You Ain't Going to Make It with Anyone Anyhow

"The Maoist temptation was part radical chic, part revolutionary tourism, part orientalism. It drew upon a deep-seated discontent with the corruption of Western society as well as the illusion of a radiant utopian future. It was also heavily infused with bourgeois self-hatred. By placing the emphasis on culture—the Great Helmsman was after all a poet as well as a revolutionary—Maoism offered intellectuals in Paris (if not Beijing) the opportunity to act out the role of revolutionary vanguard. So, too, it appealed to those enamoured of the invigorating and moralising qualities of popular violence. Robespierre's ghost was much in evidence."

Jeremy Jennings in Standpoint reviews Richard Wolin's The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s.