So, I recently told my Dad I'm a communist and of course he hits me with all the people communists have tortured and murdered (More than Nazi's or anyone). I didn't know what to say. Please help me out.
Let's not get any debate here. That isn't what I'm seeking. I'm trying to become versed in communist apologetics. I grew up hating Communism not realizing that I was indeed what I hated the entire time.
I remember a scene in the movie Nicholas and Alexandra where it's after the Revolution and the deposed Tsar is describing his Bolshevik captors:
I've never known a heart without some murder in it. I made these men. They are our Russians. I am responsible for what they are. I let them starve. I put them in prisons. And I shot them. If there's hatred in them now, I put it there.
I think that, in order to understand communism, one has to look at what existed prior to their coming to power. In countries like Russia and China, their histories are quite rich, lengthy, and even somewhat intertwined (both were ruled by the Mongol Empire at various points in their history). I'm not judging them in any way, but as far as how they relate to their own history and how it was under communist rulers like Stalin and Mao - that's for them to sort out on their own.
I do have the utmost respect for the people in both of those countries, Russia and China. They are strong, tough, resourceful, intelligent, and a powerful capacity to endure hardship and adversity, which they've proven time and again this past century. I honestly believe that the world would be far better off today if we had taken an honest approach at friendship with those regimes, rather than hostility and enmity. Maybe they went too far, maybe we went too far. Maybe both sides had too many stubborn hotheads, but thankfully, cooler heads still ultimately prevailed and we avoided all-out warfare.
One might also consider the conditions of some of the other countries where communism gained a significant following. It's the same old story - the majority of people living in abject squalor, poverty, starvation - while a relative few at the top live in luxury. And they imprison, torture, and murder dissenters. It doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure out that some people living under such conditions might actually want to fight back.
When Westerners talk about communism, they have a tendency of overcomplicating the obvious. When I was growing up, people would talk about communism like it was some sort of mysterious, sinister, evil force which was going to grip us all. Back then, people believed in all kinds of communist plots and conspiracies out to undermine the American way of life.
There were some who thought the Beatles were a communist plot.
There were also fears that the Russians or Chinese could attack us or invade at any time, so we had to be constantly prepared for the worst. That's where communism also had a different angle from our point of view. It wasn't merely a question of what kind of ideology or political/economic system communism advocated domestically. It was also associated with loyalty to a foreign power which was hostile to our own country.
As for your dad mentioning the atrocities committed by some of these regimes, there's probably very little point in trying to defend the indefensible. There are things which have been done by my own government which are indefensible - even though we've had a supposedly "free" and "democratic" system. Some might argue that, even despite whatever has been done by Western governments, communists are/were still worse in terms of the vast number of victims.
But then, does that tell the whole story? Based on the West's own geopolitical aspirations, any and all non-communist regimes were considered favorable to Western interests, even if these non-communist regimes were not exactly free or democratic (or even all that capitalist, for that matter). That didn't matter, just as long as they weren't communist. But it also involved a great deal of interventionism in other country's civil wars - war by proxy. We've supported some rather despicable regimes and factions in the name of "freedom," but I guess that was better than letting them fall into the clutches of the Evil Empire.
But it did do a lot of damage to the world and kind of screwed things up. We're still having to deal with the consequences of all that.