Do you think Mao and Stalin deserve their popularity?

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Mao's face is still on Chinese money. His body is on display in the Chairman Mao memorial hall, where many people visit to pay their respects. "The East is Red" is a very famous restaurant in Beijing celebrating the cultural revolution, which was a particularly brutal and almost anarchistic time in China. It's decorated with Maoist slogans, his pictures, and flags with the hammer and sickle.

Although it turns out that Stalin's body was removed from the Lenin mausoleum 8 years after his death, in the meantime hundreds of thousands of people came to see the dictators embalmed remains. The most striking statistic I have heard with regards to Stalin's popularity was the results of a poll carried out by a Russian TV station. More than 50 million people voted by phone, the internet and via text messages and voted Stalin the third greatest Russian of all time, losing out only to Alexender Nevsky and Pyotr Stolypin. Dostoyevsky comes 7th, and Tolstoy incidentally is not in the top twelve. (there was some controversy surrounding the poll, and a new one was released using different voting rules which placed Stalin 10th)

There are differences and here lies two truly monumental paradoxes in history.

The Germans are suitably ashamed of Hitler. His face isn't on German money, people treat his era with solemnity... apart from the white supremacists who, even in America still celebrate his birthday. But they are of course a tiny minority. As far as I'm aware nobody seems to know where his remains are and even the headstones of his parents in Austria - which became a place of pilgrmage for neo Nazis - have been removed. Is this really only because of things like the holocaust? It's doubtful, when so much of Nazi terrorism was perpetrated against the German people.

So what about another two dictators: the great Georgian and would-be priest, ex-petty-thug turned treacherous Soviet leader Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, and the peasant, the runaway revolutionary, talented guerrilla fighter and critic of traditionalism Mao Tse Tung? - What is it about their legacy or the Soviet and Chinese culture which sees these men somewhat escape the contemptible fate and image of Hitler?

 

You would be surprised how many Germans admire, and in some cases rvere Hitler. But they have to be careful because of the ultra-liberal government there. Do not forget, Hitler almost got rid of the greatest threat to humans in history, the jews.

 

You would be surprised how many Germans admire, and in some cases revere Hitler. But they have to be careful because of the ultra-liberal government there. Do not forget, Hitler almost got rid of the greatest threat to humans in history, the jews.

 

I don't think I would be. The point is German society has rejected his legacy, any form of hitlerian praise is driven underground. A similar poll was in fact carried out in Germany, there's no sign of Hitler. Marx is up there, but more notably Sophie Scholl and her brother came third I believe. They were anti-Nazis executed for high treason.

 

Mao and Stalin along with obama do deserve their popularity, albeit in the most negative of terms.

 

Putting Obama alongside Mao and Stalin is a disrespect to all those Chinese and Russians killed, tortured, beaten and starved in their own country.

 

Do Russian and Chinese history textbooks accurately describe the Stalin and Mao eras?
Andrew Jackson, a nasty man responsible for the Trail of Tears, is on US currency, as is Ulysses S. Grant, a terrible President.

 

Stalin was a disaster for the Soviet Union. He destroyed the Red Army so badly in the late 1930s with his purges that Nazi Germany almost took the USSR out in the first two years of war on the Eastern Front. He also loved Communism so much that he purged Communists (true believers) more often than any other group and on more occasions Finally, the man was a monster: he effectively killed tens of millions of people and ruined the lives of tens of millions more while he lived like a tsar.

Mao has a little more going for him. He was more in the position of Lenin, overthrowing a corrupt government (the Kuomintang) and fighting the Imperial Japanese. But let's look at his record after he took power. He also sent tens of millions of people to their deaths and operated a gulag-type system of camps, he was prone to enthusiasms like The Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution that were absolute disasters economically and socially Finally, he was a bit creepy: he married an absolute monster of a woman and he had a fondness for deflowering early pubescent girls.

So my answer is no to Mao and "not only no, but h - - l no" to Stalin.

 

It would be interesting to find out about Russia in fact. I think their access to free information is much better than China's. I'd hazard a guess that the Russians have a pretty good idea who Stalin was. The Chinese and Mao is a different story, there's no doubt that most if not all history is skewed, and books are banned, like Wild Swans and the Unknown Story by Jung Chang.

Is Andrew Jackson still a cultural hero?

 

Actually, I've just had a look at the Freedom house. Turns out Russia scores only a tiny bit better than China on freedom of the press.

 

Do you also think that by placing obama beside his political ideological equals like a Mao and a Stalin is giving any less disrespect to the American people who have suffered under his reign by losing their jobs, losing their $$ saftey nets (pensions etc), the disrespect of the world community as witnessed in the recent anti American uprisings, in taking our freedoms away from us, and by ushering in his version of socialism to our capitalist society? The only difference between obama and those two mass murderers is that the American body count in the Mideast under obama's reign hasn't reached the record breaking level of a Mao and of a Stalin as of yet.

 

No they do not deserve any popularity. People should be educated on how genocidal these people were. And all those (*)(*)(*)(*) communists that praise them should be frowned upon just like nazis praising hitler are. And they should get the fact that communism has killed more people than nazism shoved up their faces! (*)(*)(*)(*) communists, they think they are soo innocent.

 

Nonsense. Firstly Obama didn't start those wars in the Middle East, a republican did. It's so very simplistic to consider Obama's mild socialist reforms as tantamount to the five year plan or the great leap forward which caused wide-spread famine and tens of millions of deaths. Not only that but Stalin and Mao were sadists. Mao encouraged young revolutionaries to destroy and humiliate older traditionalists... even to beat and denounce their parents in mass gatherings. Stalin and his purges were second to almost none and the state of perpetual fear the Russian people were in is something America really doesn't know anything about.

Again it's a massive overreaction, delusion and disrespect.

 

How do you feel about socialism?

 

not so hostile. But it depends on what you mean by socialism though.

 

Both Stalin and Mao were great leaders of their country and brought about tremendous change. Both were also ruthless mass-murderers on an epic scale.

 

Well, like Libhater comparing socialist democratic reform to the Soviet union and Maoist China.

Sweden, Norway and Denmark are Socialist democratic after all, right? The likes of which I'm sure our fearful republican friends would fervently disdain.

 

oh. no, no, no. I don't think Obama and mao is the same, at all. And yes, it's pretty much social democracy over here. And in my opinion it could use a little dose of liberalism (as in classical liberalism). And the general debate climate here could go to the right as far as I'm concerned. Here people are concerned about men not sitting down when they pee, it's an equality issue you see, and if you say anhything against immigration of any kind and its' effects you are of course, a racist.

 

ha, interesting. Well I'm glad you're not insanely paranoid. Seems as though you guys in northern Europe have a high standard of living, if immigration was to threaten that, then guess what I'd be right there with you arguing for the right.

I'm adaptable like that.

What I don't agree with is inviting everyone and their dog into the country (usually to take up crap jobs for even crapper wages) and then turning fascist on them... my advice is don't let them in in the first place.

 

well thank you.

I just want higher requirements to become a citizen. i.e I don't want every analphabetic somali shepherd that come here to just get citizenship as soon as they've set foot on swedish territory, as it is currently. I want them to know our history, language, etc. Reasonable demands right?

And I don't want refugees to become citizens simply by being refugees. Being a refugee means you should be offered safety and protection, not citizenship. Isn't that obvious? And if Sweden absolutely have to help people all the time, I'd rather want us the help them in their own countries or nearby ones. I mean, what the flipp are libyan refugees doing in sweden? do we border them? no. Do our nieghbors border them? no. do our nieghbor's nieghbor even border them? If you're a refugee you can't be very picky can you? That inclines me to believe that it's more economic reasons behind. Besides, i've heard it's cheaper to help the there rather than to have to pay for them in Sweden. Btw, we don't even have enough housing. You know, we close down hospitals just to house them. And in one case they shoved 400 refugees into a little village of only 800 people! crazy. I'm all for helping when we've got the means, but this is just stupid.

 

Americans have the same thing, it's a historical thing.

 

That would make a great thread in the history section. I don't know how to create a poll but maybe you do. It would ask which of our early but tainted leaders are still considered heroes: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Hamilton and Franklin.
Jackson won a great military victory at New Orleans on January 8, 1815, two weeks after the War of 1812 ended. He lost the 1824 election despite having the highest plurality of votes in a four-way race, then founded the Democratic Party along with Martin Van Buren.
His administration (1829-1837) was stormy. His wife died before the inauguration, upset with press reports that their marriage was illegal because her divorce might not have been finalized when he married her. (He had remarried her years later to make it legal.) He destroyed the national bank and many others failed because he favored some over others. The Trail of Tears was the relocation of eastern Indian tribes to Oklahoma, a three-year march that left many dead but gave survivors 53 years of privacy (kind of like thinning a herd of deer.) He was personally nasty, winning many duels. They say lead poisoning from a bullet from one of these duels killed him over 20 years later. His administration was followed by the first major recession in US history, but the reasons include events in Europe.
I'd love to know what Obama thinks of him, or if he even is aware of most of that last paragraph.

 

Jackson took (*)(*)(*)(*)s that had 1000 times more intelligence and dignity than oboobma ever had.

 

Both Mao and Stalin were murderers.

The difference is that Hitler was defeated completely while Stalin and Mao weren't.

All three deserve to be repudiated.

 

I voted "no" because it seems in the OP you're talking about in the positive sense. I do think Stalin and Zedong deserve vastly more recognition, but to demonstrate the danger of big government policies.