Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Profugo dalla Cina "comunista": Gli USA, oggi, mi ricordano il mio paese

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1026-05.htm
Dissing Dissent
 In White House Actions, A Troubling Echo of Life in Communist China
 
by Liu Baifang
 
 
Lately, I find myself worrying about my adopted country, the United
States. I'm alarmed that dissent is increasingly less tolerated, and
that those in power seem unable to resist trying to intimidate those
who speak their minds. I grew up in the People's Republic of China, so
I know how it is to live in a place where voicing opinions that differ
from official orthodoxy can be dangerous, and I fear that model.
 Like so many others, I arrived in the U.S. enormously relieved to
have left my "socialist" homeland. During Mao Tse-tung's "Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution," intellectuals were persecuted,
physically intimidated, imprisoned and, all too frequently, killed.
Educated people, known as "the stinking ninth category," were
terrified into political silence after witnessing the dire
consequences of voicing any suggestion of dissenting views. My parents
were engineers, educated people, and so my family was separated and
then "sent down" to labor among peasants in the countryside. We were
punished merely for being educated.
During this time, there was a dizzying succession of "correct
political lines" and an endlessly changing kaleidoscope of labels used
by the Communist Party and the state to isolate anyone who disagreed
with official thinking. People who criticized the government were
dubbed "counterrevolutionaries," or "capitalist roaders" or "running
dogs of American imperialism." They were "bourgeois liberals" or
"wholesale Westernizers." People tarred with such labels lost friends,
jobs and reputations - even spouses. Families were destroyed. When it
came to politics, no room was left for ambiguity, doubt or
disagreement. We had to pretend to believe that our leaders always
knew best, and to toe the political line. With all criticism stifled,
China lost the ability to examine and correct even its most abjectly
self-defeating policies.
As students, we had to endlessly study the works of Marx, Lenin,
Engels, Stalin and Mao. One of the main tenets of this totalitarian
system was what Lenin called "democratic centralism," which prescribed
"full freedom in discussion, complete unity in action." The Party
hierarchy embraced the "unity in action" portion of the message, but
true free discussion was out of the question. As Mao said: "The
minority is subordinate to the majority, the lower level to the higher
level, the part to the whole, and the entire membership to the Central
Committee ?.We must combat individualism and sectarianism so as to
enable our whole party to march in step and fight for one common
goal."
Those courageous or foolish enough to dissent were marked and then
ruthlessly hounded into submission. The suffocation of discussion and
debate - never mind the suicides and killings - crippled every realm
of life, from science and literature to politics, economics and even
the most basic human interactions. Noted astrophysicist Fang Lizhi
told me that he had been unable to teach the big-bang theory of
cosmology during the Cultural Revolution because the notion of an
expanding universe was a manifestation of "bourgeois idealism" that
did not fit with Engels' idea that the universe must be infinite in
space and time. There were myriad other examples everywhere around us
of the ways in which the nation's ability to find the truth were
affected by this savage intolerance.
 So why are these 40-year-old stories of political rigidity in a
faraway land relevant in America today? I'm certainly not suggesting
an equivalence between the political climate in America now and China
then. But I am getting a whiff of the Leninism with which I grew up in
the air of today's America, and it makes me feel increasingly uneasy.
I could not help but think about China recently during the flap over
former State Department envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, who angered the
White House with his finding that documents suggesting Iraq had tried
to acquire nuclear material from Niger were in all likelihood forged.
The administration went ahead anyway in citing the documents as part
of its justification for invading Iraq. After Wilson wrote an article
for the New York Times calling attention to the deception, someone in
the administration allegedly leaked information to the press that
Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA agent. In China, it was not just
one official like Wilson who was targeted for retribution but
countless individuals, many of whom spoke unwelcome truths about their
country, only to be rewarded with public shaming or prison sentences.
When I hear our president, in this time of soaring deficits, continue
to insist that tax cuts are the key to national prosperity, even
though countless economists have warned against them, I cannot help
but remember how Mao used to say that China didn't really need
"experts," only people who were Red. Mao's inner circle attacked
anyone who questioned whether "class struggle" would ultimately solve
all China's problems.
I also worry about what I see happening to our media and freedom of
the press. The Bush administration has repeatedly made clear that it
does not welcome skeptical, penetrating questions. White House
spokesmen have made it clear that they view the Washington press corps
as a corrupting "filter" on the news. Reporters and publications seen
as unsympathetic to the administration's goals find it harder to get
access to officials. Recently, Bush made an end run around the entire
White House press corps by going directly to regional television
outlets in the hopes of being better able to spin the news at the
local level.
Indeed, Bush press conferences, which I enjoy watching, seem to me to
have become more and more like those held by the Chinese Communist
Party: Nothing but the official line is given, and probing questions
from reporters, which are crucial to advancing the public's
understanding of the government's actions, are often evaded or
ignored. Moreover, as Hearst Newspapers columnist Helen Thomas, dean
of the White House correspondents, recently learned, too-persistent
questioning on sensitive issues means that the next time you are
ignored, even relegated to the back row of the briefing.
 Open inquiry, freedom of expression and debate are essential parts of
a well-functioning democracy. When leaders disdain debate, ignore
expert advice, deride the news media as unpatriotic and try to
suppress opposing opinions, they are likely to lead their country into
dangerous waters. Even China now seems to have learned how dangerous
it is to completely control the press - witness the attempted cover-up
of the SARS epidemic - and to be loosening up a bit.
Thus, it makes me all the more discouraged to find the U.S. moving
backward. When honest government officials and outspoken citizens are
ignored or, worse, marked for intimidation, it begins to seem that the
Bush administration is acting more in keeping with Lenin's notion of
democratic centralism than with the founding fathers' notion of the
necessity for a sometimes inquisitive citizenry and a free press.
I am grateful to have become an American and to now belong to a
country that has had an inspiring and enduring and true commitment to
letting "a hundred flowers bloom," as Mao, hypocritically, once said.
What has made the U.S. such a beacon to people like me is that it has
always been principled, confident and strong enough to let its people
debate and criticize government policies without suggesting that the
critics are somehow less than patriotic.
When our government loses its tolerance for a full range of views on
national and world affairs, it is veering toward the authoritarian
world that speaks in one voice, the very political model it has so
often stood against - even fought against. I hope I will never again
have to live in such a world.
Liu Baifang, who emigrated from China in 1977, lives in Berkeley.

and a free press.
Che esiste senza alcun problema, fino a quando rispetta la legge.
-Stefano