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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27875 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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It's tempting to read this Mao quote as chest-beating propaganda, not real doctrine. Was there any evidence he intended to follow through?

He launched a skirmish with the Soviet Union (over a worthless island in a river), in 1969. Hundreds were killed. He was an incredible risk-taker.

These quotes were supposedly attributed asides to no-name ambassadors outside of the great powers of the time.

If he was trying to intimidate people, he picked the wrong targets to do so.

Mao saw combat during WW2 in China. I imagine he had a very different view of death and permissive causalities. While per capita China's deaths were not the worst, they were certainly up there. I don't think it's wise to underestimate just how this shaped his outlook.

To me it seems that the man who orchestrated the great leap forward, cultural revolution and pushed the Korean war to stalemate was not what one would consider a chest beater. He was committed and he had a very high tolerance towards Chinese casualties.

What I'm saying is, it would be prudent for Mao to say "eh the bomb is no big deal, they won't dare use it, and if they do they won't kill all of us and if they do then in any case socialism will win" whether it was true or not. That's what I mean by chest-beating.

To be fair he would also say stuff like this to his allies, in private. There was some transcript of a conference of socialist countries I think in the 50s where Mao is like "well, China will naturally be the leaders of the socialist revolution because we have so many people that we'll best survive the inevitable nuclear war," and all the other countries would be like "inevitable nuclear war? Come again?"

I was wondering if sun_the_second was referencing the old Mao story about Italians. I've seen it in a couple forms and I think the main source is Khruschev's memoirs.

Mao: In the worst case, half the people would die, but the other half would survive, and imperialism would be wiped off the face of the earth, and the whole world would become socialist.

Italian Communist: How many Italians will survive?

Mao: None at all. But why do you think Italians are so important to humanity?

That must have been what I was thinking of since it's from the 1957 Moscow Conference of Communist countries. I read it first in Julia Lovell's "Maoism: A Global History". I do remember it having a little more, or maybe just her having some specific commentary, but unfortunately I've only got the physical book and can't search through it.

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