Instead of brushing his teeth, which is more of a western thing, he would use old eastern medicine. Rinsing them every morning in a green tea herbal concoction, like a mouth wash.
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Mao Zedong, one of the most evil men in history?
- Thread starter Flying_Phoenix
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Instead of brushing his teeth, which is more of a western thing, he would use old eastern medicine. Rinsing them every morning in a green tea herbal concoction, like a mouth wash.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Like 90% of those posts were just people saying "Well he's worst".
Only 3 posts involved me with light conversation on the matter.
Solid warrior
Banned
Mao is a great leader.
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
I want that phone cover now.
I like it.
But on a serious note, this wouldn't be tolerated for Hitler. What's the difference?
There are less movies featuring Mao as the villain
communist zombies are less interesting than nazi zombies
Invisible_Insane
Member
I think focusing on calling people "evil" is the easy way of dealing with the fact that humans are capable of doing quite terrible things to each other. It kind of seems like a cop-out.
That plus the fact that he wanted the country to become self-reliant, so they pretty much refused to import any food. Along with moving people away from food production to make what turned out to be shitty steel, he was probably ignorant as hell. He wanted communes to make their own steel using backyard kilns, which would be comically hilarious if millions of people didn't die because he thought he could multiply steel output in that way.
The CCP had some crazy paranoia over the idea of red vs. expert and feared that actual experts in fields (scientific or otherwise) were bourgeois agents and rather than try to utilize them to get actual things done most of them were targets of the party.
He did in fact orchestrate the Hundred Flowers Campaign so I guess he did get some dastardly villain into all of it.
that's what I was getting at
its not taking into account what the person was like growing up, and what experiences made them that way.
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
Are you evil Uchip?
TheJollyCorner
Member
I want that phone cover mao.
Fixed. :}
Communism has always represented a significant and valid counterculture and is not inherently evil (well, I guess if you're a libertarian it is; but think of how many people will admit that they find communism attractive in theory but impractical in reality). And fetishizing communist iconography in a capitalistic form is ironic.
Meanwhile fascism is entirely founded on death and hatred.
bone_and_sinew
breaking down barriers in gratuitous nudity
The Khmer Rouge were fucking scary. I still have difficulty trying to conceive them as actual human beings.
Sup Mao
Kuro Madoushi
Unconfirmed Member
Umm...yeah what he said.
He was good for China during the Sino-Japanese war since Chiang Kai-shek wasn't doing shit. But Mao was a good military man, NOT a true governor. He was out of his depth and extremely out of touch.
Hasphat'sAnts
Member
He's not any more or less evil than most of the emperors China's had.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
If Stalin and Hitler became one, the result is Pol Pot.
Chiggs
Gold Member
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll pick that up tonight.
Kenshin001
Member
I guess because he made China strong and independent after years of domination by foreign powers. Still odd as, as I understand it and maybe I'm wrong, Mao was responsible for more Chinese deaths than the Japanese.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
This has been a great thread. I promise that I'll stop making threads in relation to evil dictators or Communism. I guess there goes my "What makes Che so loved and special?" thread.
Not surprised that most would hate the Japanese more than Mao. A vast majority of China's deaths were due to starvation. The Japanese were arguably worse than the Nazis.
For now.
Not surprised that most would hate the Japanese more than Mao. A vast majority of China's deaths were due to starvation. The Japanese were arguably worse than the Nazis.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
There's a reason why most of the mass murders have been within the last 100 years.
- Because of technology (cars, telephones *well a tiny bit more than 100 years*. machine guns, etc.)
- Mass population growth (Population was much bigger in 1900 than say 1500).
Hasphat'sAnts
Member
How is that an adequate comparison? You can't really have a famine without droughts and floods and all kinds of institutional breakdowns.
ChiTownBuffalo
Either I made up lies about the Boston Bomber or I fell for someone else's crap. Either way, I have absolutely no credibility and you should never pay any attention to anything I say, no matter what the context. Perm me if I claim to be an insider
Obama
If you're interested in the subject, Humanity covers many of the atrocities of all the 20th Century.
From what I read, Mao was certainly a horrible person, however he was an extremely stubborn and ignorant man. Ignoring science, and pushing his ways constantly on topics that he had no knowledge of. Not only that but it seemed like the people around him encouraged this behavior by falsifying the results to him.
From what I read, Mao was certainly a horrible person, however he was an extremely stubborn and ignorant man. Ignoring science, and pushing his ways constantly on topics that he had no knowledge of. Not only that but it seemed like the people around him encouraged this behavior by falsifying the results to him.
Hasphat'sAnts
Member
Mao was a wonderful poet though.
Plenty of tyrants in any day and age, but it is technology (in a broad sense) and organization that enables exponentially more cruel regimes (I admit there's a lot more factors). The Holocaust wouldn't have been nearly as bad without IBM's Hollerith punch cards, for example.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Book ordered.
Kenshin001
Member
Not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing. You mean comparison with the deaths by the Japanese?
The rise of technology to deliver and control media has made dictators that much more powerful. Previously the would just have control of a military, but by controlling the media they could deliver targeted messages to all citizens (especially children). The internet is a tool that might spell the end for dictators due to its openness. I can see why so many dictatorships would want to have a kill switch or aggressive proxy on their internet.
pure evil
well yeah
it should be 'did they become one of the most notoriously evil men'
although there have undoubtedly been people far more inclined to evil than these men, especially on a personal level, but never had the political influence.
notoriety being the key word here
The wealth of the nation was robbed and the country was a backwoods, poor, and massively agricultural third-world nation that needed to be lifted out of the gutters with much needed changes to the entire social structure and improving education, healthcare, and industrial economy. The 2nd Sino-Japanese War, comparison to Chiang's years of rule, and his socialist ideologies give him the edge as well. It's not really difficult to understand at all why there would be people who think positively of Mao despite the awful parts.
Invisible_Insane
Member
The Albatross
Member
In terms of actual numbers of people who died because of his policies, Mao is very likely the most evil man in contemporary history. But because it was Maoist Communism, people look to make excuses for him. As far as we know, there weren't any sort of weird sick human guinea pigs in Maoist China like there were in other totalitarian, socialist regimes, but then again, there were also millions of children dying after being forced to eat mud and tree bark as a direct result of policies that they knew were not working.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Could you imagine if China went the Capitalist route instead ala Taiwan? It would most likely be a superpower to rival or even surpass the US.
The Albatross
Member
Communism is hip, despite the mass murder (or maybe because of it?), National Socialism isn't. It's why you get romantic love stories made after the guy who ran the prison death camps in Cuba. It's very unlikely that movies would portray, say, Josef Goebells or Josef Mengele -- the architect of the nazi death camps -- in some compassionate, sympathetic light.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
Sup Mao
Yeah, so much concentrated evil into one. Take the best, and buy best I mean humanly worst things ever and rolled into Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
Blackace
if you see me in a fight with a bear, don't help me fool, help the bear!
Same as people with Che
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
The thing is I didn't even need to know much about him to hold that title. I'm not sure if the Khmer Rouge had labor camps or not but what the guy did was insane. The ENTIRE population being forced to work to death? Completely removing everyone in all cities, including those as big as Chicago, and removing them from their families?
Its like playing Nation States and trying to be as evil as you can be.
I find it odd that the United States fighting Vietnam was to stop it from potentially being an evil Communist nightmare country when in reality it fueled for the Khmer Rogue to come into power
He was going to be my next topic, but I assume I'll wait a month or two before I make it before I get complaints.
I don't know much about him except that he lead the Cuban Communist Revolution but then left when Castro got too crazy.
Its really difficult to figure out the full effects of Mao's policies and the natural disasters when it comes to the great famine. It seems like the history has been re-written a couple dozen times, sometimes with little blame placed on Mao and more on the natural disasters and then the history was changed to lay more blame on Mao. I doubt we will ever know for sure the truth, many of the people alive during that time are dying out and I dont think the current government wants to hurt the Mao name much. While I dont think Mao cared much for the lives of the common man, Im not sure he set out to wipe out his citizens like Hitler and Stalin.
The US has its own skeletons though and our country is far from innocent when it comes to genocide. US has almost wiped out the Native Americans completely and our government was responsible for killing millions of Native Americans. I know many like to forgot about it, but wiping out almost an entire race of people by our policies, actions, wars, etc. ranks up with the actions of the most evil dictators. Outside of Alaska and reservations, it is very rare to see Native Americans living next door.
The US has its own skeletons though and our country is far from innocent when it comes to genocide. US has almost wiped out the Native Americans completely and our government was responsible for killing millions of Native Americans. I know many like to forgot about it, but wiping out almost an entire race of people by our policies, actions, wars, etc. ranks up with the actions of the most evil dictators. Outside of Alaska and reservations, it is very rare to see Native Americans living next door.
Here's the book I was talking about earlier. It even now has a Kindle edition.
http://www.amazon.com/Private-Life-Chairman-Mao-ebook/dp/B004JHYRMM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327130742&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Private-Life-Chairman-Mao-ebook/dp/B004JHYRMM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327130742&sr=8-3
gundamzeta209
Banned
wow.... Mao
what about ghengis khan or countless corrupt Roman caesars? Maybe we should think about mass killings relative to the total population size the Eurasia... because my gut tells me Khan takes the crown on ruthless genocide.
what about ghengis khan or countless corrupt Roman caesars? Maybe we should think about mass killings relative to the total population size the Eurasia... because my gut tells me Khan takes the crown on ruthless genocide.
IrishNinja
Member
true, but different scale though, no?
not for lack of wanting in his later life though, apparently...
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
And if the findings a percentage of people today can be traced back to one man is to be believed, that man being Khan, he probably holds the grand title of the greatest rapist of all time.
Manifest destiny put into action is a scary thing
I was under the impression he left more because Castro had taken control of Cuba and there wasn't much use for him as a revolutionary fighter, so he looked to help the revolution else where.Flying_Phoenix said:
His image being co-opted for every god damn thing has lessened any impact he might have. Having him on your tshirt is the opposite of what he'd have called for.
As for Mao, I don't know if he was intentionally evil the entire time. Initially, probably not, just the like Bolsheviks in Russia didn't start out that way. But by the time of the Cultural Revolution, yeah he'd slipped into the evil personality cult phase of totalitarian rule. If the West hadn't used him as an occasional enemy of my enemy with the USSR and China wasn't still ruled by his party, the country would probably be just getting around to rehabilitating his imagine as Putin did with Stalin.
What's scary is that some people who were involved in the khmer rouge are now still involved in the running of cambodia (the argument is that they were following orders and unaware of the reality of what went on :s). Also Pol pots ideals were losely based on Mao so I guess you could blame him lol
Give 'Survival in the killing feilds' or 'First they killed our father' a read for some first hand accounts that will stay with you forever
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