My father-in-law was a mid-level Communist Party official (photo editor of the People's "Liberation" Army newspaper) who knew Mao personally. Years later Mao's people threw him in a concentration camp for "rightists" because he had made a joke about the Great Helmsman. When they ran out of cooking oil they would cook his food in used motor oil. The man they tortured and forced to rat him out never recovered from the shame. My wife and I had dinner with his daughter in Beijing two years ago. She still carries the shame for her father, even today. A little gift from Mao that keeps on giving.
They were the lucky ones, of course. The consensus estimate is that 70 million human beings have died so far during the CCP's reign of terror, mostly from starvation. My wife spent much of her youth hungry. She and her friends used to pull the stingers out of honeybees to get a bit of sweetness in their lives. The things little girls do, huh?
Not much terror these days of course, unless you're Tibetan, Falun Gong, or an enemy of the state. The strange thing for me, when walking around China, is that the monster's face is on the money. Statues of him are still common. He's the worst murderer who ever lived, and you have to look at him when buying a rose. Isn't life interesting?
> They were the lucky ones, of course. The consensus estimate is that 70 million human beings have died so far during the CCP's reign of terror, mostly from starvation. My wife spent much of her youth hungry. She and her friends used to pull the stingers out of honeybees to get a bit of sweetness in their lives. The things little girls do, huh?
I dated a Chinese girl for 3 and 1/2 years whose father was sent to a labor camp for a lot of her childhood.
I really don't understand how the Communists don't have the same reputation and stigma of the Nazis. They killed over twice as many people, most of them civilians, and did it for twice as long. They ran their countries into the ground in pretty much all meaningful measures, destroying civilizations well known for science, commerce, and innovation. They accomplished almost nothing of value, in any of the areas mankind finds valuable. And they're treated with a mild disdain, but nothing like the Third Reich, where they probably deserve even worse treatment.
If anyone doesn't know who Deng Xiaoping is, it's worth reading a little bit about him. He was probably one of the most important and good politicians of the last 100 years. He helped lead China out of the Communist mess they were in, declaring, "It doesn't matter what color the cat is as long as it catches the mouse." Was imprisoned for a while due to his views before taking over and putting China back on the path to being a global power with healthy, happy citizens.
But as a casual historian, I'm still baffled why the Communists don't have the same or worse of a rep than the Nazis - input from knowledgeable people is welcome.
The courts of public opinion, history or even the actual international courts are poor ones. The Nazis are unique in the treatment they got. Many of the judgements do not contain the consistency to be called justice.
The Nazis lost to deeply injured enemies, Europe, the Soviet Union & the US. They were clearly proven to be malicious. That is they were evil in theory, intention, strategy, tactic, rhetoric, practice and in practical outcome. Communists tended to have at least some of these which were palatable. This leaves the possibility that they have good intentions, got waylaid, failed, etc.
Nazis brought terrible suffering and disgrace to their own people and were recognised by Germans in this way. But this is extremely unusual and it is a consequence of regime change. Look at Turkey and the Armenian genocide. Modern Turks do not believe in it and it was almost 100 years ago. You can't be friendly with Turkey and bring it up.
Communism has not really fallen in the same way Nazism and Fascism fell. Even Russia is still really a descendant of the Soviet Union.
The places that do consider communists similarly to fascists are those places that felt colonised by them.
2. The Nazis were across-the-board evil, whereas the Communists at least pretended to have some decent intentions.
3. The big one which makes sense - the governments and descendants of the fascist areas owned up to what they did and denounced it. Most places don't.
4. Finally, no real theatrics or drama at the end. Communism just slowly eroded and died, there were no cities sacked or surrenders signed.
Good points: #3 was the biggest one I hadn't considered enough.
That said, I've traveled around the world some, have friends who had parents in the Communist Party, and have an older acquaintance whose family were Polish resistance fighters to the Nazis later turned black marketers/Polish underground.
Pretty much everyone with exposure to Communism thinks it was a pretty awful thing, on pretty much all levels.
Berlin's got to be the most obvious example: You can walk through old, pre-WWII Berlin neighborhoods (beautiful), Allied post-WWII Berlin neighborhoods (pretty nice), and Soviet post-WWII neighborhoods (very ugly, foreboding, and dreadful aside from what the citizens have made of it recently). It's a pretty incredible contrast.
But the way you outlined it makes sense - great points, and thanks for shedding some light.
Although this is HN and we should not discuss politics, just a few points.
Firstly, the Nazis may have been bad – but the treatment of post-WW1 Germany was bad and a causing factor of WW2.
The Treaty of Versailles ensured in effect that there will be another war in Europe. I think that Germany was uniquely the only country in the 20th century to receive such a hard “punishment” (both economically and culturally) when they lost the First World War.
Not just history. Actual international courts are extremely inconsistent. They are basically a way of judging losers with a little bit more legitimacy then just hanging the enemy king.
War crime charges as they are legally defined could probably be proved about any leader of a country at war, nt just Omar Al Bashir or Saddam Hussein. Almost certainly George Bush (and many other recent world leaders) would at least meet the criteria for trial.
If a domestic criminal justice system functioned like the international one, it would be deemed as non-existent. We just do not have an international system, but we pretend we do.
It's not that black and white. It was Deng's regime that crushed the Tiananmen Square protesters. There were other nominal heads-of-state at that time, but Deng had de facto power.
His reputation is generally favourable today because of the economic wonders he orchestrated in the 90s.
Depending on how you define a good politician, Zhao Ziyang, the party general secretary in 1989, was sympathetic towards the pro-democracy movement. But overall he didn't change as many lives as Deng did. He lost power after Tiananmen Square protests.
One liberal political who was pro-democracy at that time yet still remained in power is Wen Jiabao, the current Premier (second in power maybe). He is probably the most popular politician in power today. If there is going to be top-down democratisation, it would probably start around him. He is in a lineage of politicians who rose to power through meritocracy rather than loyalty, succeeding Zhu Rongji.
If you ask most Americans who invaded Poland in 1939, most will simply say "Germany" or "the Nazis". Few will mention the "Soviet Union" or "the Communists". Even fewer will say "the National Socialist German Workers Party". That's part of the Gramscian Damage.
University humanities and social science departments are relentlessly conformist, though they certainly don't see themselves that way. Since they largely control the inflow of ideas into the culture, they can choke off whatever they want. So, the CCP largely gets a pass.
I'm still baffled why the Communists don't have the same or worse of a rep than the Nazis
The simple answer is that many "intellectuals" in the West find the notion of "to each according to his need, from each according to his ability" very appealing. They "need" to do lots of unproductive (and unrewarded in the West) things such as sit around talking about abstract philosophy, and those poor suckers with "ability" will support them for free.
Never mind that the one of the first things real Communists do when they take over is send all the intellectuals for re-eductation...
I like that you're quoting one of Ayn Rand's "Communist" talking points rather than talking about Communism proper.
Let's get something straight. There is no Communist-central plan. Russia and China each approached Communism differently. If somebody else were to try Communism, they'd have a completely different approach to it. As it is, the only Communist regimes we talk about are the ones installed by violence, and as a result we get this idea that you can't have Communism without violently murdering people. The smaller communes that manage to last decades without violence, they're the ones we ignore when readying our anti-Red talking points.
You're showing a fair spot of anti-intellectualism when you bash abstract philosophy. Who do you think invented capitalism? I'll give you a major hint: He was an abstract philosopher. Adam Smith was just like Karl Marx, only we like him more. Every major idea we've seen in the world stems to some degree from abstract philosophy, as you call it. It's not particularly abstract, mind you, because it has concrete effects on the world. We're not talking Nietzsche, here.
Now, let me explain why the Holocaust is really so touted, and why Mao isn't mentioned as much. Partly it's because Germany is a European nation, and the world is still very Euro-centric. In bigger part, however, it's because the Nazis did a pretty good job at its attempt to exterminate the Jewish religion, which, though small, is a pretty major force in the world. People still think Judaism is one of the three major religions in the world, because they like ignoring Hinduism. Jewish people are usually well-educated, hard-working, and ambitious, which is why there's still a disproportionate amount of them in executive positions at companies, in top-notch colleges, and in the literary world. (If we go by the utterly lame judge that is IQ, the average IQ of a Jewish person in the United States is higher than of any other arbitrary demographic, including asian.)
There were 18 million Jews when Hitler took power. When his regime was ended, one in three of those Jews were dead. Remember Nazis also killed 5 million Protestants, but nobody cares about that, because there are so many Protestants. Hitler showed a lot of Jewish people the mortality of their faith. In a time when Jews were still hated in most parts of the world—and they were certainly still hated in the 40s—they were dealt an enormous blow.
So a lot of well-educated and influential people all took up the cause. We've got literary masterpieces regarding the Holocaust. I can't think of any that have to do with other genocides; if they exist, I haven't heard of them. There's Eli Wiesel's Night, there's the diary of Anne Frank. Authors wrote a slew of kid's books about the subject, so that a lot of us grow up with the Holocaust ingrained in us. Number the Stars; the Devil's Arithmetic. Those are the books used to teach 10-year-olds about morality. It's all Holocaust-based, because many of the best kid's book writers are Jewish. (Even the ones that don't make being Jewish a big part of their writing. My favorite Child's Lit author is Daniel Handler alias Lemony Snicket, one of whose adult books is about the Golem in the Jewish religion.)
Finally, we have the fact that World War II is perhaps the best and easiest story ever told. We've got a brilliant military leader and outright psychopath whose childhood is tragic and fascinating, whose seconds-in-command were all rich characters, and whose uniforms were all made by Hugo Boss, still a big name in the fashion industry. There's the famous swastika. Then there are Hitler's allies: Mussolini, who's almost comically corrupt and bad, and Hirohito, the faceless emperor of a nation that was batshit insane when it started fighting and that tortured American soldiers in unspeakable ways. On the other side you have the heroic crippled FDR, and the brilliant procrastinator Churchill, and you've got the morally uneasy compromise with Stalin. It's a made-to-go movie, which is why so many movies are made about it. Whereas World War I was hell, World War II had a very clear villain. And how do we know he's a clear villain? Because he's cooking Jewish people in ovens.
So World War II is an easy story, and it all revolves around the Holocaust as proof of our moral superiority. Therefore, the Holocaust gets celebrity attention, which complements nicely all the talented Jewish people who remember the Holocaust because their parents died in it.
(I'm saying all this as a kind-of Jew who grew up listening to a different Holocaust survivor each year. Apologies if that colors this narrative.)
No, I think the difference between nazi and coumminst terror is not just historical perception. There is a very clear difference between political terror and racism. You can choose to be a communist or not. You can choose to be politically active or not. You cannot choose whether you are jewish or not.
The communists killed political opponents and they killed many more people by plain incompetence. They did not set up an industrial operation to deliberately murder people _regardless_ of what they did.
It's not just a numbers game either. If it were, the inventor of the automobile would have to be considered one of the greatest villains in the history of mankind. So we do make a difference based on the motivation for killing people. Here's my hierachy of evil, which explains why I agree with those who find communism less horrible than the nazi holocaust:
Killing people for what they are
Killing people for what they do
Killing people by accident or incompetence
Letting people die unnecessarily
The nazis did all four. The communists just the latter three. Capitalism specialises in the the last item. And yes there are exceptions that blur the lines (like Stalinist ethnic cleansing), but they are just that, exceptions.
Good points, but: There are many genocides that target based on race or religion. So I was trying to explain why the Holocaust and not a similar genocide targeting, say, racial groups.
Yes there are many. But I'm not aware of one that was as elaborate, ideologically and logistically, as what the nazis did. In my opinion they fully deserve their place at the top of the evil list.
I"m sorry, I don't buy the "lone lunatic" theory. Its a very interesting debate as to whether change at the amount and rate China went through over the past 120 or so years could have occurred without such cost to human life. I like to believe societies even this large can change for the better without so much bloodshed. But no society to date has shown it is capable of behaving with such peace and rationality. This is not pulling excuses for Mao or anyone else.
Icons "morph". I don't like the new Chinese money. I think the old bank notes were beautiful and representative of their recent history. China has decided to use Mao on their bank notes and as such has committed to protect his image as being a man of positive change and ignoring or excusing the brutality.
In absence of a theist point of view, no credible moral criticism of Mao is possible. Mao was determinedly and consciously a monster, per his self assigned civilization imperative to achieve the shared goal (of the Chinese intellectual elite) to unshackle China from Chinese history and historic mindset.
The bitter irony lost on the swept away former comrades of the helmsman was his violent intent to show the paucity of the convictions of the intellectual class (which he amply demonstrated in the gruesome display of the Great Leap Forward).
Today, China is a nation completely denuded of ideological inclinations in its ruling classes. China is again restored to her former (power centric) social structures, having traded (empty) Confucianist morals with (equally empty) koanic musings of the CCP chairman (e.g. Three Represents), and fully equipped to function in the modern world. That is Mao's achievement.
I am not a fan of Chairman Meow, but I consider him the most honest of the revolutionary/reformist monsters. At least he didn't b.s. about his self appraisal as the new god for his people. A positive consideration of Mao may find a parallel in the fictional character of the Worm-God Leto in Frank Herbert's Dune.
I certainly hope you don't find my prior post to defend anything Mao did. I simply feel that if it wasn't him it would have been someone else's name we affix to some other incalculable amount of suffering. There were and still are in China many that model their behavior after thousand year old stratagems for accumulating and maintaining power. When the last empire was swept away, there were many ready to replace it with another form of empire. If it wasn't someone from the camp that Mao sprang from, it may have been someone from the Chiang Kai-shek camp.
As far as "Mao's achievements" goes, we may see these having rather short half-lives throughout society. I find that most Chinese only pay lip service to the current mantras from headquarters. Whatever happens over the next 60 years is anybody's guess.
> The consensus estimate is that 70 million human beings have died so far during the CCP's reign of terror, mostly from starvation
Yeah, but it's hard to imagine what China actually like in pre-P.R.C times. It's not "end the war, install democracy and go prosper" that easy for an ancient civilization to turn modern. Mao has his faults, and underestimated contributions, but what's more important is whether current and succeeding politicians will learn from history.
I don't think "the ruling Communist Party of China celebrates 60 years in power" would be a good title. The current governance of China is communist in name only and has morphed substantially multiple times over those 60 years.
I've lived in Shanghai for 10 years. Very little that Beijing tells Shanghai to do has an impact on daily life there. For the most part, Shanghai controls Shanghai. Governance in China is fragmented, hierarchical, and networked.
I built a large workflow system for the Shanghai gov in 2001. To build such a system, I had to understand decision processes, chains of command, etc. If there was an "org chart" I never saw it, but had to piece it together through inputs from many government departments. The structures that exist follow patterns well understood by those in power (and to varying degree by many in society). These processes are more complex then Western business or government structure and rarely dictatorial.
Decision takes a long time to incubate while various interests align. Once consensus is reached, they move forward in lock-step. An outsider may view these actions as the result of a dictatorial process. I can assure you they are not.
I'm curious - could you for instance walk the streets of Shanghai in a t-shirt openly critical of the government? 'Cos people in London do it all the time...
Actually yes, you can walk around Shanghai with ugly words about the government. As far as I know there are no laws against it.
There are laws against plotting to overthrow the gov or causing civil unrest similar to the ones that exist in the U.S. or UK. I just fact checked this with my Chinese wife. She has a degree in Chinese Law.
Could someone use your t-shirt to concoct a case against you relative to these laws? Maybe. But the Chinese police have bigger things to worry about. I have heard about people in the U.S. being tossed off airplanes and detained due to the content of their t-shirts.
The Chinese Internet has massive amounts of chatter expressing anger at the government. Some of it gets removed by the gov and site management. But not all of it. There is plenty of juicy stuff to read online.
False dichotomy. There is a difference between "totalitarian dictatorship" and "society with relatively low levels of political freedom". The former requires the latter, but not every instance of the latter is an instance of the former.
The U.S. Constitution's first amendment provides for "the right of the people peaceably to assemble".
Try doing this in front of the White House without a permit.
In Atlanta, Georgia, for example, the mayor has veto powers over permit requests. Try waving the constitution in front of an Atlanta police office as he's dragging you to jail.
When I hear the word 'totalitarian' or 'dictatorship' I think of Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. If contemporary China is a dictatorship, then apparently life under a dictatorship isn't as bad as I was raised to believe and I need to review my evaluations of those regimes. I used to live in San Francisco and now live in Beijing - my ability to live my life as I see fit has been relatively unchanged.
If you were an ethnic German, life in Germany in the 1930s was pretty good too. Bierkellers, girls in dirndl dresses, finally after the setbacks of WW1 the German people were back on their feet, etc etc.
If you're an ethnic Han, or a Westerner, life in China could be pretty good too.
Very spectacular but the normal Beijing people were kept well away from the parade. Like many things it does this display demonstrates the weakness of the regime rather than the strength. It needs such a display to attempt to show to its people (and in a smaller part to the world) that the Communist party is powerful and everlasting. That the Communist party brings great face to China through power and prosperity.
China is on the edge of the precipice. Especially with this recent economic turmoil. While they live in an authoritarian society, Chinese people are not sheep. There are far too many have nots and the memory of standing up and deposing the government is still in many peoples minds.
The irony of the Empire State Building being lit in red and yellow in deference to the commemoration is not lost.
In 2009, China is Maoist and "Communist" in name only; in fact, much of the awe-inspiring artifacts and sophisticated technologies on display in the parade are principally features of a >= Deng Xiaoping environment - well, maybe starting with Hu Yaoban.
Meanwhile, in 1949 when the authentic Maoists seized power, the US provided entirely nontrivial military aid and financial assistance to the retreating Kuomintang (nationalist) government, and did much to try to suffocate the revolution in its cradle after the PLA did seize power.
Now the US salutes them (and warmly encourages them to maybe continue buying Treasuries... please?), and meanwhile there is nothing in the faintest bit "Communist" about the establishment, save for the nomenclature and iconic imagery of the incumbent power structure.
After the faction-change and Sino-Soviet split, the US actually sold weapons to PRC. It lasted until 1989 where the Tiananmen Square protest ended it all with a PR disaster.
> much of the awe-inspiring artifacts and sophisticated technologies on display in the parade are principally features of a >= Deng Xiaoping environment - well, maybe starting with Hu Yaoban.
Sorry, but most of the ass-kicking weapons were from Mao's.
Deng? He buys foreign things and never make ones themselves.
There were precious little weapons originated under Mao regime. They were either of Soviet manufacture, or straightforward copies of Soviet designs. The (often brilliant) Chinese engineers were instead plowing paddy fields in correction villages.
True, but I was not really referring to the ass-kicking weapons, but rather the features of the modern Chinese economic boom seen in the background (not literally - I'm talking about the all-around context and its aesthetic ligaments).
I watched it on TV. Highly impressive, perhaps more impressive than the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The pictures actually don't do it justice to the marches.
They were the lucky ones, of course. The consensus estimate is that 70 million human beings have died so far during the CCP's reign of terror, mostly from starvation. My wife spent much of her youth hungry. She and her friends used to pull the stingers out of honeybees to get a bit of sweetness in their lives. The things little girls do, huh?
Not much terror these days of course, unless you're Tibetan, Falun Gong, or an enemy of the state. The strange thing for me, when walking around China, is that the monster's face is on the money. Statues of him are still common. He's the worst murderer who ever lived, and you have to look at him when buying a rose. Isn't life interesting?