alt Hacker NewsThis is satire, surely?
Downplaying the severity of despots like Mao by comparing them to democratically elected leaders is incredibly disrespectful to the 45,000,000 people that died as a direct result of catastrophic and coercive policies.
Replies
vaidhy • 05/03/2025
Why is "democratically elected" so important? Democracies can also kill a lot of people. Hitler was democratically elected, so is Netanyahu.
If you are so inclined, one was had good intentions, but backfired badly while other is explicitly cruel.
➕ show 2 replies
I assume the reference was to Bush’s foreign wars, which killed _dramatically_ fewer people (under a million even in the most expansive estimates I can find)… although they also brought widespread poverty, rather than mass industrialisation and wealth.