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was it Chairman Mao? who said that the first step in a revolution is to kill all the librarians or is this just Authoritarianism with American characteristics?
by metalman 1y ago
was it Chairman Mao? who said that the first step in a revolution is to kill all the librarians
or is this just Authoritarianism with American characteristics?
- croisillon 1y agothe only reference i found is... you ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42757893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42757893 but apparently there is a Shakespeare play saying to kill the lawyers, either you or Mao mixed things up
- tokai 1y agoOnly thing I can find on this is an older post of yours. I don't think Mao said that. He worked in a library himself and the director at this library introduced him to Marxism. Marx was angry with bourgeoisie scholars though.
- metalman 1y agoThe quote was given to me by my uncle Kieth, who was the chief librarian in charge of periodicals at the main, central branch of the New York Public Library, long before the internet, there was more to the quote....in that the reason to kill the librarians, which they did a lot of durring the cultural revolution, was to eliminate those that understood the filing system, and was done as a part of the wholesale eliminating of discourse in western languages,philosophys, and systems. Dig a bit deeper, perhaps in chinese language books on Mao, but the quote does fit what was done. Edit. They kept the books though, and the card catolog of what is in.the Chinese national archives is rather astounding..