Zhou Enlai, born on this day in 1898, was a communist revolutionary, statesman, and military officer who served as the 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1976. "All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means."

Zhou was educated in a missionary college in Tianjin before studying at a Japanese university. In Tianjin, he met his future wife, Deng Yingchao while participating in a radical political group known as the "Awakening Society". In 1920, Zhou moved to France, where he helped form the overseas branch of the Chinese Communist Party. He also lived in Britain and Germany before returning to China in 1924.

While working in the Political Department of the Whampoa Military Academy, Zhou was also made the secretary of the Communist Party of Guangdong-Guangxi, and served as the CCP representative with the rank of major-general.

After the Chinese Civil War broke out in 1927, Zhou served in the communist forces, helping establish and oversee a network of underground cells of communist resistance. Zhou played a leading role in the Long March of 1934-35, an arduous military retreat of communist forces over 8,000 miles.

Following the Zunyi Conference in 1935, Mao Zedong became Zhou's assistant. After the conclusion of the Long March, Mao officially took over Zhou Enlai's leading position in the CCP, while Zhou took a secondary position as vice-chairman. Both would hold their leadership positions until their deaths in 1976.

Zhou was a prominent participant in the 1955 Asian–African Conference, held in Indonesia. The conference produced a declaration in strongly in favor of peace, the abolition of nuclear arms, general arms reduction, and the principle of universal representation at the United Nations. Zhou was critical of American imperial aggression and stated "the population of Asia will never forget that the first atom bomb was exploded on Asian soil."

Zhou passed away from bladder cancer on January 8th, 1976, just nine months before Mao Zedong's death in September that year.

"Today the first unification of the Chinese people has emerged. The people themselves have become the masters of Chinese soil, and the rule of the reactionaries in China has been irrevocably overthrown."

  • Zhou Enlai, from "Chinese People Will not Tolerate Aggression" (October 1950)

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  • Poison_Ivy [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Mkay so I work as a clinician in a treatment center for drugs and alcohol (meth, heroin and alcohol being the most common things we treat) with a focus on recently released people from prison and people who are homeless. We get all sorts and I genuinely love my job and my coworkers. This story has been burning a hole in my skull for months now.

    Which brings me to: The Woke Nazi

    We got a Patient a couple months back who seemed like any other Patient, until he took his shirt off while working out. He had 2 swastikas, an othala rune and a valknut rune all tattooe'd somewhere on his torso. He explained he is a member of a pretty prominent skinhead gang basically since he was a teenager which was like....ummm.....idk I gave him a wide berth until I just couldn't take it and went " [Name] what the fuck is with the goddamn swastikas!?"

    And he described his ideology which was....something more frustrating than I expected.

    He basically described a People's Revolution where all groups of people (yes all races, creeds and sexualities) band together to take over the government and redistribute the wealth and seize control for the common person, including the means of production (but not in those terms). I asked him about white supremacist ideology and stuff like that and he explained that "everyone is pretty much the same" and that we shouldn't be segregated, or seperated from eachother because we're all lonely enough as is. I asked him about Jewish people and he said he doesn't agree with his fellow gangmembers ideas about them, and personally vouched for white jewish prisoners while locked up. Idk if this is true or not but dafuq

    He had the general attitude and demeanor of a fucking Labrador retriever and made it a point to be friendly to everyone, including the trans patients (including attending the dedicated LGBT group discussion to better understand them) and his best friends in the program were a Mexican guy and a Black guy who he described as his "brothers and comrades".

    During a casual session where we were waiting to call his probation officer, I offered my own ideology (I openly stated I was communist) and he was super...cool about it and agreed to read through my copies of Wage Labour and Capital and Principles of Communism which he finished and returned in 2 weeks, thanking me and telling me that he agreed with all the premises and discussed in depth the content of the books (at least as much as he understood :-I) . He would excitedly ask me for more books after that.

    I introduced him to parts of American history like the Tuskeegee experiments, Tulsa Massacre, and the California Genocide, and he was shocked and disgusted and stated that redistributing wealth to the people effected (in the way that he described a week prior to this) would be "a start". Americans are a diseased people what the fuck.

    I have no idea how to explain this weirdo, but of all the people that have ever existed, he certainly is one of them.

    • Abraxiel
      ·
      2 years ago

      Sounds like a more or less good egg (at least in his conception of other people) who found a group of bad people who welcomed him.

      • Poison_Ivy [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Thats what I got too, I hope he falls in with a better crowd and takes up my offer to connect him with tattoo removal services because those tats are gonna bar him from a lot of jobs and financial security is paramount for a lot of these guy’s sobriety

    • GaveUp [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I feel like this guy is what Kanye West thinks he is

      Ask him how he feels about Nazis. I'm betting he says something about how they're also our brothers and deserve love too

      • Poison_Ivy [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        He said he does not approve of the Holocaust and when I probed a bit also does not approve of the nazi party, hitler, or any of the massacres. He claims that the nazi iconography for him is the equivalent of the black power fist for white people, which I didn't know what to respond with besides pointing out to everyone else the swastika means something very very particular.

        He does follow “Odinism” as some kind of symbolic faith thing, but also would wear a crucifix (common with the people coming out of prison.

        I looked up the skinhead movement and apparently there are some who get the nazi tattoos for the shock value, which may be a partial explanation but I think with him he wants some kind of shared identity with his fellow mayos but like…there are better identity movements to attach yourself to than the fucking swastika.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Well... There are a lot of places that will help people remove or cover up their nazi tattoos for free or at a reduced rate. Maybe see if you can find someone like that to help him out?

      • Poison_Ivy [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I mean I don't think he wants to. I know one charity that does it pretty good and for free (along with all other gang tattoos) and another org that specifically helps with "deprograming" people coming out of white supremacist groups and among their services is tattoo removal.

        It's just pretty frustrating to have someone who is like a breath away from leftism if he weren't involved in all the gang-lifestyle bullshit.

        We'll see what happens, you can lead a horse to theory-infused water but you can't force it to drink.