The most important thing needs to be said first. I am not well read on Maoist theory and history apart from On Contradiction by Mao (which is not really Maoist). So whatever I say, you may as well completely disregard it. It won’t any difference.
As everyone here probably knows Chairman Gonzalo died on 11/9/2021. On Reddit at least not many people are mourning. /r/GenZedong’s pretty elated about it. I personally don’t know enough to take a stance.
/r/communism mods are pretty protective of Guzman’s legacy. The truth is that every communist figure is heavily slandered in mainstream capitalist canon. Guzman is pretty unique in that he has a bad reputation among communists as well.
I have been trying to read/watch/listen about the Sendero Luminoso and there is definitely a lot of questionable aspects to them. One thing I found out about is the massacres they have conducted. The victims here are usually indigenous peasants. An example is the Lucanamarca massacre, which the party has confirmed was a directive from it’s central leadership.
The thing that makes it the most confusing is that the accusations against the Shining Path are superficially similar to PragerU/Victims of Communism-tier slander against previous communist leaders. For example, it’s said that Chairman Gonzalo fostered a cult of personality, using armed indigenous peasants as cannon fodder. I am not yet sure if this was true or not, but going to Maoist blogs and websites and always seeing him being praised as the greatest MLM thinker alive does not instill much confidence. This is just a shallow comment though. For something more substantial I will have to read a bit more.
Back to the topic, the mods of the subreddit don’t like what they call revisionism. But the refutations that I see are not very convincing. The articles that are linked are not easy to read but I guess they are targeted towards someone who is more enlightened about the broader context.
The mods seem very knowledgeable so I expected more. Since revisionism is so prevalent, I expected to find some good refutations. But instead I just find a appreciation for furthering Marxist theory, waging a war that, while it did achieve significant victories, ended up failing. As communists, I expected appreciation of results and material gains but instead the realm of preference seems to be ideological dogmatism.
Overall it’s very confusing.
The articles that are linked are not easy to read but I guess they are targeted towards someone who is more enlightened about the broader context.
I think this is generally a big red flag. If there is an important point, then it should be possible to explain it in a way that everyone understands. If they link that to someone who is new, they might do it on purpose to avoid any discussion.
Maoism was invented by Gonzalo himself, and therefore is inseparable from his person.
Mao Zedong Thought is certainly something else entirely, integrating the contributions of Mao to Marxism-Leninism and understanding their specific character that made them applicable to China at the time, NOT universally. Also bear in mind the CIA distributed copies of the little red book in south american universities to exacerbate the sino-soviet split.
Gonzalo was more akin to Pol Pot than Lenin, despite what white Gonzaloites on Twitter may say (though many of them also like Pol Pot, so). In Peru, he enjoyed so much popular support that people voted for Castillo in this year’s elections! But I guess Maoists will defend it as saying that the SP did not participate in elections… and that they actively prevented people from voting in elections, sometimes with violence.
There is not a shred of dialectical analysis to be found in Gonzalo’s weird little cult, that was so centred around him it died the moment he was arrested. r/communism mods are in the wrong here and I’ve seen some of this stuff too. They’ll ban you if you say anything bad against him. I’m not sure if it’s because of left unity concerns or if they actually like Gonzalo, but this is what being online too much does to you I guess.
I am actually in the process of translating a book exposing SP and I can add you in to the project if you want, the book’s already in English and we’re formatting it now.
