Victims of Communism Day

At Reason:

Today is May Day. "Over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their [authority]. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes' millions of victims."https://t.co/kfMLXupao7

— reason (@reason) May 1, 2018

While communism is most closely associated with Russia, where the first communist regime was established, it had equally horrendous effects in other nations around the world. The highest death toll for a communist regime was not in Russia, but in China. Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward was likely the biggest episode of mass murder in the entire history of the world. In terms of comprehensive state control over society and suppression of civil liberties, Soviet communism fell short of the even more thoroughgoing totalitarianism of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and North Korea.