Word: mao
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...literature, however, Revolutionary Immorality is much more notable. It conveys with surprising force the staggering personal tragedy of Mao Tse-tung, a leader who has spent his lifetime designing one of the great political triumphs of history, and now seems to be systemically shattering his work...
LIFTON'S concepts become intelligible only when he relates them to the specific case of China. "The essence of the 'power struggle' taking place in China," he argues, "as of all such 'power struggles' is power over death." The symbol of immortality linking Mao with the mass agents of upheaval is the Revolution. As an old man facing death, he has seized on his political work and vision as his connection with Chinese history. The knowledge that they will outlive him allows him to face death, and the threat of their corruption stimulates an almost paranoid response--a need...
...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...