This is the estimated number is from The Black Book of Communism: if some people consider that number suspect, there’s also Frank Dikötter’s estimate* of 45 million killed during the “Great Leap Forward.” Even the New York Times thinks that 30 million died in that atrocity, while noting that the ChiComs admit to 16 million murdered by the state** during that time period. In short: Mao Zedong was a ruthless dictator who killed on a scale equivalent to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
NEVER QUOTE HIM AGAIN ON A DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION-RUN KID’S WEBSITE.
EVER.
I understand that they’ve already scrambled to get the quote off of the site, but… nobody checks this stuff? – And that’s a question that should be asked Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the next time he’s speaking in front of Congress. We would be seeing zero tolerance if they had put up quotes by the aforementioned German and Russian genocidal psychopaths: why, exactly, should we be expected not to care now? Is it because Mao’s victims were Chinese, and thus apparently not as important to apologists for this administration?
I certainly hope that this is not the case. I’d hate to think that the Left was still struggling with that kind of institutionalized racism…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962.
**Oh, pardon me: “died in a famine.”
Never mind that Mao got it *precisely* backwards.
.
We should be satiable, i.e. we should become sated, or stop learning? Bull####!
.
We should be tireless, i.e. we should never stop trying to foist our increasingly outdated “facts” on others?
.
Y’know .. I think this may be a very appropriate quote for the Dept.Ed. after all, Moe.
.
Mew
You have to admit, though, that an argument for ignorance and arrogant bullying from a murderous tyrant is PERFECT for the Obama Education Department.
Yes. It’s perfect, actually, for *any* federal Education Department.
.
After all, what else can they *do* from D.C. but ignorantly bully?
.
Mew
IIRC, Mao was a biblophile and a reader to the point that it may have counted as a luxury. That may have simply been more of his ‘do as I say, not as I do’ Bullshit.
Chung and Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story
.
…
.
*No words for the actual thing.*
*Calming down slightly*
.
That said, there are legitimate reasons to quote the man. Some of his quotes help describe his madness and evil. For example, IIRC, the one about how he thought it was possible to force the same amount of manual labor out of women as out of men.
.
As it is, too much of him and his evil has been written out of the standard history curriculum. *Rants about the legitimating narratives of the Vietnam peace movement, for example.*
.
Anyway, I need to stop thinking about this for a while, because I have a project that this is relevant to, and I need to be able to think about Mao and still use words for it.
All I needed to know, to determine he was pockin’ nuts, was his dental care regimen.
.
Mew
As you say, a fairly shallow examination shows that he was nuts and evil.
.
A deeper examination can give insight into the broader historical picture.
.
Such examination may contain information unsuitable for children 25 or younger.
“But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going make it with anyone anyhow” — The Beatles