A great exhortation of our times is the need to ‘be kind’. It manifests itself among those who cry ‘refugees welcome’, who urge for ‘compassion’ for the feelings of those deemed oppressed, and for those who regard Paddington Bear as the embodiment of everything good in the world. More sinisterly, however, this mentality still shows up in those who would excuse the crimes of communism.
According to a Sunday Telegraph report, one of the BBC’s online resources for children, which provides an overview of communist ideology and history, glosses over the mass murders committed in its name. While the BBC Bitesize video, aimed at educating pupils aged 11 to 14 for use by teachers, outlines the central tenets of Marxism, and the emergence of the Soviet Union, it doesn’t mention Stalin, or other dictators, or the tens of millions who died under communist regimes. No mention is made either of the famines and mass killings in the USSR, Mao Zedong’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
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