Word: mao
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mao was, by Lifton's account, a man confident of his cluded the warlords for ten years before...
...symbol of Mao and his revolution, in turn, link the masses to Chinese culture and history. With ancestor worship and family under attack from the communist leadership, the revolution is a substitute for the biological line. This explains the deification of Mao, and even more than Mao, Mao's Thought. Mao's Thought must be the sole (thus unchallenged) basis for the order which survives him. The hysterical attack on all tradition is an attempt to clear the field for the rise of a new cleansed Maoist order, and youth is the bearer of the new tradition because it symbolizes...
...observer, Franz Schurmann--noting the extraordinary scene of a million people gathered in the great square singing "The East is Red," Mao Tse-tung powerful in his presence though walking slowly and stiffly ... then moving out into the masses on the arm of a teenage girl--spoke of the formation of a new community. I would suggest that this new community, in a symbolic sense, is a community of immortals...
Lifton has a particularly hard time convincing us that the Red Guards who have spearheaded Mao's movement actually share his concern for the revolution--or at least that they are concerned for the same reasons that Mao is. The youthfulness of the Red Guards (most were between 10 and 18 years of age) is logical from Mao's viewpoint, since they symbolize for him a vital new order. But it seems hard to understand why youths should be so violently afraid of death and fearful for their immortality. Lifton quotes extensively from Red Guard statements, most of which...
LIFTON'S account of Mao's peculiar obsession and its role in explaining the cultural revolution is far more satisfying than his account of mass response to that obsession. This side of the collective-individual relationship is much easier to document and far better researched than the motivations of China's millions. The image of Mao which emerges has all the features of high tragedy. Mao will undoubtedly be recalled as one of the great political geniuses of all time. Over a span of thirty years he personally molded a classic revolution and within three years of his victory...