Not really good article, mediocre analysis with misleading information.

One particular example is the killing of Chinese because they are Chinese. Never did Suharto collectively murder Chinese people like the military did to the communists members. When the massacres of 1965 took place, Chinese people might had been victims but their number was by no means majority.

I am not sure if genocide or ethnic cleansing are appropriate term to describe the communist purge. For East Timor, it may be appropriate but not for mass murder in 1965

Keith,

I do not dispute the evil of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Deng, but what makes you call them socialists? The last three were communists, though Deng set China on its current capitalist path, while Hitler was a Nazi. The fact that the Nazi Party’s full name, the National Socialist German Workers Party, contains the word “socialist” has no more meaning than the fact that communist dictatorships called themselves People’s Democratic Republics. They were not democratic and the Nazis were not socialists.

Chris C

Oh I probably should have used 'communist/socialist' rather than simply 'socialist'. Thank you for pointing out my ... er laziness.
However regardless of the leftist description the comment still holds water.

Deng was Mao's chief henchman throughout Mao's reign.

Hitler was not a member of the German Liberal, Conservative or any ultra right wing political Party. He was a member of the German National Socialist Party. It's policies were socialistic and as with all the socialist experiments of the 20 century it eventualy ended up a basket case of murder and mayhem and was characterised with an utter disregard for human rights.

I've never had any dispute about the communist dictatorships claiming to be democratic. Your comparison is a 'straw man' type argument... it's irrelevant ... and socialist still means socialist.

Keith's use of the term 'socialist' reminds me of revolutionary leftists' use of the term 'fascist' - a juvenile insult that disguises the real meaning of term and which the user is unable to explain when asked.

Rather than play with labels, let's look at facts. Hitler, like Soeharto, viciously attacked social democrats, communists and other leftists the moment he came to power. Hitler also had initial support of German big business and was admired by government figures in the West including Churchill prior to 1938. As an aside, Margaret Thatcher admired Deng Xiaoping and said so on Lateline when she was touting her biography here in 1993.

Hitler's regime, like Mussolini's before him, was characterised by extreme nationalism. Socialism (at least in Marx's writings) is characterised by internationalism and the idea that class struggle between the working classes and capitalists should end up in victory for the international working class. This is not only at odds with Hitler's policies but also Stalin's.

Read Marx's Communist Manifesto and Hitler's Mein Kampf and see the difference yourself. And also note the extreme nationalism in the ideology of self-styled communist regimes such as Pol Pot's Kampuchea, Mao's China and Stalin's Russia.

I read Zapata's comment and checked with an Indonesia expert at one of our Universities. He thought that Suharto's actions were not driven by anti-Chinese sentiment per se, although the dictator did use the PKI's link to China as a reason to ban Chinese publications.

So the word genocice may be a little inaccurate. War criminal, or perpetrator of crimes against humanity, might be a better description.

The murder of 1 million Indonesians to seize power makes Suharto one of the biggest mass kilers of last century, along with Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Churchill and the like.

And what do all these mass murderers have in common? They were totally committed to a system (no matter what they called it) that objectively was capitalist.

Hmm, I think it's pushing it to claim either Mao or Stalin were "committed to a system...that objectively was capitalist".

Surely the fundamental basis of capitalism is free enterprise - all citizens should be permitted to start and invest in their own business within a defined legal framework. This was surely not the case for most of Mao's or Stalin's rule.

I'd also suggest that "mass-murderer" does not just mean "anybody whose decisions resulted, directly or otherwise, in a large number of deaths". Do you really think the world would be a better place if Churchill had never committed to fighting off the Nazis? No question some of his tactics (and various public opinions) leave little to be desired, but given the alternative, we may have little alternative to be thankful that Churchill had little hestitation in acting in such a belligerent and revengeful fashion.