The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Demonizing Discourse in Mao Zedong's China: People vs Non-People

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

This article examines the use of demonizing rhetoric by the Chinese Communist Party during the first decades of the People’s Republic after 1949. It chronicles the rise, flourishing, and ultimate post-Mao demise of a political discourse predicated on an ‘essential’ distinction between people and non-people. With the help of illustrations lifted from public and until recently classified sources, it sheds light on the strategic reasoning behind official as well as popular deployment of dysphemisms like ‘ox-monster’ and ‘snake-demon’. Noting the extremes to which demonization was taken during the Cultural Revolution, when some party leaders were made to self-criticise for mis-speaking of class enemies as actual human beings, it hints at the role that the trauma of Mao’s final decade in power played in problematizing the people vs. non-people distinction and finally discarding it altogether as incompatible with the needs of political reform.

Department/s

Publishing year

2007

Language

English

Pages

465-482

Publication/Series

Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions

Volume

8

Issue

3-4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Routledge

Topic

  • History and Archaeology

Keywords

  • Revolution
  • Communism
  • Mao Zedong
  • Class
  • Discourse
  • Demonization
  • Politics
  • Society
  • China

Status

Published

Project

  • Mass Dictatorships of the 20th Century

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1469-0764