Why Trumpism Reminds Me of Maoism

We’ve all seen and heard the comparisons between Trump and Hitler. We’ve also seen and heard Trump supporters cry foul at that equation. I get it: no one likes to see their hero, who blames their problems on undesirable foreigners and sends his goons to round those foreigners up, likened to history’s most notorious bigot.

So I’ll come their way for the next few minutes. After all, Hitler is low-hanging fruit, and there’s a panoply of other unhinged and maniacal autocrats with whom to compare Trump. Take Mao Zedong, one-time unquestioned ruler of the People’s Republic of China and focus of a personality cult beyond even Stalin’s wildest dreams.

Living in China for a number of years, learning Mandarin and reading Chinese history, I became quite the student of Chairman Mao’s exploits. For over three decades, the Chinese people not only worshipped him (by choice or by necessity), but found themselves subject to his whims. Whatever Mao endorsed, the population rushed to carry out. Whatever he despised, they zealously destroyed. When Mao made pronouncements, however unfounded or absurd, party cadres did everything in their power to make those pronouncements true.

The ‘Great Leap’ into Absurdity

There was the time Mao envisaged a near astronomical lift in China’s agricultural production, as part of a ‘Great Leap Forward’ for the country. Local officials competed with each other to show ‘revolutionary zeal’ for Mao’s program, setting increasingly ludicrous quotas for their farming collectives. On their orders, farmers over-planted, over-fertilised and tried to reap harvest after harvest from the same depleted patches of land, contributing to a major collapse of national food security.

Or the time the Chairman decided that China should not only lead the world in grain output, but in steel production as well. Villagers across the country scurried to build the backyard blast furnaces with which Mao had become infatuated. Of course, now, the villagers had to split time between these new furnaces and their fields to meet the grain and steel quotas that, again, the cadres had set for them. What’s more, the great majority of the furnaces spit out nothing but useless hunks of iron, rather than the fine steel that was promised.

Then, there was the time Chairman Mao announced his hatred for sparrows as one of the ‘Four Evils’ of Chinese agrarian society. Once again, the population rose as the blunt instruments for his impulsive desires and worked to eradicate sparrows. They trapped them, poisoned them or incessantly beat loud pots and pans to keep sparrows from their nests (believing that if the sparrows couldn’t sleep, they would die of exhaustion). One thing they didn’t count on was that sparrows actually eat insect pests. Locusts and other insect blights soon decimated what harvests the overtaxed and underworked land yielded.

These factors played a huge role in turning China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ into one of the most severe famines to ever hit the country. Tens of millions died of starvation.

Those surrounding Mao were simply too power-hungry or too afraid to do anything but stroke his ego and rubber stamp his misguided policies. Anyone who did dare to disagree with him was summarily persecuted by him or his legion of worshippers. In fact, in 1957, just before the launch of the ‘Great Leap Forward’, Mao had instigated a purge of intellectuals from any and all positions of influence – intellectuals who might have challenged his many ridiculous assertions. Those positions were soon filled by sycophantic ‘yes’ men, ill-equipped to carry out their roles.

Trumpism’s China Syndrome

History indeed repeats itself in strange ways. And I can’t help but think Trump is just Mao in a three-piece suit instead of, well, a Mao suit. Like Mao before him, Trump is a loose cannon. He speaks and acts impulsively, spouting uneducated claims about tariffs, or the Ukraine, or a ‘Golden Dome’, or [fill in the blank with whatever he said today]. He petulantly assails visiting world leaders with unfounded accusations and childish gripes. Like Mao, he’s anti-intellectual, denies the best science and pridefully ignores the advice of knowledgable others. Like Mao, Trump purges anyone who dares to dispute his claims, replacing them with loyalists whose only qualification seem to be having no qualifications whatsoever. For me, though, one connection between Mao and Trump stands above the rest: when the tin god speaks, his words, no matter how bizarre, determine the truth for his loyal worshippers and minions. They will defy all logic, standards and common sense to make his words true.

When the tin god speaks, his words, no matter how bizarre, determine the truth for his loyal worshippers and minions. They will defy all logic, standards and common sense to make his words true.

Fool’s Gold

That’s the thing about worshipping idols, even idols of flesh and blood – we become like what we worship. As the Psalmist sings:

Their idols are silver and gold,
    the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
    they have eyes, but they do not see.
They have ears, but they do not hear;
    they have noses, but they do not smell.
They have hands, but they do not feel;
    they have feet, but they do not walk;
    they make no sound in their throats.
Those who make them are like them;
    so are all who trust in them.

Psalm 115:4-8 (emphasis mine)

When a fool leads us, we become fools ourselves. We defend and excuse the foolish words actions of the fool. And we watch as the world around us descends into foolishness at the fool’s bidding.

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