Jung Chang: preference

Transcript context

…So let's go back to the Cultural Revolution. One thing that I find really interesting about communism, especially in China, is the need for the victims to then incriminate themselves to confess. Even Hitler wouldn't have the Jews in Auschwitz talk about renouncing their semitic ways. And "I've been an enemy to Germany in World War I." Explain why it was important that the victims of these purges had to then talk, you know, "I'm guilty, I'm complicit." Why couldn't they just be ostracized? I think Mao knows people's psychology very well, and I think he uses this as a weapon to break people. I mean, to humiliate them and to break them. So even his opponents then started to grow doubt about their own opposition. So I think that's the main thing. I tell you, it's not very nice. I mean, in China, when I lived in China, I wasn't denounced, but we all had to attend criticism and self-criticism meetings. I mean, it really stirs up some very basic discomfort and unsettling, upset feelings if you have to criticize yourself, I mean, not do it cynically because you have to win our days, you couldn't do it cynically because nobody has reason to understand the whole thing in order to be cynical. So you were starting with being quite sincere. It certainly breaks people. And also it makes people turn people against each other because when people are criticizing each other, you create a lot of animosities among the people, which is one reason why no opposition can get organized. I mean, people don't dare to talk to each other in case they were denounced. It's a psychological warfare against his own population, which is quite effective. So meaning that it wasn't just a campaign against political opposition, it was literally every part of your life. I think even in the book you talk about embracing your family is anti-Maoist because it shows you're closer to your family than you are to Mao.…

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