Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts has designated July as the “Victims of Communism” month, highlighting the estimated 100 million people who died during religious or political purges, manmade famines, and crimes against humanity. Ricketts, in a press release and on Twitter, singled out the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which recently marked its 100th anniversary, and the Soviet Union. “An estimated 100 million people have died from political purges, religious persecutions, mass starvations, and other crimes against humanity carried out by communist regimes such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the People’s Republic of China,” the Republican governor wrote. In a proclamation (pdf), the governor noted that former CCP dictator Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward—a calamitous top-down effort that diverted Chinese farm workers into mass collectives—killed some 45 million people. That figure was revealed years ago by historian Frank Dikötter, who has systematically chronicled the CCP’s mass purges, failed policies like …