The 'Golden Age' of Chinese History

Book Club #42 | Frank Dikötter's The Tragedy of Liberation

Callum & Carl discuss Frank Dikötter's 'The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957'

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[psyxypher]

You know things are bad in your country if a six digit death count is considered mild.

[pyrevulpine]

The saddest part, my family fled Chaozhou to Phnom Penh. Then some more of these lunatics came about in 1975. My family went through 2 countries of hell. I am forever grateful to be alive.

[Richforce]

It wasn't that Truman's advisors were stupid, it was that some of them like Alger Hiss were soviet agents and gave advice that would benefit a soviet ally.

[scottcantdance]

"Truman's advisors, it seems, were really effin stupid."
Only if you take what federal officials are saying at face value. If you're a bit more cynical... it would appear that they were actively malevolent.

[VeraldoAncodini]

It definitely liberated a lot of people from life...

[rextucker]

My father had a book that contained, among other war-related things, pictures of male prisoners executed by the Communist Chinese. It was one of a series of books my father bought from Time/Life and so there were a lot of pictures. The pictures of the executions showed the prisoners were all killed in the same way. Their severed heard was placed in their lap and their genitals were stuffed in their mouth. And Time/Life used the original format in which they were received, so the pictures were around the size of a postage stamp and there were pages of them. Time/Life just hammered me with one page after another until I finally set that sumbitch back on the shelf. Time/Life didn't have to tell me about Communism, they showed me. They showed me and they kept showing me until I finally had to put that damn book down. That was some of the wildest most brutal shit I ever saw.

[popularopinion]

There were communist sympathizers throughout American State Department. One of our biggest failures is not resisting the rise of communism in China

[pyrevulpine]

I have said before to my buddies that one of the reasons the Guoming party lost is simply that they were fighting alone. No allies to support them. The Gongchan party had the Soviet Union backing them. This video revealed a new source of grief for my family, the Truman administration and its successors.

[rahn]

"We don't like these people kill them"
"Okay."
"We think the relatives of those people will want revenge. Kill them too please."
"Okay."
"We think the friends and family of those people will also want revenge. They need to die before we feel safe."
"Okay."
"We're going to leave now, the people you killed were friends of ours."
"No no, you're going to die as well."

[raypurchase]

Andrew Marr was a hardline deep-left Maoist whilst at university.
There's a video on YT where George Galloway recalls Marr distributing Maoist pamphlets outside a railway station.
But both The Guardian and the BBC gave him jobs anyway.

[iainbaker]

Just remember that Diane Abbott said Mao did more good than harm.

[arisaga]

This should be required reading in schools. Instead, we teach them how Harry now identifies as Harriet and still can’t decide which bathroom to use.

[dareka]

Game critics are right. There are far too many games that only touch upon Western history. We need more games that are set in seldom talked about history like the Chinese Civil War. And it's perfect for modern gaming templates: one side is Red team and the other is Blue team.

[hengineer]

It's crazy that the Kmer Rouge were even worse

[MlSHKlN]

it was a violent but largely bloodless protest

[hx]

Bring me back to 2006, when I learned the real history of modern China and CCP.

[magnus]

yes, because Mao totally did not have his followers perform cannibalistic rituals to literally eat the rich

[stephenrice]

Those were the days, my friend!
We thought they'd never end!
We'd sing and dance
Forever on their graves!
Which victim would we choose?
So many lives they'd lose!
Those were the days!
Oh, yes, those were the days!

Early PRC song, freely translated into English.

[ritalewis]

Many of your podcasts are the best world history classes I ever had

[servicerifle]

And there's people out there that defend this.