Martel: Mike Bloomberg Is Not a Democrat – He’s a Maoist

Mike Bloomberg knows better. The former Republican mayor of New York City has launched a presidential campaign predicated on telling Democrats he knows better what is best for their own party.

Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor was defined by this steadfast insistence on telling the people he served that he knew how to run their lives better than they did. Bloomberg knew how to feed newborns better than their mothers did, so he tried to ban baby formula. He knew better than police officers who the criminals are, so he mandated they target people of color more than white New Yorkers for random searches.

This totalitarian paternalism is not new, nor is it unique in the world today. Perhaps Bloomberg himself knows this because he went out of his way to applaud the only man on earth implementing his ideology better than he is: Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

Bloomberg: Xi Jinping Is Not a Dictator

Bloomberg’s affinity for Xi and the parallels between his own understanding of government and that of Xi’s ideological forebear, Mao Zedong, should horrify any decent American. And it should be particularly problematic for Bloomberg given that his campaign is largely predicated on the fact that he, a Maoist, is more of a “practical” presidential choice than old-school Soviet Marxist Bernie Sanders.

In a bizarre conversation with PBS’s Margaret Hoover in December, Bloomberg claimed that China relocating coal plants away from cities to hide them from global environmentalists was “doing a lot” to help the earth, then claimed that the Chinese Communist Party is somehow beholden to its people – the same people it routinely tortures, enslaves, rapes, and kills in a bid for absolute power.

“The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public. When the public says ‘I can’t breathe the air,’ Xi Jinping is not a dictator; he has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive,” Bloomberg asserted. Challenged on the fact that China has no democratic elections and no citizen of China outside of the Communist politburo had a say in Xi’s ascent, Bloomberg added, “You’re not going to have a revolution. No government survives without the will of the majority of its people. He has to deliver services.”

Don’t be confused by Bloomberg’s outrageous wealth – there is no such thing as a poor communist – and don’t allow the instinct to laugh at absurd policies like banning large sodas to save the people distract from the fact that only one kind of government has attempted them in real life. Just as it would only occur to Bloomberg to legally ban large sodas, only Mao Zedong banned flowers (for being symbols of feudal oppression, naturally).

Cultural Revolution: Mao’s Murderous Plot to ‘Educate’ the Masses
Mao Zedong, more than any other leader, pioneered the use of state force to “teach” the ignorant masses what a good life is, killing an estimated 45 million to 65 million in the process. His legacy lives on in Xi Jinping, the first Chinese leader whose name appears in the Chinese constitution besides Mao and Deng Xiaoping, the resurrector of the “mass line” purges, the only man who could get away with multiple pictures of his face looming larger than Mao’s in Tiananmen Square.

Defending Xi Jinping publicly – and, privately, humiliating employees who dared attempt to use journalism to expose Xi’s crimes – makes sense for Bloomberg only if Bloomberg sees Xi’s political goals as defensible.
At the heart of Mao Zedong Thought is the idea that the totalitarian Communist Party must “educate” human beings into worshipping Mao, what Mao referred to as “democracy.”

“Education in democracy must be carried on within the Party so that members can understand the meaning of democratic life, the meaning of the relationship between democracy and centralism, and the way in which democratic centralism should be put into practice,” Mao wrote in 1938. Mao used the euphemism “centralism” for totalitarianism – power centralized in one core.

Mao regularly indicated his desire to “educate,” which resulted in routine mass murders of individuals considered insufficiently loyal to him. In a later writing in 1942, he repeats, “To criticize the people’s shortcomings is necessary … but in doing so we must truly take the stand of the people and speak out of whole-hearted eagerness to protect and educate them. To treat comrades like enemies is to go over to the stand of the enemy.”

Mao Zedong fashioned himself a destructive “monkey king,” wrote Harvard professor Roderick MacFarquhar in a profile that formed part of the New York Times‘ abhorrent celebration of the communist centennial in 2017.

“Education in democracy must be carried on within the Party so that members can understand the meaning of democratic life, the meaning of the relationship between democracy and centralism, and the way in which democratic centralism should be put into practice,” Mao wrote in 1938. Mao used the euphemism “centralism” for totalitarianism – power centralized in one core.

Mao regularly indicated his desire to “educate,” which resulted in routine mass murders of individuals considered insufficiently loyal to him. In a later writing in 1942, he repeats, “To criticize the people’s shortcomings is necessary … but in doing so we must truly take the stand of the people and speak out of whole-hearted eagerness to protect and educate them. To treat comrades like enemies is to go over to the stand of the enemy.”

Mao Zedong fashioned himself a destructive “monkey king,” wrote Harvard professor Roderick MacFarquhar in a profile that formed part of the New York Times‘ abhorrent celebration of the communist centennial in 2017.

“The monkey king is an imaginary being with the strength of a superman, an ability to fly and a predilection for using his immense cudgel for destructive purposes. He is a sage. Ordinary humans and even spirits cannot defeat him,” MacFarquhar wrote. “When young, Mao had written that for change to come about, China must be ‘destroyed and reformed.’ He now realized that only the peasantry could bring that about. Mao would be the monkey king to lead that destruction.”

The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s campaign to destroy all of society in a bid to save it. Lasting over a decade and beginning in the mid-1960s, the Cultural Revolution largely consisted of publicly shaming “intellectuals” – professors such as MacFarquhar at the top of the list – for being part of the malevolent bourgeois. The public shaming included beatings, forcing people into embarrassing outfits and smearing them with paint, making them perform humiliating acts such as barking like dogs, and, in some cases, cannibalism.

 It was not limited to intellectuals, but to anyone the communist rabble decided seemed even mildly interested in the world outside of Mao.
 
“Gangs of students and Red Guards attacked people wearing ‘bourgeois clothes’ on the street, ‘imperialist’ signs were torn down and intellectuals and party officials were murdered or driven to suicide,” the Guardian noted.

Flowers, as mentioned previously, were banned, as were lawns and gardening in general. Gardeners were “bourgeois” and needed to be “educated” in the error of their ways. The author Jung Chang wrote with sorrow of spending her childhood digging up flower gardens for the Revolution in her memoir Wild Swans, noting that her sadness came from self-shame over liking the flowers against Mao’s wishes.

“Educating” the Chinese people on how to best stay healthy was also part of the process. The Great Leap Forward – a failed seizure of the agriculture industry – had resulted in at least 40 million deaths, as communists are notoriously bad farmers. The mistaken idea that farming is not a skilled job has led every communist government, from China to North Korea to Zimbabwe to Cuba, to replace skilled farmers with trusted Communist Party bureaucrats, leading to famine. Sadly, this notion did not die with Mao.

Read Complete Editorial Here