Summary: Mao’s thinking was influential in the 1960s and 1970s, the formative era for Sanders’ thinking. Understanding it tells us much about what to expect from President Sanders. Our ignorance of history makes it more likely to be repeated, in some form, here.
We are all shaped by our early experiences. Some outgrow it; some do not. Sanders was shaped by the politics of the Left when Mao’s thinking was ascendent. Mao developed methods by which a society could be molded like clay on a potter’s wheel.
From the NY Review of Books review of
Maoism: A Global History
by Julia Lovell (2019).
by Julia Lovell (2019).“British historian Julia Lovell provides, by contrast, a richly detailed and wide-ranging account of the emergence of Maoism and its evolution as a political force, first within China and then, to a remarkable extent, overseas. Her book proceeds from the claim that despite its impact on nearly every continent, Maoism remains woefully underexamined. …
“Paradoxically, as Lovell makes clear, despite {Mao’s} rampant killing, as well as China’s generally woeful economic performance under Mao, it was also the era of China’s greatest soft power – its ability to influence others through its political ideals or culture – that the country has enjoyed in modern times.”
Lovel describes the key aspects of Mao’s thinking, and how it differs from that of Soviet thinking
“Some of these differences are in kind, others in degree. In the former category, there is Mao’s veneration of the peasantry as a revolutionary force and his lifelong tenderness for anarchic rebellion against authority. In the latter category belong central elements of the Leninist–Stalinist project, with its veneration of political violence, its championing of anti-colonial resistance, and its use of thought-control techniques to forge a disciplined, increasingly repressive party and society.”
This describes Sanders.
Veneration of the peasantry
Sanders, like much of the Left, venerates the underclass as the source of energy and shock troops for the revolution. In America today, that means ethnic and racial minorities, Muslims, gender minorities, and (America’s majority group) women.
Political violence
“This affection for political violence underpinned the cult that Mao would create over the next half-century. …After his ideas began to go global, legitimisation of violence for political purposes was associated closely with Mao.”
— Lovel, ibid.
Political extremes are noteworthy for their love of political violence. It is a major source of their power, especially as moderates often tolerate it as “well-meaning” – until too late.
The Left demonstrated that during their last period of strength. Militant leftist groups set bombs across the nation, so that NYT called 1969 a Year of Bombings (e.g., the Weather Underground). Other Leftist terrorist groups were even more aggressive (e.g., the Symbionese Liberation Group). Now a new cycle of Leftist violence has begun. ANTIFA and Black Bloc are successors to the Leftist thugs who helped shape the 20th century. Here are a few posts documenting this violence (it’s not news fit to print, so mostly ignored by the major news media).
- Terrorism won yesterday in Berkeley and Portland. See these important stories.
- How the Left sees its political violence: as innocents victimized.
- About Steve Crowder’s horrifying exposé of Antifa’s violence.
- The Left uses violence to fight climate change.
- Antifa’s political violence wins again.
Sanders does the typical Leftist two-step of “condemning” violence, but only after how he explains it is understandable and just (e.g., here). To get a better understanding of what we can expect from candidate’s administration, see these candid video interviews of Sanders’ campaign staff: here, here, and here. They are true believers in the Left’s doctrines. Listening to them it is easy to imagine them using violence (preferably government violence, it is safer and more effective).
Anti-colonial resistance
Colonialism was the big baddie for the Left in the post-WWII era. But now they have new big baddies: patriarchy/sexism, white nationalism, white power, and fascism – all as one big ball of evil. As with colonialism, these are evils justifying extreme measures to overcome. This is the engine driving the Sanders movement.
Thought-control methods …
to forge a disciplined, repressive party & society.” This has been the Left’s long-term project, now come to fruition, on America’s major universities. Controls on speech, indoctrination programs, reeducation programs, and tribunals to enforce compliance.
Now they launch the project to reshape America in the same way.
Debating the Left is a waste of time
“Practice is the sole criterion of truth.”
— Title of radical 1978 paper by Hu Yaobang, who became General Secretary of China. It said that words meaning nothing. Only deeds matter.
To the Left, words are just a means to influence the public. They say what is necessary to get power. They promise what is necessary to gain power. It is all for our own good of course, which they know better than we do.
Conclusons
Looking at Sanders reveals a foundation of Maoist doctrines. We do not recognize it because amnesia about history is a defining characteristic of modern America. So we get to repeat past mistakes.
So far as I can tell, Sanders’ beliefs have remained consistent since the 1970s. He has expressed them in a fashion, to a degree, acceptable to voters at that time and place. Obama was a moderate on the Left. He used the presidency to execute citizens, implement a law never passed by Congress (his Clean Power Plan), and execute a treaty without Senate approval (the Paris Agreement). Imagine what a bolder Sanders and his radical team could do!
Other posts in my series about Bernie
- Vote for your ideal figurehead in 2020!
- Triumph of the Left over the liberals who nurtured them.
- The hidden key to Sanders’ amazing success in 2020.
For more information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about a unit of young women who flew biplanes in WWII and lived in a barn: Ballad of the Unknown Pilot.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about ways to reform America, about the Left-wing, about political violence, and especially these…
- Important: The middle in American politics has died. Now extremists rule.
- The Left goes full open borders, changing America forever.
- Visions of America if the Left wins.
- The key insight: the Left hates America and will destroy it.
- The Left can win in 2020 and dominate US politics.
- Glimpses of the political revolution just starting.
- About the slow-mo revolution by the Left.
- None of the Democratic candidates are moderates.
- Is the Left marching to victory – or doom?
- In 2020 America might resume the revolution.
- The age of revolution has begun in America.
Books about Bernie’s Revolution …
… but these describe only the mild first steps in Sanders’ program. Don’t scare the proles!
Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In
Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution
How Bernie Won: Inside the Revolution That’s Taking Back Our Country –
and Where We Go from Here
LK: What about the purposed veneration of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao? A good peasantry loves Big Brother, and he loves them back. He would never do anything wrong, his opponents MUST deserve the violence directed at them. Does Lovel have discussions of this facet of totalitarianism, how the revolution is centered around the greatness of Big Brother; pleasant stories for the peasants? Bernie was giving us some in his South Carolina debate.
John,
“What about the purposed veneration of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao?”
That’s not a valid sentence since it lacks an actor. Whose “proposed veneration”?
As Lovel had “Veneration of the Peasantry”.
C’mon, this is the silliest, loosest, most forced comparison I’ve seen out of you. I could take all of those points, twist as far as you have, and tell you Trump is a “Maoist” too
Joe: IMO, I would say, the agitprop has been successful that you see the velvet glove and not the iron fist that his call for revolution entails. Just how does he nationalize the energy sector with flowers or with guns? Takings are theft in this country. Persons do not just give their wealth away.
John,
A simple exercise: do you think Joe looked at the videos I linked to, the interviews with some of Sanders campaign staff?
no.
Joe,
“I could take all of those points, twist as far as you have, and tell you Trump is a “Maoist” too”
OK, let’s try.
(1) “Veneration of the peasantry”
Nope. The Right is disdainful of the underclass.
(2) “Political violence”
Nope. There is nothing on the Right equivalent to Black Bloc and ANTIFA. There are no cities run by the GOP where Right wing violence is tolerated as Leftist violence is in Portland and Berkeley.
(3) “Anti-colonial resistance”
Nope. There is no equivalent on the Right to the Left’s roster of class enemies.
(4) “Thought-control methods …”
There is no equivalent on the Right to the thought-control machinery built by the Left on America’s colleges, and being expanded outside that.
Conclusions
That was an interesting exercise, but had results different than you predicted. Your parallelism fails because the Right today is a defensive movement against an ascendent Left. Also, it is powered to a large extent by the 1%, whose goals are limited and largely extractive. As we have seen during Trump’s three years: tax cuts for the rich, crushing unions, deregulation of corporations, waving through mergers, etc.
If you wish to try again, a more useful rebuttal would explain how the simple comparisons I made with Sanders and the Left were “twisted” – rather than just asserting it.
1.) “Veneration of the peasantry”
The white working class that’s being squeezed by globalization, onerous government regulation, immigrants undercutting their wages, political correctness, whatever.
Trying to conflate Mao’s rural Chinese peasantry with just any disenfranchised group is ignoring a lot of history here between Mao’s doctrines and all the other Marxist schools of thought. Peasant, proletariat, and underclass aren’t all the same thing, even in Maoism.
2.) “Political violence”
Plenty of militia groups like the Oath Keepers and III%ers, violent street-fighting clubs like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayers, and white nationalists espouse support for Trump. Several people in the Trump administration (not just unscreened volunteers on a campaign staff) have ties to such groups. The QAnon cult around Trump dreams of a violent cataclysm when Trump will banish all his enemies to Gitmo or whatever. His followers were outright threatening a civil war if he was convicted of the impeachment charges. Right-wing extremists have had, and continue to have, a much higher body count than left-wing extremists historically in the US.
We’ll ignore the fact that neither Trump nor Sanders is actively calling for political violence.
3.) “Anti-colonial resistance”
The globalist elites (Clintons, Soros, a hundred other liberal bogeymen), the mainstream media, the PC police, the supposed elite child sex trafficking rings of QAnon and Pizzagate, etc. etc. The Right has plenty of real and imagined “class enemies”.
You’re really stretching “anti-colonial” .
4.) “Thought-control methods”
The Right has built an entire alternate universe of traditional news and social media to indoctrinate their voters and insulate them against any information to the contrary. Fox News, Breitbart, talk radio, Reddit, Facebook groups, 4chan/8chan, Gab, etc. It’s progressed from “the media is liberally-biased and spinning the news” all the way to “the media is outright lying to you with Fake News”.
Conclusions:
This isn’t to say that either Sanders or Trump is a Maoist, it’s to say that your comparison is facile and fallacious. You’re just taking terms out of their context and stretching them to mean whatever you like to prove your point.
ch1kpee,
Wow. That’s all really wrong.
(1) “trying to conflate Mao’s rural Chinese peasantry with just any disenfranchised group is ignoring a lot of history here”
False. The history of communist doctrine has been one of steadily widening the concept of the underclass (modern term) from which the revolution comes. Marx saw this as the industrial workforce, which is why be believed the revolution would first occur in heavily industrialized nations like Britain and Germany – and only later in less developed (ie, heavily agricultural) nations like Russia. The opposite was true, and doctrine accordingly broadened. Communism is a vital political forces because it grows and adapts.
In our post-industrial society, the definition of the oppressed underclass has again been redefined – as described in this post. But the structural role of the oppressed class remains the same. One can take much of Mao’s writing and use the post-mo def of “peasant” and the text still works just fine. If I have time, I’ll post another comment with an example.
(2) “Plenty of militia groups like the Oath Keepers and III%ers, violent street-fighting clubs like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayers, and white nationalists espouse support for Trump”
Wow. First, Oath Keepers is not a violent group like Antifa and Black Bloc (it has a large membership from law enforcement). Second, the relevant factor is not who fringe groups support – but which violent groups are supported by politicians. There is nothing on the Right equivalent to Black Bloc and ANTIFA in size or the respect it gets from “their side.” There are no cities run by the GOP where Right-wing violence is tolerated, as Leftist violence is in Portland and Berkeley. GOP politicians avoid association with right-wing milita groups like vampires do sunlight.
(3) ” The Right has plenty of real and imagined “class enemies”.”
Those are structurally different than the Left’s concept of class enemies. “Enemies” is not the same as “class enemies.” I mean, really – that’s not a mistake anyone with even a basic understanding of Leftist doctrine would make.
(4) “The Right has built an entire alternate universe of traditional news and social media to indoctrinate their voters and insulate them against any information to the contrary”
This is starting to feel like a demonstration by you of the doctrine that “Practice is the sole criterion of truth.” Yes, most tight social groups have mechanisms to “indoctrinate” and “insulate” their members from foreign views. The Left is enforcing those on non-Leftists – such as everybody on college campuses, and now the general public.
(5) “it’s to say that your comparison is facile and fallacious.”
That’s pretty much true of your comment. You either ignore or don’t know much about the history of communist thought – and misrepresented or misinterpreted what I said. Neither is a strong form of rebuttal.
LK:
Maoism’s modus operandi is organizing rural peasants into armies to take state power by force. Sanders is appealing to the disaffected working class and underemployed college-educated of America to go vote for him. The comparison you’re making is so broad as to be meaningless beyond the “organizing the 99%” strategy that pretty much everyone on the political left believes in. Nothing about it is uniquely “Maoist”.
I’m not sure what “anti-colonialism” is supposed to mean in the context of the US, the world’s remaining imperial power. Opposing white supremacy, sexism, fascism, or the wealthy 1% is pretty standard left-wing boilerplate, again nothing uniquely “Maoist” about that. If you’re trying to draw some kind of comparison between the Sanders movement and so-called “SJWs”, I’d urge you to look at the hostility with which he’s been greeted in that community and the fact that Sanders consistently says socio-economic class is more important than “identity politics”.
Trying to claim Sanders is stoking political violence or seeking to building a repressive brainwashing organization is baseless and dishonest.
Sanders mostly closely matches a mid-century European-style social-democrat/socialist, the kind that existed before most social-democratic/socialist parties sold out to neoliberalism and austerity from the 80’s onward. At his most radical, he still tacks closer to a Kautsky-ite SPD parliamentarian reformer looking to change the system from within, not a revolutionary looking to violently upend and replace the whole system from the outside. His tactics and ideology owe much more to the Nordic model and radical labor movements of the late 1800’s/early 1900’s era than they do to Mao.
ch1kpee,
“Maoism’s modus operandi is organizing rural peasants into armies to take state power by force”
That is what Mao did in the specific circumstances of his time and place. That does not mean that Mao’s methods cannot be adapted to other circumstances and still reflect the essence of his operational insights. That’s equivalent to saying we shouldn’t listen to the Founders because their America is so unlike ours.
“I’m not sure what “anti-colonialism” is supposed to mean in the context of the US, ‘
Yes, its apparent that you are unable to generalize about Mao’s insights and see how they can be applied elsewhere. Oddly, millions around the world were able to do so in the 1960s and 1970s – and still do so today.
“Trying to claim Sanders is stoking political violence or seeking to building a repressive brainwashing organization is baseless and dishonest.’
How sad that this obvious truth makes you unhappy. The Left has been increasingly using violence for over a decade. But keep your eyes closed and you won’t see it.
Anyway, I see there is no point to this. You are unable to reply to what I say, just ignoring it and repeating your idée fixe. I suggest reading Sanders’ books to learn more.
“That does not mean that Mao’s methods cannot be adapted to other circumstances…”
You’re just slapping the label of “Maoism” on something completely unrelated. It’s like people who try to slap the “fascism” label on Trump’s blend of nativism, nationalism and populism. Superficially similar at best, but completely unrelated and historically unconnected. Why not call it “National Socialism” or “Trotskyism”? You’d have a leg to stand on if you tried to claim he was Trotskyist, since he was affiliated with the SWP for a while.
“Maoist” has a definition, it’s not just a synonym for “radical lefty” that you can generalize to the point of meaninglessness.
“Oddly, millions around the world were able to do so in the 1960s and 1970s – and still do so today.”
Yeah, those are/were peasants or ethnic minorities, like indigenous Peruvians or scheduled tribes in India. Even Maoism’s flirtations in the US have largely been around minority “liberation struggles” like the Black Panther Party. You don’t make a very convincing case for how Bernie Sanders represents an “anti-colonial” struggle, when his campaign centers around social welfare, labor, and tax reforms.
“The Left has been increasingly using violence for over a decade”
“The Left” is not the monolith you seem to think it is, any more than “the Right” is (mea culpa: I’m certainly guilty of treating them that way sometimes too). Sure, left-wing and right-wing violence has been going up, but both mainstream left and right reject it and condemn it, as have Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Like I said, your insinuation that Sanders is encouraging it is baseless and dishonest.
I get it that you’re not fond of Sanders or any of the rest of the Democratic primary crop, but at least be intellectually honest when you’re talking about their proposed policies and tactics.
Larry-
Good analysis. My points are more on how this could play out operationally which is where the confusion may lie.
Instead of village teenagers armed with AK-47’s, it’s hipsters armed with twitter- which is a much more effective for the psychological preparation of the people and later info ops campaigns.
Mao focused on was mobilizing the peasants in the rural areas. Land reform was a major operational arm of the campaign.
Bernie would use (is using) a two-prong strategy of 1. Mobilizing refugees / immigrants and 2. Infiltrating key institutions / Mobilizing urban youths / urban elites. Land reform / rent control could still be a major driver.
-Mike
Mike,
You raise important points! Communism has always been a matter of adapting opportunistically. But there are common elements. As always, there is the revolutionary vanguard. In Czarist Russia, it was university-educated youth using pamphlets and speeches. Today it is university-educated youth using social media and podcasts.
Another common element is violence. The Left has effectively silenced dissent at America’s universities with a combination of violence (eg, forcing segregation in living quarters, preventing conservative speakers) and the naked exercise of power by university administrators and professors. Now Antifa and others are expanding into areas where the Left has influence in local government, allowing them to exercise street power. They’re turning up the heat slowly but steadily.
I hadn’t thought of it, but pointing to the role of “land reform” in our context could be powerful. The young find the high cost of housing a blockbuster issue. So far the Left hasn’t picked it up. After all, Sanders is a billion years old and owns three mansions – what does he or his kids or grand-kids know about this? But my guess is that eventually the younger staff behind Sanders and Warren and Hillary (the elderly crop of Leftist leader-hipsters) will die off – and the new cadres will take the stage.
Larry-
Spot on! I can only guess how land reform will shape out.
For Maoist, violence was used for compliance and land reform for recruitment. It was involved in everything that I’ve ever read about the countryside. I don’t know how it was discussed for urbanites.
Even today, in Northern Philippines, the Communists still use it, and it is a constant struggle for the government to address,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_the_Philippines#Arroyo_administration
The Left in general hasn’t picked up on “land reform” if only because all their leaders in government and in the private sector own some serious properties. The old ones, Pelosi, Sanders, et al, will have to die off before this gets any real traction beyond the usual bloviating.
Topics like MFA, student loan relief, carbon tax, et al, that’s just shuffling dollars around the table, much easier for leadership to push that sort of thing while feeding at the trough.
Larry, I really like this article. I felt uncomfortable calling Bernie a Marxist. Now I know why. Calling him a Maoist is so much better. It makes his past and present coherent.
John,
Marxists are as extinct as dinosaurs. The movement has learned from its successful and failed revolutions and absorbed powerful insights from outside (esp Nietzsche). That is what makes it alive and powerful.
Mao is coming into his own now, decades after his death. Much as Marx dominated much of the 20th C’s intellectual life after dying in 1883. Radical ideas travel slowly.
Historical context: When I attended the University during the Vietnam wars, the radicals who rebelled so much against the machine were Maoists. If they trusted you, they would even let you look at their little red book. My break with them was when they wanted to protest and get arrested by throwing rocks, firecrackers, and objects at the ROTC during their mandatory Thursday afternoon ROTC drills. I told them that I had nothing but respect for someone willing to risk their life for a college education. They thought that this made me an unrelenting bourgeois lackey. I thought their actions made them criminal. In my world, MLK, Jr was the example to use. I grew up in the segregated South and was exposed to the power and usefulness of organizing for one’s rights.
One of ANTIFA’s present tactics was used by many Totalitarians, violence as a reaction to free speech. That Bernie, and others, give the wink and nod to violence against free speech and lawful interaction by the public and police, IMO, tells more than the videos of their flunkies. The flunkies are just confirmation; the action of condoning is the danger to our Republic, and a symptom of where it stands. Too many don’t know or won’t face that without lawful action by people and police being allowed, the basic contract of a government to its people is broken. Though these ANTIFAs claim roots of our national battle to racial equality, it is a lie. Mao is their source of guidance. MLK,Jr was about uplifting everyone; Mao used “anarchic rebellion against authority” and murder. It is noteworthy that MLK’s followers were murdered, and Mao’s followers were the murderers.
It is better to be more precise about the terms and to focus on specific policies.
Maoism was distinctively Chinese. If you like, it was mass murder and famine with Chinese characteristics. There is quite a lot of material available on what happened – Dikotter is essential reading. Stein Ringen’s The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century Paperback is a bit scrappy but has lots of specific useful information on recent evolution.
I don’t know Chinese and am no way any sort of expert, but neither Sanders in the US nor Corbyn in the UK seem to be from readings of recent Chinese history and the Mao regime to have anything much in common with Mao and Maoism.
Sanders and Corbyn look to be pretty much alike in their specific policy views and sympathies and belong to a an Old Left tradition which was found in both Europe and America. Its part of a continuum where the Gaitskell administration of the UK post WWII is left, administrations like Wilson-Callaghan are centrist, and the Corbyn-Benn axis far left – within the left movement as a whole.
Blair probably reinvented the old Democratic Party of Humphrey with British characteristics.
The policy choices are around the same variables – how much nationalization, on what terms, how great a role for government in economy, health, education, which overseas regimes deserve sympathy, how much immigration and on what terms.
So at one extreme of this continuum you have the Corbynite infatuation with any terrorists they can find, anti-semtism under the guise of anti-Zionism, and proposals for confiscatory nationalization of corporations – in Corbyn’s case 10% was to be seized and handed to the workers in the companies, though with very restricted ownership rights. Sanders seems to be proposing 20%. In Corbyn’s case there was a proposal for ‘free’ broadband provided by a state monopoly. It is very similar to Sanders.
Neither one of them has anything which corresponds to what was done in the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. This is really the Old Left as it was in the West in the 1950s, modified and marketed with an overlay the cultural obsessions of the latest wave of the New Left, gender, climate and gender. And with different regimes to be admired, now that the Soviet Union is no more, and China is thought to be a capitalist roader.
I really don’t think that calling this Maoism helps to understand what is it, where it came from, or its likely prognosis. I also don’t think the sixties radicals who claimed to be Maoists are usefully thought of as that either. It was and is very much a Western cultural phenomenon. The current far left in the UK who are referred to as Trotskyites are not that in any useful sense either. Its an name which distinguishes them, everyone knows what it means, but all it means is the people called that. It does not have any real policy content related to the historical Trotsky.
As to its prognosis, don’t be so pessimistic. The UK, given the choice, voted Corbyn out with a bang. And even in power, the obstacles to getting what he proposed done, and getting a second term, would have been enormous. Also true of Sanders.
True, thankfully Corbyn was humiliated but his fantasies live on; the British Labour party appear to be following the same prescription.
“Neither one of them has anything which corresponds to what was done in the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. ”
Try reading the Green New Deal, an updated Great Leap Forward if ever there was one. Fortunately the American people have more sense than to support what would be an unmitigated disaster.
I would have had no trouble calling Bernie a Communist, but you calling him a Maoist was still a bit jarring. Having considered your argument, I conclude that you are correct.
But I must say that I appreciate the irony. The security agencies, which were originally set up to fight Communism, have spent a lot of time, effort, and thought on damaging Trump. If they help us to finally have a Maoist President, it will be a kind of ultimate mission failure on their part, and I suspect they’ll be among the first to be purged.
I’m not sure what Chairman Bernie’s purges will look like, so I doubt we will see a lot of Russiagate promoters toiling away on a pig farm somewhere. But we can always dream, I suppose.
Then again, we might be slopping the hogs alongside them. You never know where those purges will end up.
The Man,
That’s a great point – about the irony!
As for the purges, I’m sure you’re kidding – but just for the record, let’s not take this too far. Bernie can be a Maoist in many senses, but that does not mean he will implement policies like those of Mao.
If we determine somebody is a Christian, with what precision can we predict his or her behavior? In broad terms, yes. They probably won’t have three wives, abstain from pork, or worship cows. But will they vote Democrat or Republican? Oppose or support the death penalty or the next war?
“Bernie can be a Maoist in many senses, but that does not mean he will implement policies like those of Mao”
In what senses is he a Maoist? He grew up in an era when a sentimental enthusiasm for what people imagined Mao to be was common. That seems to be about it. That is not being a Maoist.
Its like saying someone of 70 who grew up in a milieu in which enthusiasm was common for what people wrongly thought of as Zen Buddhism is therefore a Buddhist. Despite the fact that he hasn’t thought much about it since he was 18 and never practised.
Sanders was obviously influenced by strains in the left circles of his youth. We all were by the strains in our own circles, often in different directions from him. But describing him as Maoist? Or the rest of us by reference to what was around us when growing up? Its just superficial name calling.
The phenomenon of the current new new left is important, that you are dead right about. But it needs, to be understood, to be subjected to a lot more specific analysis than this. And its nature has little or nothing to do with Mao.
I’m semi-kidding about the purges. If Commissar Bernie become General Secretary, well…the Intelligence Community has claimed, apparently, (Or it has been reported) that Russia is helping his campaign as well as Trump’s If he were to win, that might have consequences. You’ve pointed out yourself that the IC could be purged at some point by a President with a sense of self preservation. I don’t expect pig farms, jet planing, dunce caps, or self criticism sessions, but at this point, the Deep State seems to be against Trump and Sanders both . (Does this mean they’re endorsing Biden? Bloomberg?)
Maybe these people have a permanent immunity totem, but then again maybe not. I’ve made enough wrong predictions about this race already to not risk further disgracing myself here. But I do wonder how President Sanders might deal with an IC that claimed he was being supported by Russia.