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American Maoism


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american-maoism
The American Mind

Habi Zhang

Aug. 25 2021

The origins of our current Cultural Revolution

“Never forget class struggle!” proclaimed Mao in Fall 1962 at the Chinese Communist Party’s annual retreat. This maxim quickly became the fevered chant of the day, paving the way for the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and continued until Mao’s death in 1976. This slogan defied reality and logic: How could class struggle persist when there was no private ownership left in China? But the slogan appealed to sentiment, not logic, and thus persisted.

If modified into “Never forget race struggle,” the command has the same appeal in today’s woke America, and serves the same purposes, even though there is no evidence that race is a barrier impeding individual effort in America today, or that it is decisive in distributing outcomes.

Maoist tactics, rhetoric, and symbols have been adopted in BLM protests and riots, “anti-racist” self-education doctrine, and the promotion of “critical race theory” (CRT) in schools, corporations, the government, and even the military. As a student of the totalitarianism of Mao’s China—which was exceptionally effective in peddling propaganda and staging performances of feigning, preening, and indignation—I find woke America’s reinvention of Maoism fascinating and terrifying. Mao is the unsung hero for contemporary CRT intellectuals.

Maoist Wokeism

Maoism differs from orthodox Marxism, which holds that the economic base of a social system determines its superstructure, i.e., culture, language, and ideas. Class war thus comes to an end once the state owns the means of production. Maoism insists that the abolition of private property won’t necessarily transform the superstructure; rather, the Maoist revolution must be kept in constant motion. There is no end to fighting “class enemies,” much as the evangelists of CRT project no concrete consummation of the war on racism.

(Snip)

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