From the Spectator for your delight and amazement:
In 2008 during an appearance on This Week, Diane Abbott found herself fighting the communist leader’s corner during a discussion on dictators with Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo:
MP: Mao Zedong killed 30 million, 60 million. People still wear Mao t-shirts, people still carry Mao Little Red Books and if you go to China there’s still a huge picture of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square. It’s absolutely bizarre. When a royal prince dressed in an SS uniform he was absolutely condemned. Had he worn a Mao outfit, nobody would have blinked.
AN: Why is that? Why is it right to wear a Maoist t-shirt but obviously wrong, as it is, to wear a Hitler t-shirt?
DA: I suppose that some people would judge that on balance Mao did more good than wrong. We can’t say that about the Nazis.
At which point, both Portillo and Neil asked Abbott the not entirely unreasonable question: what good did Mao do?
MP: What?
AN: Remind me what the good was…
DA: Well, it’s funny I just had this debate with my son…
AN: Mao killed tens of millions of people.
MP: Just tell me what was the good thing that he did that made up for the 60 million people he murdered?
DA: He led his country from feudalism, he helped to defeat the Japanese, and he left his country on the verge of the great economic success they are having now.
Three cheers for Chairman Mao!
Update: After Mr S’s article, This Week have dug up the clip from their archives for your viewing pleasure…
An exclusive from the #bbctw archive. @HackneyAbbott on Chairman Mao pic.twitter.com/TthPgnvj1U
— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) November 27, 2015
‘HackneyAbbot’ !! Hackneyed more like!
When she closes her eyes like that, it’s a toss up whether she’s getting an update from Planet Loon or trying to teleport back.
I do remember student leftists during the cultural revolution citing this defence of Mao, and a similar one for Lenin and Stalin who facing western imperialists had to take harsh measures to modernise Russia. They never seemed to grasp the enormous evil in killing millions. Some of them, and this women is one, remained in that closed environment where that view was never challenged. It was so obvious to Diane Abbott that on balance Mao was a good guy.
I think that it’s more accurate to credit Chiang Kai-Shek with benefiting China, not Mao. Mr Chiang, as far as I recall, was a great warrior, defending China against Japan; he also did much to modernise China, whereas Mao, like all communists, showed exceptional skill in destroying. If memory serves, Chiang escaped to Formosa; Taiwan; which became a bastion of capitalist prosperity long before mainland China started to come to its senses.
Diane was positively sylph-like in that old clip.
Nurse! My tablets!
Diane Abbott=dumb,thick,stupid,ignorant,racist,hypocrite.
How anyone takes her views seriously is beyond any form of intelligent reason.
I suppose she received her regular £700 fee for that.
Socialist Regime – ‘Good’ regardless of any evil perpetrated in its name.
Right of Center Governments – ‘Evil’ regardless of any good or socially beneficial acts carried out in its name.