The most important thing needs to be said first. I am not well read on Maoist theory and history apart from On Contradiction by Mao (which is not really Maoist). So whatever I say, you may as well completely disregard it. It won’t any difference.

As everyone here probably knows Chairman Gonzalo died on 11/9/2021. On Reddit at least not many people are mourning. /r/GenZedong’s pretty elated about it. I personally don’t know enough to take a stance.

/r/communism mods are pretty protective of Guzman’s legacy. The truth is that every communist figure is heavily slandered in mainstream capitalist canon. Guzman is pretty unique in that he has a bad reputation among communists as well.

I have been trying to read/watch/listen about the Sendero Luminoso and there is definitely a lot of questionable aspects to them. One thing I found out about is the massacres they have conducted. The victims here are usually indigenous peasants. An example is the Lucanamarca massacre, which the party has confirmed was a directive from it’s central leadership.

The thing that makes it the most confusing is that the accusations against the Shining Path are superficially similar to PragerU/Victims of Communism-tier slander against previous communist leaders. For example, it’s said that Chairman Gonzalo fostered a cult of personality, using armed indigenous peasants as cannon fodder. I am not yet sure if this was true or not, but going to Maoist blogs and websites and always seeing him being praised as the greatest MLM thinker alive does not instill much confidence. This is just a shallow comment though. For something more substantial I will have to read a bit more.

Back to the topic, the mods of the subreddit don’t like what they call revisionism. But the refutations that I see are not very convincing. The articles that are linked are not easy to read but I guess they are targeted towards someone who is more enlightened about the broader context.

The mods seem very knowledgeable so I expected more. Since revisionism is so prevalent, I expected to find some good refutations. But instead I just find a appreciation for furthering Marxist theory, waging a war that, while it did achieve significant victories, ended up failing. As communists, I expected appreciation of results and material gains but instead the realm of preference seems to be ideological dogmatism.

Overall it’s very confusing.