Some things to keep in mind when talking about any kind of dictatorship

For years I have been denouncing the support and complicity of left-wing parties with socialist and communist dictatorships.

Against false dichotomies: communism and national-socialism are the same scum
The left that wants to jump over the wall to East Berlin and sail on a raft to Cuba

Some may think that talk of dictatorships is a thing of the past. However, today more than 1.5 billion people, 20% of humanity, live under anti-democratic, far-left regimes, in dictatorships such as communist China, North Korea, Cuba, Laos, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Vietnam.

One of these dictatorships, China, is constantly whitewashed by a multitude of media outlets, which never refer to their dictator by calling him that (they speak of "president"), and its single party has a cordial relationship with parties that call themselves democratic (such as the Popular Party, the PSOE and the Communist Party of Spain), without most of the media being scandalized by it and without any controversy breaking out.

That said, I feel encouraged to write some notes that I think are advisable to keep in mind when talking about dictatorships:

• Every dictatorship deserves rejection from democratic positions. All of them, regardless of their ideology. What is not coherent is, for example, that in Spain it is penalized to praise Francoism but not communist dictatorships that were much worse and killed many more people than Francoism.
• There are dictatorships that are less harsh than others. Franco's regime in Spain was less harsh than the communist dictatorships, and the Polish communist dictatorship was less harsh than the communist dictatorships in Albania or Cambodia. Putin's dictatorship is also less harsh than North Korea. But they are all dictatorships, that is, regimes where power is imposed by non-democratic means, preventing the normal exercise of political opposition.
• Among the worst dictatorships are totalitarian regimes: communism and Nazism. It is not consistent to call for political condemnations of dictatorships in which there were more margins of freedom, such as Franco's regime, and at the same time refuse to condemn the crimes of the worst dictatorships, as the Spanish left did three years ago, with absolute shamelessness and without the media making a fuss about it.
• The so-called "historical memory" or "democratic memory" is selective amnesia if it forgets left-wing dictatorships. This is precisely what happens in Spain, where the legislation approved by socialists and communists systematically ignores the crimes of communist dictatorships and their victims, as if they did not deserve any respect or remembrance.
• Looking for another name for your dictatorship doesn't mean it wasn't one. Many leftists refer to Cuba's communist dictatorship as the "Cuban revolution." Even Wikipedia speaks of a "socialist state" but avoids saying "dictatorship." This is a custom that occurs with all dictatorships by those who have some kind of sympathy with them. The Royal Spanish Academy is clear in its definition of dictatorship: "Political regime that, by force or violence, concentrates all power in a person or in a group or organization and represses human rights and individual freedoms."
• If you criticize a dictatorship of the past but not a current dictatorship, perhaps your idea of ​​fighting for democracy is to wait for the dictator to die, as happened to many leftists in Spain, who only became anti-Franco after Franco's death. The brave thing to do is to criticize a dictatorship when it could have negative consequences for you, such as suffering punishment from an economic power like communist China.
• The success of a dictatorship in certain areas does not justify it. It is very common to read leftists defending the Cuban communist dictatorship by citing its literacy rates, its health system or its life expectancy (something about which there is much to discuss), as if that justified having Cubans subjected to a dictatorship since 1959. The same can be said about those who justify Franco's regime by citing its economic achievements.
• Rejecting dictatorships with which you share some views is a test of consistency. There are many leftists who fail this test when it comes to opposing socialist and communist dictatorships, simply because they agree with part of their ideology. This also occurs among some people who justify Putin because he defends some conservative ideas, as if that excuses the crimes of that dictator.
• It is a contradiction in terms to call democratic countries "dictatorships" while at the same time supporting or justifying real dictatorships. This is something that the extreme left often does, for example, calling liberal democracies "dictatorships of the markets" or "dictatorships of capital", while refusing to call regimes such as those in China, Cuba and Venezuela dictatorships. Of course, this is not a custom exclusive to the extreme left: the extreme right does exactly the same with the dictatorships it admires.
• It is hypocritical to criticize dictatorships while supporting authoritarian measures in democratic countries. This is precisely the hypocrisy that the left incurs when, for example, it applauds measures that violate fundamental rights such as freedom of education, religious freedom, linguistic freedom, the right to the presumption of innocence, freedom of the press and equality before the law.