Hitler’s critique of liberalism followed the same pattern. He wrote in Mein Kampf that parliamentary democracy is “one of the most serious signs of decay in mankind” and declared that it is not “individual freedom which is a sign of a higher level of culture but the restriction of individual freedom,” if carried out by a racially pure organization. As early as 1929, Mao Zedong, who later became the dictator of the People’s Republic of China, also warned against what he called “ultra-democracy,” because “these ideas are utterly incompatible with the fighting tasks of the proletariat”—a
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