[OP of "How do you respond to people who try to say how oppressed their friends/grandparents/etc were in Communist countries?"]

(I'm sure something like this has been asked before but I couldn't find it with a search)

I am a pretty new Marxist-Leninist and I see a lot of stuff like this on the internet. The argument usually goes something like this: "the only people who are pro-communist are people who have never lived in communist countries. My grandparents lived in a communist country and everything was terrible and one of them was executed. My grandfather was just a simple farmer. You're in inconsiderate asshole and an idiot for thinking communism is a good thing and it has killed a ton of people needlessly, etc etc"

So my first question for them would be under which circumstances their friend or grandfather was persecuted, of course, but they always seem to think that they did no wrong and the government just randomly decided to put them to death because the bloodthirsty evil communists just liked to do that (/s). And then, of course, I would ask which country and in what year they are referring to and find out if it was (as it seems to me) a revisionist/opportunist sort of situation or not. And then I would ask if their family was bourgeois or petit-bourgeois, as I understand many of those people had a pretty hard time in communist countries. From here, I don't really know where to continue, especially if I try to do some research and explain why what they perceive as an injustice occurred. And I do understand that not all communist countries are above doing wrong. In fact, I personally believe every previous and future state and revolution made and will make mistakes, some more debilitating than others. But these people are just so hostile and offended since it involves someone important to them who they do not see as someone who does wrong.

I guess my point and what I would like to ask is how to explain to people who are absolutely certain that they aren't missing something in all of this. I am certain that whatever country they were in had some sort of rationale for the execution (if it happened at all) and can research/show them what happened historically all day long, but they will always just default to your generic bourgeois propaganda and say that everything they are told contrary to that is fake and a lie.

Of course, since this kind of discussion deals with a sensitive and emotionally-charged topic, but these anecdotes people have about people in their personal life being randomly fucked over by countries run by a communist party leave me skeptical personally, but for countless others, they perpetuate and reinforce a negative, sinister sort of image of communism. But I don't know how to reason with these people. And I don't think I can just get them to read Lenin or Marx to get them to understand why things happened the way they did.

I realize that I will never be able to encourage everyone to read more about Marxism and the USSR or to start calling themselves a Marxist-Leninist or whatever, but I just wish I knew how to better discuss stories of people who lived in supposedly malevolent communist countries.