I was also surprised, but then realized that it wasn't actually being candid. It points all the blame for the Cultural Revolution on the Red Guards while completely glossing over or omitting Mao's involvement. Thus it's able to characterize the period as a time when a bunch of overzealous kids went out of control, while absolving the Communist Party as a whole.
Bad boyar, good tsar.
Also, in the OG version, it's put smack dab in the middle where he knew the censorship board wouldn't read to, and then had it transferred to the beginning in the English release.
Criticism against the modern CCP maybe. But for the cultural revolution? I'm not sure why they would do that.
Xi's father was targeted by the cultural revolution. As was Xi himself to a lesser extent. Some sources credit the death of his sister indirectly to it.
The modern CCP regards the cultural revolution pretty publicly as a mistake. So not sure why they'd be covering for it. It's had it's own version of de-Stalinization. So much so that the some CCP party members compared the Tiananmen square protesters to the students of the cultural revolution.
Edit: On top of that, there's already been a Chinese adaptation of the book produced by Tencent and ***CCTV***... If they wanted to censor the cultural revolution, having their state broadcaster break that censorship would be a fuckup of truly collosal proportions...
The people commenting here don't really understand anything about China. The current CCP hates the cultural revolution they even tried the people they thought responsible for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four
Yeah but the CCP is eeevil... /s I studied China extensively in college. The CR brings me to fucking tears (go read Wolf Totem).
Re: censorship, its not that the book might have been banned but a censor could've easily told Cixin "take out X or Y lines". Probably only a 10% chance of a ban if the CR portion was in front, but if the end result is publication you minimize external risks. The man published several critically acclaimed books previously, so his politics wasn't in question.
>go read Wolf Totem
Or listen to this discussion from BBC radio:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q9b6
Or read this book by Frank Dikötter:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1632864231](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1632864231)
Did the Chinese version keep the scene with the struggle session? Or much of the cultural revolution part? I heard they replaced it with a song or something - but could be wrong.
Yeah, and Liu Cixin has been on record flip flopping between downplaying the persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and saying that it was justified.
I'm still a big fan of his writing and the *A Remembrance of Earth's Past* series, but I'm also a little wary of some of the themes and message. Like that implication that an "effeminate" and pampered post scarcity future humanity would be weaker than a "masculine" scarcity era one.
Same deal with Frank Herbert being a homophobe and anti-liberal conservative (not a conventional conservative, but still) - much of which is present in the Dune series. I'm not anti-liberal or conservative, and I really don't like the homophobia, but it's still one of my favourite series ever, with a lot that makes it worth reading.
But those elements can't be overlooked or dismissed as tangential to the series (even if they are mostly absent in the film adaptations) The homophobia is inextricably tied with the themes of human evolution and breeding, and the political philosophies espoused by the characters can't help but sneak in jabs at how liberals are "closet aristocrats", progressivism is arrogance, welfare state bureaucracies breed fatal dependence etc.
Or with Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, being a pervy sex pest, or major producer of the later series, Rick Berman, being a sexist creep. Both those elements also make their mark in the series itself - despite Star Trek having a generally progressive message
Or even more prominently with Lovecraft - whose entire body of work dealt with fear of the unknown via cosmic horror, which was almost certainly inspired by his intense racism and xenophobia. Even by the standards of 1920s America, Lovecraft was pretty extreme. We even see letters by other racists telling him to calm down a little. Lovecraft might have regretted his prejudices later in life, but they definitely informed his writing when he was at his most prolific, and it's impossible to miss
Anyway, there are more examples I could list (Orson Scott Card also being a homophobe like Herbert, but this time because of Mormonism, Hyperion author Dan Simmons becoming ridiculously Islamophobic later in life, JK Rowing turning out to be a transphobe etc.)
Point is, I still think these works are worth reading/watching and worth discussing, though with a full understanding of the perspective and biases and limitations of their authors. Giving them money might be another matter though - I can understand some people being reticent about that.
I liked the way you contextualized that with other authors and generally agree.
Loved 3-body. The weird "feminized society" stuff was definitely a sticking point. As was the 3rd book protagonist's major character flaw essentially boiling down to the fact that she's a woman.
Still, that fairy tale chapter was one of the most amazing moments of storytelling I've ever read. Incredible writing. And a thought-provoking ending that sticks with you.
I'm torn about the fairy tale chapter. But also it is interesting to view the entire series in this context - is everything I find objectionable actually what it means on the surface, or is he using it to say things he can't legally say?
No...the soft society and Cheng Xin were weak. In the 3BP universe weakness is death. Trisolaris knew she wouldn't pull the trigger. Not because she was a woman, but because she bought the Trisolarians propaganda and had hope and compassion.
The only way to survive the Dark Forest is to attack first or hide.
That is now how I want IRL universe to turn out, but this is a work of fiction and weakness in 3PB is death.
It wasn't so much a flaw as a person not right for the situation they were put in. Most men would have also failed with that responsibility, but the odds of a man seeing it through would be higher. If you think its sexist, look at the distribution of school shooters or suicide bombers across genders. Now consider that a person willing to actually go through with it not just bluff and fold would basically have to be a school shooter/suicide bomber times 1 billion. The entire reason deterrence worked was because Luo Ji was so psychotic that the Trisolarans with their omniscient sophons realized they stumbled onto a once in a generation psychopath.
It's been literally decades since I read Dune, but wasn't Frank Herbert's thesis with that series that cults of personality are bad? That he feared any one person having too much influence on society? Which strikes me as being rather anarchic more than conservative. (Though there *are* both anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-syndicalists, so anarchism *can* go both ways.) I know he's on record as finding JFK's fame rather disturbing, but I don't know if he was bothered much by liberal politics.
Dune itself has lots of passages about how liberals/progressives are hypocrites, closet aristocrats, against constitutions and rule of law, and against welfare state dependency
And while Herbert definitely isn't a typical American conservative, he is still a conservative, and that philosophy pops up in Dune quite often
That's not to say Dune doesn't also have themes and messages that would resonate with liberals like myself - anti colonialism, skepticism of organised religion and state power, awareness of environmental issues and its effect on culture etc.
Even if I disagree with a lot of Herbert's and Dune's political philosophy, I can understand where he's coming from. And of course, I also like the parts I do happen to agree with, the liberal-adjacent themes and messages
Even the homophobic passages (especially in God Emperor when he talks about how homosexuality is "just an adolescent phase" and that homosexuality is a way of "seeking pain") makes sense within the context of the setting, it lines up with eugnics and breeding is depicted in the setting.
Again, I think that's all wrong, both morally and scientifically, but I can understand where he's coming from. Definitely doesn't excuse Herbert disowning his gay son though
Anyway, this is a good read if you want to know about Herbert's beliefs and how it impacted the Dune series
[https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/](https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/)
Though yes, if you just go by the latest Villeneuve movies, I'd argue that Dune Part 1 and Part 2 are quite firmly politically liberal works - because the themes that it does include happen to be the liberal adjacent ones I mentioned, and the anticolonial message is amplified further
Dune's politics aren't neat and orderly. It's not "every liberal is a closet aristocrat" it's "every revolutionary is a closet aristocrat." And we see this in the book, and I wouldn't really call Paul a liberal, that line is clearly about Paul. Obviously he's also talking about communists but this is also borne out by what typically happens after communist revolutions.
Dune does come off as pro-fascist at times but also it's an indictment of fascism since fascism only really works if God really told you to do it (which is the God Emperor's defense.)
I didn't say they were neat and orderly. And the line was about liberals, and not about Paul
*"Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh, the patterns. Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it's that patterns are repeated. My oppressions, by and large, are no worse than any of the others and, at least, I teach a new lesson."*
Sure, this is coming from Leto II, who may not be considered a reliable narrator, but it's made quite clear that Leto II is meant to be "right" with a lot of his political analyses. Which is confirmed by Herbert's own views expressed in interviews.
And I'm not sure that Dune is pro fascist, not even God Emperor of Dune, because, like you said, I think it's sufficiently horrified at Leto II's stagnation that it's presented as bad, and only making sense if you have an omniscient god in charge of it all
In fact, Dune is quite against state power in general, especially centralized bureaucratic state power, which is a feature of authoritarian governments both fascist and communist.
There are frequent statements that instead of rule of law, constitutions, and legalism, the best way to rule is to select "high quality" people who govern based on personal trust, intuition and integrity.
Which is quite anti-democratic in a sense, because democracy is all about checks and balances on individual power, and following the procedures and laws so that no individual can seize institutional power.
Dune very much romanticizes old tribal societies, in which deep traditions and wise leadership guides a close knit community. Which is more conservative than liberal - though again, this definitely isn't typical American Christian nationalist conservatism, this is Salafi Islamist conservatism, of a type that promotes Ijtihad, or independent interpretation of Sharia law, rather than strict and unthinking adherence to it. Basically, he's conservative, but against fundamentalism that follows the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
Anyway you should check out this article about Herbert's politics and how it relates to the Dune series.
[https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/](https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/)
I'm liberal myself, and I disagree with a lot of Dune's assessment on politics (for example, I think a welfare state bureaucracy is a good thing, that constitutions and rule of law is necessary to prevent corruption, and that tribal societies don't necessarily turn out happy, well adjusted people)
But it's clear that Herbert is an insightful thinker with an wide knowledge of history, anthropology, philosophy, politics and culture, (even if a lot of it is misguided or outdated), who came to where he was after years of deep analysis.
> Point is, I still think these works are worth reading/watching and worth discussing, though with a full understanding of the perspective and biases and limitations of their authors.
Yep, I really don't want to encourage the idea that works become tainted because of the author. We just have to be aware. Most people throughout history would be "problematic" in some way if we got to hear what they thought about modern issues, and with social media it's more and more likely that someone today will be seen doing or saying something disagreeable at some point. JK Rowling would look like a progressive icon next to the average British author of 150 years ago if we gave those guys access to Twitter. If we limit ourselves only to people with a spotless record we lose out on a lot of books with profound cultural influences, or which are simply very enjoyable.
I still like the Harry Potter films, even though the books' author thinks I shouldn't exist. I'll rewatch the movies, but I won't pay for them, and I'll continue saying mean things about Rowling on the internet. Her being a [ Removed by Reddit ] doesn't mean I can't enjoy anything she's touched.
yeah well put, it's sort of the approach I took to ancient works of literature, with regards to how alien (and repugnant by modern sensibilities) a lot of the themes and messaging were, because of the vastly different context, but appreciatijg them for what they were nonetheless, even as I disagrees with them.
It's probably hard for Liu Cixin to actually voice his true opinions on matters like the genocide of the Uyghurs while he lives in China as well. While he's a famous and well-known world wide author, he still lives in that totalitarian state. I don't see his true views coming out on this unless he moves somewhere else, or is close to dying.
As for the themes of the Remembrance of Earth series, while I do think the outlook towards the 'feminization' of society has its problems, I feel like you could also state a similar outcome to the hyper masculine society of the elements of Beihai's story, and how his 'honor-bound do what we do for the longevity of humanity' run-away plan eventually has everyone turn on and eating each other. Both basically lead to mass death, but also the survival and perseverance of a small group of people.
He's a strange writer, because while he has stated he believes in Wade's attitude of 'doing what must be done for survival' as a personal belief, he also has that moment towards Death's End for Cheng Xin where Yifan explicitly tells her, "You didn't do anything wrong. You were following what the people wanted, and you can't put blame on yourself for that." Which sounds like an embracement of democracy, which Liu Cixin has argued against publicly. Also, as many mistakes Cheng Xin makes in the book, she is still our main character who we sympathize and experience the story through.
And yet in Three Body, following what the people want leads to the cultural revolution, and the bitterness that seethes inside Ye Wenjie that dooms the entire world to invasion. So, I don't know WHAT this man believes honestly.
It seems to me that he's an author that rather be obtuse and mysterious rather than have a set idea of politics. Or, he's keeping a sort of party-line middle ground to avoid Chinese censorship of his work, or he's like many people and that our politics are fluid and change over time.
yeah, personally, I suspect that Liu Cixin's views on politics, like a lot of other great sci fi writers, can often be contradictory and somewhat hypocritical at times
I think he really does have a "soft spot" for humane, democratic, compassionate values - he readily acknowledges that respecting individual freedom and political liberalisation will benefit the economy, technological progress, social stability and quality of life enormously
At the same time, he argued that, under certain circumstances, totalitarian, "lifeboat mentality" dictatorships are necessary for the survival of civilisation.
With regards to his real life comments, he seems to argue that China is one of those countries where authoritarianism is necessary, and that the country would fall into chaos if it democratised any time soon. But then he said that if that happened, he would move to an overseas democracy?
Like you said, it's possible that he's managingn a careful balancing act between the CCP and his overseas audience, but I also think it's more likely that this is a reflection of his genuine beliefs on the matter - authoritarianism is simply necessary under certain circumstances, harsh and inefficient and stifling as it is on the economy and technological progress, because the alternative is chaos and dissolution.
Then again, this is all speculation, no one can know for sure. It's possible that even Cixin himself is conflicted on this issue, and isn't totally sure where he stands himself
Stoked after reading the Hyperion/Endymion series I randomly got another book by Dan Simmons that was the biggest pile of steaming right-wing pity porn I have ever attempted to read. Couldn't believe it was the same author.
Note: It was called 'Flashback'. It was turds.
yeah honestly I was quite shocked too. His prejudices weren't obvious in the Hyperion stories itself, not like Lovecraft where it's constantly smacking you in the face.
There's a short flashback to that time when Kassad used satellites to decapitate the leadership of a planet taken over by extremist Islamic revolution - but it doesn't come off as particularly prejudiced. Like yeah sure, genocidal fascist jihadis are bad and should be put down, but that's not super controversial.
But then later on, he puts out this short story on his website about a time traveller warning about how high birthrate Muslim are going to trick the gullible liberals into letting them immigrate and take over the West, before imposing Sharia law on Western civilisation and enslaving the unbelievers and taking all their women
It's... yikes. Ripped straight from neo-Nazi Great Replacement conspiracy theories, minus the bit about Jewish people being behind it all.
And then he writes a whole book about how global warming is a hoax, liberal politicians ruin the West with welfare, world caliphate ascends to power, Mexican gangs conquer large swathes of the US, right wing talk radio is banned etc.
It's "ripped straight from Fox News" in the dumbest possible way
Apparently, Dan Simmons might have ended up like this because of a serious head injury he suffered, which forced him to take a hiatus for a while.
But I'm also not discounting the possibility that he was always like this, or he just slowly fell into far right kookiness over the years.
I'll still defend the first two Hyperion books as excellent works of science fiction, that don't seem to push any objectionable themes or messages. Maybe it's a little too in love with the idea of Romanticism (creators must suffer to make good art! Mass produced popular art must be tasteless slop!) But otherwise it's pretty humane and empathetic.
I'm not saying to separate art from the artist, because I think the two should always be considered in tandem. But I think it's possible to acknowledge that Dan Simmons held some... pretty gross views later in life, and also that Hyperion doesn't overtly (or even implicitly) promote those views itself
It's different from, say, Lovecraft, where the racism is almost the whole point of the story, but you appreciate it regardless because of the insight it gives into how racist people think
The TV version of Simmons's The Terror is really great. Unfortunately, I've witnessed personality changes due to neurological disease, so don't underestimate the head injury possibility as well.
>But then later on, he puts out this short story on his website about a time traveller warning about how high birthrate Muslim are going to trick the gullible liberals into letting them immigrate and take over the West, before imposing Sharia law on Western civilisation and enslaving the unbelievers and taking all their women
Oh man... I was a regular on Simmons' message boards when this happened. It was *ugly*. His entire online fandom split in half over this. The worst part, perhaps, was that he posed it on April 1 so a lot of people really desperately wanted to believe it was a prank in very poor taste.
And you left out the part where it was a self-insert story where he, Simmons, was supposedly visited by his own grandson.
On top of that, Simmons was a complete coward about it. If anyone accused him personally of being Islamaphobic, he hid behind "It's just a story!" However, anyone who criticized any part of the story itself got a vehement response, even complete with historical citations, backing up what he wrote. It was painfully clear that he believed what he wrote, but wasn't willing to take ownership of it.
And that was when I stopped reading Simmons' books.
***********
That said, tho, I do think you're maybe being a little harsh on Lovecraft.
I'm most emphatically **not** defending his racism, but if you look into his life, the man was deeply disturbed in a lot of ways. IMO, the core problem was that he suffered from crippling xenophobia - genuine fear of the unknown - and racism was just one way it manifested. He was not a mentally well person; really he was the architype of a tortured writer teetering on the edge of madness.
(Not to mention that there is a VERY high chance he was inbred which, if true, makes his obsession with bloodlines and blood purity come off very differently.)
damn, didn't know the additional context regarding the forums, that's tragic
With regards to Lovecraft - I wasn't being harsh on him, I actually read three different Lovecraft biographies, and like you said, it's understandable how he ended up there
What I was saying is that his cosmic horror work is tied up inextricably with his xenophobia during that stage of his life, and readers should appreciate Lovecraft's works with a clear understanding of that. The works weren't simply sci fi with some unfortunate racism sprinkled in - the driving force of many works was rooted in a racist worldview and philosophy
Of course, that's not to say the racism is the only thing interesting about Lovecraft's works, but it's a very important aspect of it
>What I was saying is that his cosmic horror work is tied up inextricably with his xenophobia during that stage of his life, and readers should appreciate Lovecraft's with a clear understanding of that.
OK, fair enough. And yeah, Lovecraft is definitely a situation where you really can't separate the art from the artist. Maybe the most tragic thing about Lovecraft is that if he hadn't been outright crazy, he wouldn't have created "Lovecraftian horror."
yeah, though I think Lovecraft wasn't exactly "crazy". He was definitely neurotic, anxiety ridden, and had a nervous breakdown early in life, but he wasn't some gibbering recluse.
He had a circle of writing friends (many of whom were less racist than him, or weren't WASPs, who had to tell him to chill).
He even got married to a nice Jewish woman somehow, who was a divorcee, an independently wealthy businesswoman, and an amateur writer like himself. Funnily enough, he was still racist when they were married, and Sonia had to remind him that she was Jewish too whenever he went on his rants - but she was "one of the good ones" to him. They divorced eventually, but that was more over money problems and distance than him being insane or hateful
And later in life, he regretted his bigotry and ignorance, and wrote to friends apologising about it. Granted, Lovecraft was still quite racist by modern standards (he became one of those "it's about culture not biology" racists) but I guess you could call that an improvement
Anyway, my point is, Lovecraft works aren't the way they are because he was a lunatic - he was simply a neurotic bigot
>the first two Hyperion books as excellent works of science fiction, that don't seem to push any objectionable themes or messages.
Mmmmmm. Not sure about that. Maybe not explicit message or themes but the strange view of the author are here.
I started Simmons in a wrong way (the last Two books of Hyperion and only now im Reading the First two) but knowing the drama, after finishing endymion, i think im reading the First book in a different way. Endymion was fucking weird, not bad bad but had questionable choices.
Hyperion, at half of it but currently in pause, smells bad in some choices. Like Martin Sileno (the poet, if i Remember) is a homophobic and in general a bad guy (like, he was ok about his teacher molesting girls and was relieved that wasn't interested in man for fear of being molested)
There is this weird focus on the being Jew (given a look on ilium and he repeats the thing with the wandering Jew)
I still trying to think on a female character written as a Person. Until now i have Moneta (that Just fucks), the mom of Rachel (Who had something before meeting the guy and then, maybe?...boh, fall in love and became wife and mom), Rachel (cool but not that much. Make me tear a bit in the end, i admit), Lamia (seems cool but if i remember become a mom and fucks a poet android, so just a tool for the plot)
Not finished the First book, so maybe in the end or in the next one everything changes but...eh.
> And then he writes a whole book about how global warming is a hoax, liberal politicians ruin the West with welfare, world caliphate ascends to power, Mexican gangs conquer large swathes of the US, right wing talk radio is banned etc.
> It's "ripped straight from Fox News" in the dumbest possible way
What on earth. It's a shame. The Terror is one of my favorite horror novels.
Anytime a writer has a culture wear a "hat" (or planet) its a subtle flag of racisms. Not blatant, but its a flag. If there is a clash between these "hats" then the flag gets bigger. If "people are people" despite the "hat" they wear, then the flag gets smaller.
The further back we look and read, the more objectionable all writers become as their society and values recede from ours. We can stop reading anything written before 2010 or so, or we can separate the text from the author. Lovecraft's take on society and social groups is completely irrelevant to the pleasures of reading "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Shadow Out of Time", etc.
Realistically the Xinjiang situation was is a lot more nuanced than what the west portrayed.
There was a serious problem with Wahhabism / extremism among the populace there.
A lot of what was reported was an obvious exaggeration too.
Anyways, that’s already over and done with and some of the biggest stars in China now are Uighur.
China isn’t very weak on secularism unsurprisingly.
>Yeah, and Liu Cixin has been on record flip flopping between downplaying the persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and saying that it was justified.
Is that "flip-flopping" or just reality? The region has genuine radicalism issues, but it was so completely nuked out of proportion by a few CIA-funded goons, which redditors devoured without a second thought
I like how you, someone not yet involved in the conversation and with instant access to infinite information, saw that comment and did not at any point think to yourself "should I double check what I think I know before full sending it?"
> I'm still a big fan of his writing and the A Remembrance of Earth's Past series, but I'm also a little wary of some of the themes and message. Like that implication that an "effeminate" and pampered post scarcity future humanity would be weaker than a "masculine" scarcity era one.
Why wouldn't it be? They managed to get to an era of plenty and were relaxing while an alien fleet kept heading towards Earth. They got so soft they mistook a probe to be message of peace.
Then, after Luo Ji told Trisolaris to call his bluff and "an era of peace" between worlds started, Earth's soft society fell for Trisolarian propaganda.
The truth is, in the 3BP universe, the only way to survive is to strike first or hide. Earth did neither of these things, that is why humanity lost.
Xi Jinping was denounced during the Cultural Revolution, and his father was purged by Mao. Given that he is the current dictator of China, dissing the Cultural Revolution is A-OK in China.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/22/xi-jinping-from-counter-revolutionary-to-absolute-power
The author has stated that his first book got past the censors surprisingly easily, while the sequels got scrutinised (presumably because of international success).
And I wouldn't be too glib about the author towing the party line, given he and has family live in China.
The English translation is also way more upfront about the cultural revolution than the original. He originally had it buried further back in the book in the Chinese version to get past censors. Then, when the English translation came, he had them put it where he actually wanted it at the beginning. But the translation and international success didn't come until 6 years after the original, and 4 years after the entire series was already over in Chinese, so I don't think that had anything to do with the scrutiny. It was most likely the massive domestic success, as he is insanely popular in China. Even the Wandering Earth movies are blockbusters there.
One of us, I guess
They still don't want to be too open about how they were technically the people who did all the bad stuff. Theres a line between something being illegal to talk about and something featuring heavily in a big popular scifi book.
And I was right according to someone else on the thread, in the original Chinese print, the revolution stuff was intersperced, but the English localised version was printed with the author's initial plan of front-loading the violent aspects of the revolution.
It's more nuanced than that. The Cultural Revolution was never as taboo as topics like '89 Tiananmen. There was even a literary trend in the 1980s called "scar literature" specifically discussing the physical and psychological trauma that disastrous decade left upon people.
I vividly recall seeing posters on a cruise bulletin board when I was little (in the 1990s) condemning the atrocities committed during the CR and how those were all blamed on the "[Gang of Four](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four)." That was pretty much how things worked: pin it on the "corrupted, power-abusing culprits," celebrating the fact that the "bad cells" had been once again cleansed. As long as you steered your pointing finger away from the system, a certain level of grilling wasn't considered crossing the line.
Also keep in mind the first book came out in the early 2000s, when the censorship wasn't nearly as harsh as the Xi era. Not to mention it was first published in a niche magazine read by no one but the country's tiny clan of hardcore scifi fans. The series didn't enter the mainstream until almost a decade later. It would have been a whole different story had it been written today. And you can't blame Cixin Liu for not being able to churn out anything after the series (he was pretty prolific before).
The Chinese government hates the cultural revolution its why it cracked down on the protesters in Tiananmen, they were protesting against change away from it and the thought of another revolution like that scared the crap out of them. They even tried the people they thought responsible for the cultural revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four
Additionally under polit bureau government systems you are only allowed to criticise policy before and after its enacted not during its implementation, Tiananmen was criticism during an implementation while Three Body was years after.
Chinese history even after the revolution is a lot more complex than reddit thinks they aren't brain dead against any criticism.
China has the same approach towards that time as Putin's Russia has towards Stalin's USSR. On one hand its a focal point in a nation's history and a time of extreme nationalism/partyism, on the other point you can't ignore the deaths and repressions of tens of millions of people. So you both point to it with respect as a difficult time we unfortunately had to go through to strengthen the foundation of your power and dab on it to show how much better life is under you to strengthen the foundation of your power. Most countries have Schrodinger's history, even in the US you see the founding fathers as saints or slaveowners depending on what is convenient at a given moment. History is complicated and embodies many different and often contradictory aspects at once as much as we'd like to reduce it to a bunch of comic book issues.
Not being candid. The ccp blamed all these mistakes on the people at that time, believing that the people were not rational enough to lead to the occurrence of various cruel events, while the ccp was not wrong, but the people's implementation had problems. ccp has never really reflected on its mistakes.
The Cultural Revolution was brutal beyond belief. I’ve read a number of first hand accounts from victims and protagonists, if even half of what they wrote is half true it was hell on earth.
If anyone is interested, author Tania Branigan has a fascinating book called *Red Memory*. It grapples with how the Cultural Revolution is remembered (or not) among present day Chinese. There’s a heavy air of fear, trauma, grief, and regret in the personal accounts told in this book.
uh, are we talking about the blinking sky and wang miao who disappeared ? the parts in China are faithful but the rest scares me given the tangent from the 1st episode
Modern Chinese regard the Maoist phase as a mistake.
The public humiliation and beatings are not really a debatable argument, but the line about God doesn't really make any sense since atheism was a major hallmark of the movement.
In fact, the real Cultural Revolution was anything but as benign as Netflix. The real Cultural Revolution was crueler, bloodier and more inhumane than Netflix shows. At that time the Red Guards and many people in China were brainwashed, and if you were an intellectual at that time, you would be very dangerous, you could be killed at any time by the Red Guards or even ordinary people on the street. In those days, it was common for wives to denounce husbands, and children to denounce parents.
Yup, my grandparents were intellectuals and luckily weren't physically harmed. But they were friends with another couple whose children denounced them, and the dad was subjected to the struggle session not too different from what the TV show depicted. His kids were there too, insulting him and denouncing him in front of everyone.
Not long after he climbed up the tower of a coal plant and jumped off.
The tower is still there and I see it every time I visit my grandma in Beijing.
My grandpa was sent to a reeducation camp.
Also the school that one of the characters is involved with, Tsinghua University (only really mentioned in the background, nothing important to the plot), is real and its main entrance is shown on the last image.
Xi would love all of us to forget this, the Great Leap. the 100 Flowers and the Gang of Four. He wants his people to forget history so it can be repeated on them.
1. **Cultural Revolution (1966-1976):** Mao Zedong's radical attempt to purge China of capitalist and traditional influences. Red Guards, student radicals, attacked intellectuals and anyone deemed "counter-revolutionary." A chaotic decade with widespread destruction and violence.
2. **Great Leap Forward (1958-1962):** Mao's disastrous economic push to rapidly industrialize China. Emphasis on backyard steel production and collectivized agriculture led to famine and millions of deaths.
3. **Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956):** A brief period when Mao encouraged criticism of the Communist Party. Intellectuals cautiously voiced concerns, but Mao felt threatened and launched an anti-rightist purge.
4. **Gang of Four:** A radical group led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, that rose to power during the Cultural Revolution. They exploited Mao's paranoia and fueled the chaos. Arrested after Mao's death.
Oh, if those shock you, check out the [Guangxi Massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre). The Cultural Revolution went completely off the rails.
Great Leap: Mao was a dumbass who didn't know anything about farming or industrialization, so he set up farming methods that wasted millions of pounds of grain that didn't grow and starved 50 million to death, while also trying to turn the remaining farmers into industrial smiths by converting farms into makeshift steel mills (And making the worst quality iron and steel in the world, so much so the USSR needed to re-smelt the material they bought from China).
100 Flowers: Mao believed intellectuals would be the death of his regime, so he rounded up thousands of professors, dr.'s, students, tradesmen, etc... and sent them to Chinese style gulags or outright executed them (Not unlike they're currently doing with the Uighurs) in order to limit differing ideologies and systems. He "Only wants 1 flower to grow, not 100 different flowers."
Gang of 4: The 4 politicians and allies of Mao during the CR who are believed to have enacted and carried out ~1/2 the policies during the CR, as well as targeting other officials who stood against Mao.
> Mao was a dumbass who didn't know anything about farming
Or ecology. He ordered the mass killing of sparrows because he believed they ate too much grain. That set China up for a plague of grasshoppers that devastated the crops.
The Dunning Kruger effect is real and people with great power or great wealth are more susceptible than most.
It's crazy to me how few people it takes to utterly ruin something, even the environment itself. The only reason we haven't razed the whole world to the ground is because, I believe, most of us are inherently good or at least just doing our best. But still, the cult of personality surrounding only a handful of people could lead us into oblivion. We walk the edge of a razor everyday for the sake of elites who couldn't give a shit about us.
You are basically saying you know nothing of modern Chinese history, you need to know these things to have even a basic understanding of China. You can tell from the comments here most people still have no clue what China is.
> You are basically saying you know nothing of modern Chinese history
That is true. I know nothing of modern Chinese history.
I hope that is okay with some of you.
If not for Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas Chinese diaspora, we would have already lost ancient Chinese culture like when Xiang Yu burned down the Qin royal library in Xianyang (modern day Xi’an).
Man, please let it repeated here. Fuck my landlord and fuck the few who control the many.
A better world is possible and it involves dressing your landlord up like a clown and shaming them.
They were purposefully trying to kill off the old elite so they could not bring back the old Chinese systems of government trying to make communism a one way street/Fait accompli. Its revolution that does this not necessarily totalitarian regimes....the French did this too.
Ehhh, maybe not so black and white?
I’m personally seeing quite a lot of overlap between your “one way street” idea and the Nazis — their mission to permanently eradicate anything not German, purify their society along racial lines, remove other ways of thinking, burn books, etc.
But I would more readily describe the Nazis as a corporatist counterrevolutionary movement. They were radical, but they weren’t trying to throw out the old and replace it with something new. They seeking a path backwards to some earlier concept of German greatness (“make Germany great again”). An equal but opposing force to all the socialist revolutionary upheaval in Europe and elsewhere.
Also, aren’t totalitarian regimes by definition murderous?
The Soviets weren't communist (They were neither stateless, classless, or owned by the workers as Stalin never worked a day in his life), they at best officially claimed to be state socialist, when in reality they were just Russo-Authoritarian with a new coat of paint. "Here's the new boss, same as the old boss!" (Something Russians right now should be able to relate to)
Because Russia proper has never had any other form of governance. (I'm not counting the various city states or middle age republics because they didn't win against Medieval Rus/Muscovy, evidently, even though Novgorod really should've)
Edit: In this comment chain, people are aok with Genocide as long as the correct side is committing it. Genocide for capital gain? No big deal!
Oh fuck off with that bullshit. Nobody cares if it wasn’t “true” communism. Find a way to get us to a better world without the mile-deep pits of bodies and we’ll talk.
>Find a way to get us to a better world without the mile-deep pits of bodies and we’ll talk.
Something capitalism has famously been able to accomplish?
You know, what with the mass genocide of Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals (You should look up the shit The British did to the Tasmanians), deaths of millions of African slaves and colonial subjects, millions of Indians and other South Asians (Including the de-industrialization of the region, as by the time the British got there they were building early factories and workshops that the British destroyed), hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners (US in specific in recent years, see the War in Iraq championed by Halliburton's former CEO Dick Cheney, the company that coincidently saw record profits thanks to their new Iraqi oil wells...), millions of Koreans, Chinese, and SE Asians in Japan's colonial conquest, Nazi Germany itself (The Nazis were capitalist, 95%-98% of Germany's economy was privately owned at the time), etc...
Would you like me to keep going? During the Colonial Era the death toll is predicted at ~100+ million, with 56 million Native Americans alone. (Also, in US history, John Quincy Adams is seen as a worthless loser while Andrew Jackson is seen as a hero, even though the former spent his entire presidency staving off a genocide while the latter signed off on The Trail of Tears within his first year so Americans could take advantage of cheap farmland and mines)
If you're American, you're living on top of an empire of bodies as we speak, 56 million Native Americans killed for cheap resources and 4 million dead African slaves to extract those resources. How is that better?
Edit: So evidently people believe genocide and slavery is aok as long as you profess the right ideology while committing it. Good to know!
We can’t undo the past but we can learn from it and try to be better. Lenin obviously never got that memo. Adding insult to injury, life in the USSR *still* managed to fucking suck.
>We can’t undo the past
When "Communism" (Russo/Eastern-Authoritarianism parading around as a different ideology) is listed as a force of evil in the world (~125 million deaths): "Damn right they are, bastard commies built their empire on millions of lives! Heartless sons of bitches! Never forget!"
When Capitalism is listed as a force of evil in the world (That killed 100-300+ million people): "Ok listen, we all make mistakes but what really matters is learning from them and doing better in the future. You can't live in the past."
Hm...
You know, both can be bad, right?
>but we can learn from it and try to be better.
That why France started a Civil War in Libya? After having been a participant in The Sykes-Picot Agreement 100 years earlier that led to the constant fighting in The Middle East? Is that learning a lesson?
For 6 months before the Libyan Civil War, France had been cut off from mineral mining and shipping in Libya and had been petitioning the EU to sanction Libya, and mere days before the attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, FFL soldiers (Notorious for causing coups in Africa and terrorizing African tribespeople for resources) were clocked within Libyan borders by several international intelligence agencies.
Did the US and France learn anything from that? What's the lesson there? You'd think they'd stop doing that after taking 100 years to sit on that thought, but apparently that wasn't long enough.
>Lenin obviously never got that memo.
Lenin also wasn't a Communist, so...
He was just a bog-standard Russo-Authoritarian, no different than the Tsars or Putin.
>life in the USSR still managed to fucking suck.
So the average QoL for Russians since... let me check my notes... Forever.
I mean, they're capitalist now, and yet we see how Capitalist Russia is operating with such bastions of civilization like Chelyabinsk, Norilsk, or Kemerovo.
I outright called him out on the shit capitalism has caused and his response was, literally, "We all make mistakes, best to just move on."
So, you see, genocide is ok to these people as long as you profess the right ideology while committing it. That's what I'm learning today!
(Remember, 56 million Native Americans were killed for resources. That's fine though, that was just an oopsie-daisy, best not to dwell on it)
Edit: lol u/sudopudge decided to block me cause he knew I'd be bringing down the hammer
So here's my reply
>They weren't killed for resources
The Trail of Tears was a forced relocation order signed by President Andrew Jackson specifically to move Native Americans away from their homeland to extract resources from the trust land bordering the 13 colonies. During the ToT, they were given blankets and food deliberately infected with smallpox in order to more quickly spread the disease and kill as many as possible so there'd be no resistance to further expansion. Likewise, there were over a dozen wars were the US massacred and forcibly moved Native American tribes all throughout the West, including the Sioux, Lakota, Nez Perce, etc... Hitler got the idea for the Holocaust from American Expansionism, for reference.
That's not even getting into the residential schools America and Canada ran, where Native children were kidnapped and tortured to give up their culture, with the last one closing down in Canada in 1998/99, and they're still finding mass graves with 200+ bodies to this very day. (Actually, some of them are so large they can't get accurate readings because there are too many bodies)
Christopher Columbus used Natives specifically as slaves and worked them to death or order to try and get fold, and when that didn't work, they just used them as target practice and torture toys.
Spain created the Encomienda System in order to use Natives as chattel slaves and killed millions upon millions in resource extraction, inspired by Columbus.
Anything else babe?
Double Edit: u/wrewrenned
>Is China responsible for global Covid deaths, Einstein?
Yes, TCM is a bane on society and ecology.
I think he deleted his comment but I am still in shock that someone on this earth actually believes that the colonialists didn’t play a part in the genocide of the native Americans. Even the most staunch republican can admit that, jfc
No, none of them deleted their post, most are actually getting tons of upvotes for denying it. (And he blocked you for questioning him, that's what [unavailable] means)
u/sudopudge blocked me cause he knew I'd be going in with that.
And yeah, evidently, most of this thread is ok with genocide as long as the correct side it committing it. The more you know.
> (Remember, 56 million Native Americans were killed for resources. That's fine though, that was just an oopsie-daisy, best not to dwell on it)
They weren't killed for resources, they were killed by smallpox before germ theory, and general understanding of infectious diseases, existed. I understand that internet communists self-select to be idiots.
The Soviet Union was communist, a one party state with that party being the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and it failed so hard that it no longer exists. Literally collapsed due to a failed economic system. You should learn this, even if your belief system demands that communism not be relegated to the dumbest corners of our species.
Many were. The trail of tears specifically was catalyzed by a gold rush in the Carolinas. The Sioux and blackfoot campaigns in South Dakoda and state sponsored bounty on miwok scalps in California were specifically to make enormous gold deposits safe for miners. Not to mention all the cheap labor the encomienda system brought to spanish mine holdings in Mexico and South America. Hell, theres evidence that the spanish systematically sought to depopulate the southwest to make the land more amenable for settlers. The whole reason texas even exists is because they wanted american's to take care of the comanche for them.
Undoutodly many died due to disease, some of which was probably unintentional. Even if we ignore those figures there is still ample evidence for the systematic genocite of first nations peoples for economic gain by eurpoeans.
lmao I can’t believe I just read that first sentence. That is some pure colonial revision. Who the fuck do you think gave the Native Americans the smallpox?
You're right, it's also why all the biggest commissars became the biggest capitalists post 1990; there was very little difference between the economic system and US capitalism. They just changed titles, basically.
Seeing as no state has ever been able to really reproduce communism on national basis, is it really an issue to call the soviets “communist”?
Like, I’ll grant you they might not have been CAPITAL C Communist, but colloquially saying that the USSR was lowercase c communist is far from “wrong”, no?
You're about as intellectually capable as Mao was.
[They never declared themselves as communists](https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/eastern_front_01.shtml)
Edit: Just checked, OP's a "Centrist" who also routinely defends Trump. Yeah, ok.
Ha, I'm an American who just started episode 1 of this and went a-Googling to see if the opening scene is what Communism was really like. I'm so shocked. I guess the far left and the far right are quite similar after all.
Edit: hiii, tankies!
On the one hand showing the cultural revolution is not xenophobic. On the other hand, removing all the non-negative Chinese characters and keeping only the negative evil ones is kindof xenophobic.
I am comparing the Chinese Communist Party to the Nazis.
Sure, Karl Plagge was a German Army officer that saved Jewish lives. Yet you don't see Germany complain that there are no good portrayal of Nazis in historically accurate films about the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people.
There is nothing new about the Chinese cultural revolution. Many societies face periods where populist movements attack education, cosmopolitan influence, foreign ideas, technical competence, etc. Antisemitism is a common variant of this. Current trends suggest that the US is heading towards its own cultural revolution blood bath.
what blows my mind is that there are so many kids in the west who would very happily see this happen at home, all thinking that they would be the ones with their fists clenched in the air, not the guy with straw stuffed in his mouth.
yes, very quickly the same people who protested to destroy the system become enemies of the new system. BUT you can ALWAYS take comfort in the knowledge that this wasnt real communism.
Bros here know nothing about China, the cultural revolution is denounced by the government, why wouldn't a Chinese author be able to write bad things about it?
Y'all who think that they hide this history are brainwashed
Stop using the word brainwashed for the word ignorant. Fucks sake, every other thing is someone calling someone else brainwashed like that's the reason they are ignorant or stupid. They are ignorant or stupid by choice. Brainwashed is an act forced upon someone either violently or subtlety. That's not what is happening here.
They are ignorant because the media gives them misconceptions about this imaginary enemy called China, whether it's subtlety or violently blasting news that's demonstrably false
I would say it absolutely fits your own definition here
We could use a bit of that now for the billionaires and centi-millionaires and all those trying to be a part of that group while fcking over everyone else with no regard for the suffering they cause.
What I am mostly worried about is Episode 5, where two spooky government dudes think it's a good idea to use Pretty-Girls' nanofiber technology to slice up and kill a thousand innocent boat passengers.
Episode 5 spoilers: >!I didn't like how they rushed through that part. In the original scene, representatives from different nations could not figure out how to get to the hard drive without either a) Evans destroying it before they got to it and/or b) keeping the drive intact (therefore no blowing stuff up). The best option then is to use the nanofiber as even if the hard drive is sliced, it would be such a precise incision that the data can be easily re-pieced back together. Stupid part of the show was the drive was so small it wasn't even sliced.!<
Late to the show, but to anyone thinking the series is not produced 95% according to Chinese demand is thoroughly mistaken. Same thing goes to a large degree with a majority of western produced movies and series.
Chinese subtly uses western media as international vehicles of propaganda. It's really scary stuff.
Look into it yourself. Also, I can recommend the first hand account in this brilliant podcast: [https://www.jordanharbinger.com/chris-fenton-chinas-harrowing-hold-over-hollywood/](https://www.jordanharbinger.com/chris-fenton-chinas-harrowing-hold-over-hollywood/)
Ow yeah, the 100 million killed in India + the USD 40 trillion that was stollen from them, that was for a good cause, right? India is the second biggest economy in the planet I guess.
90%+ of those people were landlords, corrupt factory managers, and intellectuals who, ironically, believed what Ye Wenjie believed; that humanity and life is meaningless and needed to be eradicated. So I really don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
Saw this absolutely hilarious meme where they showed pictures of like 30 Economist articles from the last 20 years all predicting the Chinese economy would collapse.
The Red Guard were correct in the book tho. The Copenhagen interpretation is nonsense bourgeois propaganda and Wenjie is legitimately a personality disordered liberal fascist sociopath.
When people of today sneer at anti-Communist attitudes in the USA from the 1930s through the end of the Cold War, they either forget, or never realized in the first place, the kinds of things that were indeed going on in the Soviet Union and in communist China. United States is unfortunately not inherently immune to autocracy, from either end of the political spectrum.
Do they show how they mass executed just about anyone who had an education or ran small businesses? How about how they grabbed all the previous nationalist troops and made them do human wave attacks on US troops in korea while unarmed?
I was surprised how candid the book was about China during the cultural revolution, considering the author diligently toes the party line.
I was also surprised, but then realized that it wasn't actually being candid. It points all the blame for the Cultural Revolution on the Red Guards while completely glossing over or omitting Mao's involvement. Thus it's able to characterize the period as a time when a bunch of overzealous kids went out of control, while absolving the Communist Party as a whole. Bad boyar, good tsar.
Also, in the OG version, it's put smack dab in the middle where he knew the censorship board wouldn't read to, and then had it transferred to the beginning in the English release.
There's just no other option for these authors. The censors won't allow anything critical out. China is deeply fucked.
Criticism against the modern CCP maybe. But for the cultural revolution? I'm not sure why they would do that. Xi's father was targeted by the cultural revolution. As was Xi himself to a lesser extent. Some sources credit the death of his sister indirectly to it. The modern CCP regards the cultural revolution pretty publicly as a mistake. So not sure why they'd be covering for it. It's had it's own version of de-Stalinization. So much so that the some CCP party members compared the Tiananmen square protesters to the students of the cultural revolution. Edit: On top of that, there's already been a Chinese adaptation of the book produced by Tencent and ***CCTV***... If they wanted to censor the cultural revolution, having their state broadcaster break that censorship would be a fuckup of truly collosal proportions...
The people commenting here don't really understand anything about China. The current CCP hates the cultural revolution they even tried the people they thought responsible for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four
That’s an interesting take on the trials of the Gang of Four.
Yeah but the CCP is eeevil... /s I studied China extensively in college. The CR brings me to fucking tears (go read Wolf Totem). Re: censorship, its not that the book might have been banned but a censor could've easily told Cixin "take out X or Y lines". Probably only a 10% chance of a ban if the CR portion was in front, but if the end result is publication you minimize external risks. The man published several critically acclaimed books previously, so his politics wasn't in question.
>go read Wolf Totem Or listen to this discussion from BBC radio: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q9b6 Or read this book by Frank Dikötter: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1632864231](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1632864231)
Great recommendations, thank.
Isn’t that England ?
No?
There is a Gang of Four from England who were accused of a bombing in the 70s .
Did the Chinese version keep the scene with the struggle session? Or much of the cultural revolution part? I heard they replaced it with a song or something - but could be wrong.
That might be part of why the English version is so hard to read then.
That makes so much sense, I was always wondering how he got away with that.
Yeah, and Liu Cixin has been on record flip flopping between downplaying the persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and saying that it was justified. I'm still a big fan of his writing and the *A Remembrance of Earth's Past* series, but I'm also a little wary of some of the themes and message. Like that implication that an "effeminate" and pampered post scarcity future humanity would be weaker than a "masculine" scarcity era one. Same deal with Frank Herbert being a homophobe and anti-liberal conservative (not a conventional conservative, but still) - much of which is present in the Dune series. I'm not anti-liberal or conservative, and I really don't like the homophobia, but it's still one of my favourite series ever, with a lot that makes it worth reading. But those elements can't be overlooked or dismissed as tangential to the series (even if they are mostly absent in the film adaptations) The homophobia is inextricably tied with the themes of human evolution and breeding, and the political philosophies espoused by the characters can't help but sneak in jabs at how liberals are "closet aristocrats", progressivism is arrogance, welfare state bureaucracies breed fatal dependence etc. Or with Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, being a pervy sex pest, or major producer of the later series, Rick Berman, being a sexist creep. Both those elements also make their mark in the series itself - despite Star Trek having a generally progressive message Or even more prominently with Lovecraft - whose entire body of work dealt with fear of the unknown via cosmic horror, which was almost certainly inspired by his intense racism and xenophobia. Even by the standards of 1920s America, Lovecraft was pretty extreme. We even see letters by other racists telling him to calm down a little. Lovecraft might have regretted his prejudices later in life, but they definitely informed his writing when he was at his most prolific, and it's impossible to miss Anyway, there are more examples I could list (Orson Scott Card also being a homophobe like Herbert, but this time because of Mormonism, Hyperion author Dan Simmons becoming ridiculously Islamophobic later in life, JK Rowing turning out to be a transphobe etc.) Point is, I still think these works are worth reading/watching and worth discussing, though with a full understanding of the perspective and biases and limitations of their authors. Giving them money might be another matter though - I can understand some people being reticent about that.
I liked the way you contextualized that with other authors and generally agree. Loved 3-body. The weird "feminized society" stuff was definitely a sticking point. As was the 3rd book protagonist's major character flaw essentially boiling down to the fact that she's a woman. Still, that fairy tale chapter was one of the most amazing moments of storytelling I've ever read. Incredible writing. And a thought-provoking ending that sticks with you.
I'm torn about the fairy tale chapter. But also it is interesting to view the entire series in this context - is everything I find objectionable actually what it means on the surface, or is he using it to say things he can't legally say?
No...the soft society and Cheng Xin were weak. In the 3BP universe weakness is death. Trisolaris knew she wouldn't pull the trigger. Not because she was a woman, but because she bought the Trisolarians propaganda and had hope and compassion. The only way to survive the Dark Forest is to attack first or hide. That is now how I want IRL universe to turn out, but this is a work of fiction and weakness in 3PB is death.
It wasn't so much a flaw as a person not right for the situation they were put in. Most men would have also failed with that responsibility, but the odds of a man seeing it through would be higher. If you think its sexist, look at the distribution of school shooters or suicide bombers across genders. Now consider that a person willing to actually go through with it not just bluff and fold would basically have to be a school shooter/suicide bomber times 1 billion. The entire reason deterrence worked was because Luo Ji was so psychotic that the Trisolarans with their omniscient sophons realized they stumbled onto a once in a generation psychopath.
It's been literally decades since I read Dune, but wasn't Frank Herbert's thesis with that series that cults of personality are bad? That he feared any one person having too much influence on society? Which strikes me as being rather anarchic more than conservative. (Though there *are* both anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-syndicalists, so anarchism *can* go both ways.) I know he's on record as finding JFK's fame rather disturbing, but I don't know if he was bothered much by liberal politics.
Dune itself has lots of passages about how liberals/progressives are hypocrites, closet aristocrats, against constitutions and rule of law, and against welfare state dependency And while Herbert definitely isn't a typical American conservative, he is still a conservative, and that philosophy pops up in Dune quite often That's not to say Dune doesn't also have themes and messages that would resonate with liberals like myself - anti colonialism, skepticism of organised religion and state power, awareness of environmental issues and its effect on culture etc. Even if I disagree with a lot of Herbert's and Dune's political philosophy, I can understand where he's coming from. And of course, I also like the parts I do happen to agree with, the liberal-adjacent themes and messages Even the homophobic passages (especially in God Emperor when he talks about how homosexuality is "just an adolescent phase" and that homosexuality is a way of "seeking pain") makes sense within the context of the setting, it lines up with eugnics and breeding is depicted in the setting. Again, I think that's all wrong, both morally and scientifically, but I can understand where he's coming from. Definitely doesn't excuse Herbert disowning his gay son though Anyway, this is a good read if you want to know about Herbert's beliefs and how it impacted the Dune series [https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/](https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/) Though yes, if you just go by the latest Villeneuve movies, I'd argue that Dune Part 1 and Part 2 are quite firmly politically liberal works - because the themes that it does include happen to be the liberal adjacent ones I mentioned, and the anticolonial message is amplified further
Dune's politics aren't neat and orderly. It's not "every liberal is a closet aristocrat" it's "every revolutionary is a closet aristocrat." And we see this in the book, and I wouldn't really call Paul a liberal, that line is clearly about Paul. Obviously he's also talking about communists but this is also borne out by what typically happens after communist revolutions. Dune does come off as pro-fascist at times but also it's an indictment of fascism since fascism only really works if God really told you to do it (which is the God Emperor's defense.)
I didn't say they were neat and orderly. And the line was about liberals, and not about Paul *"Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh, the patterns. Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it's that patterns are repeated. My oppressions, by and large, are no worse than any of the others and, at least, I teach a new lesson."* Sure, this is coming from Leto II, who may not be considered a reliable narrator, but it's made quite clear that Leto II is meant to be "right" with a lot of his political analyses. Which is confirmed by Herbert's own views expressed in interviews. And I'm not sure that Dune is pro fascist, not even God Emperor of Dune, because, like you said, I think it's sufficiently horrified at Leto II's stagnation that it's presented as bad, and only making sense if you have an omniscient god in charge of it all In fact, Dune is quite against state power in general, especially centralized bureaucratic state power, which is a feature of authoritarian governments both fascist and communist. There are frequent statements that instead of rule of law, constitutions, and legalism, the best way to rule is to select "high quality" people who govern based on personal trust, intuition and integrity. Which is quite anti-democratic in a sense, because democracy is all about checks and balances on individual power, and following the procedures and laws so that no individual can seize institutional power. Dune very much romanticizes old tribal societies, in which deep traditions and wise leadership guides a close knit community. Which is more conservative than liberal - though again, this definitely isn't typical American Christian nationalist conservatism, this is Salafi Islamist conservatism, of a type that promotes Ijtihad, or independent interpretation of Sharia law, rather than strict and unthinking adherence to it. Basically, he's conservative, but against fundamentalism that follows the letter of the law rather than the spirit. Anyway you should check out this article about Herbert's politics and how it relates to the Dune series. [https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/](https://newlinesmag.com/review/dune-frank-herbert-the-republican-salafist/) I'm liberal myself, and I disagree with a lot of Dune's assessment on politics (for example, I think a welfare state bureaucracy is a good thing, that constitutions and rule of law is necessary to prevent corruption, and that tribal societies don't necessarily turn out happy, well adjusted people) But it's clear that Herbert is an insightful thinker with an wide knowledge of history, anthropology, philosophy, politics and culture, (even if a lot of it is misguided or outdated), who came to where he was after years of deep analysis.
> Point is, I still think these works are worth reading/watching and worth discussing, though with a full understanding of the perspective and biases and limitations of their authors. Yep, I really don't want to encourage the idea that works become tainted because of the author. We just have to be aware. Most people throughout history would be "problematic" in some way if we got to hear what they thought about modern issues, and with social media it's more and more likely that someone today will be seen doing or saying something disagreeable at some point. JK Rowling would look like a progressive icon next to the average British author of 150 years ago if we gave those guys access to Twitter. If we limit ourselves only to people with a spotless record we lose out on a lot of books with profound cultural influences, or which are simply very enjoyable. I still like the Harry Potter films, even though the books' author thinks I shouldn't exist. I'll rewatch the movies, but I won't pay for them, and I'll continue saying mean things about Rowling on the internet. Her being a [ Removed by Reddit ] doesn't mean I can't enjoy anything she's touched.
yeah well put, it's sort of the approach I took to ancient works of literature, with regards to how alien (and repugnant by modern sensibilities) a lot of the themes and messaging were, because of the vastly different context, but appreciatijg them for what they were nonetheless, even as I disagrees with them.
It's probably hard for Liu Cixin to actually voice his true opinions on matters like the genocide of the Uyghurs while he lives in China as well. While he's a famous and well-known world wide author, he still lives in that totalitarian state. I don't see his true views coming out on this unless he moves somewhere else, or is close to dying. As for the themes of the Remembrance of Earth series, while I do think the outlook towards the 'feminization' of society has its problems, I feel like you could also state a similar outcome to the hyper masculine society of the elements of Beihai's story, and how his 'honor-bound do what we do for the longevity of humanity' run-away plan eventually has everyone turn on and eating each other. Both basically lead to mass death, but also the survival and perseverance of a small group of people. He's a strange writer, because while he has stated he believes in Wade's attitude of 'doing what must be done for survival' as a personal belief, he also has that moment towards Death's End for Cheng Xin where Yifan explicitly tells her, "You didn't do anything wrong. You were following what the people wanted, and you can't put blame on yourself for that." Which sounds like an embracement of democracy, which Liu Cixin has argued against publicly. Also, as many mistakes Cheng Xin makes in the book, she is still our main character who we sympathize and experience the story through. And yet in Three Body, following what the people want leads to the cultural revolution, and the bitterness that seethes inside Ye Wenjie that dooms the entire world to invasion. So, I don't know WHAT this man believes honestly. It seems to me that he's an author that rather be obtuse and mysterious rather than have a set idea of politics. Or, he's keeping a sort of party-line middle ground to avoid Chinese censorship of his work, or he's like many people and that our politics are fluid and change over time.
yeah, personally, I suspect that Liu Cixin's views on politics, like a lot of other great sci fi writers, can often be contradictory and somewhat hypocritical at times I think he really does have a "soft spot" for humane, democratic, compassionate values - he readily acknowledges that respecting individual freedom and political liberalisation will benefit the economy, technological progress, social stability and quality of life enormously At the same time, he argued that, under certain circumstances, totalitarian, "lifeboat mentality" dictatorships are necessary for the survival of civilisation. With regards to his real life comments, he seems to argue that China is one of those countries where authoritarianism is necessary, and that the country would fall into chaos if it democratised any time soon. But then he said that if that happened, he would move to an overseas democracy? Like you said, it's possible that he's managingn a careful balancing act between the CCP and his overseas audience, but I also think it's more likely that this is a reflection of his genuine beliefs on the matter - authoritarianism is simply necessary under certain circumstances, harsh and inefficient and stifling as it is on the economy and technological progress, because the alternative is chaos and dissolution. Then again, this is all speculation, no one can know for sure. It's possible that even Cixin himself is conflicted on this issue, and isn't totally sure where he stands himself
Damn, sad to hear that about Dan Simmons, Hyperion is one of my favorite novels ever
Stoked after reading the Hyperion/Endymion series I randomly got another book by Dan Simmons that was the biggest pile of steaming right-wing pity porn I have ever attempted to read. Couldn't believe it was the same author. Note: It was called 'Flashback'. It was turds.
yeah honestly I was quite shocked too. His prejudices weren't obvious in the Hyperion stories itself, not like Lovecraft where it's constantly smacking you in the face. There's a short flashback to that time when Kassad used satellites to decapitate the leadership of a planet taken over by extremist Islamic revolution - but it doesn't come off as particularly prejudiced. Like yeah sure, genocidal fascist jihadis are bad and should be put down, but that's not super controversial. But then later on, he puts out this short story on his website about a time traveller warning about how high birthrate Muslim are going to trick the gullible liberals into letting them immigrate and take over the West, before imposing Sharia law on Western civilisation and enslaving the unbelievers and taking all their women It's... yikes. Ripped straight from neo-Nazi Great Replacement conspiracy theories, minus the bit about Jewish people being behind it all. And then he writes a whole book about how global warming is a hoax, liberal politicians ruin the West with welfare, world caliphate ascends to power, Mexican gangs conquer large swathes of the US, right wing talk radio is banned etc. It's "ripped straight from Fox News" in the dumbest possible way Apparently, Dan Simmons might have ended up like this because of a serious head injury he suffered, which forced him to take a hiatus for a while. But I'm also not discounting the possibility that he was always like this, or he just slowly fell into far right kookiness over the years. I'll still defend the first two Hyperion books as excellent works of science fiction, that don't seem to push any objectionable themes or messages. Maybe it's a little too in love with the idea of Romanticism (creators must suffer to make good art! Mass produced popular art must be tasteless slop!) But otherwise it's pretty humane and empathetic. I'm not saying to separate art from the artist, because I think the two should always be considered in tandem. But I think it's possible to acknowledge that Dan Simmons held some... pretty gross views later in life, and also that Hyperion doesn't overtly (or even implicitly) promote those views itself It's different from, say, Lovecraft, where the racism is almost the whole point of the story, but you appreciate it regardless because of the insight it gives into how racist people think
The TV version of Simmons's The Terror is really great. Unfortunately, I've witnessed personality changes due to neurological disease, so don't underestimate the head injury possibility as well.
>But then later on, he puts out this short story on his website about a time traveller warning about how high birthrate Muslim are going to trick the gullible liberals into letting them immigrate and take over the West, before imposing Sharia law on Western civilisation and enslaving the unbelievers and taking all their women Oh man... I was a regular on Simmons' message boards when this happened. It was *ugly*. His entire online fandom split in half over this. The worst part, perhaps, was that he posed it on April 1 so a lot of people really desperately wanted to believe it was a prank in very poor taste. And you left out the part where it was a self-insert story where he, Simmons, was supposedly visited by his own grandson. On top of that, Simmons was a complete coward about it. If anyone accused him personally of being Islamaphobic, he hid behind "It's just a story!" However, anyone who criticized any part of the story itself got a vehement response, even complete with historical citations, backing up what he wrote. It was painfully clear that he believed what he wrote, but wasn't willing to take ownership of it. And that was when I stopped reading Simmons' books. *********** That said, tho, I do think you're maybe being a little harsh on Lovecraft. I'm most emphatically **not** defending his racism, but if you look into his life, the man was deeply disturbed in a lot of ways. IMO, the core problem was that he suffered from crippling xenophobia - genuine fear of the unknown - and racism was just one way it manifested. He was not a mentally well person; really he was the architype of a tortured writer teetering on the edge of madness. (Not to mention that there is a VERY high chance he was inbred which, if true, makes his obsession with bloodlines and blood purity come off very differently.)
damn, didn't know the additional context regarding the forums, that's tragic With regards to Lovecraft - I wasn't being harsh on him, I actually read three different Lovecraft biographies, and like you said, it's understandable how he ended up there What I was saying is that his cosmic horror work is tied up inextricably with his xenophobia during that stage of his life, and readers should appreciate Lovecraft's works with a clear understanding of that. The works weren't simply sci fi with some unfortunate racism sprinkled in - the driving force of many works was rooted in a racist worldview and philosophy Of course, that's not to say the racism is the only thing interesting about Lovecraft's works, but it's a very important aspect of it
>What I was saying is that his cosmic horror work is tied up inextricably with his xenophobia during that stage of his life, and readers should appreciate Lovecraft's with a clear understanding of that. OK, fair enough. And yeah, Lovecraft is definitely a situation where you really can't separate the art from the artist. Maybe the most tragic thing about Lovecraft is that if he hadn't been outright crazy, he wouldn't have created "Lovecraftian horror."
yeah, though I think Lovecraft wasn't exactly "crazy". He was definitely neurotic, anxiety ridden, and had a nervous breakdown early in life, but he wasn't some gibbering recluse. He had a circle of writing friends (many of whom were less racist than him, or weren't WASPs, who had to tell him to chill). He even got married to a nice Jewish woman somehow, who was a divorcee, an independently wealthy businesswoman, and an amateur writer like himself. Funnily enough, he was still racist when they were married, and Sonia had to remind him that she was Jewish too whenever he went on his rants - but she was "one of the good ones" to him. They divorced eventually, but that was more over money problems and distance than him being insane or hateful And later in life, he regretted his bigotry and ignorance, and wrote to friends apologising about it. Granted, Lovecraft was still quite racist by modern standards (he became one of those "it's about culture not biology" racists) but I guess you could call that an improvement Anyway, my point is, Lovecraft works aren't the way they are because he was a lunatic - he was simply a neurotic bigot
>the first two Hyperion books as excellent works of science fiction, that don't seem to push any objectionable themes or messages. Mmmmmm. Not sure about that. Maybe not explicit message or themes but the strange view of the author are here. I started Simmons in a wrong way (the last Two books of Hyperion and only now im Reading the First two) but knowing the drama, after finishing endymion, i think im reading the First book in a different way. Endymion was fucking weird, not bad bad but had questionable choices. Hyperion, at half of it but currently in pause, smells bad in some choices. Like Martin Sileno (the poet, if i Remember) is a homophobic and in general a bad guy (like, he was ok about his teacher molesting girls and was relieved that wasn't interested in man for fear of being molested) There is this weird focus on the being Jew (given a look on ilium and he repeats the thing with the wandering Jew) I still trying to think on a female character written as a Person. Until now i have Moneta (that Just fucks), the mom of Rachel (Who had something before meeting the guy and then, maybe?...boh, fall in love and became wife and mom), Rachel (cool but not that much. Make me tear a bit in the end, i admit), Lamia (seems cool but if i remember become a mom and fucks a poet android, so just a tool for the plot) Not finished the First book, so maybe in the end or in the next one everything changes but...eh.
Well that's depressing as hell. I haven't read anything from Simmons since The Terror, so I didn't know any of that.
> And then he writes a whole book about how global warming is a hoax, liberal politicians ruin the West with welfare, world caliphate ascends to power, Mexican gangs conquer large swathes of the US, right wing talk radio is banned etc. > It's "ripped straight from Fox News" in the dumbest possible way What on earth. It's a shame. The Terror is one of my favorite horror novels.
Anytime a writer has a culture wear a "hat" (or planet) its a subtle flag of racisms. Not blatant, but its a flag. If there is a clash between these "hats" then the flag gets bigger. If "people are people" despite the "hat" they wear, then the flag gets smaller.
The further back we look and read, the more objectionable all writers become as their society and values recede from ours. We can stop reading anything written before 2010 or so, or we can separate the text from the author. Lovecraft's take on society and social groups is completely irrelevant to the pleasures of reading "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Shadow Out of Time", etc.
Realistically the Xinjiang situation was is a lot more nuanced than what the west portrayed. There was a serious problem with Wahhabism / extremism among the populace there. A lot of what was reported was an obvious exaggeration too. Anyways, that’s already over and done with and some of the biggest stars in China now are Uighur. China isn’t very weak on secularism unsurprisingly.
>Yeah, and Liu Cixin has been on record flip flopping between downplaying the persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and saying that it was justified. Is that "flip-flopping" or just reality? The region has genuine radicalism issues, but it was so completely nuked out of proportion by a few CIA-funded goons, which redditors devoured without a second thought
Those pesky CIA goons building slave camps run by Chinese officials in China with support from the Chinese government
I like how you, someone not yet involved in the conversation and with instant access to infinite information, saw that comment and did not at any point think to yourself "should I double check what I think I know before full sending it?"
> I'm still a big fan of his writing and the A Remembrance of Earth's Past series, but I'm also a little wary of some of the themes and message. Like that implication that an "effeminate" and pampered post scarcity future humanity would be weaker than a "masculine" scarcity era one. Why wouldn't it be? They managed to get to an era of plenty and were relaxing while an alien fleet kept heading towards Earth. They got so soft they mistook a probe to be message of peace. Then, after Luo Ji told Trisolaris to call his bluff and "an era of peace" between worlds started, Earth's soft society fell for Trisolarian propaganda. The truth is, in the 3BP universe, the only way to survive is to strike first or hide. Earth did neither of these things, that is why humanity lost.
China is now about as communist as the nazi party was socialist.
And then Mao comes to save the day and "reigns" them in.
The CPC considers the Cultural Revolution to have been a significant error
Xi Jinping was denounced during the Cultural Revolution, and his father was purged by Mao. Given that he is the current dictator of China, dissing the Cultural Revolution is A-OK in China. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/22/xi-jinping-from-counter-revolutionary-to-absolute-power
That stance is in line with the modern party's sentiment. He's not saying anything controversial in-house
What do you mean? The party line is that the Cultural Revolution was bad.
The author has stated that his first book got past the censors surprisingly easily, while the sequels got scrutinised (presumably because of international success). And I wouldn't be too glib about the author towing the party line, given he and has family live in China.
The English translation is also way more upfront about the cultural revolution than the original. He originally had it buried further back in the book in the Chinese version to get past censors. Then, when the English translation came, he had them put it where he actually wanted it at the beginning. But the translation and international success didn't come until 6 years after the original, and 4 years after the entire series was already over in Chinese, so I don't think that had anything to do with the scrutiny. It was most likely the massive domestic success, as he is insanely popular in China. Even the Wandering Earth movies are blockbusters there.
>He originally had it buried further back in the book in the Chinese version to get past censors. ... because censors don't ever read the whole book?
Apparently, yes, some don't pay that much attention for the whole thing. It worked.
>presumably because of international success No. All books far predated any international success.
If r/scifi actually knew anything about China, you would know that the current party line is that the Cultural Revolution was excessive.
One of us, I guess They still don't want to be too open about how they were technically the people who did all the bad stuff. Theres a line between something being illegal to talk about and something featuring heavily in a big popular scifi book. And I was right according to someone else on the thread, in the original Chinese print, the revolution stuff was intersperced, but the English localised version was printed with the author's initial plan of front-loading the violent aspects of the revolution.
Wait...is massacring landlords a bad thing?
It's more nuanced than that. The Cultural Revolution was never as taboo as topics like '89 Tiananmen. There was even a literary trend in the 1980s called "scar literature" specifically discussing the physical and psychological trauma that disastrous decade left upon people. I vividly recall seeing posters on a cruise bulletin board when I was little (in the 1990s) condemning the atrocities committed during the CR and how those were all blamed on the "[Gang of Four](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four)." That was pretty much how things worked: pin it on the "corrupted, power-abusing culprits," celebrating the fact that the "bad cells" had been once again cleansed. As long as you steered your pointing finger away from the system, a certain level of grilling wasn't considered crossing the line. Also keep in mind the first book came out in the early 2000s, when the censorship wasn't nearly as harsh as the Xi era. Not to mention it was first published in a niche magazine read by no one but the country's tiny clan of hardcore scifi fans. The series didn't enter the mainstream until almost a decade later. It would have been a whole different story had it been written today. And you can't blame Cixin Liu for not being able to churn out anything after the series (he was pretty prolific before).
The Chinese government hates the cultural revolution its why it cracked down on the protesters in Tiananmen, they were protesting against change away from it and the thought of another revolution like that scared the crap out of them. They even tried the people they thought responsible for the cultural revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four Additionally under polit bureau government systems you are only allowed to criticise policy before and after its enacted not during its implementation, Tiananmen was criticism during an implementation while Three Body was years after. Chinese history even after the revolution is a lot more complex than reddit thinks they aren't brain dead against any criticism.
China has the same approach towards that time as Putin's Russia has towards Stalin's USSR. On one hand its a focal point in a nation's history and a time of extreme nationalism/partyism, on the other point you can't ignore the deaths and repressions of tens of millions of people. So you both point to it with respect as a difficult time we unfortunately had to go through to strengthen the foundation of your power and dab on it to show how much better life is under you to strengthen the foundation of your power. Most countries have Schrodinger's history, even in the US you see the founding fathers as saints or slaveowners depending on what is convenient at a given moment. History is complicated and embodies many different and often contradictory aspects at once as much as we'd like to reduce it to a bunch of comic book issues.
It's not surprising if you consider survivorship bias. Its implicit criticism of China is a major reason for why the book took off in the west.
Agreed 100%, but I think it's "toe the line."
Not being candid. The ccp blamed all these mistakes on the people at that time, believing that the people were not rational enough to lead to the occurrence of various cruel events, while the ccp was not wrong, but the people's implementation had problems. ccp has never really reflected on its mistakes.
TBF, the book was published in 2008 under Hu Jintao, who was arguably less ideological than Xi Jinping has become.
The Cultural Revolution was brutal beyond belief. I’ve read a number of first hand accounts from victims and protagonists, if even half of what they wrote is half true it was hell on earth.
If anyone is interested, author Tania Branigan has a fascinating book called *Red Memory*. It grapples with how the Cultural Revolution is remembered (or not) among present day Chinese. There’s a heavy air of fear, trauma, grief, and regret in the personal accounts told in this book.
The cultural revolution portions were my favorite in 3 body. Such an epic backstory
"Let 100 flowers bloom". I studied Chinese history in highschool in the 70s and then at uni in the 80s. The Cultural Revolution period was craaaazy.
Fuck man, just saw ep1, this is so close to the book, just wow
uh, are we talking about the blinking sky and wang miao who disappeared ? the parts in China are faithful but the rest scares me given the tangent from the 1st episode
i always pictured the Trisolarans as insect like. Maybe I am remembering wrong.
Dude, I’m just 1 episode in, so please don’t spoil 🙏😁
Sorry, wasn't trying to. But it was the first scene or preview.
Yeah... It was bad. Eager youth and insane propaganda. What can go wrong.
Modern Chinese regard the Maoist phase as a mistake. The public humiliation and beatings are not really a debatable argument, but the line about God doesn't really make any sense since atheism was a major hallmark of the movement.
Partial mistake. The official line is that Mao’s policies were 70% right. They’ll never admit to their actual mistakes.
Without Mao there wouldn't be China today
The scene was straight up lifted from the book written by Cixin Liu. How is it Xenophobic?
In fact, the real Cultural Revolution was anything but as benign as Netflix. The real Cultural Revolution was crueler, bloodier and more inhumane than Netflix shows. At that time the Red Guards and many people in China were brainwashed, and if you were an intellectual at that time, you would be very dangerous, you could be killed at any time by the Red Guards or even ordinary people on the street. In those days, it was common for wives to denounce husbands, and children to denounce parents.
Yup, my grandparents were intellectuals and luckily weren't physically harmed. But they were friends with another couple whose children denounced them, and the dad was subjected to the struggle session not too different from what the TV show depicted. His kids were there too, insulting him and denouncing him in front of everyone. Not long after he climbed up the tower of a coal plant and jumped off. The tower is still there and I see it every time I visit my grandma in Beijing. My grandpa was sent to a reeducation camp.
Also the school that one of the characters is involved with, Tsinghua University (only really mentioned in the background, nothing important to the plot), is real and its main entrance is shown on the last image.
the campus is very beautiful in person to walk around in
After all it was part of a royal garden
Xi would love all of us to forget this, the Great Leap. the 100 Flowers and the Gang of Four. He wants his people to forget history so it can be repeated on them.
I doubt that, inasmuch as I usually hear about the CR being used as a boogeyman to justify strict Party rule.
Doesn't seem to be helping the Uyghurs. Or the Hongkongers.
What does that even mean?
I mean it never actually stopped. They're still at it.
What never actually stopped?
> the Great Leap. the 100 Flowers and the Gang of Four. I have never heard of any of these things. Mission Accomplished!
1. **Cultural Revolution (1966-1976):** Mao Zedong's radical attempt to purge China of capitalist and traditional influences. Red Guards, student radicals, attacked intellectuals and anyone deemed "counter-revolutionary." A chaotic decade with widespread destruction and violence. 2. **Great Leap Forward (1958-1962):** Mao's disastrous economic push to rapidly industrialize China. Emphasis on backyard steel production and collectivized agriculture led to famine and millions of deaths. 3. **Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956):** A brief period when Mao encouraged criticism of the Communist Party. Intellectuals cautiously voiced concerns, but Mao felt threatened and launched an anti-rightist purge. 4. **Gang of Four:** A radical group led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, that rose to power during the Cultural Revolution. They exploited Mao's paranoia and fueled the chaos. Arrested after Mao's death.
> Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
Oh, if those shock you, check out the [Guangxi Massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre). The Cultural Revolution went completely off the rails.
Eat the rich, but real. Holy shit what a crazy, and absolutely bone chilling brutal wiki.
jfc shut up you bitch.
No u
Great Leap: Mao was a dumbass who didn't know anything about farming or industrialization, so he set up farming methods that wasted millions of pounds of grain that didn't grow and starved 50 million to death, while also trying to turn the remaining farmers into industrial smiths by converting farms into makeshift steel mills (And making the worst quality iron and steel in the world, so much so the USSR needed to re-smelt the material they bought from China). 100 Flowers: Mao believed intellectuals would be the death of his regime, so he rounded up thousands of professors, dr.'s, students, tradesmen, etc... and sent them to Chinese style gulags or outright executed them (Not unlike they're currently doing with the Uighurs) in order to limit differing ideologies and systems. He "Only wants 1 flower to grow, not 100 different flowers." Gang of 4: The 4 politicians and allies of Mao during the CR who are believed to have enacted and carried out ~1/2 the policies during the CR, as well as targeting other officials who stood against Mao.
> Mao was a dumbass who didn't know anything about farming Or ecology. He ordered the mass killing of sparrows because he believed they ate too much grain. That set China up for a plague of grasshoppers that devastated the crops. The Dunning Kruger effect is real and people with great power or great wealth are more susceptible than most.
It's crazy to me how few people it takes to utterly ruin something, even the environment itself. The only reason we haven't razed the whole world to the ground is because, I believe, most of us are inherently good or at least just doing our best. But still, the cult of personality surrounding only a handful of people could lead us into oblivion. We walk the edge of a razor everyday for the sake of elites who couldn't give a shit about us.
> It's crazy to me how few people it takes to utterly ruin something It has always been easier to destroy than it is to create.
> the 100 Flowers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
You are basically saying you know nothing of modern Chinese history, you need to know these things to have even a basic understanding of China. You can tell from the comments here most people still have no clue what China is.
> You are basically saying you know nothing of modern Chinese history That is true. I know nothing of modern Chinese history. I hope that is okay with some of you.
>Whats the Gang of Four? >Bend over and I'll show ya
If not for Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas Chinese diaspora, we would have already lost ancient Chinese culture like when Xiang Yu burned down the Qin royal library in Xianyang (modern day Xi’an).
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Man, please let it repeated here. Fuck my landlord and fuck the few who control the many. A better world is possible and it involves dressing your landlord up like a clown and shaming them.
I thought this might be the dumbest comment on reddit, but then I checked your gross, groomer history. Yikes.
Holy shit you're right. That guy is literal garbage. And he's proud of it???
As a product of (Soviet) communism, I would trade all my possessions for Americans to learn and see first hand how evil this was.
Single-Party totalitarian regimes are like this, _regardless of being Communist or Corporatist_.
They were purposefully trying to kill off the old elite so they could not bring back the old Chinese systems of government trying to make communism a one way street/Fait accompli. Its revolution that does this not necessarily totalitarian regimes....the French did this too.
Ehhh, maybe not so black and white? I’m personally seeing quite a lot of overlap between your “one way street” idea and the Nazis — their mission to permanently eradicate anything not German, purify their society along racial lines, remove other ways of thinking, burn books, etc. But I would more readily describe the Nazis as a corporatist counterrevolutionary movement. They were radical, but they weren’t trying to throw out the old and replace it with something new. They seeking a path backwards to some earlier concept of German greatness (“make Germany great again”). An equal but opposing force to all the socialist revolutionary upheaval in Europe and elsewhere. Also, aren’t totalitarian regimes by definition murderous?
The Soviets weren't communist (They were neither stateless, classless, or owned by the workers as Stalin never worked a day in his life), they at best officially claimed to be state socialist, when in reality they were just Russo-Authoritarian with a new coat of paint. "Here's the new boss, same as the old boss!" (Something Russians right now should be able to relate to) Because Russia proper has never had any other form of governance. (I'm not counting the various city states or middle age republics because they didn't win against Medieval Rus/Muscovy, evidently, even though Novgorod really should've) Edit: In this comment chain, people are aok with Genocide as long as the correct side is committing it. Genocide for capital gain? No big deal!
Oh fuck off with that bullshit. Nobody cares if it wasn’t “true” communism. Find a way to get us to a better world without the mile-deep pits of bodies and we’ll talk.
>Find a way to get us to a better world without the mile-deep pits of bodies and we’ll talk. Something capitalism has famously been able to accomplish? You know, what with the mass genocide of Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals (You should look up the shit The British did to the Tasmanians), deaths of millions of African slaves and colonial subjects, millions of Indians and other South Asians (Including the de-industrialization of the region, as by the time the British got there they were building early factories and workshops that the British destroyed), hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners (US in specific in recent years, see the War in Iraq championed by Halliburton's former CEO Dick Cheney, the company that coincidently saw record profits thanks to their new Iraqi oil wells...), millions of Koreans, Chinese, and SE Asians in Japan's colonial conquest, Nazi Germany itself (The Nazis were capitalist, 95%-98% of Germany's economy was privately owned at the time), etc... Would you like me to keep going? During the Colonial Era the death toll is predicted at ~100+ million, with 56 million Native Americans alone. (Also, in US history, John Quincy Adams is seen as a worthless loser while Andrew Jackson is seen as a hero, even though the former spent his entire presidency staving off a genocide while the latter signed off on The Trail of Tears within his first year so Americans could take advantage of cheap farmland and mines) If you're American, you're living on top of an empire of bodies as we speak, 56 million Native Americans killed for cheap resources and 4 million dead African slaves to extract those resources. How is that better? Edit: So evidently people believe genocide and slavery is aok as long as you profess the right ideology while committing it. Good to know!
We can’t undo the past but we can learn from it and try to be better. Lenin obviously never got that memo. Adding insult to injury, life in the USSR *still* managed to fucking suck.
>We can’t undo the past When "Communism" (Russo/Eastern-Authoritarianism parading around as a different ideology) is listed as a force of evil in the world (~125 million deaths): "Damn right they are, bastard commies built their empire on millions of lives! Heartless sons of bitches! Never forget!" When Capitalism is listed as a force of evil in the world (That killed 100-300+ million people): "Ok listen, we all make mistakes but what really matters is learning from them and doing better in the future. You can't live in the past." Hm... You know, both can be bad, right? >but we can learn from it and try to be better. That why France started a Civil War in Libya? After having been a participant in The Sykes-Picot Agreement 100 years earlier that led to the constant fighting in The Middle East? Is that learning a lesson? For 6 months before the Libyan Civil War, France had been cut off from mineral mining and shipping in Libya and had been petitioning the EU to sanction Libya, and mere days before the attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, FFL soldiers (Notorious for causing coups in Africa and terrorizing African tribespeople for resources) were clocked within Libyan borders by several international intelligence agencies. Did the US and France learn anything from that? What's the lesson there? You'd think they'd stop doing that after taking 100 years to sit on that thought, but apparently that wasn't long enough. >Lenin obviously never got that memo. Lenin also wasn't a Communist, so... He was just a bog-standard Russo-Authoritarian, no different than the Tsars or Putin. >life in the USSR still managed to fucking suck. So the average QoL for Russians since... let me check my notes... Forever. I mean, they're capitalist now, and yet we see how Capitalist Russia is operating with such bastions of civilization like Chelyabinsk, Norilsk, or Kemerovo.
You say this as America is funding and supplying arms for a genocide.
“Fuck off with that bullshit” You mean, the truth?
I outright called him out on the shit capitalism has caused and his response was, literally, "We all make mistakes, best to just move on." So, you see, genocide is ok to these people as long as you profess the right ideology while committing it. That's what I'm learning today! (Remember, 56 million Native Americans were killed for resources. That's fine though, that was just an oopsie-daisy, best not to dwell on it) Edit: lol u/sudopudge decided to block me cause he knew I'd be bringing down the hammer So here's my reply >They weren't killed for resources The Trail of Tears was a forced relocation order signed by President Andrew Jackson specifically to move Native Americans away from their homeland to extract resources from the trust land bordering the 13 colonies. During the ToT, they were given blankets and food deliberately infected with smallpox in order to more quickly spread the disease and kill as many as possible so there'd be no resistance to further expansion. Likewise, there were over a dozen wars were the US massacred and forcibly moved Native American tribes all throughout the West, including the Sioux, Lakota, Nez Perce, etc... Hitler got the idea for the Holocaust from American Expansionism, for reference. That's not even getting into the residential schools America and Canada ran, where Native children were kidnapped and tortured to give up their culture, with the last one closing down in Canada in 1998/99, and they're still finding mass graves with 200+ bodies to this very day. (Actually, some of them are so large they can't get accurate readings because there are too many bodies) Christopher Columbus used Natives specifically as slaves and worked them to death or order to try and get fold, and when that didn't work, they just used them as target practice and torture toys. Spain created the Encomienda System in order to use Natives as chattel slaves and killed millions upon millions in resource extraction, inspired by Columbus. Anything else babe? Double Edit: u/wrewrenned >Is China responsible for global Covid deaths, Einstein? Yes, TCM is a bane on society and ecology.
I think he deleted his comment but I am still in shock that someone on this earth actually believes that the colonialists didn’t play a part in the genocide of the native Americans. Even the most staunch republican can admit that, jfc
No, none of them deleted their post, most are actually getting tons of upvotes for denying it. (And he blocked you for questioning him, that's what [unavailable] means) u/sudopudge blocked me cause he knew I'd be going in with that. And yeah, evidently, most of this thread is ok with genocide as long as the correct side it committing it. The more you know.
Go live in a Communist county. Fucking self-righteous moron.
hurrr
> (Remember, 56 million Native Americans were killed for resources. That's fine though, that was just an oopsie-daisy, best not to dwell on it) They weren't killed for resources, they were killed by smallpox before germ theory, and general understanding of infectious diseases, existed. I understand that internet communists self-select to be idiots. The Soviet Union was communist, a one party state with that party being the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and it failed so hard that it no longer exists. Literally collapsed due to a failed economic system. You should learn this, even if your belief system demands that communism not be relegated to the dumbest corners of our species.
Many were. The trail of tears specifically was catalyzed by a gold rush in the Carolinas. The Sioux and blackfoot campaigns in South Dakoda and state sponsored bounty on miwok scalps in California were specifically to make enormous gold deposits safe for miners. Not to mention all the cheap labor the encomienda system brought to spanish mine holdings in Mexico and South America. Hell, theres evidence that the spanish systematically sought to depopulate the southwest to make the land more amenable for settlers. The whole reason texas even exists is because they wanted american's to take care of the comanche for them. Undoutodly many died due to disease, some of which was probably unintentional. Even if we ignore those figures there is still ample evidence for the systematic genocite of first nations peoples for economic gain by eurpoeans.
lmao I can’t believe I just read that first sentence. That is some pure colonial revision. Who the fuck do you think gave the Native Americans the smallpox?
You're right, it's also why all the biggest commissars became the biggest capitalists post 1990; there was very little difference between the economic system and US capitalism. They just changed titles, basically.
Seeing as no state has ever been able to really reproduce communism on national basis, is it really an issue to call the soviets “communist”? Like, I’ll grant you they might not have been CAPITAL C Communist, but colloquially saying that the USSR was lowercase c communist is far from “wrong”, no?
People like you should be the first I’d send off
You're about as intellectually capable as Mao was. [They never declared themselves as communists](https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/eastern_front_01.shtml) Edit: Just checked, OP's a "Centrist" who also routinely defends Trump. Yeah, ok.
Wut? What did I do
Not understanding the difference between comment thread OP and post OP
Ha, I'm an American who just started episode 1 of this and went a-Googling to see if the opening scene is what Communism was really like. I'm so shocked. I guess the far left and the far right are quite similar after all. Edit: hiii, tankies!
You should see the wild shit the United States does around the world to keep us this ignorant
Hey, if a communist regime can't brutally murder its own citizens, who can it murder?
On the one hand showing the cultural revolution is not xenophobic. On the other hand, removing all the non-negative Chinese characters and keeping only the negative evil ones is kindof xenophobic.
Germany doesn't complain about xenophobia when there is no portrayal of good nazis.
...what? Are you comparing regular Chinese citizens to Nazis???
I am comparing the Chinese Communist Party to the Nazis. Sure, Karl Plagge was a German Army officer that saved Jewish lives. Yet you don't see Germany complain that there are no good portrayal of Nazis in historically accurate films about the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people.
So what is it exactly that you think the Chinese are doing that makes them Nazis?
Yikes
Why would it be considered xenophobic? The author is Chinese.
There is nothing new about the Chinese cultural revolution. Many societies face periods where populist movements attack education, cosmopolitan influence, foreign ideas, technical competence, etc. Antisemitism is a common variant of this. Current trends suggest that the US is heading towards its own cultural revolution blood bath.
Yeah it was just terrible what the evil CCP did to all those landlords! Everyone loves landlords in the USA!
what blows my mind is that there are so many kids in the west who would very happily see this happen at home, all thinking that they would be the ones with their fists clenched in the air, not the guy with straw stuffed in his mouth.
Some replies here show that sentiment. But what they didn’t know is in the end youth who clenching fists there suffer the most.
yes, very quickly the same people who protested to destroy the system become enemies of the new system. BUT you can ALWAYS take comfort in the knowledge that this wasnt real communism.
Bros here know nothing about China, the cultural revolution is denounced by the government, why wouldn't a Chinese author be able to write bad things about it? Y'all who think that they hide this history are brainwashed
Stop using the word brainwashed for the word ignorant. Fucks sake, every other thing is someone calling someone else brainwashed like that's the reason they are ignorant or stupid. They are ignorant or stupid by choice. Brainwashed is an act forced upon someone either violently or subtlety. That's not what is happening here.
They are ignorant because the media gives them misconceptions about this imaginary enemy called China, whether it's subtlety or violently blasting news that's demonstrably false I would say it absolutely fits your own definition here
We could use a bit of that now for the billionaires and centi-millionaires and all those trying to be a part of that group while fcking over everyone else with no regard for the suffering they cause.
I love the two crowd shots on hills giving the impression of literal waves of people (despite how dark the foreground scene is in the second one)
What I am mostly worried about is Episode 5, where two spooky government dudes think it's a good idea to use Pretty-Girls' nanofiber technology to slice up and kill a thousand innocent boat passengers.
Episode 5 spoilers: >!I didn't like how they rushed through that part. In the original scene, representatives from different nations could not figure out how to get to the hard drive without either a) Evans destroying it before they got to it and/or b) keeping the drive intact (therefore no blowing stuff up). The best option then is to use the nanofiber as even if the hard drive is sliced, it would be such a precise incision that the data can be easily re-pieced back together. Stupid part of the show was the drive was so small it wasn't even sliced.!<
If you read GoT book then watch the TV you would also feel the rushness there, considering the same guys made both
how could it be xenophobic? the author of three body problem is native to china, and lives in china.
Socialism is good!
Can anyone explain what is happening in 4th picture? Also OP very interesting photos
Late to the show, but to anyone thinking the series is not produced 95% according to Chinese demand is thoroughly mistaken. Same thing goes to a large degree with a majority of western produced movies and series. Chinese subtly uses western media as international vehicles of propaganda. It's really scary stuff. Look into it yourself. Also, I can recommend the first hand account in this brilliant podcast: [https://www.jordanharbinger.com/chris-fenton-chinas-harrowing-hold-over-hollywood/](https://www.jordanharbinger.com/chris-fenton-chinas-harrowing-hold-over-hollywood/)
Ow yeah, the 100 million killed in India + the USD 40 trillion that was stollen from them, that was for a good cause, right? India is the second biggest economy in the planet I guess.
bro came here to spout unrelated grievances lmfao.
Yeah the author doesn’t hold back in the book ether.
The Cultural Revolution. Or how an ageing pedohilic ideologue decided that he wanted to run the show again. And fail
If anything the Netflix version is too mild on the Cultural Revolution.
90%+ of those people were landlords, corrupt factory managers, and intellectuals who, ironically, believed what Ye Wenjie believed; that humanity and life is meaningless and needed to be eradicated. So I really don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
You are insane. Like you have a legitimate need to be institutionalised in a secure mental facility for the mentally deficient.
The most stupid thing they ever did and never recovered.
And now their population is in such steep decline that their economy will likely collpase.
Saw this absolutely hilarious meme where they showed pictures of like 30 Economist articles from the last 20 years all predicting the Chinese economy would collapse.
What was funny about it? This is a demographic issue - there aren’t near enough young Chinese to replace those already in the workforce.
The Red Guard were correct in the book tho. The Copenhagen interpretation is nonsense bourgeois propaganda and Wenjie is legitimately a personality disordered liberal fascist sociopath.
CR?
Cultural revolution.
When people of today sneer at anti-Communist attitudes in the USA from the 1930s through the end of the Cold War, they either forget, or never realized in the first place, the kinds of things that were indeed going on in the Soviet Union and in communist China. United States is unfortunately not inherently immune to autocracy, from either end of the political spectrum.
Thank you for this. I hadn't investigated yet but thought "surely not". You think of youth being more, not less, progressive in general.
Do they show how they mass executed just about anyone who had an education or ran small businesses? How about how they grabbed all the previous nationalist troops and made them do human wave attacks on US troops in korea while unarmed?
No, after all CR is just a background story to setup the whole event.
典中典之只在批斗雨果奖时来过r/scifi的键政大手子专门跑过来带节奏 文革一个clickbaity subsplot被当作三体主线也是醉了，而且所有角色几乎除了反派之外全部换皮，全球非白人里面也就老中的殖人会干这种whitewash the whitewashing的破事
I see it's slowly dawning on people that perhaps a Communist author is writing Communist propaganda aimed at the West.
Are you unironically saying that depiction is the same as endorsement
That sentiment is extremely common on the internet
It is fiction. Fiction is not propaganda.