The Little Blood Red Book

Tariq Ali said once that, "it's a total failure of the Western imagination that the only enemy they can see is Adolf Hitler."

Mao Tse-Tung, according to the recent biography written by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, must be the most successful tyrant of all time, responsible for the death of 70 million Chinese. Stalin, Hitler, Mao.

I started reading Mao: The Unknown Story (2005 Knopf) yesterday, at home suffering from viral bronchitis and a massive headache. I’m two hundred pages into his conniving rise to power and already at least 200,000 brutally murdered or betrayed deaths - Mao has just turned forty.

It reminded me that I recently bought a reprint of a classic Communist Chinese propaganda poster (something about “struggle against American Imperialism, Soviet Revisionists, etc”). You’ve probably all seen something similar (the image that accompanies this blog is a version of the poster I bought.)

It's purchase was intended as an ironic piece of art. You know, like when an atheist buys and wears a Jesus t-shirt. Or when a pacifist buys and wears army fatigues. And, besides, I’ve always been a fan of the neo-classical propaganda art of the Soviet regime, with its proleteriat and community focus - dozens of men and women, with square robust features, wearing scarves and driving threshers across fields at harvest time. And I can’t be the only one to appreciate this aethestic since we all more or less dress in work clothes today.

Except that intended irony is feeling flat now as when I want to puke after passages like this:

“...in this purge alone 10,000 were killed...Even today in the area...they dig out bones from one big pit after another....Survivors recalled that many had been “put in jute sacks and thrown into Lake Hong with big stones tied to them. Fishermen did not dare go fishing in the lake, because so many corpses came up, and the colour of the lake changed.” pg 180 Mao, The Unkown Story

It’s not clear whether the victims were drowned or killed first. Burying people alive seemed to be a particular delight for the murderers. As was “running rusty wires through the testicles” of groups of men being lead to their beheading. And, of course, the now CIA standard (taught to the best terrorists and state goons around the world): the hot poker shoved up the anus.

I took the CCP poster from its storage (it hasn’t been framed) and unfurled it and looked at it carefully, sipping tea and listening to the pounding of my headache echo off the living room wall. I still think the print is pretty but, I dunno, the longer I looked at it the more the paper seemed to become slippery with blood.

I think I might have to trade it in for a Jesus t-shirt.