Opinion of Ho Chi Minh

[tpfkaw]

HP. The only good Communist dictator is - Wait, there are no good Communist dictators.

Deng Xiaoping was quite good given the circumstances.

[tpfkaw]

Communist = Automatic HP.

Eh, I have similar sentiments, but that's a bit too reductive. Whittaker Chambers redeemed himself and became a definite FF in my book. Even certain unrepentant communists, for example George Orwell, can qualify for FF status on balance. (In Orwell's case because his best-known work was de facto anti-communist, despite his actually being a communist).

[tpfkaw]

By the standards of who gets called a "fascist" or a "Nazi sympathizer," George Orwell was most certainly a "communist." (You may notice I did not call him a capital-C Communist). He was involved in far-left politics until the day he died, thought that the problem in Russia was that they'd deviated too much from the path of Lenin and Trotsky, and actually was willing to kill or be killed for the cause of Trotskyism. I said that I consider him to have been a positive influence on balance, so I'm not sure what people's problem is. (Other than the discovery, which I fail to realize because I'm so stupid, that nobody anywhere has ever been a "communist." For example, the initial subject of this thread was, in fact, a "nationalist.")