By 2029 Trump Pence Fauci and Birx may surpass Mao Zedong

At least 45 million were starved, shot, tortured, and worked to death.

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world?

But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, hisGreat Leap Forwardpolicy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people—easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.

The Vast, Cruel, Deliberate Extinction of Millions

Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them.'

In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labour on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected.

A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine…

What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962.

It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction.

When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later.

The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool – punishment for digging up a potato.

When Westerners think of the great evils of world history, they rarely think of this one.

We make little effort to recall the Great Leap Forward.

Why We so Rarely Look Back on the Great Leap Forward.

What accounts for this neglect?

It is part of the general tendency to downplay the crimes of Communism.

FAILURE to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs.