ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that Brixton commune is not intended to recuperate a patently deplorable case. It is a way of entering a discussion of a historiography where charges of criminality and emotions of horror and disgust are commonplace. The chapter argues that it is inadequate to narrate Western Maoism as simply a grand version of the "brainwashing" of which Comrade Bala was accused and found guilty. It describes three strains of scholarship on Maoism in the global 1960s that have emerged in the new millennium. The First is mea culpa Maoism, including the memory work of former radicals repenting their youthful fascination with Chinese communism. The second is multidirectional Maoism, referring to the crystalloid reception studies of what Maoism meant in diverse cultural and historical contexts in the 1960s and 1970s. The third is Third World Maoism, exploring the ways that activists of color in the Global North declared common cause with Chinese communism in a spirit of subaltern internationalism.