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Atrocities committed in Soviet Russia/Soviet satellites are different from atrocities committed by the Nazis because one set of atrocities was motivated by racism and the other was motivated by various other stuff?Yes. Basic human morality 101. Even courts understand this, and have since time immemorial. It's another thing to do something out of pure hate/greed/etc and another to do something believing you did something good, or that you did it in self-defense, etc.
>As long as people are being subjugated and murdered to "make the world better," it's all pretty much the same to me.
Well, then fighting Nazis is the same thing as being a Nazi, after all both kill. Or killing people in the Civil War to abolish slavery is as bad as any civilian murder. But in reality people understand circumstances where killing is considered justified, even if bad.
It's just that some only apply those things to the kind of causes and people they care about.
>I also don't know why you think that what the European colonial powers did is "painted as A-OK." Maybe some people think that, but as an American I was taught that what was done to native Americans was definitely not "A-OK."
>I also don't know why you think that what the European colonial powers did is "painted as A-OK."
Because they got out of it with a slap on the wrist (if not on top), because they pull the same shit even today, and because they feel pretty damn good about having done it, when they're not totally ignorant about it.
>Maybe some people think that, but as an American I was taught that what was done to native Americans was definitely not "A-OK."
And yet everything done still today to native Americans and/or blacks points that few care -- and of course nobody is giving any land back, are they?