Lest We Forget

I, like probably most of you, am well past the median age for American citizens, which was 38 in 2017. Thus, the median American was born in 1981, and was too young to have political awareness in 1991 when the USSR collapsed. More and more, I notice that those who came aware after the Cold War do not remember the truth about Communism.

The Wall Street Journal in 2016 asked: “Is Communism Cool? Ask a Millennial.” Last year MIT Press published Communism for Kids and Teen Vogue ran an excited apologia for Communism. Tablet announced, with some concern, a “Cool Kid Communist Comeback.” On Twitter, there is new trend of people giving themselves communist-themed names: “Gothicommunist,” “Trans-Communist,” “Commie-Bitch,” “Eco-Communist.” The hammer and sickle flag has been re-appearing on campuses, at protests and on social media.

How could we have forgotten?

A poll in the UK by The New Culture Forum from 2015 showed that 70 percent of British people under the age of 24 had never heard of Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung, while out of the 30 percent who had heard of him, 10 percent did not associate him with crimes against humanity. Chairman Mao’s communist regime was responsible for the deaths of between 30 to 70 million Chinese, making him the biggest genocidal killer of the 20th century, above Stalin and Hitler.

One of the reasons Mao’s genocides are not widely known about is because they are complex... it is precisely the ambiguity over whether Mao’s Communist Party was responsible for 30, 50 or 70 million deaths that leads to internet users giving up on the subject.

Wretchard today is warning about the Cultural Revolution, which our own young left seems to be trying its best to kick off here. If they haven't heard of Mao, they haven't heard of the Cultural Revolution either; and they don't know where this process leads. Which makes them, of course, easily led there.