Can you imagine a Hitler themed bar? It would be decorated in swastikas and various symbols of the third reich. Wouldn’t that be charming? Wouldn’t that be stylish? Wouldn’t that be so kitsch? No, it wouldn’t of course. It would be the height of bad taste and insensitivity. What kind of creep would go to a place like that? Well, it turns out that there is something just as bad in New York City, it’s a Mao themed bar. I can’t find the link to it, but here’s one talking about a Mao restaurant.
Just in case you’ve forgotten, Mao killed far more people than Hitler. I’m not saying that Hitler was a great guy, just that Mao was, at the very least, another mass murderer. In point of fact, Mao dwarfs Hitler in the body count department. And yet, in certain circles, Mao and his iconography is seen as hip, kitsch style. I’ve also seen Soviet iconography creeping into “style.” I’m thinking that it’s some sort of retro, 80’s flashback look. Seeing as I lived through the last part of the Soviet empire, I can’t really see that stuff in anything but a bad light.
You see, as soon as I was able to understand what was going on in the news, I feared and was angry at the Soviets. I learned what the word dissident meant when I was 8 years old. When I think of the Soviet Union, I think of the KGB (and their sister force, the Stassi) endless lines for goods, and people literally dying to leave the worker’s paradise. One of my strongest memories is the image of bodies strung up in barbed wire. They had been shot as they tried to escape. I have no idea where I saw those pictures, I can’t imagine that they would have shown that on the news back then, and I’m not sure where I would have had access to that sort of thing. Maybe it was in an article in National Geographic or some other magazine. It may have also been from East Germany, but it’s all the same to me. I remember reading the caption and being horrified. I was probably all of 12 or 13 years old.
I was also always impressed by the stories of people defecting to the US. I knew that many people didn’t make it over to the West, and I was amazed that people risked their lives just in order to come to where I lived. So when I see a shirt with a hammer and sickle on it being worn by an American, it makes my stomach churn. The Soviet Union was a brutal, repressive state. North Korea is really the only remnant left thank God. We have gotten spoiled in the last little while. Without the Soviets around, we forget what a truly repressive regime is like. They were brutal, how many millions of people were killed, jailed, or just disappeared? Granted, Stalin was responsible for a big chunk of that, but the message was sent by him and the status quo was kept by his replacements. How can any “hipster” sport symbols of that most awful of times?
At least there’s the possibility that the person wearing Soviet iconography is actually supporting some sort of ideological point of view. I am convinced that that ideology is morally bankrupt, but at least that person might have a political excuse for that. Mao shirts have no redeeming value. When you put a person on your shirt, we have to think of that person. A government is big enough that we might, possibly have different opinions on it. The people wearing Mao t-shirts would have been the first on the list to be killed during the cultural revolution. To me, it is not hip, it is not kitsch, it is just putting the killer of millions of people on you. I can’t imagine any good things that I could think about that. I also wonder why people don’t put John Wayne Gacy or the BTK killer on their shirts if they want to be “edgy.” Oh, that’s right, they didn’t kill enough people. If you’re going to put a killer on your shirt, make it a big one…
So the real question is, “Why do the Soviets and Mao get a free pass from so many people?” Seriously, Hitler is universally reviled (as he should be), but the bigger killers like Mao and Stalin aren’t really thought about much. Why isn’t being called a “Soviet” as big an insult as being called a Nazi? Why isn’t being called a Maoist enough to send people into a rage? With the history the US has, I can understand people being sensitive to racism, and Hitler was the poster boy of racism gone amuck. But why don’t we Americans hate Mao and the Soviets (Stalin in particular) with the same vigor as Hitler? I’m afraid to think that the answer might be that people are more willing to accept “political” violence than racist violence. Somehow, Hitler was just evil while the other guys were trying to “achieve” something, so it’s not as bad…
Call me weird if you must, but I consider all of them, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and the systems that lead to their power to be monsters. You’ll note that communism was behind three of the four. Another authoritarian system was behind the other. Maybe it’s just ignorance that is allowing the others to get a free pass culturally from Americans. If that’s the case, I’m going to do my damnedest to educate people….
