How can people who wouldn't dream of drinking in a pub called Gestapo cheerfully hang out at the KGB Bar? If the swastika is an undisputed symbol of unspeakable evil, can the hammer-and-sickle and other emblems of communism be anything less?

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[P]erhaps the strongest explanation is the simplest: visibility. Ever since the end of World War II, when photographers entered the death camps and recorded what they found, the world has had indelible images of the Nazi crimes. But no army ever liberated the Soviet Gulag or halted the Maoist massacres. If there are photos or films of those atrocities, few of us have ever seen them. The victims of communism have tended to be invisible -- and suffering that isn't seen is suffering most people don't think about.

"Communist chic?" The blood of 100 million victims cries out from the ground. To wear the symbols of their killers is no fashion statement, but the ultimate in bad taste.

And it's terribly unhip to point that out.
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