Comparing Mao to Hitler

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Tue Jun 8 14:36:30 PDT 1999



> Look Max, I'm no Maoist. The Chinese CP has done a lot of
brutal things in its reign. But this harping on the alleged childishness or whatever of their prose style is pretty childish in itself. It's not easy to run a poor country of 1 billion people surrounded by hostile foreign powers. We can sit here all we like and pontificate about their crimes and blunders, but that's really easy for us to do here in Imperialism Central. For all the crimes and blunders, I think the Chinese revolution was a good thing, and I think the same aboout the Russian revolution. . . . >>

Believe it or not, with this last sentence I actually don't disagree, in the ex ante sense that not knowing the outcome with certainty, I could appreciate these projects at their inception and for some time after. We could differ amicably on when the ideal bail-out date was. As for harping, my parody was not directed primarily against Maoist rhetoric in the first place, but against the statements (and implicitly, the politics) of certain list-members directed against the persons of other list members, including me. That these others try to wrap themselves in the struggles of the oppressed is a mere distraction.

mbs



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