NYer...Gen Xer. Go Blue! 〽️Neocon in the streets, libertarian in the sheets...Your Mom pays for my Twitter. Bean aficionado 🫘
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Joined November 2015
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El Magnífico retweeted
I'm not asking anyone to hate Mao or say he's the ultimate evil in the world. I just think you should acknowledge that you wouldn't handwave away any capitalist country that caused tens of millions of deaths in a few years by mandating its citizens forge iron in their yards.
No, it isn’t racist to imply that Chinese people are afraid to speak out against Mao because it is illegal.
It’s racist to believe they deserve to live like that.
El Magnífico retweeted
Have you considered the possibility that Mao is “respected and admired” in China due to:
1. Fear of persecution for condemning Mao
2. A continued propaganda and state-led effort to whitewash his actions
3. Sample bias
Taiwan faced the White Terror perpetrated the KMT and Chiang Kai-Shek. Yet he was also responsible for resistance against communist China and helped set the conditions for Taiwan to become what it is today. He is a divisive figure in modern Taiwan, and yet we see both his memorial hall, and the 228 Peace Park just a kilometer away from each other. There are countless other memorials as well.
Is there any counterpart in the PRC? Is there a Tianamen Square Massacre memorial a kilometer from the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong? Anything remembering the atrocities committed by Mao, attributed to him?
The White Terror was terrible and authoritarian. It pales in comparison to what Mao Zedong did. Taiwan under Chiang Kai-Shek improved substantially better than the PRC under Mao Zedong did over the same time frame, yet only in Taiwan do we see the acknowledgement of the crimes committed by Chiang Kai-Shek. In the PRC they are erased.
It is shocking that a professor at Cambridge, one of the west’s most prominent institutions, can be this naive. It is such an affront to British values and legacy that I almost wonder if you have ulterior motives.
El Magnífico retweeted
I never want to hear about how Americans are propagandized again. We learn about the founding fathers' slaves in middle school, meanwhile grown ass adults in China think Mao was under democratic constraints somehow.
El Magnífico retweeted
The main talking point raised in opposition to the idea that Mao was a dictator is that there were mechanisms of balance in the CCP system. But by that metric, Adolf Hitler couldn’t be called a dictator
El Magnífico retweeted
Don't you think it's weird that China stopped doing Maoism the second he died. Like literally the first thing they did was arrest his wife.
Read like half an hours worth of actual history on Mao Zedong (not written by a conservative/yank), and you’ll probably realise he is one of the greatest humans to have ever lived by the end of the night.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Historians including Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng using Communist Party archives estimate 36 million or more deaths from the Great Leap Forward famine under Mao Zedong, with broader scholarly ranges of 30-45 million or higher for that period alone.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chi…
bbc.com/news/world-204…
chinafile.com/library/nyrb-c…
theguardian.com/world/2013/jan…
El Magnífico retweeted
The thing about Mao Zedong was that he was not just a dictator. He was actually a f***ing idiot to such an extent that it would make Trump’s ridiculous claims of himself being a “stable genius” almost credible.
Mao forced farmers to make steel out of farm tools and in small village furnaces, which left farmers with no tools to work the fields. He forced farmers to chase away insect-eating sparrows, which led yo locust-infested fields. Millions starved to death as a result.
He thought that turning the population on itself in endless struggle was the path to proletariat prosperity - all it had done was to make more starve to death, loss of Chinese know-how across the board and China left on the brink of bankruptcy.
His views on dental hygiene were so off the planet that he eschewed both “modern” or more traditional Chinese modes of dental care, to the point that his doctors and others all mention the rotting stench that emanated from his mouth.
Not all dictators are idiots - Deng Xiaoping was a dictator but not an idiot. But Mao excelled himself in his idiotmaxxing, more a buffoonish Idi Amin than a dangerously bright Emperor Kangxi.
El Magnífico retweeted
The Chinese reaction to Mbappe mocking Mao is hilarious. How insecure and thin skinned do you have to be to be offended by an offhand comment of a football player to a dead dictator?
绝不允许任何人侮辱我们中国已故伟大领袖！拿着中国市场带来的红利，却做出伤害中国人民感情的事。吃中国饭，砸中国锅，姆巴佩，你不配得到中国球迷的尊重！
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
毛泽东是一个独裁者。
history.howstuffworks.com/historical-fig…