Professor Rummel on Mao's millions and millions of murders. (Part 2.)

If a man like Dr. Rummel can underestimate the horrors of a commie dictatorship, don't you think we should be reading more history, kiddies?

The Monstrous, Hidden Mao Tse-tung

In yesterday's blog, wrote that I was convinced by Jung Chiang and Jon Halliday's Mao that China's Great Famine was a democide, and that this raised the communist democide 1923 to 1987 to 73,000,000, exceeding by over 10,000,000 the democide total for the Soviet Union 1917-1987. There is much more in this book and its predecessor, Chiang's Wild Swans that I will reveal here.

I should note that I'm not doing book reviews, although I need to give some background from the books. My interest is only in what I learned from the books that are new and surprising. First, as to the Wild Swans, this is a story of the lives of three Chinese women, Chiang's grandmother who had her feet bound, and became a concubine; her mother who along with Chiang's father became high officials in the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), and Chiang herself who became a CCP member, a Red Guard, and was tortured, incarcerated, persecuted, underwent forced labor, and finally with Mao's death was able to get a university education and be awarded one of the first foreign fellowships, this to England. What is so absorbing about this is what is revealed about China's history through its effect on this one family. This includes the downfall of the Manchu Dynasty, China's brief flirtation with democracy, the warlord years, Chiang Kai-shek's rise to power, Mao's gradual seizure of power over the communists, the civil war, Japanese invasion and occupation, the post-war battle against Chiang for China, Mao's takeover of China, and the various bloody campaigns to solidify Mao's rule and impose communism, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution, and aftermath.

Here the perspective is bottom up. The top down perspective, that is of Mao and those around them, is given in Mao. These books are essential to each other and I strongly recommend that anyone interested in China today or its recent history, in pure evil, in communism, in totalitarianism, or in how mass murder and torture can become a routine operation of government, must read these books.

With that as background, what have I learned?

I whole-heartedly recommend the rest of this post. The link is in the title at the top.

BTW, wouldn't the world be a better place if all academics kept learning a la Rummel?