“In Yanxing [China] county, a wealthy region in Yunnan [province] covered in salt flats, over a hundred middle-school students were arrested and tortured in April 1951 after an anonymous denunciation reached the local [communist] party headquarters. Wu Liening, ten years old, was hung from a beam and beaten. Ma Silie, aged eight, was tied up on a cross in a kneeling position. A wooden pole was placed across his thighs and pressed down by two of his tormentors, crushing his legs and knees on the concrete floor. Even Liu Wendi, aged six, was accused of being the head of a spying squad. Two of the children were tortured to death. This was not an isolated example. A team of militia in Sichuan [province] also tried to uncover counter-revolutionaries among schoolchildren. Some had both hands and feet tied up while being suspended upside down; others were made to go through mock executions. Three were tortured to death, and another five of the children committed suicide. About fifty of the victims survived the abuse, although many were crippled or maimed for life.” (Frank Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation, Chapter 5, “The Great Terror”)
Welcome to the Left’s Wonderful Culture of Death.
If you want to know about Leftism, communism, and socialism, if you want to know what they did in China, if you want to know what American Leftists will do if they ever get control of the United States and feel their hold is being threatened; if you really want to know about these people, then I urge you to read historian Frank Dikötter’s trilogy on Mao Zedong: The Tragedy of Liberation, Mao’s Great Famine, and The Cultural Revolution. They cover the years from when Mao gained power in 1949 until his death in 1976. The stories are absolutely horrifying, as evidenced by the quote at the beginning of this column. The shocking thing is, Dikötter, in his research, had access to relatively few of the archives in communist China and can only give us a small sample of what really must have happened.
As a historian, I have been trying, repeatedly, desperately, to warn Townhall (and other) readers about the horrors of Leftist philosophy as practiced in the 20th century (read also about Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others, as well as Dikötter’s books, to get a fuller picture.) These people are atheists; they have no moral foundation other than what they think the world should be like, and given power, they always try to create the Utopia that exists in their warped, godless minds. And anyone who opposes them—because these Leftists have no God-given respect for human life—needs to be wiped out for the “betterment” of mankind. The Left is trying to give us an earthly utopia; since there is no God, there is no heaven after this life, so this existence is the only one we will ever know. We must make it as perfect as possible.
And only the Left knows how to do that. And, again, anyone who opposes them is opposing the great, earthly Shangri-la and needs to be silenced. That often involves killing millions of innocent humans. Well, they are all going to die someday anyway, Stalin said.
When Mao Zedong took over China, he began to implement his “socialist” economic scheme immediately. That meant “land reform,” which meant taking land away from “rich landlords” and distributing it to the “poor.” Well, the definition of “rich” was loosely applied to basically mean anybody who owned anything. (Mao was following his mentor Stalin here, who had done the same thing in the USSR in the 1930s.) There was significant hostility to Mao’s communist scheme, especially in the countryside but also in the cities. His economic plan became a miserable disaster everywhere. Let Dikötter explain the dictator’s predicament:
“By the summer of 1950, the communists had few friends left. The party, Mao explained to his colleagues, was ‘hitting out in all directions,’ making nothing but enemies. Capitalists disliked the communist party, the jobless were restless, and most workers were disgruntled thanks to the economic slump. In the countryside, villagers were taxed to the hilt, while in the cities, intellectuals feared losing their jobs. Those working in the arts resented political interference. Opposition to the new regime was rife in religious circles. ‘The entire country is tense,’ Mao noted, and ‘we are rather lonely.’”
As Dikötter also says, “Paranoia was intrinsic to the regime, which lived in fear of its own shadow.” Stalin ran into the same problem. People resist compulsory Leftism—reference Bud Light. So, paranoia is a common phenomenon in Leftist circles because they know what they are going to do will not be popular with the masses, and they are afraid the people will rebel. And, of course, that is exactly what happens. Leftism can never win by debate; it can only win by force. We are seeing that in America today.
So, what was Mao’s choice? What could he do? The solution was simple: start killing people (terror). Dikötter again: “For a full year [1951], a Great Terror would run alongside land reform, shaking the country to its very roots and forcing people from all walks of life to take sides.”
As noted in the first quote in this column, even six-year-old children didn’t escape the communists’ torment. Well, they aren’t escaping it in America now, either, as countless children are being mutilated on a Leftist altar of sexual degradation and perversity. How far do you think it is from mutilation to murder? Mao’s China shows us: not far.
A Leftist is a Leftist is a Leftist—in China, the USSR, Cuba—or America. If we think they won’t do, in America, what they did (are doing) in China and elsewhere, then we are in for a rude shock if they ever get the power they crave.
More from Dikötter in subsequent columns. You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
Check for a lot more articles, as well as audio and video podcasts, on my substack: mklewis929.substack.com. Free signup. Read my Western novels, Whitewater , River Bend, Return to River Bend, and Allie’s Dilemma all available on Amazon. You can follow me on Twitter: @thailandmkl. And rumble: lewandcou
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