Teribus, you wrote:

"...who purported to be scions of the Marxist left..."

That's a telling phrase. Perverts, who purported to be "Christians", raped kids in the Texas colony and were responsible for the Waco diasaster and the Oklahoma bombing. Neither of us would wish to tar all Christians with the same brush, because of the actions of a few criminals, who call themselves Christians. What somebody purports to be is neither here nor there. It's what they do what counts. As for admitting that Marxists are intrinsically worse than their opponents, or that they they do more deliberate harm than their opponenents - that will be a long time coming.

"We are talking about recorded historical fact here alanabit, not opinion."

OK then Teribus, prove to me that they killed "one hundred times more" people than the Fascists of Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Portugal!

Stalin was a common or garden thug. Mao was a mixture of a thug and a theoritician, who was ill suited to power. The same was true of the despicable Pol Pot. Castro was an opportunist. However, he reduced adult illiteracy and infant mortality to levels lower than those in parts of Washington DC. As for Ho Chi Minh, perhaps we should ask the Vietnamese if they would like a return to the reign of President Thieu, for whom the USA government shipped out millions of dollars of gold booty at the end of the war, which he had made from his "interests" in drugs and prostitution?

I have nowhere defended Mugabe's abuse of power or arrogant refusal to submit to a free and fair election.

"By the bye, the record does show that Pinochet bowed to the will of his people." Wrong. He negotiated deals to get himself out of prosecution and frequently threatened another military coup if the government refused to bow to his bidding. He was a a thug and a bully and thoroughly deserves his place in history alongside traitors like Stalin, Pol Pot, Franco and the other riff raff.

I wrote in an earlier post that the phrase "Marxist dictator" was inherently absurd. However, in my life time, one openly Marxist president was elected. He was, of course, Allende of Chile. He was neither a saint nor an economic genius. However, I doubt even you Teribus, would like to put him up alongside monsters like Stalin. We will never know whether he could have achieved much, because with their usual commitment to democracy in South America, the CIA enlisted the traitor and thug Pinochet to depose him.

In short Teribus, I freely condemn any abuse of power by any politician - left or right. However, I reject totally the absurd assertion that so called "Marxist" politicians are intrinsically more evil than the other power grabbers of this world. It makes about as much sense as proclaiming that a Christian murderer is better than a Muslim murderer.