It doesn't matter how long you make them read Lenin and break rocks in the gulag, the second you let them out they'll see an AI generated meme from a CIA holdout posting from a bunker somewhere and immediately revert to being a burgerbrained fash.

I think we need to just dump them on an island somewhere and put them under continuous naval blockade and internet blackout till they revert to a Hunter gather society.

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[–] XiaCobolt@hexbear.net 46 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Beyond even Puyi. I read an account (which I'm trying to source again fucking internet no longer working) from an Japanese soldier who had unashamedly admitted to various war crimes, the communists housed him and his fellow soldiers in clean and comfortable, if spartan and small accommodation, they fed them despite post WW2 shortages and at one point they even gave him limited penicillin for an abscess in his spine.

There was no torture, they just had group discussion or wrote essays about their war crimes. Sometimes survivors of massacres they participated in were brought to them to talk about their experience. The worst punishment he received was early on when they thought he was flippant about his war crimes, they made him spend a night in the cell that prisoners awaiting execution by the Japanese would use, on the walls were signed names and last testaments, often written in blood and there was basically no space.

They did this for months and years, until he and all his fellow soldiers knew to their core what they had done was wrong. They did bring in other political teachers to try and educate them about communism and he was like "buddy I don't care about economics". But eventually after a few years they just sent them all back to Japan. Guys who by all rights should have been hanged at the Hague. And nearly all of them because staunch anti-Japanese imperialism/militarism activists until the day they died.

And I'm not religious anymore but that struck me as one of the most selfless and moral responses to pure evil. While also so pragmatic they made their worse enemy into their weapon. And I think if they could do it with them, an American Treatlerite could be fixed.

[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 7 points 17 hours ago

Because it destroys their ideology framework. They spared them not because they “were better than that” or because the soldiers “deserved it” but because in the minds of the japanese fascist any violence was justified and will be justified because the enemies are violent brutes who will mercilessly destroy and brutalize the Japanese.

[–] marxisthayaca@hexbear.net 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Please find the source. I’d love to read that in detail

[–] XiaCobolt@hexbear.net 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The location was here and some of my details are corroborated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushun_War_Criminals_Management_Centre

I'm trying to find it because it was very interesting and moving but searching for "china" "prison" "war crimes" obviously gets you different western propaganda stuff.

Edit: this is a really good article and talks about the anti war organisation

https://sttpml.org/miracle-at-fushun-the-transformation-of-japanese-war-criminals-from-devils-into-humans/

I think now I might have read the account in a physical book so I'll think about where it might have been.

[–] XiaCobolt@hexbear.net 27 points 1 day ago

From the article

The following is one such example which illustrates how difficult the Fushun project was for the Chinese people to carry out. A young prison guard was shocked when he discovered that a Japanese detainee who had killed his father was among those he was in charge of. After weeks of agony, he told the prison director that he wanted to be transferred. The director said: ‘I know perfectly how you feel… But if you give up on these detainees now and walk out, they will pick up guns and invade China again. This means that there will be many more deaths like your father’s. We must stop these Japanese men from becoming aggressors again. Don’t you think that this is what your father wants most in heaven as well as how you can fulfil your duty as a good son?’ The director’s words made this prison guard realise how important the task of re-educating the Japanese prisoners was for the future of China. Not only did he continue to work at the prison but also worked even harder. One day, his “enemy” suffered an acute appendicitis attack in the middle of the night. The guard carried the sick man on his back to the medical room to save his life

[–] Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What a wonderful addition, thanks for sharing. I am with you.

[–] XiaCobolt@hexbear.net 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think it's disputed that Mao actually said

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy

Like the Lenin weeks-decades thing. But I always think that quote is wrong. Communism is love. From Che Guevara

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality

And boy is that love a hammer we use to crush the enemy.

From the meeting between both in 1960

Guevara: A point in Chairman Mao’s works is found by Fidel [Castro] to be very important, which I failed to notice at the beginning. That is to treat war prisoners generously: to cure their wounds and send them back. [We] realized this point which helped very much [in our struggle].

Mao: This is the way to disintegrate enemy troops.

[–] ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy
Like the Lenin weeks-decades thing. But I always think that quote is wrong. Communism is love. From Che Guevara
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality
And boy is that love a hammer we use to crush the enemy

This is dialectics

[–] XiaCobolt@hexbear.net 10 points 22 hours ago

This is dialectics

It was not lost on me fidel-salute