OnlySubs: The Religious Appeal of Communism

OnlySubs with James Lindsay, Episode 137
Book Club Series, Episode 5

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Welcome back to another episode of my James Lindsay OnlySubs Book Club! I’m still reading Frank Dikotter’s “People’s Trilogy,” specifically in this case The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957. In this vignette I want to share with you from the book, near the end, Dikotter explains the appeal of Communism, at least to the Chinese in the 1950s, even though all around them was failure, starvation, and death. That appeal is, as you won’t be surprised to learn, ultimately religious in nature. They find meaning building a future they believe will be better. Join me to hear this sad but revealing passage.

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James Lindsay

An American-born author, mathematician, and professional troublemaker, Dr. James Lindsay has written six books spanning a range of subjects including religion, the philosophy of science and postmodern theory. He is a leading expert on Critical Race Theory, which leads him to reject it completely. He is the founder of New Discourses and currently promoting his new book "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody," which is currently being translated into more than fifteen languages.