“We, the soldiers of The National Liberation Front of America, in the name of the workers and all the oppressed of this imperialist country, have struck a fatal blow to the fascist police state. What better revolutionary example than to let their president perish in the inhuman dungeon of his own imperialist prison.” – Escape from New York
Rittenberg and Mao. One of them was working for his country at the time.
Two weeks ago, Concerned American over at Western Rifle Shooters Association (LINK) posted about a documentary, The Revolutionary. His request was pretty simple – “Find it. Watch it. Tell us about it. Any takers?”
I raised my hand. Here we are. As you read this, I suggest one little thought: would a Leftist takeover be any different in the United States?
The film opens with a shot of a library, filled with books with Chinese ideograms written on the spines. Finally, the hand of an elderly man pulls Mao’s “Little Red Book” – Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung from the stack. That elderly man, Sidney Rittenberg, then announces with gravity that Mao was a “great hero and great criminal.”
The Revolutionary is a documentary about Sidney Rittenberg and his time in China.
Sidney who?
Sidney Rittenberg was born in Charleston, South Carolina to a wealthy and politically powerful family. Rittenberg went to college at the University of North Carolina. The documentary doesn’t mention graduation (he didn’t), nor does it mention that he became a committed communist while at college (he did). His first work was as a union organizer. What union? Apparently all of them. Rittenberg recounts that one paper described him as: “an alien element who is here spreading class hatred.”
I’m surprised he didn’t get shirts made.
“I don’t always fight for my country, but when I do it’s not really for my country.”
Sadly for the Chinese people, Rittenberg was drafted and sent to Stanford to learn Chinese for the U.S. Army. After being sent to China with the Army, Rittenberg did the usual thing soldiers do and stayed and joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1946. The film hints that Rittenberg made contact with communists as soon as he could after reaching China, so he might have been playing for both sides at once.
After joining the Chinese Communist Party, RIttenberg acted as a liaison and translator with the U.S. Army in the area – even translating the Laurel and Hardy movies that the Army brought (I’m not making this up) for Mao to watch. Per Rittenberg, Mao told him that he wanted to show the world that “China could be civilized and democratic,” which I’m betting Mao thought was the central message of most Laurel and Hardy films.
In his first real taste of actual communism (versus the imaginary unicorn communism Rittenberg made up in his head) as Mao was about to take over Beijing and consolidate final victory on the Chinese mainland in 1949, Rittenberg was arrested because Stalin cabled Mao that Rittenberg was a spy. This may be the only thing (besides dying) that I ever was happy that Stalin did.
The Chinese version of Swan Lake has a slightly different ending and involves a steel mill.
For the next five years Rittenberg was in prison, and his account of this time in the documentary is filled with self-congratulation that he was a fine, faithful communist even in his jail cell. Offered the chance to go home to the U.S., Rittenberg declined and studied for five years in his jail cell until Stalin died and he was released. During the time he was in prison, the communists actively purged countless people on the losing side of the Chinese Civil War, and lost hundreds of thousands fighting Americans in Korea. These were down from the 11,000,000 or so killed during the Chinese Civil War, so it almost seems like Mao was getting tired of killing Chinese.
Spoiler alert: Not at all.
In theory, Rittenberg could be absolved of culpability in those deaths and the treason of supporting a government at war with the United States. But after Stalin died, Rittenberg was released. And after showing such loyalty by staying in prison, he was admitted to the “real” Communist Central Party. He was on the inside.
How far inside? In a country where hot running water was nearly unknown, he had it. He had a driver and car at any time of the day or night. If he wanted entertainment? He had tickets to any shows. Vacation travel. And, he noted he was, “paid better than Mao.”
Rittenberg’s first crime, at least as shown in the documentary, was in 1957. It was at that point where Mao’s “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” scheme unfolded. Mao, in theory, told people to argue about what would be best for China and let the best ideas win. Rittenberg admiringly notes that Mao, “with great artistry,” coaxed anyone who had a different opinion than Mao to speak it. Then like a vengeful junior high cheerleader, after Mao knew who his enemies were, he crushed and ruined them.
Who says Mao doesn’t have a sense of humor?
One person who worked with Rittenberg in the Radio Beijing propaganda section during the “Hundred Flowers” was the daughter of the founder of Goldman Sachs®. This unnamed daughter fought for the civil rights of those being crushed by Mao, and challenged Rittenberg. Hadn’t Rittenberg fought for civil rights in the United States?
He had.
But she just didn’t get it, said Rittenberg. Apparently civil rights were to be fought for before power was achieved. After gaining power, civil rights weren’t something to fight for – they were a negative. But Rittenberg got it. Rittenberg described taking part in “struggle sessions” where people – his friends – were denounced, beaten, and berated. Often, Chinese would commit suicide rather than be the subject of a struggle session.
Rittenberg’s second crime was in the Great Leap Forward. I wrote (a bit) about the Great Leap Forward here: In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!. This was Mao’s attempt to modernize the Chinese economy to match the industrial output of China to that of Great Britain within fifteen years. The idea was that food production would exponentially increase, and that, from small steel forges in the backyards of peasant huts, steel would be made to match the output of a first world producer of steel.
But the Chinese had a problem. How on Earth could they get that much iron and steel so quickly?
Easy!
Melt your pots. Melt your pans. Melt your plows and tools. And while you have all the men working at melting down useful items, leave the fields to the very young and the very old. Call the death toll due to famine as 40,000,000. This brings Mao’s total up to 51,000,000.
Oops. But he’s not done yet.
Spoiler: there wasn’t a Chinese spaceship during the Great Leap Forward. Also? No Lucky Charms®.
This led to the largest famine in world history. When this was pointed out to Mao by one of his trusted lieutenants, Peng Dehaui, Mao had Peng placed under arrest – later (during the Cultural Revolution) Peng was beaten so badly his back was splintered. Taking constructive criticism might not have been at the top of Mao’s skill set.
But that’s not how Rittenberg sees it. “Everybody lied.” Rittenberg said that the lies started at the bottom, and the leadership farther up was “deceived.” Certainly lower level officials gave the numbers Mao wanted to see. They knew the alternative.
They also pretended to make steel.
For Rittenberg to blame the peasants and low level officials for lying is pretty much the “she had a short skirt on and I couldn’t help myself” level of defense – the defense of a man who knows that he was corrupted by luxury and ideology.
I’ll note here that for the last 2,000 years, China has led the world in killing Chinese. The cumulative total for the various civil wars and fights dwarfs any other conflicts in the world. And Mao killed more than Chinese than any person in history.
But a catastrophe as bad as the Great Leap Forward hurt even a near-deity like Mao. He lost tremendous amounts of power as sane people tried to get the economy working again so that the Chinese would be a little less accomplished at killing Chinese.
Mao would have none of it – by far he was already the best killer of Chinese in history, and there was no way he was going to let up as long as he was alive. He created Sidney Rittenberg’s next, and probably worst crime: the Cultural Revolution. I wrote (a little) about that, too: Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be.
To put the Cultural Revolution in perspective, it was really just a way for Mao to regain power. Essentially, he told the youth that it was, “right to rebel” and to oust those that ran the communist government because they presumably weren’t good enough communists. What was a bad communist? Someone who was against Mao.
The nuclear spinach helped the most.
This is where Mao’s Little Red Book made its appearance. Everyone had one. Everyone HAD to have one. What did it mean? Whatever you thought, unless Mao said different. Teenagers and college students were told to take control of their institutions, and they did, forming what they called the Red Guard. But there were lots of different Red Guard organizations, and they often fought each other for no other reason than they had different opinions on the best way to support Mao. Think of it as Lord of the Flies, but running Congress and every public institution.
Oops. Too late.
At the least, hundreds of thousands died, with every kind of atrocity listed from cannibalism to baby-killing, all in the name of Mao. The high range of the death toll was 20,000,000, which would take Mao’s total to over 70,000,000. And Sidney Rittenberg was right in the middle of it. He gave speeches to these Red Guards supporting them since that was, according to him, “my role to play.”
Sidney gave speeches to every size crowd, from 100,000 at a stadium, to 12 people at a Denny’s™ grand opening.
Rittenberg was a prime figure in the start of the Cultural Revolution, he knew of the violence. He knew of the murders, the suicides, the atrocities, and the ruined lives. In his words, he “made feeble protests . . . against it.” But he gave up, rationalizing that, “ . . . revolution is not like having guests to dinner . . . not gracious, not gentle.”
Rittenberg knew what was going on. He related a story where one group of Red Guards captured and tortured rival Red Guard members. They tortured them, and recorded the screams of the tortures. Why? So they could play them to their members to “harden” them. Rittenberg knew that about shopkeepers killed. Teachers stabbed. All of this occurred while the army and police were told to keep their hands off and let the Red Guards do as they pleased.
Rittenberg knew that millions were being murdered. One military leader told him that, “more soldiers were killed in the Cultural Revolution than in any campaign in China’s history.”
Yes, Rittenberg knew this was going on. And he willingly went along with it.
Eventually, if you play with dictators, you’ll eventually end up on the wrong side of them. Rittenberg did. At this point in the documentary, The Mrs. noted that, “it was too bad they didn’t put a bullet in his head.” She’s cuddly that way. But she’s not wrong. Instead they stuck him in solitary, and let him out after Deng Xiaoping took control after Mao died.
Since it looked like there wasn’t much country left to loot and they stopped killing Chinese by the bucketful, and finding his luxurious lifestyle gone, Rittenberg felt his job in China was done and took his wife and family and moved to the United States. He was only there for 60,000,000 of the 71,000,000 deaths that occurred during Mao’s time.
Several of the scenes of the documentary were shot in Rittenberg’s house, I assume. The house was beautiful – lake or oceanfront beautiful, and contained a dining room set that probably cost thousands of dollars. How did a poor communist afford it?
After coming back to the United States, he sold his Chinese connections to the highest corporate bidder, and charged millions. After taking part in activities that destroyed millions of lives, he lived the last forty years of his life in luxury, apparently unburdened by self-reflection of an odious, treasonous, treacherous, and pathetic life that brought tragedy to so many. Not that I’m judgmental. To me, the most chilling part is how the one person he didn’t blame for the horror that was Chinese communism was, well, him.
At the end of the documentary, he has a rare moment where he reflects that maybe he would have been better just going over and helping the Chinese and teaching English, and not being a leader in the Chinese Communist Party.
“But I didn’t want that.”
And neither do the would-be Rittenbergs that are present here in the United States today. They want the power. They don’t mind the body count.
The Revolutionary, 2013, 1 hour and 32 minutes, is streaming now on Amazon® Prime™.
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