ILYA SOMIN ON Eric Hobsbawm And The Neglect of Communist Crimes. “I will add only that Hobsbawm’s career is yet another example of our neglect of communist crimes, demonstrated in this case by our willingness to excuse their apologists. Had Hobsbawm been a comparably dedicated and unrepentant apologist for the Nazis or even for a run of the mill right-wing authoritarian regime, he would not have been a respected member of the intellectual establishment on both sides of the Atlantic, and his books would not have been required reading for undergraduates all over the English-speaking world.”

I think the bottom line is that communists get better press because the press, and academia, contains a lot more communist sympathizers than it does Nazi sympathizers. That’s all.