Comment by b-man | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by b-man | Hacker News Reader

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Specifically one from my own country,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artur_da_Costa_e_Silva

Argentina's story is a bit more brutal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Argentina_(1966%E2%8...

All over South America during the 60~80 there were numerous 'capitalist' brutal dictatorships.

And then there's more, such as

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suharto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi

Never forget, what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but that you were willing to do it in order to maintain your power.

I'm not finding counts of deaths, nor listings of atrocities, for these. I think you're stretching the "monster" thing here; they're not in the same league as Lenin and Mao.

what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but that you were willing to do it in order to maintain your power

But if you believed that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest good" nonsense or something), then it's OK? That's nuts.

I'm not finding counts of deaths, nor listings of atrocities, for these.

Argument from ignorance. They were in the same league from the point of view of their victims.

But if you believed that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest good" nonsense or something), then it's OK?

I never said that. From available evidence, not one of the people you mentioned did their atrocities for the ``greatest good'', and it would not matter if that was the case, because the willingness to commit atrocities is the monstrous thing.

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