[PEN-L:8351] Re: Re: Re: racism

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Absent a context. Peter Dorman may have a point.  Anything serious can be lampoon to become funny.

But DeLong "satire" was made in the course of a heated and serious debate on his claimed that Mao was comparable to Hitler because Mao allegedly purposefully murdered 30 million people with his Great Leap Forward policies. When M. Perelman challenged his data, DeLong countered that no one had any data because Communist China keep such data secret as was alleged natural for totalitarian regimes and that his proof was the purge of Peng Dehuai.

When I challenged his claim by producing data sources and a brief history of the GLP, he resorted to satire which Max, while admitting his unfamiliarity with Chinese history, joined in, and the two of them had hilarious time taunting Chinese language and socialism.

At that point I suggested that their actions were racist.  Max then resorted to calling me a liar and DeLong confessed that the purposed of his satire was to prove Chinese socialist rhetoric precluded clear thinking. And the elaborate denial and rejection campaign began.

I did not and do not find any satire on Mao funny at this time in history when China is engaged in a serious struggle to keep the faith in the socialist road as envisioned by Mao.  Socialism is in an era of a garrison state mentality, facing distortive challenges from all sides and on all levels.  There is nothing funny about satirizing the greatest socialist leader in Chinese history, one that we may not find an equal for another century, it ever.

Hnery C.K. Liu

Peter Dorman wrote:

> I hesitate to get into this, but I'm on record as having posted that
> Brad's satire was hilarious.  Which it was.  The humor has nothing to do
> with Chinese culture; it is a spoof of a certain type of Marxism known
> all over the world.  Have you ever seen Jessica Mitford's
> "Lifeitselfmanship"?  Same object, same humor, also very funny.  Does
> appreciating her stuff make me a self-hating Euro-American?
>
> FWIW, the writer who had the most effect on my political thinking when I
> was in high school (a very long time ago) was Mo-tzu (old spelling?),
> whom I had read in translation.  This guy towers over any other
> intellectual or activist figure on the left until modern times, IMO.
> Imagine a Plato who is also a communist and who leads a band of warriors
> that struggles defensively against military aggression wherever it
> occurs.  (He was a rough contemporary of the golden age of Athens.)  His
> prose (in translation) has a simple, rather formal cadence, but there is
> no silliness to spoof, as there is with Mao.
>
> Peter
>
> ps: Often I think of a particular passage from Mo-tzu: There is a great
> conflagration, so great that no one can put it out.  One person is
> adding fuel, another is pouring water.  Who do we praise and who do we
> blame?
>
> The real world is often like this.
>
> Charles Brown wrote:
> >
> > In the particular instance you are talking about, Henry pointed out that Brad and Max's comedy post was mocking a fomality of Chinese culture which translated into English as something different in a cultural sense. Then Max started spelling "Mao" as "Wao". A fundamental anti-racist sense tells one not to mock other cultures, exactly because something can get lost in the translation, but this is especially true concerning members of a European nation making fun of non-Europeans.
> >