But articles consisting of only Hitler and Stalin comparisons persuade just about no one and is not the type of discourse I expect from HN.
I also agree with you. A more recent look is much more relevant and insightful than the linked article.
You shouldn't need to bring up those tired regimes even if you're trying to emphasize unrecognized analogies.
Especially when you've got a 92-year-old Soviet with a first-hand account, that speaks for itself without any further name-dropping.
Do you think Stalin and Hitler as we know were the same Stalin and Hitler as experienced in the 1920s-1930s? If you shed the baggage, can't parallels be drawn to the modern era?
Authoritarianism of the 2020s looks quite different from the 1920s, the 2020s have the Competitive Authoritarianism flavour of it, it's different, it will attack institutions in different ways than simply shutting them down and imprisoning members, it's more subtle, more disperse, but still has the same underlying traits. Comparisons are apt, even if just as a reminder of how things historically evolved from the pre-authoritarian phase into a full-blown one, remembering to trace that is as convincing now as it was in the 1950s...
I think the point is we may be past persuasion. The damage is done.
My takeaway from these articles is to pay attention to and invest more in China.