Vox Sentences: Even the Chinese government thinks Mao worship is getting a little weird

The Cultural Revolution and the politics of memory and forgetting; the Senate passes the Saudi 9/11 bill; time for another Olympic doping scandal!

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

How shall the revolution be remembered?

CCCP, via Hong Kong Baptist University Library

• Tuesday is the 50th anniversary of Mao Zedong's approval of a memo instructing the Chinese Communist Party to resist the "representatives of the bourgeoisie" who'd infiltrated it. That memo inaugurated the 10-year period known as the Cultural Revolution.

  [The Economist]

• Some historians estimate that as many as 1.5 million people were killed during the Cultural Revolution, which was marked by a reign of terror at the hands of young "Red Guard" activists. (This review of a recent book by historian Frank Dikotter is a good primer.)

  [The Guardian / Nick Fraser]

• The Cultural Revolution killed considerably fewer people than China's Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the starvation of millions. But because those targeted were city dwellers and often intellectuals, it's been remembered with particular vividness — at least outside of China.

  [Longreads / Ji Xianlin]

• In China, it's more complicated. To mark the anniversary, the People's Daily posted an editorial declaring the Cultural Revolution a "complete mistake" — which is the line the Chinese Communist Party has taken consistently (though it tends to avoid blaming Mao for the revolution's excesses).

  [FT / Lucy Hornby]

• But the editorial was probably an attempt to curtail the enthusiasm for Mao and the Cultural Revolution inspired by a lavish celebration of the chairman earlier this month (and an attempt to address the criticism of said glorification).

  [Washington Post / Simon Denyer]

• Many Chinese have begun to use Mao as a way to attack the country's growing economic inequality. And they feel that while President Xi Jinping hasn't explicitly said he's on their side, he's privately sympathetic. Xi's own parents were targeted by the Cultural Revolution, but he's always looked up to Mao.

  [AP / Gerry Shih]

• The complicated politics of memory and forgetting are on full display if you read these recollections from New York Times readers about the Cultural Revolution — which I (Dara) highly recommend you do. Among other things, they're a reminder that some people really did benefit from the revolution — and that its victims are divided about whether and whom to forgive.

  [New York Times]

Severing immunity

Eric Drapper-White House/Getty

• The US Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would allow American citizens to sue foreign governments involved in acts of terrorism on US soil. In other words, it'd let the families of 9/11 victims sue Saudi Arabia.

  [Reuters]

• Saudi Arabia's government hasn't been conclusively linked to 9/11. But relevant documents are still classified, and those that have been quietly released over the past 18 months indicate a closer relationship than had previously been known.

  [The Guardian / Philip Shenon]

• President Obama has promised to veto the bill (although the fact that it passed the US Senate unanimously is a sign that it just might be able to override a veto).

  [The Hill / Jordain Carney]

• While the president could be accused of favoritism toward frenemy Saudi Arabia, there's a good legal argument here: Weakening the principle of sovereign immunity (which bans citizens from suing foreign governments) could open the door for other countries to make it easier to sue the US.

  [NYT / Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith]

• The concern isn't that there will be overt retaliation, but rather that any weakening of the norm of sovereign immunity might make, say, a Yemeni law allowing citizens to sue the US over drone strikes more appealing.

  [Vox / Jennifer Williams]

Drug running is not an Olympic sport!

Mario Tama/Getty Images

• The International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that 31 athletes could be banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics, after the IOC retested drug test samples from several previous Olympic games.

  [NPR / Laura Wagner]

• The retesting has happened in the wake of a confession from the director of Russia's anti-doping lab during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Grigory Rodchenkov. Rodchenkov admitted to widespread tampering with the drug tests — involving urine samples passed through walls and lab techs hiding in supply lockers. (Seriously, read the article.)

  [NYT / Rebecca R. Ruiz and Michael Schwirtz]

• Russia, drawing on its Strategic Chutzpah Reserve, responded to Rodchenkov's confession with a statement that began, "We have never claimed that we do not have doping problems," which is funny because it just hosted an Olympics.

  [Natalia Zhelanova via Twitter]

• The US attorney for the Eastern District of New York is reportedly investigating Russia's doping scandal, examining whether Russian officials or anyone else "benefited unfairly."

  [NYT / Rebecca R. Ruiz]

• But it's hardly as if Russia is the only offender here. The athletes facing potential bans hail from 12 countries. And only a few days ago did the IOC clarify that Kenya will be able to compete, even though its IOC membership is on probation because it's lost the accreditation of its only doping lab.

  [Deutsche Welle]

• Rio's own lab, meanwhile, lost its accreditation in 2013. And it came close earlier this year to losing it again.

  [Vice Sports / Donna Bowater]

• Then again, at an Olympic Games that could be a coming-out party for the Zika virus, doping is hardly the biggest public health problem going.

  [AP]

MISCELLANEOUS

The case against free will. [The Atlantic / Stephen Cave]

• Two experts in diplomatic negotiation evaluate the advice in The Art of the Deal. They are not impressed.

  [USA Today / Daniel Druckman and Paul Diehl]

• Today in "well, that sure sounds bad" news, the European Union is planning to use the German global development agency to provide training, equipment, and detention camps to the government of Sudan, which is currently led by a wanted war criminal.

  [Lee Crawfurd]

• Even people in South Sudan are scared of a Trump presidency.

  [War Is Boring / Nick Turse]

• We should all aspire to spend our Sundays like Stanley Turkel, 90, spends his Sundays.

  [NYT / Stanley Turkel]

VERBATIM

"Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the age of 68." [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

• "Most, if not all, of what you’ve read about Facebook’s Trending team in Gizmodo over the past few weeks has been mischaracterized or taken out of context. There is no political bias that I know of and we were never told to suppress conservative news."

  [The Guardian / Anonymous]

• "Screw the 'majestic' bison: Squirrels should be our national mammal."

  [Slate / Rachel Gross]

• "People know parks on land. They might not know parks in the water  —  but they will."

  [Jane Lubchenco to Pacific Standard / Bonnie Tsui]

• "There is no scandal burbling around In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, no tragedy or darkness, nothing lost or unconsummated, no imprisoned brooding genius. Jeff Mangum is not Kevin Shields or Brian Wilson or D’Angelo. A band recorded an album and called it a day. The poetic injustice is invented and prescribed by us. Seriously, how did we let it get this far?"

  [AV Club / Luke Winkie]

WATCH THIS

When running was for weirdos [YouTube / Phil Edwards]

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images