Saturday, January 31, 2009

Propaganda Movies on a Saturday Night


Talk Tibet are running weekly meetings at nearby Yongling School. Tonight´s offering was “On How the Chinese Communist Party is an Evil Cult”. It is the 8th part of a documentary series entitled “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” made in 2005.

I saw the interesting flier on the wall stating “the CCP is “essentially an evil cult that harms mankind”. Although it has “never called itself a religion, it matches every single trait of a religion...(I)t regarded Marxism as the absolute truth ...(and) exhorted people to engage in a life-long struggle for the goal of building a Communist heaven on Earth”. Now how tempting is that?

There were about 10 “foreigners” in attendance with about 40 Tibetans including several pre-pubescent monks. As it was in English, I would be particularly interested in what they made of it all, with plenty of footage from the Cultural Revolution (people waving Red Books, Chairman Mao giving his megalomaniac speeches and other examples of Hero-worshipping. It was as blatant as it sounds and straight out of the classic propaganda films it was frowning upon. Subtle it was not, but a real classic nonetheless.

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