To be clear, I'm not willing to give Stalinism or Maoism, or even vanguardism, "another shot". My point is that the hammer and sickle flag-btw, the hammer and sickle symbol itself simply represented the unification of rural and urban workers in a common struggle- was not the CAUSE of Stalinism and Maoism, and, even though I would never march under that flag, can be separated from the deeds committed by those who perverted its original ideals.

The causes of Stalinism and Maoism were the "vanguard party" structure, the "democratic centralism" approach to decision-making Stalin and later Mao turned into their mechanism for enforcing and arbitrarily changing "the line", and the conspiratorial/paranoid mindset the Bolsheviks and the Maoists operated under.

The hammer and sickle flag was not the cause of any of that, and cannot be compared to the Stars and bars or the hakencreuz, neither of which ever represented anything other than hatred and a desire to persecute.

And in any case, Stalinism and Maoism are extinvt in this country and in most of the world, so raging at them makes about as much sense as raging at the Hapsburgs or the Holy Roman Empire.