Unearthing Maoism's Legacy

Last December, in the midst of the Little Red Hoax controversy, Mark Rosenzweig posted this paean to the continuing relevance of Maoism to the ALA Council listserv:

Well, my friends, let me explain. There are, strange though it may seem to some of you, large parts of the world where the experiences
of the Chinese Revolution with which Mao was so centrally involved,
seem peculiarly relevant even today to, for example, landless
peasants who make up a large portion of the world's population, and
where 'Maoism' is a very living movement with mass involvement,.


Of course, in the very next paragraph, Rosenzweig put out the following disclaimer:

I say this without the slightest intention of arguing for the theory and practice of this ideology or thebalance sheet of the results of it in the 20th Century.

Yeah, right. If I was a communist, I'd probably skip over all that Great Leap Forward - Cultural Revolution - Khmer Rouge stuff too.


Among the Maoist groups Rosenzsweig mentioned is the New People's Army, a Maoist insurgent organization located in the Philippines. Rosenzweig expressed his disbelief that the US classifies the NPA and other Maoist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Why am I posting about this now? Because it was just reported that mass graves containing up to 300 of the NPA's victims from the 1980s have just been found. I think this discovery more than explains why the US Government and so many others consider the NPA to be terrorists.