Monstruosidades

Na galeria de monstros do passado recente, Hitler e Estaline não estão sós. Não é novidade nenhuma. Mas parece ser interessante o livro Mao: The Unknown Story de Jung Chang e Jon Halliday, acabado de sair: talvez ainda haja aspectos da actuação deste ditador que são capazes de nos surpreender. Uma recensão do livro está aqui. Nela se recorda, em particular, uma faceta bem conhecida do terror instaurado por Mao, o incitamento à crítica, auto-crítica e delacção: The use of terror typified Mao's rule. Although he had his equivalent of the KGB, Mao's distinctive form of terror was to get people to use it against each other. This was the model that he perfected in Yenan, when everybody was coerced into the exercise of criticism and self-criticism by which they were forced to confess and implicate each other in terrible "wrongs". It was a method that was then extended to the whole of China, as people were confined to their work units in the cities and their villages in the countryside.