Comparing Mao to Hitler

[Max Sawicky]

> 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