Internet memes, especially the political kind, are supposed to be clever little axioms that promote a cause. Often they’re just bumper sticker wisdom on pictures, with bad spelling to boot.

But then there is the meme that is so blatantly stupid, I’m surprised it doesn’t break the internet.

I saw that meme recently. I couldn’t believe the amount of derp it contained.

It looks like this:

Whoever put this historical travesty online should hang their head in shame, along with all the other morons who actually promote this. I’d bet a dollar to donuts that the idiot is some young twit who thinks that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a genius and that socialism can work.

Now there’s a partial truth here: the Russian Communists were indeed one of the three main Allied powers that defeated Nazi Germany. It’s also true that the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, as well as Sobibor and Treblinka.

But to exalt communists just because they were on the right side in World War II is ludicrous. In reality, the Communists were just as brutal as the Nazis, and there is really little difference. In fact, their body count is even higher. Except that our meme-maker probably never learned about this in school.

He probably didn’t know about the Holodomor, the artificial famine that Stalin used against the people of the Ukraine. Why did Stalin kill these people? Simply because Ukrainians rejected collectivization, so Stalin deported and murdered farmers and took their grain. He also ordered the murder of religious and cultural leaders, leaving society in shambles. Mass starvation resulted, and about 4 million died in the early 1930’s.

One survivor said:

“I remember Holodomor very well, but have no wish to recall it. There were so many people dying then. They were lying out in the streets, in the fields, floating in the flux. My uncle lived in Derevka – he died of hunger and my aunt went crazy – she ate her own child. At the time one couldn’t hear the dogs barking – they were all eaten up.”

But no Commmunist genocide here. Communists stop genocides, right?

Let’s carry on.

I wonder if the meme-maker ever heard of the Katyn Forest Massacre. That happened after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, and the Russians decided to do a little invading of Poland, too, only from the east. Hitler and Stalin had a convenient alliance in 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which gave Stalin free rein in Poland.

So Stalin dissolved the Polish government and set forth a wave of terror throughout the country, while his police arrested, deported, or executed 1.5 million Poles. Not only that, but the Soviets also executed over 10,000 Polish military officers, murdering them with a shot to the head and burying them in the Katyn Forest.

But no mass slaughter by Communists here. Move along.

Finally, let’s look at the ethnic cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe near the end of World War II. At the 1945 Yalta Conference, Stalin promised that he would deliver “reparations in kind” to Germany, and the brutal payback began. The Russians drove 14 million Germans from their homes in eastern countries and states. They forced younger Germans into slave labor on farms, mines, and construction sites.

And then there were the massacres. In the East Prussian village of Nemmersdorf, for example, the Soviets slaughtered 30 old people, women, and children — and that wasn’t the only massacre, either. Abandoned orphans roamed the forests of Lithuania; they were called “wolf children.”

One East Prussian refugee recalled:

“So there were graves everywhere. The villages looked sad and desolate, with rubble everywhere, furniture, doors, windows ripped from their hinges and smashed. The wind howled through the open houses and buildings.”

This was the largest forced migration in history. And it didn’t stop after the end of World War II, either; the expulsions, rapes, and murders continued after the war. The Soviets even kept German prisoners in former camps like Buchenwald. I guess they were into repurposing before it was cool.

So while Americans were helping to rebuild Germany and Western Europe under the Marshall Plan, the Soviets were busy making life hell for Germans in Eastern Europe.

I wonder if our meme-maker ever knew about this. Probably not, and I’ll bet most other young fools with stars in their eyes about socialism don’t know about this either.

Why are people, especially millennials, so, well, stupid about Communism?

Dennis Prager has the best explanation I have ever heard, all wrapped up in five brilliant minutes:

This is what kids should learn in schools. This is what history professors should teach their students. Except most of them won’t, because they’re invested in socialism, communism, and the brain-droppings of far-left historians like Howard Zinn. That’s how you get lots of young Americans who don’t know history, but are willing to believe any crap they see on the internet.

Because they can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true, right?