It's like doing a movie about Qin Shi Huang saying that he was good, actually, because he unified ch...wait
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Replying to @Cybren @dreamingnoctis and
The funny thing is that's a take with a pedigree Like one of the artifacts of the Cultural Revolution that produced the most discussion among Western sinologists was this essay the government put out saying Confucius was Bad and Qin Shi Huang Good, Actually
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
Wait why did the Maoists hate Confucianism
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @Cybren and
Well because Confucius exemplified feudal values, obviously
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
But the... qin emperor... did not???
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Replying to @Cybren @Nymphomachy and
The article in question makes this whole argument about how even though Qin Shi Huang was no leftist, his authoritarian state was in fact a necessary progression in the dialectic of history as preached by Marx, to move forward from feudalism into a more liberated era
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
The whole thing is that Western scholars puzzled by why they'd bother saying this concluded this was, essentially, them being Very Online They knew that the Cultural Revolution was driving a lot of dissidents to say shit like "Mao is acting like the First Emperor"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
And they decided to directly lean into that "So what if he is? What's so bad about Qin Shi Huang? Sometimes history calls for a God-King At least Qin CHANGED something about the world"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
Anyway the attitude exemplified by that essay kind of demonstrates the bridge by which the CCP transitioned from the absurdly ideology-obsessed era of the Cultural Revolution to the kind of ideologically apathetic ordinary fascism they're dealing in now
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Cybren and
Any accusation that anything they're doing isn't actually very leftist gets hit with the universal rejoinder "You just want China to be WEAK and POOR, you want the country to FALL APART like it was in the era of the Warring States when Confucius was moralizing"
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(Confucius was before the Warring States, in the Spring and Autumn Period, but you know what I mean "If he was so smart why didn't any of his preaching actually stop the Partition of Jin from plunging the land into chaos")
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