The U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, so maybe we were trying to play nice in the aftermath of that.
Jung Chang's 2005 "biography" of Mao did a shitton of damage. I don't know how bad Mao's image was in the U.S. before then, but she's the one who really got the ball rolling on the "worse than Hitler" kind of talk.
There's a book from 1994 that used to be very popular (still gets parroted on Reddit today, just with no source). It depicts Mao as having a personal depravity that might be more comparable to Genghis Khan or Caligula. It is also completely discredited among scholars even in the US, but that never stopped anyone from saying ridiculous shit about, say, the USSR.
I think the "Mao killed trillions" idea came about no later than the Black Book of Communism, published in 1997, which blames 65 million deaths on the PRC. In short, the book you cite might have sparked a new wave, but I think overall it was following a trend rather than setting one.
Thanks for the correction. I think I got my impression from the afterword of the most recent edition of Philip Short's biography of Mao, and he may have focused on Jung Chang's distortions more than the others because she was his direct competition.
The U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, so maybe we were trying to play nice in the aftermath of that.
Jung Chang's 2005 "biography" of Mao did a shitton of damage. I don't know how bad Mao's image was in the U.S. before then, but she's the one who really got the ball rolling on the "worse than Hitler" kind of talk.
There's a book from 1994 that used to be very popular (still gets parroted on Reddit today, just with no source). It depicts Mao as having a personal depravity that might be more comparable to Genghis Khan or Caligula. It is also completely discredited among scholars even in the US, but that never stopped anyone from saying ridiculous shit about, say, the USSR.
I think the "Mao killed trillions" idea came about no later than the Black Book of Communism, published in 1997, which blames 65 million deaths on the PRC. In short, the book you cite might have sparked a new wave, but I think overall it was following a trend rather than setting one.
wish I hadn't read that pile of lies during my lib years, it set my political development back
I'm glad you made it here in spite of that :rat-salute:
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Thanks for the correction. I think I got my impression from the afterword of the most recent edition of Philip Short's biography of Mao, and he may have focused on Jung Chang's distortions more than the others because she was his direct competition.
Seems reasonable.