I didn't mean to say that their mechanisms of enforcement are identical; that would certainly be absurd. I just made an analogy between the two systems' ideological narratives of progress and their confounding of the alleged beneficial effect of the system itself with the exogenous effects of technological progress. (Note the difference between my characterizing of dissent in the former system as dangerous in general, and my claim that in the West nowadays, it is typically dangerous only for one's reputation. I did mean by this that the latter system practices, for the most part, more subtle reputation-based mechanisms instead of downright censorship, repression, etc.)

Indeed. Even Moldbug himself states that many times; liberal democracy, he says as a disclamer, might be really really rotten, but it's laughable to think of its appetite for violence and system of repression as similar to those of Nazism or Communism.

Most of the time in the USSR after Stalin's death or Communist Yugoslavia being too critical of the reigning ideology just got you fired, passed up for promotion, a failing grade on your essay, charged with what is basically hate speech (freedom of speech was constitutionally guaranteed in the USSR btw), be considered mentally ill, denied a vacation request or put you on a watch list or under surveillance by an intelligence agency.

The difference is pretty clearly of degree not kind.

But I generally agree that the bloodbaths that where Communism and National Socialism in the 20th century where much more oppressive than Democracy.