https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-andy-warhol/10-facts/10-f...
What a fantastic story.
Sarah Paine EP 3: How Mao Conquered China (Lecture & Interview) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l3Sa8ImGFQ&t=6325s
You should't believe everything you read. Especially when it comes from a secret service.
And does Warhol's treatment celebrate them, or mock them? Is it respectful or does it reduce the person into a cartoon, a caricature, a meme? Does the very act of mass-producing an image elevate the subject's status, regardless of the content?
How many millions of people's deaths was Marilyn Monroe responsible for, as a rough estimate?
> The systemic media control in authoritarian regimes is often inspired by China’s propaganda model. China (178th) remains the world’s largest jail for journalists and reentered the bottom trio of the Index, coming just ahead of North Korea (179th). -- https://rsf.org/en/rsf-world-press-freedom-index-2025-econom...
A media control does not need government to act openly. A mind-numbing patriotism can be as effective. Look at US reporting on the aftermath of 9/11. How many papers argued against Iraq or Afghanistan war? How many papers are talking about Gaza now? or even covering hands-off rallies?
Iraq, though? There was tons of opposition to the Iraq War. It was only approved because people were lied to about the "weapons of mass destruction." Once the truth was out, a lot of us felt betrayed.
Iraq is a large part of why that particular segment of the Republican party (the neocons) lost its power. Which is a shame, really, given who replaced them...
Can you expand on this?
Always amazing to me how we're all supposed to be outraged for chinese/Russians who suffered under particular rulers, while also being generally hostile to them as nations and people.
That's one way to describe Mao implementing such incompetent and exploitative policies that it leads to over 40 million Chinese people dying in famines and purges.
Downplaying the severity of despots like Mao by comparing them to democratically elected leaders is incredibly disrespectful to the 45,000,000 people that died as a direct result of catastrophic and coercive policies.
If you are so inclined, one was had good intentions, but backfired badly while other is explicitly cruel.
The only way Hitler could have gone out was in a pine box. That's the difference. He may have been democratically elected, but he wasn't a democratic leader.
Middle east is as it is currently largely to his fuckups and made up invasions for reasons barely better than russian invasion of Ukraine, and Afghanistan failure is proper second Vietnam for US to the last details, just less movies about it so far so its largely ignored and people act like it didn't happen.
Republicans still uncritically celebrate him, when I dared to criticize him even here I got downvoted to hell pretty quickly. Yet he is directly responsible for death of millions of innocent civilians and indirectly caused ie Isis, not on Mao or Stalin level but still.
Now whether you might argue that it was thanks to or rather despite Mao being in leadership is another matter and believe me I am in the "despite" camp but it still makes sense that he would have strong symbolic importance for the Chinese people.
People that will argue "oh he killed millions of people" need to get their head out of the cold war propaganda. I do believe his economic policy was criminal and was done against the advice of Soviet advisors but it is still not murder. His policy was idiotic, he was neglectful maybe but he did not purposefully cause a famine.
Saying it is the same or even worse are the purposeful, planned industrial scale mass murder that Hitler was responsible for under the Nazi regime is pure holocaust apologia. Plain and simple.
More people died then than during the Holocaust. More people dying is objectively worse, no matter how you slice it.
If I see a donation stand for children in Africa and decide to rather buy a video game from that money, well some children are going to starve because of my decision but I haven't exactly killed them.
Blaming Mao for a famine is completely insane if you are not super brainwashed. He was a human not a god.
But considering you took the highest death toll estimation you could find already shows you are not interested in facts but in pushing a narrative.
Great leap forward killed 4% of Chinese population. Vietnam war killed 10% - 12% of people in Vietnam. I do not see condemnation of US here..Rather, I see the celebration that US has a democracy.
War has never been nice, but peace is supposed to be. It wasn't some foreign invader that killed that 4% of China's population, it was their own government - the organization whose primary purpose is to look out for their welfare.
Israel is a different matter, and it's all a political mess.
But bear in mind that these are foreign deaths. A government is responsible for its own people, not those of other countries. I realize hating on US is the popular thing these days, but at least we don't let large percentages of our own people starve.
"Better than China" is too low a bar for a democracy.
Citation needed. The only effort US is making, is for hiding its crimes. Killing all people at a wedding because there is a "terrorist" (which was earlier trained by US) present there, is no excuse.
Hitler and Nazis have been used as comic reliefs in Western popular culture. You can supposedly make anything more funny in an absurd way by adding some gratuitous Nazis. Communist leaders such as Stalin and Mao are often used ironically. Sometimes because people find the socialist realism art style aesthetically pleasing, and sometimes due to the irony of turning a communist leader into commercial art.
The article was a good story. Strange though that people cherish these Mao pictures and put them on display. I like Andy Warhol but putting Mao up seems like putting a picture of Hitler on your wall. And no, this isn't Godwin's Law. The comparison seems to fit given he's one of the top 3 mass murders of all time
https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zed...
https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/who-kil...
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
bookofjoe•9mo ago