As someone far left, I sort of agree. The hammer and sickle was conceived for the Soviet Union, and the Bolsheviks took power in a coup against the socialist provisional government that actually had popular support. It's a symbol of a movement that grabbed power in a coup and then went on to outlaw, persecute and kill socialists and communists with equal fervour as they killed reactionary supporters of the Czar (who had been deposed months before their coup).

At the same time it is in an odd position because it was also very early on, before it was widely known what was happening with the Soviet government, adopted by anti-authoritarian socialist and communist groups, some of whose members risked their life against Stalin, and it was later knowingly adopted by groups opposed to the Soviet regime, such as e.g. the Trotskyist 4th International, as well.

This makes it quite different to symbols that are singularly attached to totalitarian governments and movements, in that it also has nearly as long history of use by their opponents.

Personally I think it's unhelpful to use it, but I also understand those who use it as an attempt to "reclaim" socialist imagery that has been relentlessly abused.

I too am always baffled about how much more accepted communist imagery is than Nazi imagery. Mao and Stalins death counts far outstrip Hitlers. Also anyone advocating nazism in public would be rightly shouted down but you get heavily upvoted posts here advocating all sorts of nonsense proven to kill millions.

I have never seen anyone here advocating "all sorts of nonsense proven to kill millions" without getting shouted down for it. I would love to see examples (well, not love, but you get the point).

I have seen people here advocating anti-authoritarian socialist ideologies of the types that would get you executed by regimes like those of Mao and Stalin.

There are plenty of actual, unironic Stalinists and Maoists on Reddit.

I don't doubt it, but the claim I responded to was that we get "heavily upvoted posts here advocating all sorts of nonsense proven to kill millions". Key word being here.

Everybody read Elie Weisel's Night in school but almost nobody's heard of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, for one thing..

this is simply not true, please read up on Holodomor, forced Chechen relocation, etc. Stalin was pretty much as evil as Hitler.

Some of the mismanagement however was intentional (for example in Ukraine) and/or enforced to a criminal extent (thinking of China here). People died of starvation because their harvest was taken away in its entirety.

Down-voted for talking truth about the largest mass murders of the 20th century. Kind of makes you not want to be here, doesn't it?

Oh well. And I am myself European socialdemocratic, which should be just a little bit short of bolshevik for the American POV. :)

FYI Holocaust revisionists make similar arguments.