The Fashion Pigs

The Fashion Pigs by monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com

Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz is being accused of committing a “fashion crime” in Peru. (1) The actress of There is Something About Mary and Shrek fame wore a tourist reproduction of Cultural Revolution-era style bag on her trip to Machu Picchu. The bag with a red star and the slogan “Serve the People” in Mao Zedong’s calligraphy emblazoned on the side has caused much yapping from imperialists, white-trash, and Peruvian compradors.

Various bourgeois so-called “human rights” groups are making noise about the fashion faux pas. Diaz said regretfully, “I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended,” she wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it.”(2) Apparently, “Serve the People” is a hurtful slogan according to the imperialists.

Her apology was not enough for Thor Halvorssen of the so-called “Human Rights Foundation,” a suspect organization that appears to spend most of its time as an imperialist mouth piece attacking Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Evo Morales. (3) Halvorssen,

It is bad enough that Diaz wears a bag quoting history’s most prolific butcher, but what’s even worse is that she is of Cuban heritage and really should know something about the true history of communism. There is a double standard here that boggles the mind: Had she worn a bag quoting Himmler or Pinochet, she would likely face career annihilation, and rightly so. (4)

White-trash blogs have also been chiming in,

So to your typical sheltered Western elite it’s just a fun communist phrase. “Serve the People.”…I think not wearing slogans of organizations the killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the past couple of decades would be a good start. Having the Western Elite – from Diaz to your average college kid – have even a passing familiarity with the blood behind populist slogans in general would be nice. (5)

Another white-trash blog,

Why would actress Cameron Diaz want a handbag emblazoned with Maoist slogans? This is fashion? And then to insensitively wear it while touring Peru, a land where Maoist ideologues murdered tens of thousands. Why not just wear a “Go Hitler!” sweatshirt in Jerusalem or a “Pol Pot Is My Homeboy” baseball cap in Cambodia? Even if Diaz was truly clueless, her handlers should have caught this…. No, wearing a Mao Zedong handbag is just evil. (6)

Thor Halvorssen and the white-trash yappers have no clue. Mao was one of the greatest liberators of all time. The Chinese revolution under Mao’s leadership smashed feudalism and built socialism for a quarter of the world’s population. A quarter of the world’s population was without political power and existed in conditions of dire poverty. A quarter of the world lived in squalor while imperialists and their comprador and feudal allies reaped the benefits. Mao’s revolution was also the greatest feminist revolution of all time, bringing real political power to a quarter of the world’s females. The Chinese Communists under Mao brought health care and education to a quarter of humynity. Life expectancy nearly doubled. The infant death rate was reduced by 77% in the Mao years. (7) Under Mao’s leadership, humynity embarked on a great social experiment that was truly liberating. And, when the gains were being reversed by capitalist-roaders, the Maoists unleashed a cultural revolution to protect the gains of socialism and push even further to communism.

The Communist Party of Peru, known as “Shining Path,” led a people’s war to liberate Peru from the clutches of yankee imperialism. Revolution is not a dinner party and people die in wars. However, even bourgeois so-called “human rights” groups admit more people were assassinated by the yankee backed genocidal puppet state in Peru. In addition, vastly more people die in Peru due to the structurally caused poverty inflicted by imperialism. Blaming the Communist Party of Peru for the deaths that happened during the people’s war is blaming the oppressed for standing up to their oppressor. It is like blaming the victim when she fights back.

Typically, Halvorssen and the white-trash yappers incorrectly compare communism with Nazism. Communism is revolutionary science wielded by the oppressed to advance all of humynity to a global society where no group has power over another. Nazism is an arch-reactionary imperialist ideology that advocates the vilest forms of oppression. The Nazis waged a brutal genocide against oppressed peoples in parts of Europe and the Soviet Union. The yankee puppet Alberto Fujimori of Peru waged a de facto genocide against the countryside of Peru. In addition, Halvorssen mentions Pinochet, but he forgets to mention that compradors like Pinochet and their imperial masters are exactly the ones that the masses led by Maoists fight against. In addition, the single greatest genocide of all time was waged by the Amerikan nation when it exterminated a continent of First Nations to make room for its white-trash empire. Does anyone think that there would be an uproar if Diaz wore a bag with an Amerikan flag on it? Of course not.

It is not surprising to hear an apology from the host of Trippin’, a show where rich and famous Amerikan stars pretend to go-native and learn from locals in “exotic” places “in the middle of nowhere” like Bhutan and Honduras. (8) When Diaz apologizes for brandishing a “hurtful slogan,” she should be honest and embrace the slogan of imperialism, “Fuck the People.”

Notes.

1. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=paDiazsat08diazbag&show_article=1

2. http://www.worldhum.com/weblog/item/cameron_diaz_to_peru_lo_siento_mucho_20070625/

3. http://www.humanrightsfoundation.org/

4.http://www.nypost.com/seven/06272007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix_u.htm

5. http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/search/label/Pablo%20Rojas

6. http://burrintheburgh.blogspot.com/2007/06/cameron-diaz-mao-disciple.html

7. http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/faq/50threbut.html

8. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=trippin

Movie review: Borat (2006)

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006, Larry Charles)
reviewed by Prairie Fire of monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com

Borat (2006) is a reactionary movie based on British Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s character of the same name from HBO’s Da Ali G Show. Sacha Cohen plays Borat, a reporter for Kazakhstan TV who goes to Amerika to make a documentary, “although Kazakhstan is glorious country, it have a problems: economic, social and Jew. This why Ministry of Information have decide to send me to U.S. and A., greatest country in the world, to learn lessons for Kazakhstan.” In the U$, Borat happens to see a Bay Watch episode; he falls head over heels for Pamela Anderson. The movie is a faux documentary of Borat’s adventures and interviews on the way to California to marry Pamela Anderson by kidnapping her.

In some of the interviews, those in the scenes don’t appear to be actors. They don’t appear to know that the Borat character is an act. Borat’s over-the-top behavior is written off because his behavior conforms to Amerikan expectations of foreigners. Throughout the movie, Borat and his homeland are portrayed to Amerikans as inbred, provincial, poverty stricken, anti-Semitic, misogynist, anti-queer and so on. In the opening scenes a festival called “the running of the Jew” is depicted. In this festival, a persyn wears a large vulture-devil costume and runs a gauntlet chasing money and waving a cleaver. In another scene, Borat refuses to fly across the U$ because he fears that the “Jews repeat their attack of 9-11.” Also, Borat causally remarks that Jews have horns. However, many, if not most, of the scenes are scripted.

Borat continually jokes to his Amerikan interviewees about raping wimmin, kidnapping them for marriage, buying wimmin and so on. He tells some Amerikan bourgeois feminists, “in Kazakhstan it is illegal for more than five women to meet in one place except in brothel or grave. So what it means this feminism?” Predictably, the Amerikan females leave the interview, offended by Borat’s outrageous statements.

Borat interviews Republican ex-presidential candidate and homophobe Alan Keyes, “a chocolate-faced politician.” Borat plays dumb and Keyes expresses dismay at Borat’s stupidity during the interview. Borat pretends to be shocked when Keyes informs him that people at Pride-fest, who supposedly wanted to use a dildo on Borat were, surprise surprise, actually gay. In another scene, a white-trash cowboy tells Borat that all Arabs, Muslims, and terrorists look alike. This white-trash Amerikan tells Borat he should shave his mustache in order to appear Italian. Borat informs the cowboy that they jail and hang gays in Kazakhstan. The cowboy replies “that is what we are trying to do here” and gives Borat a high-five.

In another scene, Borat says to a rodeo crowd, “We support your war of terror. We support our boys in Iraq. May U.S.A. kill every single terrorist. May George Bush drink the blood of every man, womyn and child in Iraq. May you destroy their countries so that for the next thousand years no single lizard will survive in their dessert.” Borat receives a big cheer from the white-trash rodeo crowd.

Borat does show the ignorant and reactionary ways of white-trash Amerika. However, Borat does this by playing to their stereotypes of the Muslim world. His comedy works because so many Amerikans believe that this is exactly how Muslims and Middle Easterners are — no matter that Kazakhstan is in central Asia and it is unclear if Borat claims to be a Muslim or not. In this way, Borat is like the Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd “wild and crazy guys” skit from old Saturday Night Live episodes. The imperialists rally females and queers to the war effort by claiming that Amerika is civilizing the Muslim world by bringing sexual liberalism and supposed gender equality. Borat’s stereotypes will only add to the warmonger’s image of a backward Muslim world. Borat is popular among liberal Amerikans because it pokes fun at white trash and foreigners. It is popular among white trash because of its reactionary portrayal of Muslims and foreigners. It is popular among Zionists because it portrays Muslims or Middle Easterners as rabidly anti-Semitic.

Besides being reactionary, the movie’s humor is of a typical scatological variety. Amerikans are so stupid and inane that they are barely able to understand literate comedy. Referring to an anus as a “back pussy,” as Borat does, is bound to get lots of laughs from half-wit Amerikans. Reaction mixed with poop jokes sums up Borat. In the end, Borat’s last laugh is at the expense of the oppressed.

Excerpt: Interview with Ganapathy on the Islamic upsurge, General Secretary, CPI(Maoist)

Interview with Ganapathy, General Secretary, CPI(Maoist)

[The questions that follow have been sent by various newspapers to Ganapathy, General Secretary, CPI(Maoist). More than half of these were sent by BBC. The answers by Ganapathy are being sent to the media in the background of the successful completion of the Congress of the CPI(Maoist) and other recent developments—Azad, Spokesperson, CPI(Maoist), 24th April, 2007]

[The following is only a small section of the full interview available online -- PF]

On the Islamic Upsurge:

Q: But globally the fight is now becoming pro-globalisation versus Islamic upsurge—in this scheme of things how do you see a classless society?

A: Globalisation is a war on the people and on every value cherished by the people for centuries. Globalisation is the ideology of the market fundamentalists. The market fundamentalists are destroying everything a nation had possessed and preserved for centuries. They promote nothing but sheer greed and self-interest with the sole aim of global hegemony and the means to achieve it is a war on all fronts—military, economic, political, cultural, psychological. And to achieve this “lofty” goal, they think even the destruction of the world is collateral damage.

There is a people’s upsurge against globalization all over the world and Islamic upsurge is an integral part of the worldwide people’s upsurge against imperialism, imperialist globalization and war.

A classless society-Communism—is a conscious human project and has to be built through the transformation of human consciousness. And to achieve this, the first step is to destroy imperialism on a world scale and domestic reaction in every country. Islamic upsurge is a reaction to imperialist globalization and imperialist oppression and exploitation of the world people, and Muslim masses in particular. As long as imperialism exists, and as long as it bolsters up decadent reactionary comprador Islamic regimes in countries of Asia and Africa, it is impossible for the Muslim masses to come out of their fundamentalism. It is only after the destruction of imperialism on a world scale can the Islamic masses come out completely from their obscurantist ideology and values. This will pave the way for the establishment of a classless society.

Q: What is your opinion about Islamic upsurge?

A: The answer to this question is already contained in the above explanation. In essence, we see the Islamic upsurge as a progressive anti-imperialist force in the contemporary world. It is wrong to describe the struggle that is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestinian territory, Kashmir, Chechnya, and several other countries as a struggle by Islamic fundamentalists or as a “clash of civilizations” long back theorized by Samuel Huntington and which is being resurrected by all and sundry today. In essence all these are national liberation wars notwithstanding the role of Islamic fundamentalists too in these struggles. We oppose religious fundamentalism of every kind ideologically and politically as it obfuscates class distinctions and class struggle and keeps the masses under the yoke of class oppression. However, “Islamic fundamentalism”, in my opinion, is an ally of the people in their fight against market fundamentalism promoted by the US, EU, Japan and other imperialists.

The upsurge is bound to raise the anti-imperialist democratic consciousness among the Muslim masses and bring them closer with all other secular, progressive and revolutionary forces. I see the Islamic upsurge as the beginning of the democratic awakening of the Muslim masses despite the domination of fundamentalist ideology and outlook in the Islamic movement at present. Our Party supports the Islamic upsurge and seeks a unity with all anti-imperialist forces.

Q: Nasarullah of Hizbollah has recently said that Left should come close to Islamists. In Indian context—what do you feel?

A: I basically agree with what Nasarullah of Hizbollah has said. One must understand that Nasarullah is referring to the struggles for national liberation from imperialism in Islamic countries.

The need of the hour is to achieve the unity of all forces opposed to imperialism, particularly US imperialism, which is aggressively destroying every human value handed over to us by thousands of years of history and is oppressing every nation of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Left cannot even claim itself to be democratic if it does not initiate steps to unite with the forces in the Islamic movement which are fighting for national liberation from imperialism, particularly US imperialism. All the ongoing movements which are supposed to be led by Islamic forces in various countries as I had mentioned above, are national democratic movements in content. The strong religious language used by the leadership of these movements does not alter their national democratic essence and their anti-imperialist character.

MSH has not done enough investigation into the CP India (Maoist) to know the details of its line or whether it can be considered a true Maoist party. In any case, the above orientation toward the “Islamic upsurge” is correct. MSH likes what Ganapathy has to say here.

Just because the “Islamic upsurge” casts itself as religious does not negate that such movements 1. have a democratic character and 2. are part of the broad united front against the principal enemy, U$ imperialism. Let’s see what Mao Zedong had to say about it in On Contradiction:

When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position.

Lin Biao in Long Live the Victory of People’s War! said:

Since World War II, U.S. imperialism has stepped into the shoes of German, Japanese and Italian fascism and has been trying to build a great American empire by dominating and enslaving the whole world. It is actively fostering Japanese and West German militarism as its chief accomplices in unleashing a world war. Like a vicious wolf, it is bullying and enslaving various peoples, plundering their wealth, encroaching upon their countries’ sovereignty and interfering in their internal affairs. It is the most rabid aggressor in human history and the most ferocious common enemy of the people of the world. Every people or country in the world that wants revolution, independence and peace cannot but direct the spearhead of its struggle against U.S. imperialism.

Just as the Japanese imperialists’ policy of subjugating China made it possible for the Chinese people to form the broadest possible united front against them, so the U.S. imperialists’ policy of seeking world domination makes it possible for the people throughout the world to unite all the forces that can be united and form the broadest possible united front for a converging attack on U.S. imperialism.

Insofar as it is possible, proletarian forces should attempt to assert their leadership role within the united front. However, if proletarian forces are too weak to assert their leadership role, they should not take up positions that amount to de facto calls for “revolutionary” defeatism against oppressed nations. They should also defend themselves within the united front. They should maintain organizational autonomy and not liquidate into the united front. They should not enter into de facto alliances with imperialists for sectarian reasons. Forces that take up such a reactionary line are basically doing the work of the CIA; they are plan B and plan C compradors. Those fake-Maoists in the “RIM” who have entered into an alliance with U$ imperialism against the Taliban and Islamic Republic of Iran are traitors. Serve the People of IRTR said:

We communists are atheists. Religion is fundamentally opposed to the philosophical position of materialism and therefore must be rejected by every communist. But religion is a product of social conditions. It cannot be eliminated under the obscurantist systems of capitalism and feudalism that prevail everywhere in the world today (with the exception of a few small, isolated societies that still practice so-called primitive communism). In particular, the contradiction between religion and science is not the principal contradiction at this time; the principal contradiction is that between imperialism and the oppressed nations.

Observe what that means when the white-chauvinist First World “left” attacks Islam today, in 2007. Such “leftists” elevate their opposition to religion above their (stated, not genuine) opposition to imperialism. They end up serving imperialist interests, whether they realize that or not. It’s no accident that the imperialist media in the united $nakes try to fan up opposition to Islam; that serves, by extension, to build up opposition to several powerful resistance movements and to distract the proletarian camp from our main enemy, U$ imperialism.

By contrast, we communists see that most Muslims today are proletarians and therefore likely allies of the international communist movement. We correctly regard them as part of the united front against imperialism. If the Iraqi resistance, after gloriously liberating the country from the Great $atan, set up an Islamic theocracy, that would be a contradiction for the Iraqi people to resolve eventually. But even an Islamic theocracy, while not ideal from a communist perspective, would be by far preferable to a Yankkkee puppet state (including, tellingly, a “communist” party hand-picked by the united $nakes). Right now, with their country under imperialist occupation, the Iraqis cannot choose between theocracy and other forms of government; the great $atan is imposing a puppet regime on them. Setting up any other government, theocratic or not, is predicated on the liberation of Iraq from Yankkkee clutches. And that means uniting all patriotic forces, including religious ones, in the anti-imperialist struggle. That’s because the fight against U$ imperialism is the principal contradiction. (source: https://irtr.info/forums/vtopic3005.html)

People need to wake up and see that not everyone calling themselves “Maoist” is a real Maoist. Bob Afakean’s new age cult pyramid scheme and the fake-Maoists in the “RIM” should be treated as enemies of the proletariat for attacking the “Islamic upsurge” and making alliances with the Great Satan, Amerikkka. People need to start looking beyond how people self-identify. People need to examine the content of people’s lines and the objective effects of those lines in the world. Revisionism doesn’t wear a “kick me” sign — neither does the CIA.

Movie review: Morning Sun (2003)

Morning Sun (2003, Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé)
(available at http://www.morningsun.org/)
reviewed by Prairie Fire of monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com (slightly edited)

“You young people are full of vigor and vitality. You are full of life. You are like the morning sun. You are our hope.” — Mao Zedong

“When we saw the light of dawn, we felt as if this was the dawn of a new era for mankind. We felt we were about to embark on an unprecedented revolution. It would bring about a society that was truly egalitarian and democratic.” — ex-red guard Tang Rae

Morning Sun, directed by Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé, is one of the few documentaries that examines China’s cultural revolution in any detail or complexity. It contains amazing footage of red guard rallies in Tiananmen, footage of Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Jiang Qing, Wang Li and Guan Feng. There is also footage from model operas and the mass movements. The film is worth watching for this footage alone.

The film mostly focuses on the height of the cultural revolution from 1966 to 1969. However, it also covers the events leading up to the cultural revolution: Liu Shaoqi’s rise after the Great Leap, Lin Biao’s elevation of politics in command in the PLA, Jiang Qing’s work in the arts and the rise of new proletarian culture, the building frustration with bureaucratic privilege and problems in education. It covers Liu Shaoqi’s suppression of students and the rise of the red guard and rebel worker movements. The campaign against the Four Olds that began in August of 1966 and the power seizures of 1967 are portrayed as a frenzy of violence. The mass movement power seizures ended and “consolidation” began as Mao shifted toward the cadres and against the mass movements late 1967 and through 1968. The film covers the rise of the cult. It covers rise of the PLA in politics and its role at the Ninth Congress. The film briefly covers Lin Biao’s fall and death in 1971. Except for Lin Biao’s death, the film skips the years of the early 1970s, except to comment on Nixon’s visits and the changes in Chinese foreign policy influenced by Zhou Enlai. It covers the counter-revolutionary demonstration at Zhou Enlai’s memorial on April 5th of 1976. It briefly shows Jiang Qing at the trial of the “Lin Biao and Gang of Four anti-party cliques.” The film is a good history lesson for so-called “Maoists” who have the simplistic notion that the cultural revolution was a single event running from 1966 to 1976, as though red guards were running around seizing power in 1976. The glory days of the cultural revolution existed between 1966 and 1969 or 1971, at the latest. The many phases of the cultural revolution will be an eye-opener to some. However, those who know something about this history will feel that the struggles involved are only barely touched on in the film.

The film is clear that the rebel movements were genuine expressions of discontent. However, rather than taking the Maoist view that the cultural revolution was a real struggle between two classes, the film instead characterizes these struggles in bourgeois terms. The film compares rebel youth to The Gadfly, a Russian tale of “revolutionary idealism and romantic love” dubbed into Chinese with a score by Shostakovich. The Gadfly is a Byronic hero, a scarred outlaw figure. He is contrasted by interviewees to the image of Lei Feng, implying that most of the youth were originally moved by only romantic notions of liberation and not moved by notions of proletarian dedication and discipline. Thus, the film peddles the revisionist criticism that the socialist conception of human nature and socialist art reduce life to stick figures. Yet the film reduces the cultural revolution to its own bourgeois stick figure explanations: teen rebellion, mob violence, religious fanaticism and lack of bourgeois democracy. One example of the film’s bourgeois outlook is given by ex-red guard Zhu Xue Qin’s description of his rebellion, “this was part of a universal and timeless adolescent impulse. If I was emerged in religious thinking, perhaps I would have become one of the faith.” The film constantly downplays class struggle. Yet the film’s view, albeit bourgeois, is not entirely negative. The film implies that the act of rebellion is deeply human, but the humanistic side was lost to extremism and conformity in the late 1960s.

According to the film, the world of the cultural revolutionaries lost all subtlety. Like a model opera, the world was stark, only black and white. The film fails to grasp that the starkness in socialist art is a way to draw out, to make visible, the underlying power dynamics that shape the world. People with pre-scientific and bourgeois outlooks fail to see the power struggles in the “everyday.” Rendering of the world in unequivocal terms provokes them into seeing through the bourgeois and pre-scientific matrix of the “ordinary” and “everyday.” The film documentarians fail to grasp the point of socialist art. What they fail to see is that the cultural revolution appeared to participants like a model opera because class struggle had become so acute. The film fails to connect how both socialist art and the phenomenology of the cultural revolutionaries traces back to the acute class struggle taking place.

Ex-red guard Zhu Xue Yang remarks on what the film sees as a paradoxically romantic and violent time, “the zeal for revolutionary ideals was accompanied by an underlying fear. It was a time of the poet and executioner. The poet scattered roses everywhere and the executioner cast a long shadow of fear.” Chen Boda, nominal head of the Cultural Revolution Group, quotes Lenin’s comparison of Bolsheviks to Jacobins in his 1944 essay on Mao’s Hunan Report. Mao’s Report was often alluded to during the height of the cultural revolution. “It’s excellent!” appeared in the Chinese press during period of red guard activism. Mass movement leaders rejected calls for “moderation” and non-violence according to the film. This radical sentiment was expressed in a red guard leaflet, “We revolutionaries are monkey kings. We will turn the world upside down… the messier the better.” The film sees this mix of idealism, rebellion and violence as paradoxical because the film fails to grasp the cultural revolution as a life and death struggle between two classes and what this inevitably means in the real world.

Song Binbin, known for having pinned a red guard armband on Mao, regrets the role she played. She states, “violence spread out of control like a plague.” More time in the film is spent describing the red guard and rebel worker violence than either the systemic violence of capitalism, the violence of Liu Shaoqi’s white terror, or, later, the rightist counter current violence against the mass movements. This leaves one with a skewed picture that the mass movement and its leaders were the main perpetrators of violence. In addition, the film spends a disproportionate time on the suppression of the counter-revolutionary demonstration at Zhou Enlai’s memorial in 1976. This emphasis on leftist violence is all out of proportion and is typical of narratives on the cultural revolution. Most of the interviewees are open rightists, revisionists or those who present themselves as onetime true believers who claim to now be disillusioned with socialism entirely. There is no reason to think that the interviewees have any special insight; anecdotal recollections are notoriously unreliable, they not a scientific basis for summing up something like the cultural revolution. Of all the interviewees, Liu Shaoqi’s wife, Wang Guangmei probably has the most air time. We get to hear Wang Guangmei whine about having to wear a ping pong ball necklace and her “humiliation” by Kuai Dafu, but she says nothing of her direction of the white terror at Qinghua or how the trend she represents dismantled socialism fully under Deng Xiaoping. Even if every act of violence of the cultural revolution years could be placed at the doorstep of the left, this blood would be a drop in the ocean compared to the horrors of capitalism inflicted on the Chinese people, a fifth of the world’s population.

In a similar vein, the film criticizes lack of bourgeois legality and lack of bourgeois democracy during the cultural revolution:

One interviewee says, “The people in power had always suppressed the masses while taking good care of themselves. So, when Mao said to overthrow those taking the capitalist road, all those in authority were dumped. The masses couldn’t careless who was taking the capitalist road. Initially, it was liberating. But, without the rule of law, the mob mentality took over.”

Another interviewee says, “The cultural revolution was the first time people had a chance to challenge the privilege of the Party, nobody had any legal protection..”

Li Rae, purged one time secretary of Mao, says, “the real problem of unrestricted power was never really addressed.”

Liu Shaoqi’s daughter, Liu Tiang says, “The words of a single persyn, of Chairman Mao, could override Party policy, and Party policy could override the law.”

Instead of examining these struggles through the lenses of class analysis, the film opts for cliche bourgeois reflections about violence and lack of so-called “democracy.” Contrary to the bourgeois view, the struggle between two antagonistic classes could not have been anything other than violent. Revolution is not a dinner party. Rather than seeing social change as a function of power struggles by groups, the film takes a naive bourgeois outlook. Abandoning power analysis, the film seeks answers about the cultural revolution in an eternal so-called “human nature,” in lord of the flies youth behavior and, typically, even sexual repression.

The film shows the heights of Mao’s cult of persynality. Ex-red guard Wang Lixiong compares the admiration of Mao to the admiration of rock stars. Clips of PLA soldiers allegedly curing deaf mutes through loyalty to Mao and the practice of acupuncture are shown to highlight the level the cult had reached as it filled the void after the end of the mass movements. This needs to be seen in perspective: Are not fraudulent claims of all kinds made even more often in the amerikan media?

Pre-science and religious thinking existed in China during the cultural revolution, just as it has in all societies. Capitalism is filled with cults of all kinds: religious cults, celebrity cults, political cults and even CIA pirate ship operations, fake-Maoist new age cult pyramid schemes. More pseudo-science and religious thinking exists in amerika today than existed in socialist China. In China under Mao, the masses strove to see the world through the lenses of power struggle and revolutionary science. In amerika, with one of the highest literacy rates in the world, people spend their time wading through tomes of how birthdays relate to love lives. Significant numbers of the Chinese masses, emerging from feudalism, entered the matrix of Mao’s persynality cult. However, from the standpoint of science, such is preferable to being in an Amerikan Idol matrix of western capitalism. There is a real criticism of the cult to be made. However, our bourgeois critics need to get a grip here and see this in perspective. Whatever errors were made in socialist China need to be seen in context and against the conditions in the rest of the world.

Loyalty to Mao and practicing Maoism are not the same thing. This is something that is often confused, even by those calling themselves “Maoist.” Maoists face the truth about the successes and failures of the great social experiments in China from 1966 to 1976. Maoists are revolutionary scientists, not merely fans of Mao. Maoists don’t cherry-pick historical facts to soft-peddle errors by the Maoist camp in those years. Even among those calling themselves “Maoist” today, the cult of persynality still casts a long shadow. Maoists should be clear on this: The cult of persynality is fundamentally opposed to the goals of communism. However, it might be expedient to embrace the cult in certain circumstances. Again, it comes down to the issue of proletarian power. If the cult can be means toward that end, then it is not necessarily a bad thing. If it gets in the way of that end, it becomes a tool of reaction. The cult may have been necessary to dislodge Liu Shaoqi, but it also was turned against the left. Did not Hua Guofeng use the cult to suppress the leftists in 1976?

The film correctly highlights the role of Lin Biao in the cultural revolution and his role in promoting the cult. It also highlights the demoralization that the masses faced following the end of the mass movements in late 1967 and 1968 and Lin Biao’s downfall in 1971. Liu Tiang says, “Lin Biao was the one who attacked my father [Liu Shaoqi] most viciously. And, then, suddenly, Lin Biao was not chairman Mao’s successor. He had been plotting to assassinate the chairman? This had a profound effect on how the people saw the cultural revolution.” The film does not weigh-in on the fishy story about Lin Biao’s alleged coup.

If there is one theme in the film, it is that revolutions eat their own. Some of the first red guards, the sons and daughters of “red” backgrounds were swept away as the tide turned against them when the Cultural Revolution Group refuted the red lineage theory. Ex-red guard Yu Luowen, “what Jiang Qing said then really appealed to the common people. She criticized the saying ‘father a reactionary, son a bastard.’ She said, ‘that’s garbage.’ Her apparent outrage made us feel that she was our savior.” Like the earlier red guards criticized by Jiang Qing, latter red guards also ended up on the losing side in late 1967 and into 1968. One of the interviewees criticized the Cultural Revolution Group for taking no responsibility for the fires they had helped fan, even as Mao later sought to put out the fires in late 1967 and 1968. Many in the Group and their allies fell from power for the “excesses,” including Wang Li, Guan Feng, Qi Benyu, and later, in all probability, Chen Boda and Lin Biao. As the tide turned in late 1967 and 1968 and the mass movements and some of the leftists were purged, one interviewee felt betrayed by Jiang Qing who, like Chen Boda and Lin Biao, had taken very militant stances in support of the mass movements but now changed her tune a bit. Opportunism was a big problem within the Maoist camp and hurt the struggle for socialism. Later, there is the trial of the “Lin Biao and Gang of Four anti-party cliques.” And, finally, even Mao falls posthumously as Deng Xiaoping’s counter-revolution runs its course. Maoists don’t see this as a case of revolutions eating their own. Rather, Maoists see this as the result of life and death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution. In the real world, revolutions are messy affairs.

The film quotes Lin Biao that the spiritual atom bomb of Maoism is the most powerful weapon. It is a weapon that the imperialists are unable to wield. Ex-red guard Li Nayang, “We were taught at a young age the purpose of life was not to seek happiness for yourself, that was embarrassingly vulgar. A glorious and fulfilling life can only be achieved by dedicating yourself to a great revolutionary cause.” Even though this film has obvious flaws, it still has educational purposes for serious students of Maoism. Because of the film’s bourgeois approach and the complexities it raises, it is probably not the best way to introduce people to the cultural revolution. The film ends ambiguously with a Maoist sentiment, “The specter of Mao is never far away. When people feel oppressed and powerless, when a system permits no legitimate protest or dissent, Mao emerges as a possibility, a champion of “it’s right to rebel!’”

***

Also see: Two Roads Defeated part 1; Two Roads Defeated part 2; Two Roads Defeated part 3; Mao Declassified; Some of Us reviewed (Part 1); Some of Us reviewed (Part 2);Some of Us reviewed (Part3); A Maoist-Third Worldist Review of Mobo Gao, The Battle for China’s Past; In memory of the great Lenin..; Some lines within the CCP in the Maoist period; Shubel Morgan video On the Theory of Productive Forces; The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution; The Lin Biao Centennial, hooray!; Lin Biao excerpt on the TOPF with important commentary by Prairie Fire; Mao’s Bloody Revolution Revealed (with Philip Short, 2007); Really supporting the GPCR vs. Opportunist Yapping;Morning Sun (2003, Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé); Subel Morgan’s Series On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces”