French National Front expels founder Jean Marie le Pen

I think your family's misfortunes have blinded your judgement regarding a whole political movement that possesses a very wide spectrum of opinions and ideals, like every political movement does. It's a shame, but you're entitled to your opinion. I just wish you wouldn't be so quick to compare someone's use of a common word, or one of the major political movements in Europe, to one of the worst political regimes in world history. You're not doing anyone any favours, especially yourself.

The issue I have with left wing parties is that they are and always will be connected to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Just look at this story for instance.:

http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/lichtenberg/mit-stalin-und-mao-in-die-vergangenheit

You can see the most important members of the so called "Left" party in Germany laying down flowers for some leftists that no one gives a shit about anymore except for them. But then you will see their supporters, there is literally a guy carrying around a Stalin picture and saying to reporters "he wasn't that bad", these are the kind of people that these politicians want to be associated with. Can you imagine the international outcry if this had happened at a CDU rally and with a guy carrying around a Hitler picture (which I personally would find less offensive)? There would be week long discussions about how racists and right wing germany is, but because this is a left wing party ("those are the good guys") no one gives a shit.

Then we have people in Germany like Sarah Wagenknecht, she is currently the leader (together with another guy) of the "Linke" party in Germany. This is what she had to say about Stalin:

http://www.glasnost.de/pol/wagen.html

She is basically saying that he improved the situation in the Soviet Union with his politics. She didn't mention a single time that he was a mass murded that was reponsible for the death of up to 50 million people (more than Hitler).

THIS person is now the leader of the left wing movement in Germany, can you even imagine that?
I can guarantee you that if there was a single politician in Germany that said that Hitler "wasn't that bad" they would have lost their job within a couple of hours. But she gets rewarded for what she said, literally defending Stalin.

Oh, but I am not finished yet. The German Linke is the spiritual successor of the the SED, which was the puppet socialist party in the DDR controlled by, you guessed it, the Soviet Union.

No matter how you turn it, left wing in Germany will always be associated with Stalinism (Wagenknecht) or the Soviet Union (Linke, SED), and those involved are not even ashamed of that.

/r/europe Thread Parent Link - bbc.com