ERIC GENDLE’S letter (HAS, Sept 13) classing Spain’s General Franco together with Stalin betrays a certain divorce from reality and a singular lack of common sense.
General Franco, let us remind ourselves, murdered – some would say executed – several thousand communists, most of whom, during the Spanish Civil War, had been complicit in acts of mass murder themselves.
Stalin, by contrast, murdered 30 million people at a conservative estimate. The vast majority were perfectly innocent people. His colleague, Mao Tse Tung, murdered 50 million.
The different between General Franco and those two is fundamental and absolute. He was the no doubt aberrant product of something intrinsically noble and life-affirming and enhancing – the Christian faith.
They by contrast were the utterly repulsive and inherently evil products of something that is itself utterly repugnant and inherently evil – communism.
Tony Kelly, Crook.
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