A recent guest (historian) made that point on the Triggernomitry podcast.

Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hitler- they were all 'idealists.'

They were in it to improve the human (or some subset thereof) condition. And they weren't going to let anyone get in their way of making things better!

That guest is Dominic Sandbrook, one half of the excellent "Rest is History" podcast.

You can't make an omellete without breaking a few eggs, after all. That was Lenin, supposedly.

edit: spelling of "one"

Idealists in the sense of a simplistic worldview.

It is worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-bSAnW_E0 but it itself is a somewhat simplistic take.

It's probably more accurate to say they were reductionists -- it's easy to imagine an ideal system if you ignore the complexities of reality.

Which is why they all failed.

I bet it's related to the tendency for narcissism where you believe that you alone have all the right answers.

On the contrary, Stalin was one of the most brutally pragmatic politicians of the 20th century.

This is what's scary about Elon Musk talking about 'sustainable abundance'.