Department of Mistakenly Plundered Archives
China Scholar Claims New Crimes by Mao
May 9, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is the transcript of an address from Broadshtick McFarcemore given at last month’s Harvard symposium on the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution in China. The Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao in 1966 against those in power who were determined to turn China back into a capitalist country—as they actually did after Mao died. Still, scholars in the decades since have labored mightily to bring to light how actually horrible the rule of Mao was. McFarcemore, who publishes nearly every issue, it sometimes seems, in the New York Review of Books, stands out in the field. Here is the verbatim presentation by McFarcemore given last month.
MC: Distinguished scholars, students, let me present the pre-eminent scholar at Harvard in the field of China studies, Mr. Broadshtick McFarcemore. [Great applause.]
McFarcemore: We’ve all known about Mao Zedong’s truly great crimes. His leadership of a revolution to do away with the centuries of backwardness and poverty, in which tens of millions routinely suffered starvation and disease, certainly ranks high among history’s horrors. After all, this revolution threatened the ability of the Western democracies and Japan to actually keep developing China in the rational direction that they had been. Oh yes, a few wars here and there, tens of millions of Chinese slaughtered—but these were minor flaws in an otherwise benevolent process. And beyond that, Mao developed a military doctrine and strategy in that so-called war of liberation which was used by other people who called themselves “oppressed” to break free of the very selfless and benevolent colonial rule of the West over the vast majority of the world. (Yes, I know that resources were plundered under colonialism and tens of millions perished in war and famine but, again, my friends—what about the suffering of the West in this process?)
Mao’s leadership in building socialism in China, which led to a doubling of the life expectancy in that country in 25 years, went up against the wise counsel of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which of course had only China’s interests at heart but were then forced by Mao to resort to sabotage, blockade, and threats of war to stop his plans. But perhaps Mao’s worst crime was leading millions and millions of people in a Cultural Revolution to actually prevent the seizure of power by those sensible leaders within the Chinese party who have now restored capitalism there and made it possible for at least a tiny minority to grow extremely rich and to experience the great benefits of capitalist development.
Now despite knowledge of these terrible crimes of Mao, too many people around the world still defend him. But last year, due to heroic work of scholars searching through archives in China, we learned of a crime planned by Mao so vast as to truly dwarf any of his other infamies. Through documents and the testimony of those who knew Mao, we have discovered that Mao had actually planned the invasion of entire other continents in the name of China’s destiny. He planned to wipe out the tens of millions of inhabitants of these continents through a combination of warfare and disease and to seize their lands forever. Then, on top of that, Mao planned to import tens of millions of Africans to work as literal slaves to develop the continents.
But that’s not all. Mao actually had a plan to hold the descendants of these slaves in bondage for 10 generations, draining their labor in unbelievably horrible conditions, and using violence, rape, mutilation, torture, and—where he felt it was needed—murder, to prevent them from rising up. Further, once these slaves had served their purposes, their descendants would be confined in isolated neighborhoods and often put into concentration camp-like prisons, by the millions. To those of you who doubt this evidence, we learned this from those who knew Mao or who at least say they met him or who, at the very least, in some cases, are highly reliable people whose cousin once talked to someone who told him that he saw Mao in a parade.
Boggle the mind though it may, this fiend further planned to use the wealth thereby ripped from these slaves to build China into an extremely powerful country, bragging that there would be a “Chinese century” in which China would enforce its rule through wars, invasions, and intimidation, and through using that military aggression to secure economic domination of the resources and labor of many other countries—indeed, so these archives tell us, domination over the vast majority of countries and nations throughout the world. Mao said that even if numerous wars against these smaller and weaker countries were necessary, and even if these wars killed hundreds of thousands and in some cases several millions of the people of these countries, including children, “it would”—in the words of Mao’s foreign minister—“be worth it.” In fact, Mao called for building the most massive nuclear arsenal in the world and claimed that China must be willing to threaten others with this arsenal and even risk the annihilation of the whole planet through nuclear war if their will were to be challenged. And this doesn’t even mention Mao’s plans to become the world’s biggest despoiler of the environment and to even have some of his main spokespeople deny there even was a problem.
Think of it! Has there ever been a more monstrous oppressor than this? Surely, anyone who could even dream of planning such a mind-numbing and shameful litany of horrors, let alone try to do it, is the worst... [looking offstage to emcee frantically signaling] what? You say my paper got switched? That these were not Mao’s plans but the actual reality of... where? Where?!?
Oh my goodness.
[Turning to audience.] Errrr... never mind.
—Toby O'Ryan
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