I came across the Moses Wine novels of US blogger Roger L. Simon after reading his blog a few months. Blogging has opened my eyes to authors I might never have encountered before, and I am sure many readers of this site probably had similar experiences. I am a fan of John Scalzi’s science fiction books, for example, and came across them after seeing favourable mentions over at Instapundit. And so on.
I have been enjoying Roger’s book, Peking Duck, which relates the tale of Moses Wine’s trip to China in the late 1970s during the years immediately after the death of Chairman Mao. Wine is persuaded to go on a trip with a bunch of liberal-leftist writers, publishers, fashion models and various other Californians by his Aunt Sonya, who is a sort of ageing communist straight out of central casting. The group with whom Wine travels are shits of varying degrees of ghastliness, egomania and falseness. The book flags up Roger Simon’s own gradual shift away from socialism and Wine’s own observations on China and his travelling companions are well observed, all the more so for not being overtly political. It is a fictional version of PJ O’Rourke’s wonderful article, ‘Ship of Fools’, which depicted a group of far-left travellers to the former Soviet Union in his book, Republican Party Reptile.
The fondness among a certain demographic for communist and repressive regimes has not died out. By coincidence, blogger Matthew Sinclair recently fisked an appalling piece of flim-flam by the British writer Will Hutton, who can still not bring himself to acknowledge the full scale of the slaughter perpetrated in Mao’s China. (Hat-tip, ASI blog).
Of course, in reflecting on such matters, we should not forget that on the other end of the spectrum, there were plenty of people, like the Mitfords and so on, who were only too happy to travel to places such as Italy in the 1930s and drool over the supposed efficiency and orderliness of Fascism, or more recently, to defend ‘strong men’ types such as Saddam Hussein. Human capacity for folly is not confined to the left side of the spectrum.
As normal it is hard to work out what is meant by “left” and “right” in a political context.
If by “left” we mean someone who vastly increases government and regulations and (in the Italian case) even makes a large section of industry state owned (not just state controlled as with the National Socialists in Gemany), then it is hard to see how the ruler of Italy in the 1930’s can not be be considered “left wing”. (Just as it is hard not to see Edward Heath and Richard Nixon as “left wing” – if one judges them by their actions[vastly more government spending and regulations, price controls, nationalization and so on], rather than by their image).
Certainly Mussolini had many admirers in Britain and the United States (Winston Churchill at least in the 1920’s, and F.D.R. in the 1930’s), but it is hard to see this as a bar to being “left wing” – unless the true meaning of “left” is not even Marxism (after all B.M. had been a leading Marxist and never really shed his Marxism – indeed went back to a version of it with his “Italian Social Republic” in the last period of World War II) but just means “slave of Moscow”.
On the Mitford sisters. Well one was a Marxist, one was a National Socialist (although this sister shot herself whilst in a state of despair over collapse of Anglo-German relations into war) and I do not know much about the politics of the other sisters.
As for Mao – yes the greatest mass murderer in history (an even greater murderer than Stalin). Responsible for many tens of millions of murders.
Those who attack politicians for visiting Hitler in the 1930’s (pointing out that he had already been responsible for murder – although not the millions of murders of Jews and others that were to happen during World War II) should also attack anyone who met Stalin (who was already responsible for many millions of murders before World War II – a fact that was well know to both the British and American governments) and to Mao.
President Nixon cynically allied with Mao as part of power politics, but Edward Heath (right up to his death) held Mao to be a great and good man (even though, as Prime Minister, Edward Heath knew what Mao had done).
God protect us from “conservatives” like Richard Nixon and Edward Heath.
Paul, of course you are absolutely correct. “Right” or “left” are what the late Ayn Rand referred to as “package-dealing”, whereby often contradictory political and philosophical views are bunched together for nefarious purposes. I was being a bit lazy today and using these terms in the usual, understood meaning.
The one who shot herself, poorly as it happens, was one Unity Valkyrie Mitford born in Swastika, Ontario. No bullshit. What hope did she have eh?
Otherwise they were a mixed bag.
Orwell had something about Unity, in his diary I believe.
“There was a rumor going around that Unity had shot herself because she was pregnant.
When he heard this tale some fine Englishman is quoted as saying “But the Furher would never …”
There’s one of the all time greatest put downs ever in Stoppard’s current play, Rock N Roll.
“I miss the sixties, all that revolution in the air.”
“Really, I’d forgotten about that revolution, you must tell Jan about that” (Jan is the protagonist, who is currently back in England after the velvet revolution, after mistakenly leaving in ’68 to help in the Czech revolt).
“No, no, she means the Cultural Revolution.”
I quote from memory, poorly. Original is much funnier, particularly with context, but still. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard lefties talking about the great days of the revolution in the sixties, but from now on I will always try to agree with them that things got much more dull since Mao found out what the Gang of Four were up to.
At the risk of sounding like a sock puppet, on the enticing supposed “orderliness” of fascism Jonathan refers to I’d throughly recommend the books The Dictators(Link) and The Wages of Destruction(Link). Particularly the latter which is super-nerdy and excellent.
Both focus on how things get messy when ideology has to interface with reality. The Nazis are painted as overseeing a fundamentally weak economy rotting from the inside out, ultimately kind of powerless at anything other than extending human misery. They’re are also cracking history books in their own right.
Thanks for the kind words. It’s gratifying (though slightly unnerving) to find people reading books you wrote over twenty-five years ago. Especially on Samizdata.
Roger, you’re welcome. Question: what happened to the duck?
Yes the “left” and “right” have both indulged brutal tyrants.
Yet the devotees of Mussolini and Hitler admit — or are forced to admit — that they were wrong. Those who fawned over Communists never seem to admit error — and are never forced to.