All that talk, then, of encouraging candid discussion turned out to have been a premeditated effort to “tempt the snake out if its den.” During the April forum, some had said what was really on their minds, and Mao now concluded that they were seeking power. Increasingly, he defined the threat posed by “rightists” in ominous terms: “The contradiction between bourgeois rightists and the people is an adversarial, irresolvable, live-or-die contradiction.” Insecurity and resentment drove Mao to dehumanize his critics in a grotesque fashion: “Now a whole bunch of fish have floated to the surface.
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