism to empower workers. Che fought for global revolution against colonialism and U.S. theory, about freedom, equality, and solidarity, not domination and extermination.
Does that mean they got everything right? Hell no. The crimes can’t be ignored though.
Lenin authorized the Red Terror and laid the groundwork for the state repression in the USSR. Che oversaw executions of political enemies in revolutionary Cuba. They believed violence was a necessary tool of revolution. That can’t be whitewashed or excused with historical whataboutism.
However, here’s where critical admiration comes in.
You can admire someone’s courage, clarity of purpose, or strategic brilliance without endorsing every action they took. You can appreciate Guevara’s fearless commitment to anti-imperialism and still mourn the people who died because of him. You can study Lenin’s revolutionary theory and still criticize how it was implemented.
There’s a difference between admiration and apology. Admiration is honest. It sees both the brilliance and the brutality. It doesn’t romanticize, but it also doesn’t erase the context or potential of revolutionary struggle.
Apology is denial. It minimizes or justifies atrocities, insisting the ends always justify the means. That’s where things get dangerous.
If your admiration turns into excuse-making–“they had to do it,” “it was for the greater good”–you’ve stopped thinking critically. You’re no longer admiring. You’re worshipping. And revolutionary icons don’t need worship, they need interrogation.
Bottom line is history is messy and so are its heroes. We don’t need to build saints out of revolutionaries, and we don’t need to pretend they’re all devils either. The left does itself no favors by refusing to wrestle with the full truth of its icons. And the right discredits itself by comparing every revolutionary to a fascist.
So yes, I admire Lenin and Guevara. I admire their courage, their clarity, their willingness to challenge empires and imagine a different world. But I don’t ignore their flaws. I don’t excuse their crimes. And I don’t pretend they didn’t make serious mistakes at the cost of real lives.
That’s not an apology.
That’s what it means to learn from history instead of being trapped by it.
Sisyphus Shrugged 
Viewing the Republicans who lie that Hitler was a left winger reminds me a bit of Beavis and Butthead. Two barely audible, knowledgeless, fuck-witted, self-obsessed wankers. As Hitler was the leader of the Right Wing of the Nazi Party, I’m not sure why there is any confusion. Do they think that that party had two left wings? Do they think that the supposed personification of anti-semitism was inspired by the teachings of Jewish dude Karl Marx? Do they think that the Democrats and Liberals who he threw into camps when he came to power were somehow right wingers? Do they not admire the fact that he betrayed the working man and sided with the rich industrialists, just like the Republicans do today?
The Republican Party is “The anti-racist party”, apparently. Because Trump has never been racist. Nor was his KKK father. Nor are the Far Right militias (fat old men playing soldiers) with their swastika flags, or Musk with his Nazi salute.
It gets confusing though. The left are apparently the Nazis, yet its the right that does the Nazi salutes and waves the Nazi flags. Mixed messages from people who don’t like mixed races.
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Nailed it! The mental gymnastics it takes to call Hitler a leftist while cosplaying as a stormtrooper is Olympic-level. These people wouldn’t know a political spectrum if it goose-stepped across their front lawn.
There’s also a dark comedy in how history is rewritten by people who’ve never read a book without pictures. Watching them accuse the left of being Nazis while standing under a swastika flag…pure absurdity.
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Khmer Rouge – “Oi specky! Come here enemy of the state!”. Pol Pot associating a physical defect with intellectual superiority.
“You couldn’t make it up” is a phrase that is long past its use by date.
I think the problem is often that people need to become part of the madness to maintain their sanity. Just go along with whoever is in charge. Methamphetamine and sugary cakes should detract from any irregular concerns. Worked for the Nazis.
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A goose-stepping dance macabre, a divine comedy, a theatre of the absurd and the insane. Pitch darkness where once were mere grey shadows. Loss. Loss. Loss. Minds that are inside the fish bowl and others that are outside. But both are drowning. Some are thoughtless as they drown. Others analyse their depleting moments. But all are going down into the depths.
We have waved goodbye to someone(s) who meant something to us as they fell away from us. They might have meant EVERYTHING at one time.
Maybe being born itself incurs a debt. Born a bastard, back in the day. You’d never pay it off. A moral pauper, officially lost from decent society. Dead before you were dead. Dead before you were even born.
There’s never been justice. So why do we expect justice?
I know you know Kafkaphony. If people believe in something, no matter how corrupt, no matter how ridiculous, no …. “absurd” is better, No matter how absurd. It buys the puppet masters time and space to add more strings to their living marionettes. Thus even more control. If we dare to make an involuntary movement of our own they yank us back into line. (especially if we ain’t white or straight).
Ironically, if people aren’t restrained by others, they tend to restrain themselves. Probably why some Americans don’t ever leave their own county, let alone their own state and their own country. Because THERE BE DRAGONS!
The enemies of reason, the fake allies of decency, the gorgers of lies, are scared shitless of everything in the world that isn’t them. Its a Dark Age reflex reaction. If a new Black Death appears they crowd into churches, just like their ancient ancestors did, and spread the fucking plague way more effectively just like their ancient ancestors did.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe people should learn from shit that happened in the past. Its a novel idea. Though it won’t ever result in the Booker Prize.
Or maybe the reality is that real movers and shakers have to be cruel to really get things done. In which case Trump and Musk and all are the real successes in this world.
Which would make us are seriously inadequate subspecies.
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We don’t need to become monsters to fight people like Trump and Musk, we just have to stop pretending decency means passivity.
Then again, maybe we do have to become monsters to fight the monsters. What do you think?
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It’s why I gave up on social media, idiots arguing over what up or down means. It’ll only get worse now that the farce that is AI is churning out modified reality for people to wank over.
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I’ll argue where-the-fuck-ever if I know good and damned well what I’m talking about. The problem with social media and the internet in general is that no one seems to do any actual reading outside the internet or social media. People only read one side. I read all sides before forming an opinion. A lot of the people who are anti-communist were just raised that way in America and have never even read The Communist Manifesto. They’re still just spouting off 1950s Red Scare bullshit. I remember Trump calling Harris a Marxist and just thinking, “Motherfucker, do you know what a Marxist is?”
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It doesn’t help that anything with the slightest critique of capitalism is banned? People think socialist means traitor and communist means serial killer.
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I even got bullshit from the left when I told them I identify as a libertarian socialist. “Oh libertarians are worse than Republicans!” I didn’t say libertarian, ass clown. I said libertarian socialist. Now I just say anarcho-communist to fuck with everyone. It’s pretty much the same thing with a more in-your-face name.
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