I think because some part of me wanted to feel better about our own situation, I've been reading Mao's Last Revolution, about the Cultural Revolution. At one level, boy yes, a reminder of how much much much worse politics can get, but also more than a few moments of recognition that are discomfiting
You’re a powerful person. You know other powerful people. This is the time for strategic action.
Especially considering we are viewed worse now internationally
you might enjoy Yiching Wu's book The Cultural Revolution at the Margins for a newer account that does great bottom-up work on the subject
That opening scene in the first episode of 3 Body Problem sticks with you
yeah dude purestream american hypercapitalism and fascism remind me so much of mao
red dawn but it's the us military lol
check out "Mao Tse-Tung and I Were Beggars" by Xiao Yu
Gangsters of Capitalism is a good one for understanding just how often the Marines engage in suppression of peaceful protests as opposed to 'war'. Just because they haven't done it here yet doesn't mean they aren't well versed.
Don’t listen to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast then. The historical through lines are disconcerting. Prince President Louis Napoleon III comes to mind.
I admit to being quite troubled about the whole “evil urban elites” versus “wholesome authentic rural real Americans” dynamic of the current situation, unfortunately reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror.
The phrase Authoritarian Playbook exists for a reason. They’ve been running the same game plan for thousands of years.
Same, except I’ve been listening to David Blight’s course on the American Civil War. At once reassuring but also profoundly disturbing.
We’re going in the direction of fascism, not communism, the two can be confused. We can’t talk about any of this in normal terms. We have to stay with economics. That’s what the masses understand. If this country appreciated science and knowledge, we’d be in a better position to save democracy.
You should have revolution hype girl, Susan Sarandon, on to talk about how great it will be when Trump burns it all to the ground.
How dare anyone recognize historical patterns and similarities!
there is no historical pattern, nor similarities with Mao or the cultural revolution in china. literally zero. if it were a comparison with nazi germany or franco's spain or mussolini's italy, etc etc, those would be recognizing historical patterns and similarities.
you really don't need to compare this us-born fascist movement to china's errors during the cultural revolution. say what you want about mao: he was trying to do the right thing. US fascism is NOT trying to do the right thing, they're doing fascism.
This is a very weird take. Everyone THINKS they’re doing the “right thing”.
lol okay solipsist.
"everyone thinks they're doing the right thing" posts local dumbass who despite being against the DANG CHEETO IN THE WHITE HOUSE has never read a single "i voted for this" post by some maga dipshit, somehow
Not even sure what point you’re trying to make. The people that voted for Trump obviously thought it was the right thing. People can be, and often are, wrong about what the “right” thing is.
you went from being a contrarian turd to a straight up incoherent mess in two posts
Happy to clarify anything you’re having trouble understanding.
But the problem here is your lack of understanding though, so how do we fix that?
You could start by clearly stating your point.
People do not always “think they’re doing the right thing.” In fact, many people with money and power are well aware they’re doing horrible things. They just don’t care. They’re motivated by money and power for its own sake, for themselves, full stop. Our political & economic system rewards this.
just proving my point. MANY do not think they are doing the right thing, they think they are punishing their enemies and whether or not that is "right" is the furthest thing from their mind. sure, some are delusional and belive nazi propaganda, but not all of them
You don’t think they see “punishing their enemies” as the “right thing to do”? Why else would they do it?
you don't have to punish enemies if they stop being enemies.
Agreed, but the people we’re talking about clearly don’t understand that.
im sure if pressed they will say its the right thing to do, but they are not motivated to do what they do by whether or not it's the right thing to
How are you defining “the right thing to do”? Im having a hard time imagining how/why a person would intentionally do something that THEY believe to be the wrong choice.
yeah that's kind of the problem here isnt it
✋👁️👃👁️🤚
A lot of alt-right types DO NOT think this, they are very conscious that they are evil. Think of all those sly-expression alt right cartoons. They are unusually self aware.
They obviously think that trolling the left is the correct thing for them to do.
You keep, repeatedly, giving a lot of credit to far-right people and their attitudes/motivations in this thread
If seeing them as human beings who happen to be somewhere between foolish and completely delusional is “credit” then, sure I guess.
I think you lack the capacity to understand that people will knowingly do evil.
People will do unimaginably harmful things, yes. But writing this off as “they must just be monsters” is not just incredibly naive, it also does nothing to help us avoid and/or mitigate future harms.
Some of them are conscious monsters. Some of them are just scared and mean.
It’s the obscurantism of the Khmer Rouge that resonates for me. MAGA and MAHA want to take us back to a mythical Day Zero.
Maybe your “news” organization should cover the strange voting patterns in the 2024 election. You would have to be deaf dumb and blind to believe Trump really won.
This is all a distraction from what Elon said about the Epstein files #KeepTalkingAboutEpstien
I think ya' got it backwards. Elon just said something obvious that everyone already knew about the Epstein files, which became a distraction from lots of other things.
Actually, it's safe to say that literally EVERTHING the used-ConDon does is bad and distracting.
Great choice. (MacFarquhar turned me on to China.) One relevant echo: As Mao became more frustrated, he pruned his court down to the most die-hard aides who would screen out any news that defied his delusions. The cult of Mao spun out of control. Deification merged with destruction of enemies.
That’s the Stalin playbook. In spite of the sycophants’ reassurances, said playbook also bore very uncomfortable similarities to the Hitler playbook. It’s almost like all totalitarianism ends with the same scenarios…
Evan: for the review, see the section “Uncivil War” at the end of: chinaheritage.net/journal/xi-a...
Mmm… it’s a very frustrating and flawed book. To quote my 2006 review in the Financial Times: It is frustrating that the authors give so little weight to the underpinnings of Mao’s last revolution; nor do they help the reader gauge the origins or extent of pent-up mass fury. …
Thanks for this, GB! Reading the review now
Evan, cheers. “Last Revolution”, like much of Rod’s other work, rarely takes one outside of the imposing vermilion walls of Zhongnanhai, the party-state compound that Beijing friends still refer to as “The Great Within” 大内 (it’s an old dynastic term for the court).
A risk in Washington reporting, too. +1 to this: “For insightful and elegant writing on the Cultural Revolution, however, the work of Simon Leys (pen name for Pierre Ryckmans), the Australian-based Belgian sinologist, has yet to be surpassed”
Evan: “Last Revolution” was a great disappointment. There’s no serious discussion of the origins of the movement in early 1940s’ Yan’an or of the ideas propounded by Zhang Chunqiao (later of “Gang of Four” fame) in the late 50s that underpinned Mao’s “revolution within a revolution”.
yeah I've found the POV to be a little bit claustrophobic in that sense, a kind of blow by blow of party intrigue and party communications and it's hard to get a grasp of what's happening outside
I’d recommend Linda Jaivin’s recently published “Short History of the Cultural Revolution”. As for the US: Christopher Rufo’s “America’s Cultural Revolution” and David A. Graham’s “The Project” are useful. Of course, Rufo is an obnoxious zealot.
Chris: indeed. A real slog through the researchers’ index catds.
Trump's been doing that for the past four years.
I'm reading the news daily. Extrapolate from these 140 days. We'll see "much worse" soon enough. January 6th, 2021 was a devastating day for our democracy. March 15, 2025 was an even more devastating day for our democracy. June 9, June 14... more to come.
Mao would’ve sent you to the labor mines bitch boy
Yeah, Mao had fucking balls cause he killed millions. And you're all whining about rubber bullets and some tear gas, LOL.
what the hell 😭
Your fascism is your own. Your obnoxious hoorah brand of bread and circus is nobody else's. Mao has nothing to do with it. The world would be better if Americans had an ability to be culturally re-educated.
What was your favourite bit of the GPCR?
The part where they came out ahead of the west, most definitely.
You aren’t at all familiar with the CPC’s own assessment of the GPCR are you? You people are pathetic. Cosplaying as Marxists but literally ignorant.
I've held the same views for over 30 years, have studied Marxist and critical theory in and out of school. Your insult is baseless, you simply suffer a narrow mind.
Muted as life is too short to waste effort on people who are willingly determined to stay thick
Man, if only there were events in Germany in the last century that we could compare to instead! But oh well, guess you had to go "what are we, a bunch of Asians????" because you had no other choice and compare it to a situation that does not relate at all. Come on, get real.
Does the purging of intellectuals and shutdown of colleges not relate at all?
Any kind of authoritarian eventually goes after disagreeing colleges and intellectuals, it is a bad point of comparison for this reason. Germany is a better point of comparison due to very specific overlaps in targeted groups and the democratic-to-dictatorship ascent of Hitler and Trump.
And also varying centrists being in denial about the situation and not putting up a proper resistance.
Ok, so you've moved from doesn't relate at all, to not being as good of a comparison to the nazis. Progress. Incidentally, they weren't targeting disagreeing colleges and intellectuals. It was all.
It doesn't matter how much worse things can be. This is terrifying and there's no need to look for a silver lining.
25 vocabulary points for “discomfiting”. Great word!
I'm practicing to make my handwriting as small as possible so that I can write my book on toilet paper from prison, since that's where this is now all headed
Even Gavin Newsom made a dark joke about writing a tell all from prison. That was sobering.
As a 34-year-old millennial, I remember reading that same book my sophomore year of college in 2009. I’m so thrilled you’re reading it now, but please Mr. Hayes know how late to the party you are.
Also, I encourage you to finish a book like this before commenting on it publicly. To your success, -me.
We’ve entered a cold civil war where its okay to deploy troops and deny resources based entirely on your political alignment
* Welcome to the Trump Fox News Administration Appointees “Reality Show” . The Roman Circus of bread & sand . Are You Not Entertained ? *
In Toronto I taught ESL to refugees. My family lived in a too-small apartment. I refused to address our inadequate housing because the housing of my students was so much worse. Only later did I realize that comparing “worse” was the same as comparing “best”. Truth is truth - no need to compare.
This is America’s cultural revolution.
Well as the horrors of the 20th century go, that was one of the worst and self-induced. I mean you can think of the starvation of Ukraine as a stab of nationalism (Georgian, Russian) but Mao kills his own people. I assume it overlaps with a famine that might have taken him out of power.
Good to compare and show people that this is how Mao and Pol Pot START but OMG does the regime neither have the stomach nor the balls to go the whole way. And the US does have semi-autonomous regions with their own political protocols. That will always block some thuggery.
Restive provinces.
Out of curiosity what makes you think they don’t have the stomach or balls to go the whole way?
Because they don't. You just have to look at them. But the institutional barriers to sort of takeover executed by Mao, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin etc did in their respective cases are quite large starting with the fact that the FBI are simply not a secret police and that there are fifty--5 OH--
independent administrative jurisdictions where the Gov is the CO of the only approximate militia. But come on? The people in the White House are not Serious People. They have never even lead a movement to crash a party, let alone beer hall putsch (Hitler) or numerous revolutionary actions (Stalin)-
And the toddler in charge just wants money. The Song of Hate he sings has succeeded but he has no more idea what it means than what being President means.
We gonna start laying down in front of tanks? Maybe light ourselves on fire in front of the White House?
That's funny cause I've been reading about Stalin 😂😂😂
do you think there will be books in hell?
Oralè Resisters 50501SoCal No Kings 6/14 Rapid Response NO KINGS Guerrilla Action LA They’re incredibly talented engaging committed patriots. I’m honored to be in their presence, the energy they bring to any challenge often leave me feeling hopeful for America. Thank you 50501Socal! You humble me.
I fear that the rank anti-intellectualism & defaming of anyone seen as “collegiate” will lead to mass slaughter like under Pol Pot, where people ended up being murdered just for wearing glasses. I don’t want to end up in a mass grave. But I cannot remain silent or inactive in the face of this evil.
I minored in Chinese and Chinese history, so yeah, I'm really happy that we're dismantling our medical systems, destroying our intellectual institutions and firing our scientists. That has turned out really great wherever they've tried it.
Worked fine in the Soviets. No dissent to speak of afterwards.
Worked out great.
Worked as intended 🫤 USA moving fast towards the same “goal” as Lenin and later Stalin wanted to achieve
I agree.
Lysenkoism crippled Soviet genetics for decades
Indeed, but then again it had little to do with general human rights and freedom. Just another failed biologist who failed to read or didn’t underbar Darwin’s teaching
A very important book for us today.
Yes, I read about the Cultural Revolution long ago and have watched it coming for the last 40 years. “Discomfiting” is the least of it.
I'm a history lover (not a buff, can't retain everything lol), but I can't digest anything historical right now because our situation. Anything shining light upon what we know is too heavy and I can't breathe. It feels like that makes me weak.
who is this for?
My family escaped Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Trump & enablers in SCOTUS & Congress, like Clarence Thomas & Mike Johnson on path of doing same here in USA. Mao like Trump went after those who fell out of favor as well, folks like Musk & Leo Leonard should be afraid. That’s why USA has no KINGS.
I’m reading Madeleine Albright’s Fascism: A Warning. The parallels are horrifying. Mussolini: “Drained the swamp” firing civil servants. Was nicked by an assassination attempt and gave speeches wearing bandage Had terrible economic policies and got rid of anyone who disagreed with him and so on…
Madeline Albright was a war criminal and that bitch is burning in hell.
Really? Is "at least we're not" the best excuse you can muster? USA was always a shithole: 1) Kicked out of UK for being theocrats in the early 1600s. 2) Followed with ~300 years of systematic Native American genocide. 3) Slavery/Atomic Bombs/McCarthyism/JPN Internment Camps/Watergate/Trump.
Indeed
Just skip to the end Do we survive?
I don’t think the US is surviving this (the trump regime) if I’m being honest.
Truly disturbing. I supposed he isn’t too concerned about the goin squads in LA right now or soon to be in your own hometown. ICE was active in Milwaukee today amassing in a local park earlier this morning then heading out into the Latino community on the near southside.
you are not a baby, you are the entire nursery
With every news story, I wonder if we're going the Hitler route, the Stalin route, the Mao route, North Korea route, or even Pol Pot... or maybe they're picking the "best" from each
Yes, same here! This started in the first term for me. Maybe our authoritarian experience being a mixture of them all is a perfect expression of America/americanism, being that we’re made up of & take from people & ideas from around the world.
Zzzzzzzz......
#SinoPhobia yeah remember when an dictator suspended habeas corpus, put natives in gulags.. and killed 600,000 of his own citizens....... that the way Lincoln would've been for labeled if he was a communist🙄🤦♀️ Dude civil wars happen 🤷♂️
It is horrifically familiar to some of us... The first item ✅ The 2nd, ½ ✅ bsky.app/profile/edch...
i really love all the political commentary and analysis but its getting futilely redundant. why isn't major media investigating and drilling down on the corruption? - i.e. migrant handler payoffs !www.npr.org/2025/06/04/n...
If anyone is looking for a good book for kids on Mao’s Cultural Revolution, 6th Grade and up, “Red Scarf Girl” is excellent.
😂 🫏 🤡
Yes!!!! Same thoughts.
A basket full of unintended consequences From day 1 of US-China trade talks to Chinese state media pouncing on chaos in Los Angeles, here’s a round-up from today’s coverage www.scmp.com/news/china/a...
Read Erik Larson's In The Garden Of Beasts last year, about FDR's ambassador to Germany during Hitler's ascension and it made me feel INTENSELY uncomfortable.
Well I just finished watching The Handmaid's Tale . . . that made me think we can do this and there are plenty of walls!
After the cheers to the felon and the boos to Bass and Newsom yesterday at Ft. Bragg I was beginning to wonder if I was NUTS. The majority of current & former military do not disagree with the majority of Americans! www.yahoo.com/news/america...
Careful Chris. That’s the kind of talk that can get you on a list, brought before the HUAC, and blackballed.
I try doing the same thing in refreshing my memory about the Second World War. I recently rewatched a greatly accurate movie about Hitlers last days called „The Downfall“. Very eerie feeling to tell you the truth
Hey man real quick how fucking dumb are you? I need Mao to come back from the dead to cultural revolution your ass into a camp.
I think you maaaaay have ever so slightly mis-parsed his message :)
Nah Mao would want this lib in irons or the ground I'm pretty sure :)
Teenager thinks he’s being edgy
Tankies love genocidal violence
It's genocide to kill fash apologists now? Damn, okay then
Silence, fed
Yeah for sure fedposting to make fun of people calling anti fascism genocidal. You got me bud.
Are you really this stupid?
Go follow another fake "alt" department account
That answers my question.
I’m trying to imagine his papery liberal hands chopping trees and can’t stop laughing.
He’ll have fuckin blisters on his eyelids.
tankies are such morons
Enjoy winning those elections, Mr. Calls people tankies in 2025. Lol. Lmao
I miss being 20
In this instance, I miss being 11.
7?
Sounds like someone loves sparrows and doesn't want a pig iron forge in their backyard.
Did they also use economic factors to justify their horrors? That's the one trend I've seen throughout the worst of humanity
Of course. That was the basis for Mao's "revolution".
lol you’re a pseudointellectual hack
To quote Heraclitus, "Dogs bark at what they can't mentally grasp."
Man the replies to this post are really all from people desperate to show that they don’t understand how criticizing the cultural revolution is distinct from criticizing either communism or asians at large. Real race to the bottom of the dumbest response hill going on.
I also am reminded of Mao when dealing with capitalist bootlickers and fascists. Mainly because unlike dipshit liberals he'd put them in the ground where they belong.
The occident will overtake the orient in backyard iphone assembly!!
Now read Krushchev Remembers.
caught the last 15 minutes of your interview on CBC this morning while making my coffee....thank you!
lol you’re just racist man. Sorry buddy but there’s legit ideological similarities between Mao and Trump (and also Pol Pot).
Seeing people get mad at you for pointing out that 47 has a lot in common with two of last century's grossest dictators has been a weird Bluesky moment.
People are mad because we have multiple examples of fascists rising to power to draw from, but Americans always reach for comparisons to communism instead, because fascism is a normal part of the culture
That's valid. But it's also not where I'm coming from. I've spent plenty of time reading about fascism - particularly the right wing flavors of it propped up by the US in the last half of the 20th century - that I'm trying to broaden my horizons.
Maybe you should be less whiney and stupid about it then. The parallels exist even if they hurt your feelings.
You are deflecting hard. Trump is a product of America.
Well, yes, of course. That doesn't change the fact that authoritarianism tend to be similar in how they approach things and that we can learn from how other countries dealt with theirs.
Sure but it comes off as a lazy deflection instead of introspection.
To you, perhaps. I've been trying to learn about all flavors of authoritarianism, not just the ones that are immediately recognizable to me because the leaders look and talk like me.
You are being disingenuous and missing the other poster's point. The reality is Americans, regardless of party, have a delusion of American exceptionalism that leads to a lack of self reflection. Trump is a product of America. Flavors of authoritarianism you say? That is the issue. Maybe look within
I have no idea what we're even arguing about anymore, especially since I'm pretty sure we're aligned on almost everything, except apparently whether Americans have the right to learn from what happens in other countries. I hope you feel like this has been a good use of your time!
It is not about learning about other countries. My issue is thinking totalitarianism is this isolated thing and not a product of each country's history. The US has practiced totalitarianism way before Trump, it literally was founded on imperialism and every leader from Washington to Bernie protects.
They’re arguing essentially race science and are too much of a pussy to admit it. That’s the only thing their argument is anyway. It’s just fucking racism and anger at the idea that Asians and Americans are both human.
I'm not the one comparing apples and oranges here. There are a hundred better comparisons right there: Orban, Poland, Italy, Chile, Brazil, any of the southern cone countries in the 1970s, and on and on.
Believe it or not you can draw multiple comparisons. And there are comparisons with Mao and Trump, even if they make you big mad. All you’re doing is defending Trump.
Lay them out for me
Name one.
He hates cities. This isn’t hard you’re just a racist dipshit who doesn’t want to admit we can learn from non-western cultures.
This, however, is an absolutely wild thing to say
It’s totally true. At the end of the day it boils down to him drawing an arbitrary separation between Asians and not Asians. We’re all humans. If someone compares Trump and Mao and your response is “but Mao was Asian” you are just a racist.
Well, it was a Korean person saying it in the tweet in response to exactly this sort of thing. I think it’s a comment on the donkey brained tendency of Americans to call everything bad communist without regard to reality.
I take issue because it’s a ridiculous comparison and has no validity beyond “bad things happened”. The underlying ideology and motivations are totally, totally different.
For Mao and the Cultural Revolution, I mean. I would never presume to defend the Khmer Rouge in any regard.
You can just say you only care about vibes man because it is very clear you don’t know shit about how Mao actually ran China.
Ok
Yeah no lmfao. What Trump is doing is not meaningfully distinct from the Chinese space program gang wars. Mao and Trump have different beliefs but Maoworld operated on similar rules to Trumpworld.
But that’s not what he’s doing, He’s drawing a parallel to the cultural revolution which was a specific event that happened. And Koreans can also be stupid racists. They’re human too.
👍
This is like a chapo bit you're doing or what? You think republicans being afraid of black and queer people is comparable to emptying the cities? Both are bad things that involve a city somehow... Feel like there's some miscommunication going on here lol
I don’t think you understand how much a large portion of the GOP base hate cities. They fantasize about being able to do the stuff Pol Pot did. Pol Pot has a large Nazi following for a reason.
And for one Pol Pot wasn’t even fucking communist he was a rich asshole reactionary who never gave a shit about leftism beyond getting backing for his goons (which is also why he worked with the CIA).
Well, there we agree
Like American leftists need to stop defending genocidal reactionaries. Pol Pot wasn’t a leftist. He was mad his rich uncle had to get a job. That’s his political motivation. And he only ended up in power because he had cockroach survival abilities combined with elite opsec.
Big dog, I’ve never met a single person that thought Pol Pot was remotely good
The only person I’ve ever even seen say something good about him online was fuckin Matt Heimbach
I guess trump is like pol pot in one way, he's backed by the American empire
A lot more than one, Pol Pot wasn’t even a communist he was a reactionary asshole rich kid who only got into politics because his uncle had to get a real job (and Pol Pot did not want to be working class). The Khmer Rogue and the modern GOP have a surprising number of similarities.
I'm well aware he wasn't communist. That's why the Vietnamese army had to invade to shutdown the genocide while we supported him. But I don't think Trump is planning forced depopulation of the cities
Steven Miller, and several other cabinet members, have a plan for remigration. Trump has talked about remigration They believe in eugenics. They definitely want to depopulate cities bc they think they bastions of the liberal elites. Scary stuff.
It doesn’t get discussed much but like Trump, Pol Pot was also a psychotic racist who hated cities because they had people who didn’t look like him in them. Donald Trump wishes he could do LA like Pol Pot did Phnom Penh.
I’ve been to Republican events man I can guarantee you that Pol Pot would win a statewide GOP primary in like 35 states. He’s even got CIA credentials.
Pot meet kettle. You sound racist yourself.
Acabei de ver que o ALT sei lá pq não saiu. Alt: Tweet com: American *sees something american happening americanly in America* What are we bunch of ASIANS!?!?!
I’ve been doing the same with They Thought They Were Free. Disheartening but viscerally human.
Same...but I went with Blood Meridian.
"What are we, a bunch of Asians?" ~ Chris Hayes
He is looking for any reason to institute Marshal Law. The dictator's playbook. This country must stand up to him and stop him and his cronies.
Some similarities though! Like asking citizens to spy on eachother for "reactionary thought". Just on a much more widespread scale than what we have
Oh my God, read some of the bad American history you ignoramus.
Yes Chris, history is rhyming in a most uncomfortable way again. Triple word score for proper deployment of the word discomfiting.
I tried reading William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 2016 and had to stop because I too was having moments of recognition. Perhaps I should pick it up again at the “Fall” part.
I read book called Wild Swans about three generation of women living thru China changes and revolutions.
I couldn't help but notice Trump & Company has similar echoes of political ideology from Lenin and Mao. Indeed, most folks don't have the background to know how bad things could and how quickly a country could get there.
Maybe the two geniuses that liked this reply could lay out what those echoes would be, but I don’t think you could lol this is just plain braindead
dumb motherfucker
In college we were assigned the Son of the Revolution. It was one of the many books assigned that sticks with me to this day. It was very good. I think they made a movie based on the book.
Chris, maybe this made sense in your lib head, with your lib education and lib imagination, but doing anti-communist agitprop right now during a moment of fascist state violence is itself closer to what Trump is doing than anything Mao did.
HAPPY NATIONAL LOVING DAY-TO ALL. Including the evil, insane, diaper wearing slabs of rotting meat, who are taking food out of childrens mouths, vaccines from their veins & education from their brains. HAPPY NLD Even to the walking/talking zombies(MAGA) who say their pro kids - HAPPY NLD ALL
You really know nothing about Chinese history, do you? Or c communism or fascism?
You know nothing about fascism. "Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler... announced the opening of the first concentration camp near Dachau. The camp would hold 5,000 people, including Communist Party members and Social Democrats “who threaten the security of the state” www.facinghistory.org/resource-lib...
May I suggest Han Dongping's "The Unknown Cultural Revolution" or Mobo Gao's "The Battle for China's Past" for the experience of the majority of China then in the rural regions and the effects of the influx of doctors, workers, and the freedom to develop schools, clinics, and farming practices
He was evil, absolutely
I’ve been saying there’s a lot of overlap with trump and Stalin even if the politics are totally different.
Sinophobia
I read 1984 in the fall and it made me want to throw up. Read it in high school and thought it was ridiculous. Now 50 years later, we are living in.
Do you ever tire of being astonished?
I had essentially the exact same experience recently reading a biography on Stalin and a more general history book on all of Europe (including its colorful regimes and leaders at various points).
Even more disturbing, frightening, is Project2025! It’s the nightmare we are living.
Have you ever seen “Farewell, My Concubine”?
Oh oh oh what a film!!
I remember being really impacted by it
Knocked me sideways. Think I've seen it 3/4? times now. Wd happily watch it again.
Me too! Had it on video* back in the day *alrightgrandma
Video! Those were the days...
Yeah…remember rewinding videos to return them to Blockbuster
Oh bless. Friday night was Video Night at ours. Another life, long ago.
Great film, though I remember my reaction at the end being “Bloody Hell, I’m glad I wasn’t born in China at any point in the 20th Century"
Absolutely!
China has been a better run country for the past 25 years. American leaders only know how to grift. They don’t know how to compete
We won't quite get there because the billionaires would end up as targets ... We're just on the road to becoming another garden-variety corrupt banana republic 😕
We knew that which is why a successful and good president’s age wasn’t an issue…until media folks like you made it one
mondediplo.com/2025/05/07ch...
*Capitalism ushers in the ascendancy of nazi fascism in the USA* Liberal dipshits: "Wow, this is just like the cultural revolution in China, how frightening!"
Have you watched I’m Still Here? I feel like the wife, floating in the ocean watching the helicopters fly over.
And Mao was more competent than Ding Dong Donny and still got it wrong.
F47 has very competent people who are not in the public eye and it's those we need to be wary of.
Vought
He and others from The Heritage Society and then, especially, Thiel, who's directing a lot of this from the shadows.
Exactly, as the country fumbles its way toward a fascist theocracy by way of White Christian Nationalism.
Oh hell yes. We're heading for a Cultural Revolution event if we keep ignoring our young people's needs.
youtube.com/shorts/BSYOw...
i feel ya. i've been taking breaks from relevent history and keeping up with ICE crimes... by unwinding with cinema... in this case handmaid's tale, which doesn't always feel like fiction
wtf may I recommend reading about the #reconstruction if #Europe, #postWWII? Either that, or the #MassacreOfNanjing thinking #China has forgiven what #Japan FORGOT will be enlightening
Right let’s not wait. Glad it helped you feel better.
Now read the Little Red Book, Chris C'mon, I wanna see what happens
We are on that path. I have been repeatedly posting "How Mao." for weeks now.
I felt similarly listening to the Behind the Bastards Pol Pot episodes
During a media junket to China in Sept 2015, I asked my minder what she thought of Mao. “One third good, two thirds bad,” she said.
Please trump destroy this country more so that people like this have to think about something else for once in they're empty lives.
The cult is scary. What I truly fear is if people are allowed to take the law into their own hands and hand out their version of “justice”. Mao enabled this and it was devastating. I guess people choosing to go work for ICE is the closest equivalent right now.
Read Prophet Song, Chris. It will not make you feel better.
I can say as someone who spent years reading about Mao and what happened, yeah ... we have some things to deal with
Yeah, not great when you are reading stories / watching documentaries on Mao or Pol Pot and every 10 minutes or so you do the Rick Dalton...
I think that's the same reason. I just read a biography of Stalin.
Come to Canada .. Mark would let you in
I'm having the same feelings on some ww2 materials [hope of resistance but also oh that sounds famiia-oh no no no...]
I have particularly seen parallels in Trump's attacks on colleges, science, and medicine
Just realize why the Communist Party is as repressive as it is… They came to power through the power of the population and they fear that very same power being turned back against them when the People rise up in a New Revolution The GOP is exactly the same That’s why the Koch’s bought the Tea Party!
yeah communism and capitalism are the same actually
Liberals are some of the most frustrating people. They're so incredibly brainwashed that their minds are hermetically sealed against reality. I'm astonished they're not immune to Covid but I guess they still have to breath.
Brianna Wu follower lol
Cult of personality is always bad whomever does it.
When our gun-totin' Republicans finally realize how badly they've been duped.... nah, that is not likely, especially now that experienced TV shills are in charge.
Please do us all a favor -- you and your colleagues at MSNBC. Stop over- intellectualizing this stuff and start using real words to describe for your viewers how dire things are right now. Stop with the talk of polls and GOP v. Dems. Help end normalcy bias. It's not helping anyone
A more direct antecedent is the intelligence aktion - “Intelligenzaktion resulted in the killing of 100,000 Polish people; by way of forced disappearance, Germans imprisoned and killed select members of Polish society… mass graves… summary executions of select intellectuals and community leaders”
Exactly. We need to say things like that over & over again. Because WE are the media now. We are all lifting important voices. Like those of our Democratic leaders in Congress!
Same recognition. As if a configuration of social dynamics creates a physics that induces reactionary politics.
@democrats.org @democrats-judiciary.house.gov @housedemocrats.bsky.social @democrats.senate.gov @waysmeanscmte.bsky.social #3E #NoKings #HandsOff #14thNOW #25thNOW #Impeach47 #ImpeachRFK #ArrestMusk #VerifyTheVote #NeverForgetJanuary6 #DoSomething #WTAF ‼️💥 @fsfp.bsky.social impeachtrumpagain.org
I feel this is diferent. We achieved over hundreds of years a master class system of justice and equality, so the sting of this oppression will rage the citizenry of all sides to revolt!
In Chile, the poorly educated and the rich still, after more than 50 years, firmly believe Pinochet was the best thing that could of happened to the country. What do Americans think about Pinochet and what he did to Chile, more importantly, what do you think maga thinks about Pinochet?
*have
Ah, yes…..reminders…..
Just finished reading Hitler's First Hundred Days, and rereading 1984 concurrently. Same feels.
bsky.app/profile/torr...
And happening so very, very quickly
Trump’s attack against Universities, NIH & other research institutions & nurturing his Cult of Personality is analogous to Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Why is money earmarked for control of migration greater than defense budget of UK + France. Because they want to do renditions & reeducation camps.
I felt that way about “Reading Lolita in Tehran”
I’m worried about the much much much worse also.
It’s a brilliant book. I wish I hadn’t read it last year because then I could read it afresh this year
That’s like saying jumping off a cliff could get so much worse when you hit the ground. The path and the intention is there, just because we haven’t reached the destination doesn’t mean there is comfort in where we are.
Check out the Great Leap Forward as well. The Republican attack on DEI is definitely Cultural Revolution but the sheer economic ignorance underneath the GLF (melting finished steel products to meet pig iron quotas etc) reminds me of the Republican tariff policy. Watch for self-criticism sessions...
Chris that's what Trump really wants. He wants the power Mao had. He wants statues and military parades. His great leap back is going to kill millions. Last time 1 million died. He is ruining american farming.
The landlord who owns and rents multiple properties doesn’t like Mao because he killed a bunch of landlords who were starving their tenants with insane rent, whoda thunk?!
The RFK takeover of public health is as Cultural Revolution as anything that has happened in American history.
no it's not. cultural revolution was mistaken. this fascistic purge is eugenics and intentional.
And the New Lysenkoism...
no it's not. lysenko was just wrong. RFKjr is doing intentional eugenics.
"Just wrong" is an understatement: "...when any biologist would say, "Well, now, wait a minute, you just made such-and-such a claim; I tried to reproduce it in my laboratory, it doesn't work," that man became an enemy to Lysenko." Parallels there to my eye. www.wbur.org/news/2017/04...
I think you're gonna see what you're gonna see. personally, I see Mengele but you're free to be a sucker for red scare propaganda.
Read the book dickhead, then comment
I know about Lysenko man. I don't gotta read your dipshit red scare nonsense to know he was wrong and stupid.
It’s a narrative account of the GPCR based largely on CPC archives but sure
yeah, no red scare editorializing lining each fucking sentence, you rube.
Sorry, I didn’t realise you were 15. Don’t stay up too late in case a challenging idea comes for you. Muted
I hope his wife's acting career is over. Like many of the MAGA actors. Angel Studio films will be the only thing we see her in.
Chris quit reading and start reporting the truth about what the president is doing to our country. Even if MSNBC tries to chastise you for doing so
god, you are just so so dumb man
people are mean and crazy
Read the Three Body Problem.
The most disturbing thing about Mao, to me, is that he's still revered as a hero, even in modern China. One difference, though: somewhere around half of Americans are really opposed to and see through Trump's crap. I don't think that would've been true in China with respect to Mao in the 50s.
I think many would subscribe to you substack!
In a middlebrow version of the same sort of thing, here's Tribunate YouTube channel, an ongoing series about facets Rome's transition from Republic to Empire, a very messy process with a bad ending. www.youtube.com/@tribunateSPQR
Mike Johnson crossed a line I hadn’t seen him cross before Nobody’s making him be a malicious delinquent He’s responding to incentives Trump is pushing The right response imo is that Johnson and Trump couldn’t care less about our safety or happiness (see Decalaration) bsky.app/profile/atru...
MAGA is just full of disgusting people. Take 3rd graders Musk and Bannon.
I have been immersed in the rise of Hitler. I see many parallels. My consolation is that there is still more, and immediate, transparency in reporting than the 1930s.
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. An account of 1933 to 1937 from the eyes of the US Ambassador to Germany and his family. We’ll researched. Similarities between this president & cabinet to Hitler & company is frightening. Project 2025 playbook as well.
Was published in 2011. Who knew it would foretell 2025.
Yeah, but at least Mao was trying to get rid of the decadencies of the rich. What this excuse?
Mao also protected many rich people while ostensibly railing against "elites". Seems pretty similar to me.
The parallel has occurred to me.
They Thought They Were Free had the same effect on me!
Why the fuck do you libs always read about communists to talk about fascists? There are a lot of direct parallels with 1930s Germany also in fact id say more even than fucking 50s China. I don’t even like Mao or Maoism but Jesus Christ
That book is very good, but turgid. Try also John King Fairbanks, the Great Chinese Revolution — the chapter on the Cultural Revolution is brilliant.
I hear they’re calling it the American century of Humiliation! More and more people are saying it! #Americancenturyofhumiliation
Not exactly the comparison one is hoping for just now. 😭🤬
Fascism and communism are opposites.
My God! You are so lucky. Brilliant beautiful couple, adorable kids. The monetary means. If you have to, you can move to another country. You should feel some sorrow for the rest of us, but go if you must.
Growing up under an actual dictatorship, I can tell you this can get much worse. We are making a steady progress to that direction unfortunately.
Not like this is the first time in the USA that people had gone berserk over immigration or we’ve seen police abusing protesters.
As a China scholar, I can affirm that the echoes of cultic obedience are chilling
you're so correct. every chinese person live as a hivemind like bugs and should be dealt with as such, since they do not have any feelings or conscience besides whatever president xi feels.
If you ask many Chinese people, they will tell you Mao is considered a folk hero, and the Communist government is "experimental." But I doubt it will go that way here in the US. It will flow toward democracy rather than away from it.
I’m kinda done with “it could be worse”. I get it but I hate it!
I see very little reason to think we aren’t headed there.
There is a lot of resonance there.
Some of us have been giving warnings for a decade. Nobody listened.
We need Democrats to get their act to together immediately It would help to have Jeffries and Schumer step aside They are not proactive, not leaders and they lack the passion and the energy to meet this moment They are dragging all of us down Why isn’t anyone listening I don’t get it
Word.
There's a baseline stupidity among journalists they can't exceed. Like cops, being too intelligent or possessing too much actual knowledge is disqualifying. Thanks for providing an example of this.
