Anti-Americana: Historical Optimism

 

"Vietnam Will Win! America Will Lose!" reads this Chinese poster, probably from the early 1960s. I'm not 100% sure of this poster's provenance, and would love to know more about it. The illustration shows a crowd of peasants attacking an American soldier; usually the careful compositions of Chinese propaganda art showed a measured balance between civilians, militia, and military. Also, I'm pretty sure the Chinese characters used predate the simplification engineered in the PRC in the 1950s, and there is no use of Pinyin, which seemed to appear on most Chinese posters predating the Cultural Revolution. 

As for the slogan, of course it turned out to be quite accurate. A myth of the invincibility of US imperialism emerged somewhere between the Spanish-American War and World War II, that the US always emerged victorious from war. This myth is largely preserved in popular consciousness, even though it's quite far from the truth.

The U.S. failed to make a decisive victory in its first major post-WWII engagement, Korea. Unable to defeat the North Koreans, who were heavily backed by the Soviet Union and more importantly the new People's China, the best the US could achieve was a military stalemate, easily claimed as a victory by the North. Vietnam ended in the ignominious collapse of a massive American war effort. Cuba brushed off the CIA attack at Giron in 1961. Some minor US engagements, on might call them episodes of bullying, like Grenada and Panama, ended in decisive US victories. However, its two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, while victorious in battlefield terms, probably count as net political defeats. The US seemed to win the cold war, though the resurgence of no-longer-even-claiming-to-be-socialist Russia on the international scene in the last few years makes it clear that that victory might have been only politically solid, leaving a potential military opponent standing.

Surely the US is hungry for a clear military success. Let's hope that proves elusive in Syria... or Iran.

Anti-Americana: Anti-Imperialist BFFs?

Back in the early 1960s the People's Republic of China seemed firmly committed to the anti-imperialist camp. In 1963 it issued a series of stamps "in solidarity with revolutionary socialist Cuba." This value of the series is entitled, "Support Cuban People's Patriotic and Just Struggle Against U.S Imperialism." It shows a solidarity with Cuba rally being held in Beijing. Other values in the series showed a rally in Habana, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and some stellar cartoonish images of Cuban revolutionaries.

As the Sino-Soviet split worsened, Cuba and China grew apart. By the late 1970s, Cuba and China wound up on different sides of a number of proxy conflicts. In Angola, for instance, Cuban troops backing the MPLA government fought an extended civil war with the forces of the rival UNITA faction, armed by China, Apartheid South Africa and the American CIA. The moral of that story? Realpolitik is never good for revolutions.

Anyway, remembering this stamp is a good way to mark today's date, July 26, the date of the failed 1953 revolutionary attack on the Moncada Barracks in Cuba, and the namesake of the revolutionary movement that would go on to kick out the Batista dictatorship and its U.S. sponsors in 1959. The Movimiento 26 de Julio had a beautiful black and red banner that served as an inspiration for later revolutionaries in Chile (the MIR) and Nicaragua (the FSLN).

While we're at it, here's an LP from China in the 1960s having something to do with a celebration of the Cuban July 26th Movement. I don't read enough Chinese to get more than that, but that's pretty clearly an illustration meant to evoke Fidel. They don't make record covers like that anymore!

Happy May Day, 2013!

In honor of May Day, known as International Workers Day, here are the words of Jiang Qing, last wife of Mao Zedong, at her trial as a member of the "gang of four" in 1980: "Making revolution is no crime! It's right to rebel!"

This is appropriate for us in the U.S.A. where, in full Orwellian fashion, even though this country is the birthplace of May Day via the Haymarket martyrs, it's referred to as "Law Day," or even more grotesquely, "Loyalty Day."

Fuck loyalty. Fuck the law. Celebrate revolution!

In the words of two great revolutionaries, "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." - Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Anti-Americana: The People's War

"Long Live the Victory of the People's War!" shouts this classic poster from Cultural Revolution-era China. While the concept of "People's War" is a central Maoist tenet formulated during the guerrilla war against the Japanese occupation of China in the Second World War, the slogan itself is vintage Lin Piao, the Cultural Revolution architect and presumptive heir to Mao who was disgraced (and killed) in 1971. You can read his 1967 appreciation of the Maoist theory here. Back in the day that essay titled with this slogan was bound in a little red vinyl booklet just like the more famous Quotations from Chairman Mao, and studied and toted around as a talisman of revolutionary fervor by radical students around the world. I have a copy myself...that I bought second hand. For many Marxists, the theory of people's war was a point of divergence since it suggested a path of ex-urban military confrontation rather than an urban, political class struggle.

Obviously the graphic focus of this poster is updated from the 1940s to the 1960s worldwide struggle against (American) imperialism. The central motif shows Vietnamese, Cuban and African fighters resolutely facing forward while the flames of revolution redden the sky in the background. You know me, I'm against war. But a little more of that righteous revolutionary fervor might do the world some good.

(I'm so proud of myself... I translated this myself by guessing into google translate: 人民战争的胜利万岁! Ah, modern technology. Anyway, I haven't been posting many of these lately, but this is one of many many classic anti-imperialist propaganda art images I've featured here. Click here to see those in the Cahokian's Anti-Americana archive.)

Anti-American Art: Down Here on the Ground

Here's a vintage-1966 Chinese solidarity poster supporting the Vietnamese people fighting off American attack. Notice the GI helments danging fom the guy's rifle toward the back. Perversely this reminds me a little of that old joke "What do they call Chinese food in China? .... Food!" because in Vietnam, of course, they call it not "The Vietnam War," but "The American War." All those lives wasted, all the destruction, all the bombing and burning and killing, all in the end for, well, nothing. The poster says something about the Vietnamese people winning because they are stronger; and indeed defending your own country (for real, unlike the video game I wrote about yesterday) is a position of strength. Which is worth remembering as the U.S. plays great-power-games in the Middle East, maybe (or maybe not!) intervening on "behalf" of the Libyan rebels or supporting the King of Bahrain (just joined by tanks from Saudi Arabia) against an uprising by the Bahraini people. Let's not even discuss Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is part of an ongoing series of posts on Anti-American propaganda images from around the world. For past entries click here.

Anti-American Art: This Is My Rifle, This Is My... Shell

"The Vietnamese People Must Win!" reads this oddly blocky 1960s Chinese poster. A Vietnamese soldier and a militiawoman gaze loftily into the distance as American planes fall from the reddened sky in the background. But it's hard to remove one's gaze from the remarkably phallic artillery shell the soldier holds with his chunky hand. His companion has her own weapon but his is clearly the most powerful.

The lip service Cultural Revolution-era Chinese propaganda paid to gender equity is commendable. Women were shown to be the equals of men quite matter of factly in posters like this one. It's interesting that since downfall of Mao's widow Jiang Qing shortly after the Chairman's death, the Chinese Communist Party seems, at least to the casual outside observer, completely male dominated. For all Madame Mao's vanities and excesses her role in the cultural aesthetic of classic Maoism was remarkably proto-feminist. I wonder what the political future of women is in capitalist road China.

Anti-American Art: Holiday Cruise Package Deal

"Come Alive, Leave Dead" reads another Vietnam-war era cartoon of uncertain origin, published in China. It's sardonically humorous like this previous entry in our series, and is essentially the nautical version of this one, as a ship going out labelled "U.S." is full of soldiers and war materiel, and the similarly labelled ship returning is full of coffins and wreaths.

The war was won not only because of the military brilliance of the Vietnamese and the righteousness of their cause, but because the draft meant that the American GIs were mostly not voluntary cannon fodder, and draft resistance and rebellion in the ranks of the military coupled with protests from draft-age young people were becoming real problems for the American aggressors. Can you believe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going for almost ten years and people are still signing up to join the military? Crazy. What's wrong with those people. One does suspect that if there was a draft the wars would have been over about five years ago.

Anti-American Art: Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot...

Here's a Cultural-Revolution-era Chinese poster showing a messenger, probably one of the Chinese "volunteers," bravely carrying a parcel through the battlelines, apparently defying a cowering crowd of wounded American GIs. Millions of Chinese turned the tide of the Korean war, rescuing the North from the American counteroffensive: it was de facto war between the new People's Republic of China and the U.S.A., and Korea was the battlefield. The Koreans and Chinese have been best buds ever since, even though their respective allegedly socialist ideologies have substantially diverged.

Or are they actually best buds? Among the speculations in the wake of the recent Wikileaks release of thousands of diplomatic cables are suggestions that elements of the Chinese government might be predisposed to allow the reunification of Korea under South Korean governance. I have to say I'm not sure I buy it. I don't think China feels responsibility for the DPRK regime: clearly the two countries do not share much actual political agreement, but that's not exactly the point. And while South Korea (and the U.S.) might be important trading partners for China's new world economic ambitions, I don't see China switching sides. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Chinese lost their lives in the Korean war.

More likely to me would be something akin to the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea in 1979 to kick out former ally Pol Pot. I could see the Chinese acting to replace Kim Jong Il's (or his son's) regime with one more docile.

Anti-American Art: Buddies

My limited knowledge of Chinese tells me that this Cultural Revolution era poster is exalting the friendship of the peoples of three nations against their common enemy. I'm not sure who the third friend to the Chinese & Vietnamese people is. I'm guessing Laos? Anyway who these inseparable buddies are not letting into their club is revealed in the lower right of the image: that's an American GI's helmet and the indistinct but identifiable wreckage of an American airplane in flames. These guys sure do look like they're fans at a sporting event instead of participants in a battle, but what the heck. Fortunately they don't let people take AK47's into the stands of ball games.

Anti-American Art: I Am The Manchurian Candidate

It's the armed peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America rising up against American imperialism again, in super-saturated colors and, well, some pretty imaginative "native dress." It's a Chinese cultural revolution poster from the 1960s, and I actually once owned this poster; I bought it as a young teen in the early 1970s, though my poster ended up ripped and ragged and didn't survive my youth.

We lived for a few years in Evanston, the first suburb just north of Chicago. The transition from Chicago to Evanston isn't really noticeable; the visual shift to suburb starts to happen part way through Evanston towards Skokie. It was not ranch houses and perfect lawns. Anyway the first actual house we lived in was right by Northwestern University, and in a row of shops nearby was the Peking Book House. It was a Chinese government propaganda outlet; I'm not sure how it operated since this was right before the post-Nixon normalization of relations and the lifting of the trade embargoes. In the days when any Chinese immigrant was presumed to be a refugee from Communism, Mr. Chen and his shop clearly bucked that trend. He had a huge selection of Chinese posters, pamphlets and books, plus Mao buttons and a whole rack of blue or green Mao jackets with matching caps. He had a wall of Little Red Books --the Quotations of Mao Zedong -- in shiny vinyl sleeves in dozens and dozens of languages. I imagine his intended audience was the very international student body of Northwestern and the associated student radical milieu (the Vietnam war was most definitely still on, remember). Though I don't actually recall seeing anyone else in his shop on my frequent visits. (Crazily a google search reveals that the shop and Mr. Chen are still around thirty-odd years later).

You may ask what kind of teenage boy spends his allowance on Mao buttons and revolutionary anti-American posters. Well, the kind who grows up to write a blog like this one! I bought 10-inch LP recordings of Revolutionary Peking Operas -- Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy now replaced by CDs is something I still enjoy listening to. I bought a couple little red books, and frankly the English version is mostly as indecipherable as the Lao version I used to own.

So put this idealized, racially questionable, boldly illustrated poster into the column of highly effective propaganda vehicles. Here I am some latter-day Manchurian candidate, reactivated by the hidden clues first exposed to my tender young brain.

But enough about me. Look at this poster....keep looking. Go ahead, click on it and see it larger. Pay attention to the sound of my voice.... See the pretty bright colors. See yourself in the poster... Feel the righteous wrath of the people around you... You are getting sleepy... you're drifting off into the poster. When I snap my fingers you will awaken and you will be resolutely determined to smash U.S. imperialism...

snap!

Anti-American Art: Surrounded

I don't know much about the source of this political cartoon; the caption is in Chinese but its sardonic humor and the scale of its illustration seem at odds with Chinese Cultural Revolution-era propaganda. I suspect it's a 1960s North Vietnamese illustration translated into Chinese and republished there. If I remember the translation correctly, the sentry at the American jungle outpost is taking instructions from headquarters to be on the lookout for Vietcong infiltrators and he informs them that it's too late, he's already surrounded. Looking pale and washed out compared to the National Liberation Front guerrillas who have captured him, the American and his outpost is made to seem dwarfed and out of place amidst the tropical locale. It's a clever and effective cartoon.

Anti-American Art: Beyond Thunderdome

Here's the cover of an early 1970s Chinese Cultural Revolution booklet calling for preventive measures against imperialist weapons of mass destruction: it urges preparation for chemical, biological and nuclear attack. The booklet itself contains all sorts of instructions for building bomb shelters and carrying on the struggle. While the title doesn't mention the U.S. by name, little doubt is left as to who might be pointing these WMDs at the People's Republic. While the central motif features the typical resolute trio of resistance, waving AK47s and the quotations of Chairman Mao aloft, the background is darkly hilarious. Like some kind of post-apocalyptic revolutionary tableaux the typically diverse crowd massing under the red flags is now clad in a combination of haz-mat suits and surgical masks. One wonders how they would operate their AKs with their toxin-proof mittens. China itself has had nuclear weapons since 1964.

Anti-American Art: BFF?

Here's a 1966 Chinese poster promoting solidarity with the Vietnamese resistance to the United States. A camouflaged guerrilla fighter gathers the weapons and helmets of American soldiers as his comrades in the background celebrate the downing of an American plane. There's an interesting, if pro-U.S., account of Chinese support for North Vietnam--which was massive--during the war over at Military History Online. Of course by the late 1970s Vietnam and China fought each other in a short but bloody border war as Vietnam dislodged Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia.

Anti-American Art: Machine Gun Sing-Along

Today is the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China; here's a Chinese poster from the bygone era of Chinese Anti-Americanism, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. While it doesn't mention the U.S. by name, this 1971 poster marking the centenary of the Communist anthem "The Internationale" displays the a particularly militant tableau of world revolutionaries united in defiance against imperialism. From the top there's a Vietnamese guerrilla, an armed Albanian peasant, an armed Chinese worker, and a traditionally-clad Korean woman with bayonet-mounted rifle slung over her back. The ranks of singing revolutionaries below them run from a Cambodian guerrilla and headband-wearing student rebel to keffiyah-clad Arab, to blonde European or American to my favorite, a sten-gun-carrying African guy in some sort of sporty striped tunic over a white polo shirt, a leopard-skin cap jauntily set atop his head.

When I was in the organized left, we actually used to sing this song all the time. Everybody sing along:

Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world's in birth!
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations:
We have been nought, we shall be all!

'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The international working class
Shall be the human race

Anti-American Art: Common Cause

This badge from early 1950s China displays the solidarity of the two young Communist nations the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Flags of the two countries wave behind a Chinese soldier bayonetting a little red blob labelled "America." The inscription (which sadly I can't read all of) also mentions America. The Chinese rescued North Korea in the Korean war, sending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of "volunteers" to push back the U.S. counterattack.

Political badges have long been de-rigueur in both countries: small metal pins with Chairman Mao's face on them first made their appearance in the late 1940s, and culminated with the ubiquitous metallic red Mao buttons of the Cultural Revolution. In North Korea, everybody wears small lapel pins with Kim Il Sung's or Kim Jong Il's portrait. Or else.

Anti-American Art: Giant of Industry

An interesting comparison to the North Korean "Take That" scenario is this cover of a 1958 edition of the Chinese satirical journal "Manhua." It shows a gargantuan Chinese worker, his medallioned chest, miner's lamp, and giant power drill evoking a soldier's pose and military garb, smirking down at a hook-nosed American soldier, whose tiny rifle and cringing posture is dwarfed by the Chinese giant of industry.

Speaking of economic miracles, the People's Republic of China recently became the world's second largest economy. I saw a fascinating chart recently that was sort of shocking to those of us in the West who think the world revolves around us: it showed that the Chinese economy has always been one of largest in the world. Kind of obvious, isn't it?

Anti-American Art: Armed and Extremely Dangerous

Here's more late-1960s Cultural Revolution-era clip art from the People's Republic of China. The caption is anti-American, and as usual it's the people of the world rising up against them. Unlike the people of the world united tableaus on many of these compositions, this one is strictly military, with armed Latin American, Vietnamese and African guerrillas under the leaderhip of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and a whole lot of red flags. The first guy in red to the right of the main quartet is the requisite armed Albanian in peasant vest and fez. It's worth noting that this is kind of a fantasy tableau: Chinese influence in world guerrilla movements was shortly to be subsumed by the Sino-Soviet split: in Africa, particularly, the Chinese-backed guerrilla factions like UNITA in Angola wound up on the same side as U.S. neo-colonialism fighting Soviet and Cuban-backed guerrilla factions in post-independence civil wars.

Anti-American Art: Childhood Lessons

"Paper tiger, paper tiger.
U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger.
We are not afraid of it.
Look! We crush it at one blow!"

Page from a Cultural Revolution-era children's book, I'm not sure if designed as an English-language export or to teach a certain kind of English to Chinese children (snagged from MFinChina's flickr). But man they are doing terrible things to that cat!

Anti-American Art: Chinese American Friendship Society (not)

Well this poster has an awful lot to say, and sad to say I can't read enough Chinese to report what it's specifically about. However the second sentence in the top line of text says something "Down with America"-ish. Look for Mei-Guo, "美国". Visually it's not hard to make a few guesses about this Cultural Revolution-era poster. He's dressed like a worker in overalls, he's got a bayonet-fixed rifle slung over his shoulder, a Mao button discreetly pinned to his jacket, and a banner saying something about American something. Judging from his expression it ain't pretty.

The relationship between the U.S. and People's Republic of China is quite a study in evolution. From war in the early 1950s through two decades of unbridled hostility, to Nixon's visit to the aging Mao in the early 1970s, and the repudiation of Maoism in the years after Mao's death in 1976, and the transformation of China into an economic powerhouse with a symbiotic relationship with the U.S. in the past two decades. It will be interesting to see, to say the least, how the tension between China's privatized industry, growing working-class militancy, socialist planned economy and one-party Communist rule will play out. Its economy seems to have weathered the recent international economic crisis better than the U.S. Everybody's getting along famously now. How long will that last?

New York City Chinatown, 1990

I found this plastic baggie on a sidewalk in New York's Chinatown in the early 1990s. It's one of my most prized possessions: so beautifully poignant. It's pretty much what you see, an inscribed photo of a Chinese immigrant couple, dressed for travel, and less than a dollar's worth of small change from Hong Kong and the PRC. The reverse inscription clearly begins with names, but I don't know what the words mean.