Thanks for leveling with me Prince. I admittedly was about to write a angrier response but then I stopped thinking: "Isn't Prince one of my regular readers? Haven't I seen his name before?" I thought if you read me regularly you are not intentionally trying to step on my toes.

I tried to balance my response to get across that I did not like the implication you made, without sounding like a total dick and lose you as a reader or just end up with an angry exchange leading nowhere. So thanks for your measured response.

I did not know you currently live under a dictatorship. That naturally makes the topic quite personal to you. Might I ask where, or do you want to keep personal details of the web, for safety?

Obviously as Nazi and Communist regimes have been practiced they have a lot in common. One oppressive dictatorship is not all that different from another I suppose. I am sure a despotic Islamist state will feel familiar as well.

Let me remark on Stalin vs Gorbachev. I feel the error in your reasoning is to treat Communism as the beginning. You would instead reframe it and argue that a regime like that of the Czar is more at risk of spilling into Stalin like abuse. And in this I believe history and empirical evidence is on my side. The worst attrocities of communist regimes usually happened shortly after transitioning from a previous dictatorship ot the new communist regime. Most communist regimes got milder, freer with time. The USSR was better under every leader that followed Stalin. In China, every leader after Mao was better than him. Even Fidel Castro has given people more freedoms over time in Cuba.

As for finding their inner hippie. Lots of revolutions fail and there are counter revolutions. History is full of them. Naturally any new regime is worried in the first years that they will get unseated. Why did Stalin kill so many officers in the red army? Because he was naturally terrified that the army would unseat him. And in many ways the worse you are the more reason you create for having people try to get rid of you. Thus people like Stalin could feed their own paranoia.

As for criticism of Fascism. I think this comparison is entirely fair. Fascist regimes have existed for quite some time. We had Fascism in Italy, Germany, Japan, Portugal, Spain and Hungary to name a few. Italy started early in 1922. Spain and Portugal lasted all the way into the 1970s.

Socialists had people like George Orwell criticizing Stalinism. To put it in context though, I see communism, democratic socialism/social democrats all as different branches of socialism. Thus in my view Orwell criticzing Stalin was one socialist criticizing another. And there was plenty of socialist intellectuals who criticized regimes such those of Stalin and Mao. It just goes to show that socialism is a very broad ideology with many schools of thought. Communism is simply a revolutionary form of it, where followers believe in implementing a socialist society in a very heavy handed manner. But even that is a simplification. Not all communists are like that. So I was not talking about later Soviet leaders criticizing Stalin at all.

My point is that socialism/communism had a broad political movement and following in many western countries. Many public intellectuals followed the ideology and believed in it. E.g. Einstein was an ardent advocat of socialism. Who will claim he was a totalitarian?

So here is the thrust of my point: There is not equivalent Fascist or Nazi public intellectual in democratic countries which ever argued against people like Hitler and Mussolin and suggested that best way for Fascim would be a democratic form of government. No, Fascism is completly linked to totalitarianism. It cannot be separated. Socialism is different. Socialism and totalitarianism can be separated. Democratic socialist movement led to e.g. the Nordic countries, while the totalitarian ones led to places like the USSR. Where are the "democratic" Fascist or Nazi states? They don't exist and the whole idea would be laughable.

I'll follow up more of your points in separate answers. This got a bit long...