TL;DR I defend socialism like a fucking pile of Tankie trash.

I do think socialism and communism deserves at least a little more tolerance than fascism and nazism. True, attempts to form a communist nation have led to one or a few rather terrible people being given far too much power almost every single time, but the ideas of it are less inherently repulsive. Marx is actually a rather decently respected historian and academic who bought forward the very real issues of labour laws in the Mid-19th Century. Most big political parties in Europe either started off based upon the general ideals of socialism, or survived by incorporating parts of it ("Alright, then, here's your limits to the working week, we'll send kids to school instead of the mines." etc. etc.). By most accounts, he seems like a rather swell person (given my rather limited knowledge of him. If he ever advocated genocide of a specific race, then I would have to change my opinion, obviously. The killing of the rich would be a turn off if he didn't admit the potential for peaceful reform, which he saw happen in his life) Compare this to fascism, which has such lovely central tenements as the abolition of democracy (which, albeit, is shared with revolutionary socialism), the fetishisation and worship of the military and the state, and in the case of Nazism, the extermination or enslavement of all inferior forms of humanity. Hitler and Co. followed their ideology to the letter, and the nation they 'built' would've been a very funny joke if it were not for the ridiculous number of innocent people it killed.

Now, ideals aren't everything, Stalin and Mao were 'a bit crazy' in the same way the Sun is 'rather warm', and the ocean is 'a tad wet', and the countries they produced needed destruction or reform just as much as Nazi Germany did, but socialism at its core does embody some rather positive aspects of humanity and has in a way (though not the way Marx intended) made some tangible good change to the world. Fascism's only positive impact on the world has been serving as the honey for the idiots mocked on this subreddit to stick to.

^{Holodomorneverhappened.}

^/s