[Leica] LUG Digest, Vol 42, Issue 145

[drleonpomeroy at verizon.net (Leon Pomeroy)]

Re Kevin Landdeck Comment Concerning Mao captioned below:

I'm persuaded the comparisons between Mao and Hitler or Stalin are entirely
appropriate. The "long march" alone reveals the murderous, masochistic, and
sadistic character of Mao. In fact one need only read the first 187 pages of
the 800 page book entitled "The Unknown Story: Mao" by Jung Chang (2005) to
appreciate this fact. The photographs are also revealing. My two recent
trips to China, with cameras, prompt my interest in such things. 

Leon Pomeroy
www.e-valuemetrics.com 




As a historian of modern China finishing my dissertation at UCB, I have to
> chime in and say that the often invoked Mao example when talking about
Nazi
> atrocities is based almost entirely on misconceptions and misinformation.
>
> The people who died under Mao were almost all the result of misguided
> policies (economic and political) in the context of a very complex
political
> situation.  To put it in the same terms as the holocaust and Hitler's
> military aggression in Europe is to completely obscure the distinction
> between deliberate attempts at extermination and poor policy-making,
between
> intention and unintended consequences, as well as to misread the actual
> operation of power in communist China when compared to the Nazi
> dictatorship.  Mao was rarely in control of his own party, nor even fully
> informed as to the conditions in the countryside that led to the famine
and
> death tolls in the Great Leap Forward and the violence in the Cultural
> Revolution.  Whatever his follies, mistakes, and lust for personal power,
> Mao was not a monster out to exterminate millions of people.  Rhetorically
> it sounds good, but it does violence to historical understanding to imply
> that the actions and motivations of Mao and the CCP/PRC were analogous to
> Hitler's and the Nazi Party/Government.
>
> I would be happy to supply a "starting point" bibliography for anyone who
> would actually take the time to read some well researched analyses of the
> GLF and GPCR, instead of just spouting "common knowledge", which is common
> mainly in the sense of being based on very superficial, and often outright
> wrong, information.  (Sadly, the state of education on China is abysmal in
> most of the world and as a result such sloppy comparisons between
Hitler-Mao
> or Stalin-Mao are made often, even in places like the NYT and other venues
> that should have better research staffs).
>
> The larger point Jayanand is trying to make, however, I agree with.  As a
> historian (again), I find it painful to see anyone advocating the
> destruction of  historical traces just because they have negative
> associations as it only hastens historical amnesia.   This seems
especially
> dangerous because we selectively ignore all sorts of other items that are
> blotted with their past on a daily basis: are all people who collect
Vietnam
> era memorabilia suspect because of, and complicit with, the napalming of
> Vietnamese villages carried out by the US Air Force?  How about WW2 era
> items from the US bombing command, since they deliberately firebombed
> Japanese cities killing tens of thousands of civilians, even children?  If
> my grandfather was involved in those raids and I wanted to collect a
bomber
> captain's pistol would that make me complicit in those actions?  How about
> the virtual extermination of native Americans in California (which also
had
> a death toll in the millions)?  Anyone who collects items from this
segment
> of the past is morally suspect?  Where does this end?
>
> I find it ironic that one of the most misguided policies of the Cultural
> Revolution was precisely the same kind of judging of people's motives for
> having possessions as I see in this discussion: having bourgeois items (or
> even things produced by a capitalist country) meant, a priori, one was a
> capitalist and hence discriminated against.
>
> And then, it seems to me that there are plenty of far more pressing issues
> (some mentioned by Jayanand) involving real tyranny and oppression today
> that we can be outraged over, rather than a few cameras with a swastika on
> them from half a century ago.
>
> To keep this somewhat photography related: I do have a small gallery on
the
> LUG site that I am slowly adding to.  It's mainly conventional street
stuff
> shot on film with an M4 (and a mix of Zeiss/CV/Canon glass) here in San
> Francisco.  :-)    http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/shudaizi/
>
>
> respectfully (from a LUG newb),
>
Kevin Landdeck