defend the indefensible: chairman mao tse-tung

Inventing the term "capitalist roader"?

Living to the ripe old age of 82?

I seem to recall writing an essay at school and having to balance the argument by finding some positive points, like his support for women's rights and assisting drug addicts. Haha just remembered our history teacher pronouncing the name similar to mayonnaise - May-o; imagine this in a broad Australian accent. Oh the roffles.

Seriously though, Mao is responsible for a lot of deaths, both directly through purges and other violence, and indirectly such as the mass starvations in the Great Leap Forward years.

I've always been told Stalin murdered more people than Mao, but who really knows, right?

The only period where Mao was really a remotely positive figure would have been during WWII/The Chinese Civil War, when he was less corrupt and incompetent the Kuomintang. There are many reports from US officials in China during the war (there to back to the Kuomintang) who wrote back to Washington things along the lines of "man, I wish these were the guys we were helping," purely because they seemed so much more efficient and capable than the floundering Nationalists. Obviously, things changed drastically once the Communists took power, and I have often wondered if such totalitarianism was necessary to unify a country of China's size (as is definitely the case with Russia if history says anything).

While he did terrible things, Mao DID succeed in successfully (in terms of consolidating and maintaining power, not in terms of living up to communism's ideals) create communism based around the peasant rather than the proletariat (which China didn't really have any of), end foreign domination of China (although the Nationalists had made some headway before him), and waged unbelievably successful propaganda wars based around one of the strongest cults of personality we've ever seen.

That isn't really a defense so much as "well he was a terrible guy but he was a really great dictator" but I love talking about China so nyah.

How does the Amerikan womyn avoid the singles bar scene?
Answer: She marries her kidnapper.

so I saw this big-budget Chinese epic that's about 25% an adoring bio of young Mao -- sort of fascinatingly bad:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/beginning-of-the-great-revival/5591

great piece Doc!

I have been reading the Frank Dikötter book about the great leap forward atrocities. In many ways it was far more sickening and pointless than the early 20th century Russian famines, which had other contributory factors like the harsh climate, the war against the Whites and some of it probably was premeditated genocide/ethnic cleansing.

But the horrors of mass collectivisation put to the purpose of self destructive, idiotic irrigation schemes, pulling down communities and even stewing corpses from the graveyards for fertiliser, melting down vital agricultural equipment for worthless pig iron and vandalising a gigantic agricultural system which only required some reasonable modernisation to make it more productive. Dikötter has access to files which haven't been accessed for a long time and is talking about 45 million deaths within 4 years as a liberal estimate of casualties during the GLP.

I had a lefty history teacher at school who was a Marxism Today reader and he actually taught the hagiography version of Mao as a great, unfairly maligned visionary.

Unlike Stalin, Mao seems like he was genuinely an idiot

You should read Tombstone by Yang jisheng xp

Thanks for the recommendation, that book looks like the essential one.

County leaders such as Zhao Yushu and Dong Anchun absolutely refused to acknowledge that people were dying of hunger. When Zhao and Dong visited the Kaocheng production brigade, they asked physician Wang Shanliang, "Why can't you manage to cure edema? What medicine are you lacking?". Dr. Wang answered, "All we're lacking is food!". Zhao and Dong immediately had Wang subjected to mass criticism, after which he was arrested.

You should check out the Maoist propaganda films, easily discovered via a YOuTube search.

I spent an entire weekend going through videos on Mao - the most flattering stuff was produced by the CIA!! Real "sexy revolutionary" stuff. By the end of the weekend, I was like, "when is 'Mao: The Adventure Theme Park' open??"

I have just got into that Dr Li Zhisui memoir, not got to the GLF + Cultural Revolution eras yet but there has been some excellent material so far; the panic of embalming Mao's corpse was quite comedic, the irredeemable and dangerous Jiang Quing, Mao the sociopath slob with serious hygiene problems. It seems very exact considering that he burnt his proto-draft during the cultural revolution, but he doesn't seem like an embellisher and seems a trustworthy observer.

anybody read the Short bio? It's long.

I have it and probably will read it at some point, I checked it + it isn't long in the Kershaw sense of very fucking long. I am about 500+ pages into his Hitler book and my kindle says I am only 19% into it! I did start the MacFarquhar/Schoenhals cultural revolution book recently but couldn't get into it at the time, it seemed very detached and dull and I wanted something that evoked the madness and danger of that era. I might be wrong, but sometimes you have these responses to books.

The new Pantsov/Levine book, Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life sounds like it reveals more of the cold blooded side of his history which seemed quite neglected in that Vogel book from a few years back. I only read about half the Vogel book and was bored rigid by the sections on his economic reforms, this one sounds a bit more balanced or at least more interesting.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/the-peppery-napoleon-who-once-led-china-deng-xiaoping/

Was his poetry good?

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2930-poets-of-the-chinese-revolution

Looks like a good deal.

I don't know about his poetry but I seem to recall he was good at making up colourful nicknames for factions within the CCP that he didn't approve of!

Printing hundreds of millions of copies of Mao's poetry was the most stupendous act of flattery in the history of the world since the Great Pyramid was built.

there is nothing in the world that could’ve prepared me for the second skirt in this video pic.twitter.com/CylNctDFHW

— shai (@shclts) October 8, 2021

l-mao

waow

mao is a solid go-to for a newsprint thing

Never forgiven this guy for breaking up the Scratch Orchestra.

Twitter is still good.

In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.

— Quotations From Mao Zedong 📕 (@MaoZebot) March 21, 2025

Why get your maoist wisdom from an American dog site when TikTok is right there?

I like text more than videos.

I'll try to find you some text TikToks, might have someone playing video games over the lower part of the text tho.