Bush Cheers New Anti-Mao Biography,
Authors Are "Thrilled"
Maoist Scholar Says: "Big Liars and Big Anti-Communists Deserve Each Other."
Revolution #33, February 5, 2006, posted at revcom.us
The following press release was issued by Set the Record Straight on January 27, 2006:
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday is being promoted as the definitive new account of Mao Tsetung's life. The authors wildly claim that Mao was an egomaniacal monster--worse than Hitler.
Now we learn from a story printed in the January 22 edition of the International Herald Tribune and in the January 23 edition of The New York Times that President Bush has embraced the book and regards it as a great source of insight, and that its authors are "thrilled" that Bush is reading their book.
Maoist scholar Raymond Lotta responds:
"Big liars and big anti-communists deserve each other. Mao Tsetung was not the monster that Jung Chang and Jon Halliday allege, but the greatest liberator of the mid-20th century. That George Bush would find inspiration in this book, and that its authors would offer their work as ideological ammunition for the Bush administration's imperial crusade, tells us something about the book's real agenda."
"Mao Tsetung had a vision of a society and world without exploitation and oppression, a world in which people consciously seek to understand and change the world and themselves; George Bush has a vision of a world under the uncontested military, political, and economic domination of the United States--a world of unfettered capitalism in which rightwing Christianity serves to bully and blind people into submission."
"Mao: The Unknown Story combines tendentious historical reconstruction with gossip and slander, unsubstantiated factual assertions, statements wrenched out of context, anonymous testimonies of personal cruelty, and complete distortion of the liberating goals and extraordinary achievements of the revolution Mao led. These lies assert Mao was responsible for the death of millions. But the truth is, Mao's social and economic policies improved the lives of countless millions and life expectancy doubled under Mao."
"For an administration that has cooked data to support claims of 'weapons of mass destruction' and suppressed or altered scientific conclusions of government-commissioned studies about global warming--Chang and Halliday's hatchet-work offers the balm of a big lie that is selling well."
Raymond Lotta is available for commentary and interviews about Mao: The Unknown Story and the controversy it is stirring about Mao, the Chinese revolution, and communism. Lotta will talk about:
- Why Mao: The Unknown Story's portrait of Mao Tsetung as tyrant and manipulator is utterly false--and how it is built on an edifice of factual distortion, personal venom, and virulent anti-communism.
- The real goals and achievements of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
- Why Mao remains popular in China, despite a government that is anti-Mao and pro-capitalist.
- How Mao: The Unknown Story and the ideological assault on communism serve the Bush agenda at home and abroad.
- Why communism is more relevant than ever to today's world.
CONTACT SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Email: settherecordstraight@hotmail.com
Phone: (312) 399-1981