cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4870654
The book is largely taking claims / slander aimed at the Stalin-era Soviet Union and showing how it was largely untrue but also how things were way worse in the West. I know in one section he brings up how the prison system in the US South in the period I mentioned was pretty much just what anti-communists think the gulags were (and of course mostly it was black men who suffered). I don’t recall the exact context in which Losurdo brings up lynchings, though. I remember the focus was on how white society in the south wholly participated in it, not like it was just isolated incidents of just a few participants (lynchings were advertised in the newspapers in advance and often hundreds or thousands of people would show up).