Mao Zedong poses for a photograph in 1950
© US NATIONAL ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell (Bodley Head, £30)
Long after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, outbreaks of Maoism still bubble up in the most unlikely places. Two recent examples: in February at the University of California at Irvine, a speech by the climate-change writer Bill McKibben was repeatedly interrupted by loud cries of “Bullshit!” The abuse emanated from a handful of people wearing identical T-shirts and intense expressions—Maoist followers of Bob Avakian, founder of the US Revolutionary Communist Party, who wanted a revolution to fix the climate. In 2013, here in the UK, three women who had been held in slavery escaped from a house in Lambeth, south London. It was the residence of Aravindan Balakrishnan, the founder of the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism- Mao Zedong Thought. Balakrishnan was later convicted of rape, child cruelty, sexual assault and false imprisonment. Making world revolution didn’t make it on to the charge sheet.