There's been a lot of flack in the right-wing media (read "alternative media" since the MSM is simply a wing of the Democrat Party) about Anita Dunn the interim White House communications director and her comment that the two people she admires the most are Mother Theresa and Chairman Mao. Here's a sample from Victor David Hanson:
Anita Dunn's praise of Mao Zedong as a "political philosopher" is so unhinged and morally repugnant, that she should hang it up, pronto. Mao killed anywhere from 50 million to 70 million innocents in the initial cleansing of Nationalists, the scouring of the countryside, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Tibet, and the internal Chinese gulag.
Now I admire Hanson, own a couple of his books, and agree with many things that he says, but I find myself in at least partial disagreement here.
Yes, Mao was guilty of many of the above things and more, but let's try to take things within their proper context. The Nationalists, to put it bluntly, were a pack of fascists. They were actual fascists, as opposed to "I'm calling them fascists because I don't like them." If Hitler's Germany benefited from being cleansed of fascism, then I think we're on uncertain territory condemning Mao for the removal of the Nationalists from China. OK, they were "our" fascists, but that doesn't make them saints. Yes, innocents suffered in the process, but just as with the Nazis, it was kind of hard to be part of the Nationalists under Chiang Kaishek without having some guilt. Innocent families of Nazis suffered when their husbands/fathers faced summary execution while the war was running down or faced Nuremburg trials after things cooled off a little. Does it make Mao a good guy? Hardly, but let's not get carried away calling Nationalists "innocents" as if they were a bunch of children roused out of an orphanage for summary execution just for kicks. The Nationalists lost a civil war, they deserved to lose, and then they paid the price.
The "scouring of the countryside" has a dramatic Lord of the Rings "ring" to it (you can just see the orcs in the Shire doing nasty things to poor hobbits) and refers to the campaign against "landlords". Again, a lot of injustice was done, but the fact of the matter is, landlordism really was a scourge and blight for China, with far too much land concentrated in far too few hands. Hanson himself is a champion of the small farmer, and it was precisely this group that Mao was seeking to help. Nor was it something unique to the communists ... it's almost boringly repetitive in Chinese history that during periods of chaos and instability the poor peasants would suffer the most, and that one of the most urgent tasks of a new regime is to give them land so they can support themselves. It happened with the unification of the Sui/Tang Dynasties, and it happened with the founding of the Ming Dynasty, to name just a couple of other examples. Where was that land going to come from? Mao was on solid ground, following long established historical precedent, in his campaign against landlords.
The Great Leap Forward was an utter disaster. It was not, however, caused by maliciousness. It should be characterized as gross economic incompetence and irrational exuberance in believing that "human spirit" and "mass effort" could overcome all problems. Millions died, but they were not rounded up for execution, and nor were regions deliberately allowed to starve as part of some Machiavellian plot. We can certainly convict Mao on this one, but it's not a murder conviction: it's manslaughter with contributory negligence.
Next comes the Cultural Revolution. There's pretty much no one who is going to try to defend that one, but again, let's not get carried away. It was a cultural disaster. Society was turned on its head. Many extremely good people suffered really badly (and I know several of them) but it was as nothing compared to the kind of stuff Stalin, Hitler, etc got up to. Some people died. Most just suffered ideological indoctrination, public humiliation, and loss of status. Many priceless historical relics were lost to posterity. Even the Chinese, who generally admire Mao, no longer even try to pretend that the Cultural Revolution was anything other than a disaster. It was a bad thing, but let's not overstate the case. The same applies to the Chinese "gulags" ... and since Davis raises the Soviet comparison with his choice of the word "gulag" let's run with that. If we're talking about the campaign to send people down to the countryside exiling the intellectuals from the cities, then (again) I know people who went through all of that, and let me tell you that was a tough time, but it was as nothing compared to Stalin's gulags. If we're talking about the re-education camps, then I don't personally know anyone who was sent to one, but I have read books by people who were. They were very bad places ... but the Chinese never went through the multiple purges of Stalin's USSR with secret police knocking on doors and millions disappearing never to be heard of again except (perhaps) as a bit of bone being turned over by a farmer's plough. The Soviets put bullets in their dissidents' heads, while the Chinese sent them to be re-educated, and hopefully to be reintegrated into society once they were "cured". The Russians executed the Czar and all his family, but the last emperor of China was sent to a re-education camp, from which he was eventually released. He lived out his remaining years in relative peace as a common man, and was even put under police protection to keep him safe during the Cultural Revolution. He wrote an autobiography, and died of natural causes in 1967. Mao might not have been a saint, but he could have been a heck of a lot worse.
Wow ... this post has become a mini-essay. Let's recap. Mao wasn't a good man, and it was stupid and historically ignorant of an Obama Regime official to express open admiration for him as one of her favorite political philosophers. However, I believe it weakens the case against her to get carried away with anti-Mao rants. In fact, the reality of Mao is probably considerably more dangerous in our current circumstances, because it bears a much closer resemblance to the situation in USA. It is also why we need to be more realistic in assessing what Dunn really meant when she expressed admiration for the Chairman.
a) Mao saw real and pressing economic problems within his country, and took radical steps to try to solve these problems. Due to ideological foolishness and ignorance of economics, the steps he took did a lot of damage.
b) Mao saw people who disagreed with his ideology as enemies. This was because he genuinely believed that his ideas were what was best for the country, and that removing these people was necessary to accomplish his goals.
c) Mao believed in using the education system, the media, and many other community organizations as a way to reshape the ideology of the country, and to target those opposing his goals.
d) Mao believed in collectivization and ideological faith over anything so mundane as economic laws.
e) The miracle that is modern China only began to emerge with the passing of Mao and the return of pragmatism: it doesn't matter what color the cat is, as long as it catches mice. To express admiration for Mao is to fail to realize that capitalism, not socialism, is responsible for bringing more people out of poverty in China than the total population of any previous Chinese dynasty. China still has a lot of poor people, but it has a rampantly capitalist middle class bigger than the population of USA, and they didn't get where they are today through ideological fervor.
Frankly, when you look at it this way, Dunn's admiration for Mao is a lot more of a concern. To express admiration for the Mao described by the right wing media is to be nothing more than absurd. To express admiration for the Mao that I have described is a lot more concerning, and gives us a much better insight into the way people within the Obama regime see the world.
