BRITISH CRITIC JULIE BURCHILL: WHY I WAS WRONG TO ADMIRE STALIN. In the 1970s, Burchill now writes, “I was pretending to be a punk, a lesbian and a Jew, but at least I could be true to myself in this way. ‘I don’t kiss, I’m a Stalinist,” I’d often say…I shudder with nausea when I remember the way I used to admire myself in them, pouting into the mirrors that I snorted speed off of. ‘I’m a sexy teenage communist!’ I would gloat. But I spat blood whenever I saw a fellow punk sporting a swastika. Why? What was the difference? My side had killed 20 million.”

At a minimum. “In his acclaimed book ‘The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties,’ Anglo-American historian Robert Conquest said: ‘We get a figure of 20 million dead [under Stalin], which is almost certainly too low and might require an increase of 50 percent or so.’”

And fascism mercifully died in 1945. Stalin’s ideology would kill 94 million in the 20th century, and keeps going today.

(Found via Kathy Shaidle.)