CLUMSY COMMUNISM LOSING BADLY IN BEIJING: 1/8: To the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism by Sean McMeekin (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-World-Rise-Fall-Communism/dp/1541601963
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist ideas have proliferated across the globe.
In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes. Tracing Communism’s ascent from theory to practice, McMeekin ranges from Karl Marx’s writings to the rise and fall of the USSR under Stalin to Mao’s rise to power in China to the acceleration of Communist or Communist-inspired policies around the world in the twenty-first century. McMeekin argues, however, that despite the endurance of Communism, it remains deeply unpopular as a political form. Where it has arisen, it has always arisen by force.
Blending historical narrative with cutting-edge scholarship, To Overthrow the World revolutionizes our understanding of the evolution of Communism—an idea that seemingly cannot die.
1966 MAO
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:08.0 | Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:12.0 | This is CBS I on the World. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm John Batchelor. |
| 0:16.0 | It is the spring of 1989, Beijing. |
| 0:19.0 | Tiananmen Square, a gathering of students that grows over several weeks, |
| 0:24.6 | anticipating and then observing the visit of the leader of the Soviet Union, a man named Gorbachev, |
| 0:32.6 | making a call on the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, the CCP itself, led by a man named Deng Xiaoping. |
| 0:41.3 | That meeting is a world-scale event. |
| 0:44.3 | Events in Europe have been changing the direction of communism, Marxist-Leninism, |
| 0:51.3 | and the TV cameras are invited into Beijing during that period of conversation |
| 0:58.0 | in some fashion an alliance of two communist states that are changing their ways. |
| 1:04.0 | Deng Xiaoping is seen as a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev is seen as a reformer. |
| 1:10.0 | And gathering in the square are also TV reporters and radio reporters from around the world. |
| 1:15.6 | In other words, all attention. |
| 1:17.6 | And then is the death of a man named Yao Bang, Hu Yao Bang. |
| 1:22.6 | His death leads to outpouring of sympathy across the nation because he was seen as a reformer or a lighter hand of the brutality that the people of China have visited. |
| 1:35.3 | This event does not begin, but it ends, a new book, to overthrow the world, the, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. |
| 1:46.6 | I welcome Professor Sean McMeakin. |
| 1:49.4 | He's done an enormous amount of work putting this all together. |
| 1:54.0 | And because I've read pieces of this over the years in individual books, |
| 1:58.1 | it is a great insight to put it all together and to make you read it continuously. |
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