To be fair, Mao wouldn't be much a fan of many "Maoists" either. "Maoism" was invented after his death in a different country. Mao considered himself a Marxist-Leninist.

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 7 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair, in turn, this is how nearly every philosophy and ideology is. Lenin was not a Leninist, he was a Marxist. Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew.

It wasn't until people came along later and systematized these philosophies, extracting what lessons were universalizable from their namessake, were Leninism, or Maoism, or Christianity come into being.

Lenin himself was not the rupture from Marxism to ML, it was Socialists in the USSR grappling with his work, and the conditions the USSR found itself in, that gave birth to ML.

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

However in the case of Marxism, Leninism, Christianity, etc. the founders of that school of thought were that thinker's direct followers. They were part of the institutions and organizations that those thinkers belonged to, part of the same philosophical tradition. You can see the direct through-line of those who worked with Lenin to Leninists, Marxism-Leninism was created by those who knew him and were part of his project.

Whereas with Maoism it's not the direct followers of Mao or his institutions that gave rise to the Maoist tradition. Instead, his name and image was coopted by an unrelated party on the other side of the planet, one with basically no affiliation or right to claim it

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Paul, the person who arguably made Christianity a gentile movement, never knew Jesus.

But I see your point

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 1 points 12 hours ago

Well it's debatable if Jesus actually ever existed as a single real historical person. Christianity should more accurately be called Paulism.

[–] cornishon@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 day ago

Maoism a.k.a Gonzaloism with better marketing.