NBC Trivializes Communism's Evil, Calls It 'Pivotal Experiment'

With images of a hammer and sickle moving across the screen, opening coverage of the Sochi Olympic Games included NBC’s description of communism as “one of modern history’s pivotal experiments.”

NBC’s opening video paid tribute to Russia:

Russia transcends. Through every stage of its story, it’s resisted any notion of limitation. Through every reinvention, only redoubling its effort to cast the towering presence. The empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint. The revolution that birthed one of modern history’s pivotal experiments.

If a journalist had described the Third Reich this way, he or she would have been fired on the spot. Yet the number of deaths under Hitler’s regime was far eclipsed by the number of deaths under Soviet leaders.

Even when taken in totality–looking broadly at fascist regimes throughout the world in the 20th century compared to communist regimes–Reason.com cites 28 million persons killed under fascist governments in the 20th century and 94 million killed under communist ones.

Both forms of government were (and are) evil, but NBC didn’t even blush as it trivialized the one that killed three times more than the other.

Moreover, NBC made no reference to the terror tactics intrinsic to communism. But as Edward Radzinsky’s Stalin shows, the process of wiping out one’s political enemies in a communist regime involved cruelty, terror, and torture.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.