Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
How should we respond to people who equate communism and fascism?
There is a renewed effort to lump those that started the Holocaust in with those that ended it based on simplistic ideas of 'totalitarianism' — this ignores fundamental differences in intent and outcome, explains the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
A Soviet anti-war poster

ANTI-COMMUNIST propaganda takes many forms. A recent trope, associated with the Prague declaration promoted by European right-wing forces, claims that abuses of human rights by communist governments were as bad as those of the fascists. Fascism is almost universally condemned; so if people can be persuaded that communists committed similar atrocities, they will shun communism too.

To challenge this distortion it’s not enough just to point out that communists have always been the most active opponents of fascism, that fascists have targeted communists as the first group to be eliminated, that it was the efforts and sacrifices of the Red Army and the Soviet peoples that did most to defeat the Nazi armies and liberate eastern Europe.

This is necessary — but not sufficient. The propagandists can reply that communism and fascism are rival “totalitarian” systems so of course they are each other’s main enemy.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Statue of Oliver Cromwell
Full Marx / 2 February 2026
2 February 2026

The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library

RITUALS: Wooden crosses with poppies and names of those being remembered at the Cenotaph in Victoria Square, St Helens, Merseyside
Features / 11 November 2025
11 November 2025

WILL DRY speaks to three former members of the armed forces about the political hypocrisy surrounding Armistice Day, how war is a function of class society, and the far right’s use of militarism and nationalism to divide working people

A new epoch v ‘the main stronghold of modern colonialism’
Features / 23 September 2025
23 September 2025

In a speech to the 12th Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, SEVIM DAGDELEN warns of a growing historical revisionism to whitewash Germany and Japan’s role in WWII as part of a return to a cold war strategy from the West — but multipolarity will win out