‘CEO whisperer’ says US tycoons are privately anxious of Trump’s ‘Maoist’ leadership
8mon 25d ago by lemmy.world/u/vegeta in politics from www.independent.co.uk
The professional slumlord is in no way Maoist, hes kinda the antithesis of it.
Also they did the meme . . . again
Source article:
It's honestly a fascinating read. It's fundamentally a PR piece, but the details (especially if you read between the lines) provide some interesting insights about how American oligarchs want to be viewed.
Difficult to make any educated speculation without direct access to the event (this is a PR piece first and foremost), but I get the impression there is an attempt to hedge their bets and avoid a scenario (even if it is low probability at this point) where they will have to go down with the ship.
Nearly three-quarters of CEOs surveyed said they were confident that U.S. free-market capitalism can compete with China’s socialist market economy in the global AI contest, and they expressed a near-unanimous discontent as the Trump administration has veered away from the capitalist system.
This is a particularly funny quote. America is not a free market model and China does not have a socialist market economy. Both are state capitalist countries with China being more centralised via the CCP and America allowing a measure decentralisation for oligarchs.
I get the impression there is an attempt to hedge their bets and avoid a scenario (even if it is low probability at this point) where they will have to go down with the ship.
There is precedent for that. The industrialists of the Famous Country in the 1930s had the same qualms about the Famous Leader and his Famous Party. But they liked the promise to rein in the Socialists and trade unions.
Spoiler: it didn't end well for them
For the industrialists? It didnt end at all. They kept all their profits from the war and holocaust machinery and then went on their merry way to fund their next venture.
compete (...) in the global AI contest
Depending on the metric they may be right. The free market model may be able to outcompete in producing useless garbage.
Outside of AI? I think there's hardly any contest remaining.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Every corporation should fear their workers
The solution is of course to suck his dick even harder.
We allowed greed above all to be the fundamental basis of our economic system. Obviously, the most immoral of all criminals, sociopaths, and psychopaths prospered.
Now, most of our business and political leadership lack any virtues whatsoever. Everything and everyone can be sacrificed, as long as it's for profit.
US "preacher":
Ok I can see a comparison to the cultural revolution, especially with the attacks against academics. But the landlord president is most certainly not a maoist
He's definitely not ideologically a maoist (partially because he has no ideology beyond power and narcissism), but personality wise he shares a tendency to reject expertise, believe he knows best, and cause disasters out of stubborn narcissistic stupidity.
Although his death count is still 1/50 of that of Mao.
I'm not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?
Maoism is more than just working class attacks on academia and culture. In fact that element of Maoism is borrowed from folks like Mussolini. Maoism also involves the regime being ostensibly socialist, includes long term planning, and largely revolves around rapid industrialization.
Maoism was a top-down industrial revolution at gunpoint, carried out by someone who had no idea what industrialization actually was. So the authoritarianism, the brutality and the ignorance are all characteristics shared by Trump. The only difference is the lip service to socialism.
So.
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Socialism 2. Long term planning 3. Rapid industrialization
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Maoism is a way to move towards socialism, it is not however socialism it just contains aspects of it like many forms of government. The us also has socialist policies and thus socialist aspects.
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The lie the admin is pushing is long term planning, they aren't doing it but they're certainly lying about doing it.
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"Bring back the factories" is a literal cry for rapid industrialization.
So I ask again how are they effectively different. They may sell it to you in a different package but the contents are essentially the same and I'd argue the result would be largely the same.
You're absolutely right. Any country that makes long term plans, seeks to develop it's industrial base, and "has socialist aspects" (which I assume mean, "the government does stuff") is Maoist.
Emperor Meiji was a Maoist.
This is a very reasonable and coherent worldview. You've definitely read plenty of theory to know that one of the core tenets of Maoism is "making plans."
I didn't define it boss, read the comment then get rude of that's your prerogative but at the very least keep up with the conversation.
You wrote down words, which is something Mao did too. Are you doing Maoism?
So you're going to be rude instead of making a point?
I didn't define anything dipshit the other person did and I responded.
I asked how they were different not the same, you should read the comment chain rather then be rude for no fucking reason.
So you’re going to be rude instead of making a point?
I am making the point. The point is that you can't just take a handful of things Mao did, that tons of other people have also done, and say that anyone who does those things is a "Maoist." Whether it's "making a plan to promote industrialization with government involvement" or "writing words."
Virtually every country that went through a period of industrialization would be "Maoist" by this standard.
I didn’t define anything dipshit
Yeah and that's part of the problem. Because you have no understanding of what the label you're using actually means.
I asked how they were different not the same
The onus is on you to demonstrate how they're similar. It's like if someone said, "In what way is a raven different from a writing desk?" They're so different that it's virtually impossible to convince of any line of thought that would see them as similar.
Yeah that's why I didn't do that, keep up.
Ok so we're agreed then that Trump isn't a Maoist.
That was never something I said or implied you boisterous dolt, read the comment chain then get rude if that's your prerogative.
So when you said, "I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?" you weren't implying that Trump is a Maoist?
Yeah and we've gotten down to the fact the only functional difference is stretching towards socialism. So in practice they aren't functionally different a farmer losing their farm is generally unconcerned about what form of government did it in the long run.
Lol no we haven't. We have not even begun a serious discussion about it.
To establish that they are at all similar, you need to establish the similarities between Trump's actions and Maoism, beyond, "They both made plans to industrialize" which is true of countless countries around the world that had nothing to do with Maoism. As I said, by your standard, Emperor Meiji would be a Maoist, which is absurd.
Since you have not, and refuse to do this, then obviously you have no real basis for making that claim. They are so different that it's utterly bizarre that anyone would ever compare the two.
On the one hand, someone who came to power via a revolution in a poor and undeveloped country with the support of landless agricultural workers who then redistributed land from the landlords to the peasants and then moved to develop the economy. On the other hand, a billionaire landlord who came to power in a rich developed country through a bourgeois election with the support of the wealthy who has, rather than giving poor agricultural workers their own farms, has been deporting them en masse to foreign prisons.
They are opposites in virtually every respect and the only similarities you've found are entirely superficial or are true of virtually everyone. This comparison is baseless, ignorant nonsense, and anyone making it has zero understanding of anything.
We have, you injected yourself into a conversation you clearly don't understand nor does it seem that you care to.
No, all I have to ask is how in practice they are functioning differently. We do not in fact need to approach this is the dumbest most time consuming way.
I haven't refused anything, I will say if you had any social skills and didn't immediately get preachy and rude you'd probably get a lot farther off discussion was your actual intent which clearly it is not.
Get out your feelings, keep up with the conversation and moreover drop the preachy rude bullshit.
Forgive me for expecting an extremely basic level of political literacy.
No, all I have to ask is how in practice they are functioning differently.
How is a penguin different from Neptune? Clearly the assumption should be that they're the same until proven otherwise. This is how conversations work.
I expected some amount of reading comprehension from you so I guess we both got let down huh?
You still missed the key word ie. In practice.
You're either a troll or a legitimate fucking moron either way you really aught to take the l and go awa. At the very least calm down enough that you bother to read and absorb anything you've read because at this point you clearly aren't.
I expected some amount of reading comprehension
And you haven't shown anything that I've actually failed to comprehend.
You still missed the key word ie. In practice.
That doesn't change anything. Unless Trump has redistributed land to the poor while I wasn't looking?
You’re either a troll or a legitimate fucking moron
Says the person who just claimed that Trump is a Maoist on the basis that Maoism is when you industrialize. I genuinely hope you're a troll because otherwise, Jesus Christ.
Except the times I did, that's the reason comprehension issue I'm talking about. Good job pointing it out I guess?
It does. He doesn't need to to prove my point.
Point to one time I said turbo trump was a maoist you absolute buffoon.
Point to one time I said turbo trump was a maoist you absolute buffoon.
100% trolling, gotcha.
Yes, your inability to quote a single instance of the things you claim is proof I'm trolling. Great logic there dumbass.
So when you said, “I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?” you weren’t implying that Trump is a Maoist?
I literally already did, before you even asked. Apparently you don't have the reading comprehension and need to reread the thread.
Or rather, you can read and do know that you're wrong and are just trolling.
Is that what that sentence says or are you reading into it. To me plain English is plain English so a statement is a statement and a question is a question. I haven't actually put forth my opinion at all.
You haven't quoted me a single time genius.
Can you even find your own insult or are you just going to "I'm rubber you're glue" through this inane conversation?
So when you said, “I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?”
You haven’t quoted me a single time genius.
Troll gonna troll.
You're pathetic.
Where does it say trump is a maoist you fuckin buffoon.
Where does it say trump is a maoist you fuckin buffoon.
You said, "you haven't quoted me once." I have, in fact, quoted you, so that's blatantly false.
So when you said, “I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?” you weren’t implying that Trump is a Maoist?
Obviously, this whole time you've been arguing that position, and even when I directly asked this, you refused to answer. You're still refusing to answer.
You're just playing games, and I have no interest in it. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't spend this whole conversation arguing something and then say, "Well, I never actually said it outright" when you can't defend it just to save face. It's pathetic and dishonest.
You haven't quoted me saying Trump is a maoist, context clues bud they're part of that reading comprehension thing you seem to have issues with.
Asking how they're are substantially different is not saying they're the same thing, you're being obtuse or you're just straight up fuckin dumb. In fact I'm implying there is no functional difference just an ideological one. I tend not to answer obvious questions that are answered simply by reading.
I'm not playing games, in fact you came to me with a misconception you've accepted but not apologized for. I never said or implied it at all. Read dragons into repair manuals if you want but I'm pretty sure you'd be missing the point.
I'm always impressed by the level of effort people will put into mental and rhetorical gymnastics to avoid admitting they don't know what the fuck they're talking about rather than putting half that effort into actually studying the thing they're talking about.
You wouldn't have to play these games if you just read a fucking book.
Agreed. Basic English "substantially similar" and "exactly the same" are two wildly different concepts and definitions. You missed the point and now you're bending over backwards to try to dig yourself out of the idiot hole you've dug for yourself.
No one is playing games and moreover if we were and you're this annoyed then maybe you should stop playing take your ball and go home like a big boy.
Live in ignorance then. Bye.
A saying you live by I'm quite sure.
I'm genuinely curious if you really believe that they were never arguing that Trump was a Maoist, as they're now suggesting. Like when you read where they said:
I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?
They may sell it to you in a different package but the contents are essentially the same and I’d argue the result would be largely the same.
So in practice they aren’t functionally different
Have I actually "misread" or "misinterpreted" that? What other interpretation exists?
They're just playing games and acting coy because they know they can't actually defend what they said. It's clear bad faith, and I tend to react with hostility towards that. They're just good enough at operating in bad faith to muddy the waters.
I realize now how uninterested I am in involving myself here and have deleted my comments. Good luck to both of you.
And you think you have the high ground to pass moral judgement on others, strangers in fact. So perhaps there are 3 that should reflect on their actions then huh?
Bro literally gutted the farmers and used their tax money to bail out the country that replaced the exports of said farmers. That's not very Mao of him.
You might want to look again at Mao's catastrophic agricultural policies that led to mass famine.
Best comparison to that is still the million Covid deaths, at least half of which were completely unnecessary had Trump not intentionally sabotaged the US's pandemic preparedness and then sabotages the Covid response with misinformation and withholding support.
But Trump did it out of malice, whereas I believe Mao at least thought he was doing something good. But both are narcissistic idiots.
But we'll see if Trump manages to cause a real famine. It could still happen.
Trump is a narcissist he legit thinks he's doing good so that can't be it.
He already is causing a famine. Beef takes two years and of we can't get enough domestically we go without for 2 years or we import it at exceedingly high markup because everyone knows we have no choice.
I didn't ask for how consistent he was I asked how effectively is it different.
As an aside you should read more on mao if you think he didn't willfully fuck his people over too.
Ah ok, you're just trolling. Lol
Sparrows
How so? It sounds more like you're deflecting.
Tycoons looked at a dude with a terrible business record who's first term in office was a dumpster fire, and was clearly suffering from dementia on top of not being very bright to begin with and said "Yes, we want more of that"
I think that only applies to a couple of them like Peter Thiel and Musk. For others, it's been a neutral or negative experience and bound to get worse.
That was the hope at least
They just were supporting both sides without paying attention.
What a bunch of greed oriented pussies! They got us into this mess and skulk away instead of helping to fix it.
They're trying EVERYTHING to avoid Nazi comparisons.
"Maoist"? lol
So, is Trump gonna order executions of landlords now?
Media really trying to get that red scare stuff to get people to dislike Trump. You got this and then there's Harris calling Trump a commie.
The problem being that for many people (including my own ex, apparently, both to my and my kid's utter shock), authoritarianism and communism/socialism are synonyms. For those folks who got fed the propaganda and had no real reason or desire to question it, that's the characterization that works the best to communicate the threat.
For reference, an actual conversation:
"Man, Trump is going to make the U.S. a full-blown communist country"
[Me and Kid: Mouth agape, silence for about 5 seconds]: "I'm sorry, WHAT?"
"Yeah, you know, communist, like Russia was with Stalin".
"...do you not know what communism is?"
"Yes, it's when there's an authoritarian dictator."
"No, that's authoritarianism."
"Oh. I've never heard of that before."
Yeah we know a large amount of the population has a middle school level intelligence and an elementary school ability to read. Doesn't mean we got a cater to morons instead of publicly educating them.
If smart people are so smart, why aren't they in charge?
Checkmate nerds!
True, but part of this is impact and speed. As an uneducated person, you can immediately grasp what's intended here and why it's bad. Takes longer, and probably time you guys in the U.S.* simply don't have, to better educate folks to come to the same ultimate conclusion in large enough numbers.
Your education systems are widely gutted, general level of political knowledge is poor, and you have folks speed running to old school authoritarianism with the support of a lot of dumb people - and those folks are very close to the finish line. You. Don't. Have. Time. I'm not saying I'm a fan but there's a practical component to this.
*Noted that this is an assumption and you may not live in the U.S.
Wow…that’s just wild.
It was a very weird conversation. Most of the time I didn't think about the education gap between myself and my ex, but that was one of (to be fair) maybe three times it was illustrated.
Credit where credit's due, she's pretty clever in most other respects, just not this stuff as much. And it's not like I'm an expert myself, I just know the difference here 'cause school.
School didn’t teach me much of anything in regards to history, and my post-secondary education was in regards to buildings, not politics. I’ve never really understood the “education” argument when so many educated people I know are honestly pretty dumb save for the highly specific thing they’re trained in, and even then you can tell they were good enough at school to pass and that that doesn’t necessarily mean they can do their jobs well. School, in my experience, can even be quite difficult if you have a bad professor and go outside the bounds(I had mostly good ones and two that pretty much no student, or even some other professors, has ever truly liked but who unfortunately ran the program).
For me it’s about curiosity, mostly. I have plenty of gaps in my own knowledge but I try to actually learn stuff as I go.
These are very fair criticisms, and curiosity is key. It's more about the opportunities to follow your curiosity/get exposed to ideas that may at first be outside of your interests. Formal education can facilitiate that well, but you're right that it's not the only way or the best way for everyone. Learning never stops.
If they make them into communists then they can beat them and continue doing capitalism instead of admitting that conservative ideologies are all backwards nonsense that have never been proven to work outside of interactions made up by people who are consistently wrong about everything.
Yeah, I'm writing a thesis right now about actual Maoism, and like... Really? That's the phrase they chose?
Words used to fucking mean something!
Well his policies are already responsible for hundreds of thousands of death, so close enough?
Aight, so Imma put on my grad school hat for a minute. 'Maoism' as a term, isn't stuff Mao did, or things that happened in China in that period. Heck, it doesn't really even come from Asia.
Maoism, or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, is an ideology which proclaims itself to be the next stage in the development of Marxism, and was codified, largely, by the Communist Party of Peru (Sendero Luminoso), and the network of parties that it a part of, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement.
It's called Maoism because the PCP and the RIM were grappling with the legacy of the Chinese revolution, the Sino-Soviet Split, the Reform and Opening Up under Deng Xiaoping, etc.
Think of it like this, Jesus Christ was not a Christian. Jesus was a Jew, responding to the context of first century Roman Judea. Other people came along later, had a bunch of ideas about what the legacy of Jesus was, and what came out of that was Christianity. But if you hopped in your time machine and asked Jesus if he was a Christian, he would not have known what that meant.
Similarly, Marx was not a Marxist, Lenin was not a Leninist, etc. Other people had a lot of ideas about the legacies of these people, their ideas, and the revolutionary movements that they were apart of, and what develops are these ideological lineages.
So Maoism asserts that, for example, the experiences of the Mass Line, and Cultural Revolution (or at least the idea that class struggle persists under Socialism) from the Chinese experience, are universal lessons, applicable anywhere. Rather than being specific to China.
There's more to it than that. But I really want to make it clear that Maoism is more than just "and then we kill all the sparrows and our grain harvest will collapse!"
So no, not close enough. We don't get to throw around words, if we claim to care about opposing fascism. Don't make me pull out the Sartre Quote.
We can, and should criticize the Trump admin, but we can do it in a way that doesn't boil down to "what are we, a bunch of Asians?!"
Yes I'm sure the business major guy was conscious of the finer points of 1950s Peruvian Marxist-Leninist factionalism when they called him that.
He isn't conscious of that because that guy is a fucking dipshit who should think before he opens his mouth.
If we care about opposing fascism, the we ought to use words responsibly.
If that happens he has my utmost support. I would buy 5 overpriced maga huts in a heartbeat
I know one he could start with.
Well yeah, sure, except they keep supporting him. So their concern means jack shit, quite obviously.
I'm fucking tired of these insider anonymites wringing their hands and nothing changing, just shut the fuck up or be fully transparent with this. Take a meaningful stand and stop ass-covering so you can say I was against this the whole time when everything collapses.
That's just it they publicly suck his dick and leak stuff about being against him so they cover their asses. So they can say I didn't support him. Couldn't these assholes say we are moving their headquarters out of America. But they won't cause America is the biggest market and line must go up.
How are Western oligarchs so good at seeing something bad happen and concluding this is not us, this is what people from there do!
No its you. Learn to introspect..
Americans: Americanly do something american
Famed Yale Business Guru: What are we, a bunch of Chinamen?
They paid for it. Do they have buyers remorse already? It'd be a good thing if the resulting shitstorm consumes them all.
If the top 25 CEOs came out and said "We are going on general strike until Trump is impeached"
This is probably 8 to 15 million American households.
No, its 25 americans.
CEO Whisperer sounds like the tagline of someone in linkedinlunatics@sh.itjust.works
It's a real thing, CEOs can get really anxious in their stalls at night, sometimes they will panic and cause the other CEOs to start panicking too. Someone has to go rub their legs and brush them out to calm them or they can hurt themselves.
any butthole would hurt too with that much bending over
Lots of skyscrapers with windows in America... would be a shame if someone fell out of one.
I initially read this as 'Moist' leadership, which sounds worse.
They fed this thing...
American here. You know how we have Florida Man? Maybe we, and the world, need to start calling these idiots America Man.
Oh, fascism rounding up people with different opinions? Must be America Man.
CEOs don’t like the leadership but continue to support them to spite their face? Must be America Man.
Mourning a YouTuber’s death who did not like LGBTQ and then came together and crashed an LGBTQ app? Must be American Man again.
No, at the end of the day, we can't cede America to the Fascists. The things America stands for are generally lies, but they don't have to be. We at least have to aspire to higher values, or we'll have no direction when this whole thing comes crashing down
Mao Sow Dumb.
"Moaist"... I mean he is autocratic and anti-intellectual, but... there seem to be a few other aspects missing in this connection.
I'm not sure Mao was anti-intellectual... The Great Leap Forward was meant to industrialize China in a short period of time, and to do that, he thought he needed to force a bunch of intellectuals to start farming and shit.
Pol Pot was 100% anti-intellectual
Yeah, for one thing, Mao was literate.
I mean, he is going hard on the way China runs its businesses.
As if anything he does makes any sense....