Guest Post by Jeff Thomas via International Man
Mao Zedong was, by all assessments, not the nicest fellow.
In 1964, he published “Quotations from Chairman Mao,” which came to be known to all and sundry as “Mao’s Little Red Book.”
At first, it just went out to the military, but by 1966, it gained far wider distribution. The goal was for “ninety-nine percent (of the population of China) to read Chairman Mao’s book.”
To be objective, it’s not a great read. It’s merely a collection of rhetoric, intended to indoctrinate the people of China as to “what’s expected of you.”
From time to time, someone from the West will quote a particular passage, but one reference that Chairman Mao made that has escaped notice is his reference to “the people’s democratic dictatorship.”