Zoney wrote:
I do not doubt that assertion, but it's more to do with the specific circumstances involved. Eastern Europe was mentioned. Well, the USSR sure wanted to control those countries, but the complete eradication of their peoples was not attempted (even if less "total" activities were going on). I don't doubt many in Eastern Europe would not like to see a hammer and sickle, but I don't think it's remotely comparable to what the Swastika stands for to Jews.
I'm not sure how the supposed reasons for murder are relevant to the repugnance of symbols associated with those murders. The fact that they are murders and were committed under the auspices of that symbol seems to be the salient point. The fact that many more murders were committed under the auspices of the symbol you dismiss as being less abhorrent further raises confusion in my mind about your system of measurement of the worth of a life and the crime of taking it.
Apparently, to you, killing someone for being a Jew is more wrong than killing someone for speaking out of turn. To me, it's equivalent in either case, because in both cases it is murder.
Completely aside from that, the swastika has been used for other purposes for hundreds of years before World War II, including as a Christian symbol, while the hammer and sickle went from obscurity to symbol of an oppressive, mass-murdering regime in a relative blink of an eye.
And also, if we are to begin considering "indirect deaths", well, the US is responsible for quite a lot "indirectly".
Let's not start with the circumstantial ad hominem comparisons. It would be nice if you'd retract that statement.
-- Chad