Mao had just said, "uhh the state is an oppressive institution so now we'll just dismantle everything and y'all can just organize horizontally or whatever."

The funny thing is, he kinda did. The result was these roving, undisciplined militias calling themselves Red Guards and holding (actual) struggle sessions and killing each other, and committing a bunch of atrocities.

I know there were actual historical reasons but I like to imagine that one day Mao somehow got possessed by a redditor and started doing what any "anti-tankie" would say he should do, denouncing the government as having fallen to bourgeois opportunists and calling on the people to rise up in this structureless, "anti-authoritarian" way. But since the outcome was bad, it's of course, "No, not like that."

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 41 points 3 days ago

Yeah it's a great example, and there's a lot of irony in how during this part of history Western Maoism became the main current of the left student movement. The anti-authoritarians have always been very quick to adopt the most idealistic, anti-materialist lines just because it "feels right."

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 29 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My favorite was Ben Shapiro saying "Mao took away everyone's guns," and reactionaries started parroting this, which was the complete opposite of what happened. Mao was like "Here have some guns. I'm not gonna tell you what you should do, but also it'd be a real shame if some landlords tried to collect rent from their tenants."

They'll claim he killed 60 million people, but then not explain how. Hint: revolutionaries went around shooting anyone they didn't like after communists won the civil war.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 days ago

"I don't know where political power grows out of, I hope it's not from the barrel of a gun, I hate those things"

- Mao