US Elections

Mau-mauing the Maoist flak-catcher

By James Morrow in Sydney

19 October 2009

One of the first rules of public speaking is, "be careful whom you quote". If you're a reasonably educated human being, therefore, it should be obvious that you don't cite Pol Pot if you're giving a speech about agricultural policy, and you don't look to Adolf Hitler, vehement anti-smoker that he was, for words to back up an address on the evils of tobacco.

Nor should one, if addressing a group of high school students (or anyone else, really), refer to a man whose reign of terror resulted, conservatively, in the deaths of 60 million people as one of your favourite political philosophers - which is just what White House Communications Director Anita Dunn did recently.

Watch the tape - it's pretty damning. Or if you don't feel like wading through the speech, here's the choice bit: "In 1947, when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party, on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side and people said how can you win, how can you do this, how can you do this against all odds against you, and Mao Tse-tung said 'You fight your war and I'll fight mine.' Think about that for a second, you don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other people's choices in the past."

Even if it was a joke, it was not a funny one. Indeed, it sounds more like outright admiration for a man whose perverse brand of anti-intellectual Marxism that was simultaneously brutally centralised yet scarily anarchic gave his countrymen the horrors of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and a gulag system that exists to this day. (Perhaps this is why Barack Obama was so quick to snub the Dalai Lama?)

Look, forget the Obamas' long-standing friendship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. The fact is, the Obama White House is rapidly becoming a big tent for the sort of cranks who set up card tables on the fringes of growers' markets and pass out hand-xeroxed fliers.

Yes, 9/11 "truther" Van Jones lost his "green jobs" czar role, but that leaves plenty of largely unaccountable individuals like science advisor John Holdren who used to advocate forced abortions and a "planetary regime" to control population, or legal advisor Harold Koh.

Koh, let's not forget, is the high-ranking legal advisor who has spoken out in support of sharia law, discounted the notion of the US Constitution as the supreme law of the land (he prefers global, transnational arrangements), and written the still-confidential advice the Obama administration has used to brand the constitutional removal of Honduras's Chavezista president "a coup".

In this depressing context, it's no wonder Anita Dunn fits right in.

All the more reason for her to be kicked out.

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