When I was still absorbed in my early 20's and obsessed with socialist idealism (very much disconnected from context and the repercussions of implementation) I remember a friend telling me that he was a Maoist. Knowing very little about China or Mao, I asked him why. He said that he believed the communist revolution in China was one of the most impressive events in the 20th century, and that Mao as a figure was inspirational and less harmful when compared to other countries' modernization process.
"most Chinese believe that to take an individualistic stand was foolish. They had learned from experience or it had been drilled into them that the only way to survive was to go along with the tribe."
Right from the beginning of the book It's really interesting to see how the early communists in China were treated how radicals and anti-communists were treated in the Soviet Union. If you were suspected to be a communist or you were an activist of any kind you would be eliminated. We talk a lot of history repeating itself, and this is just another example of how it's not just about political groups being evil, but systems of power and control attempting to maintain their hegemonic positions through violence.
Even more complex is how the rise of communism in China came about: as a response to being occupied by another country while the government let it happen. I am wondering how violent that occupation was, and today even think about the reasons someone would feel nationalistic pride even if the opposing force was peaceful (which I doubt it was, but even hypothetically if they were, no one wants to be controlled ever).
"I still suspect that my fathers unexpected death in 1990 was accelerated by the student demonstrations in 1989. Although history never repeats itself exactly, events can be very similar. Witnessing such similar social tragedies must have been deeply painful to an aged man with such wide genuine social concerns. He certainly didn't want to see the event turn out to be such a tragedy (9)."
"It was true that a simple and thrifty lifestyle was encouraged for everyone, and especially for Communist government officials. It was considered sinful to waste, and officials were not allowed to live luxuriously (15)."
"When the word revolutionary was used in China it meant the opposite of what it means in the west. Instead of pertaining to radical change, the word implied conformity with the authority or being politically correct (27)."
"One of the articulated goals of the cultural revolution was to eliminate the 'four olds': old cultures, old thoughts, old customs, and old habits (37)."
This quote encapsulates a terrifying idea; erasing culture for the benefit of those in power. What's even more terrifying is to mobilize youth to turn against older customs and see old customs as threatening. To make anyone see their own cultures' history as an evil that needs to be eliminated, but also enact violence against those who carry even symbols of that culture, seems to me the most violent form of mind control there is.
"When they searched people's houses at night, some Red Guards liked to beat people. This made me believe that violence was a human instinct that would surface if it were not subdued by morals and other considerations such as punishment (39)."
Jesus Christ.
The exposing of people based on family history or past employment suggests that in this society there is no such thing as redemption. In addition, it feels like the same kind of system that attempts to expose people based on conjecture rather than punishable actions observed. What's even more ironic are the types of actions that are punishable or shameful. It seems that many of the sinful actions are things that were against old culture, such as divorcing wives after the communist revolution. That was a revolutionary act, yet now it is punished as unfaithfulness.
This all seems to culminate in the one quote on page 43: "the entire generation of youth at the time experienced a psychologically distorted adolescent development."
This immediately clashes with his father's philosophy that carries throughout the book, summed up in a passage on page 45:
"I often heard my father say, "it was the people who had supported is in our earlier struggles against Chiang Kai-shek's government. Now we the communists are in power, we should never forget their support and abandon their interest." He would always quote Lenin to end his talk, "Forgetting the past means betrayal."
"Even at a personal level, I wondered if it was nobler to speak my criticism of our political system and to be put into prison as a dissident, or to keep a painful silence and use the limited freedom I had in my classroom to crib are independent thinking among my students. Which was nobler? 'To be or not to be: that is the question." Time has not her passes Shakespeare by, and the question he put forward is still meaningful today (211)."
Now, considering the fact that I very strongly reject formulating my personal and political feelings around a human figure, I chalk up a lot of those punk kids (who were usually between the ages of 17-23) who liked to categorize themselves according to prominent political figures in history as naive an ill-informed. They wanted to latch onto a counter narrative that was opposed to the american/western ideology they were born to believe in. In this way they setup a binary system where the opposite of the failing capitalist system they see at home becomes the communist systems in the east. The answers to their problems could be found across the water.
I was right there with them.
I put a hammer and a sickle on red and yellow t-shirts and sold them to 21st century kids across Eastern Europe.
I pledged allegiance to the United States Socialist Party propaganda and promoted these ideas in places where those closely related ideologues were used against their grandparents, forcing them into subservience, or fear, or torture, or death.
We condemned Nazi punks yet propped up the same talking points Stalin would use to torture and destroy thousands and thousands of lives.
Our hearts were in the right place, but we were so disconnected from the context of our historical time period, and even worse, so were the kids who were getting an earful from us Americans, the same kids whose grandparents and great grandparents lived through this torturous form of suppression we were reproducing in 2010.
Understanding that you can't choose your favorite political system like you can your favorite color, that red is made up of many different shades and displayed differently depending on context, is something that I've been learning throughout this course. When I decided to quit my band back in 2010, effectively sabotaging the entirety of the band in of itself, I think I was just starting to realize how ideologies can't be reduced to talking points or slogans pasted on social media pages. Still, its taken me years to untangle the deep rooted thought control that breeds through binary thinking. Xiaodi's memoir helped to elucidate the human side of these political systems. That was the most powerful part of this memoir to me; to see the people and who they were instead of the invisible faces behind slogans, orders, and doctrines. It is much harder to hate or love when you see the real human faces rather than a mask.
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Here are the notes I took, pointing to specific passages I find particularly interesting.
"most Chinese believe that to take an individualistic stand was foolish. They had learned from experience or it had been drilled into them that the only way to survive was to go along with the tribe."
Right from the beginning of the book It's really interesting to see how the early communists in China were treated how radicals and anti-communists were treated in the Soviet Union. If you were suspected to be a communist or you were an activist of any kind you would be eliminated. We talk a lot of history repeating itself, and this is just another example of how it's not just about political groups being evil, but systems of power and control attempting to maintain their hegemonic positions through violence.
Even more complex is how the rise of communism in China came about: as a response to being occupied by another country while the government let it happen. I am wondering how violent that occupation was, and today even think about the reasons someone would feel nationalistic pride even if the opposing force was peaceful (which I doubt it was, but even hypothetically if they were, no one wants to be controlled ever).
"I still suspect that my fathers unexpected death in 1990 was accelerated by the student demonstrations in 1989. Although history never repeats itself exactly, events can be very similar. Witnessing such similar social tragedies must have been deeply painful to an aged man with such wide genuine social concerns. He certainly didn't want to see the event turn out to be such a tragedy (9)."
"It was true that a simple and thrifty lifestyle was encouraged for everyone, and especially for Communist government officials. It was considered sinful to waste, and officials were not allowed to live luxuriously (15)."
"When the word revolutionary was used in China it meant the opposite of what it means in the west. Instead of pertaining to radical change, the word implied conformity with the authority or being politically correct (27)."
"One of the articulated goals of the cultural revolution was to eliminate the 'four olds': old cultures, old thoughts, old customs, and old habits (37)."
This quote encapsulates a terrifying idea; erasing culture for the benefit of those in power. What's even more terrifying is to mobilize youth to turn against older customs and see old customs as threatening. To make anyone see their own cultures' history as an evil that needs to be eliminated, but also enact violence against those who carry even symbols of that culture, seems to me the most violent form of mind control there is.
"When they searched people's houses at night, some Red Guards liked to beat people. This made me believe that violence was a human instinct that would surface if it were not subdued by morals and other considerations such as punishment (39)."
Jesus Christ.
The exposing of people based on family history or past employment suggests that in this society there is no such thing as redemption. In addition, it feels like the same kind of system that attempts to expose people based on conjecture rather than punishable actions observed. What's even more ironic are the types of actions that are punishable or shameful. It seems that many of the sinful actions are things that were against old culture, such as divorcing wives after the communist revolution. That was a revolutionary act, yet now it is punished as unfaithfulness.
This all seems to culminate in the one quote on page 43: "the entire generation of youth at the time experienced a psychologically distorted adolescent development."
This immediately clashes with his father's philosophy that carries throughout the book, summed up in a passage on page 45:
"I often heard my father say, "it was the people who had supported is in our earlier struggles against Chiang Kai-shek's government. Now we the communists are in power, we should never forget their support and abandon their interest." He would always quote Lenin to end his talk, "Forgetting the past means betrayal."
"Even at a personal level, I wondered if it was nobler to speak my criticism of our political system and to be put into prison as a dissident, or to keep a painful silence and use the limited freedom I had in my classroom to crib are independent thinking among my students. Which was nobler? 'To be or not to be: that is the question." Time has not her passes Shakespeare by, and the question he put forward is still meaningful today (211)."
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