re: #112 CarolJ
The reason why this is an issue is that for decades certain parts of the American Left have in turn longed for a Benevolent Dictator who was all of the socialist dream without the messy stuff of elections and having to convince people who were not “enlightened”. So they turned a blind eye to the repression. Literacy means little if they tell you what to read and censor the books. Or throw writers and such in jail for daring to write something that the regime doesn’t like.
This is true in China as well-and by the way, they praised Mao too until China at least tried capitalism with a mean face.
Each new revolutionary in turn gets praised until the purgings start, or they prove to be less than woke.
The reason why it’s an issue is that for as long as I’ve been alive, the Right has exaggerated just how large those “certain parts of the American Left” have been, while overlooking the fact that those revolutions did not overthrow benevolent egalitarian democracies.