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I think the point that Hitler has an unjustifiably outsized reputation as the face of evil isn't unsubstantiated, but a far better example of a communist regime that far outstripped Hitler in terms of proportional body count would probably be Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge at large, who killed approx 25% of their population (among working-age men, the primary targets of the genocide, this figure rises to an astonishing 50-70%; very smart choice to absolutely decimate your main worker base in a primarily subsistence agrarian economy) while having power for less time than the Nazi Party.
They also grabbed infants by their legs and smashed their heads against chankiri trees to stop them from taking revenge after their parents had been killed, practiced Unit 731-like human experimentation including vivisecting people alive and injecting coconut juice into victims' veins, etc. It’s almost comical how exaggeratedly evil they were, and all these factors taken together probably makes them a very strong candidate as the worst regime in history. In this light, the fact that communism has a better reputation than fascism in the current day is beyond ridiculous - McCarthy, ironically enough, really did a great job inoculating them from criticism.
EDIT: Additional, unrelated thought: The Khmer Rouge were highly influenced by French communist schools of thought; many members of the party studied at the Sorbonne. I always wonder how the intelligentsia who promulgated such ideas managed to live with themselves upon seeing the fallout. Frankly, imagining myself in such a situation makes me viscerally understand the appeal of seppuku as a practice.
I will concede that the Khmer Rouge were at least as evil as the Nazis, if not worse. (Given certain proposals of the more extreme Greens [the term 'Khmer Vert' has been mentioned among certain climate dissidents], this puts Elongated Muskrat's disputed gesture in a different light.)
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My theory for why Hitler is seen as a unique evil compared to Stalin and Mao was because the western powers were allied with Stalin and Mao and made war against Hitler. Then it would follow that the way we see Stalin, Mao and Hitler today is poisoned by the propaganda of the past. But I guess that would not explain why Pol Pot is not seen as uniquely evil because the west fought against Cambodia.
The west (well, mostly the US) fought against Pol Pot taking control of Cambodia, but even the US opposition was incidental enough that we don't even think of it as an American war; we were mostly bombing the hell out of North Vietnamese logistics routes plus any Cambodians unfortunate enough to be in the blast radii, and none of it stopped the Khmer Rouge from taking control in the end.
The fight which took Cambodia away from the Khmer Rouge was accomplished by, of all nations, Communist Vietnam. I'd like to imagine that this proves the existence of a "what the fuck are you doing with those babies" red line that even most Communists don't want to see crossed, but I think the reality was more like "territorial disputes got violent and that snowballed". Regardless of Vietnam's motives, at this point for obvious reasons the west was giving them no support, and a little political resistance, and so when it turned out that Chomsky was wrong we didn't exactly have any reasons to be proud of or want to talk about the whole affair.
This was essentially what occurred, yes. Democratic Kampuchea and Vietnam initially had an alliance, but the Khmer Rouge harboured a belief that the VCP's goal was to start an Indochinese federation with Vietnam at the helm, so they started purging their own Vietnamese-trained members and attacked Vietnam multiple times in fear of their expansionism. These acts of aggression by Cambodia was what got Vietnam to take action, it was not because Vietnam was so appalled by the behaviour of the Khmer Rouge that they did not believe it could be allowed to stand. Keep in mind also that the VCP did participate in persecutions (though not to the same degree as Kampuchea) and was so hell-bent on collectivising the means of production that they almost let it starve their nation.
In general, with regards to these things it's helpful to assume they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. It's all realpolitik and always has been. Communist nations are often prone to mutual distrust and territorial infighting in spite of the shared ideological well they draw from - another great example is Ethiopia and Somalia. Despite the fact that Somalia is often brought up to take unearned potshots at libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism, if you look at the history Somalia as it is now was actually created by the infighting of two dictatorial communist governments - the Derg (Ethiopia) and the Somali Democratic Republic, governed by Siad Barre. In short Barre attempted to invade Ogaden on the basis that Ethiopian administration of the region was essentially tantamount to an African colonial occupation of a primarily Somali-occupied area, promulgating a war which he couldn't win once the USSR backed Ethiopia. This defeat, coupled with a refugee crisis created by the war and extreme disregard on Barre's end toward the Isaaq people (who were largely the ones who bore the cost of the crisis) was the catalyst that resulted in the blossoming of a full-scale civil war and the complete disintegration of Somalia.
Man from what I can tell this is one of the most bruh moments in all of history. As I recall, Vietnam had, essentially, overwhelming firepower over the Khmer Rouge (particularly since the Khmer Rouge were systematically eliminating their own manpower base) but the Cambodian regime still insisted on randomly invading and wiping out villages along their borders until Vietnam got fed up with them and overthrew the government.
Then China threw a hissy fit about it and invaded Vietnam in retaliation.
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The particular disreputation of Hitler is not just due to his evilness, but also due to the fact Germans are Western. Communism gets to largely write Khmer Rouge off its reputation because most people don't seem to care about third-world Asians (Chinese less so, but also, owing to how numerous they are) massacring each other. As the meme goes, "emperor Ching Chuang Hong declares minor border war, 100 millions dead".
I think that’s most of it, but I think Eddie Izard also had a good point that Pol Pot and Stalin “killed their own people, and we’re sort of fine with that.”
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No, no, the meme goes more like "In 924, Emperor Quan sat on the throne. 392 million would die."
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