Paper tiger
A paper tiger is understood to be a powerful or influential person, an organization or documents that, on closer inspection, actually have no meaning or power or make themselves incapable of action, which, however, can only be recognized after a long period of observation .
In politics , authorities or international organizations are often referred to as paper tigers that no longer achieve results due to bureaucraticism , but merely pretend to want to achieve a result. Furthermore, z. For example, technical objects are referred to as paper tigers which, in the literal sense of the word “on paper”, have a performance that they cannot actually do for various reasons.
This term was coined by Mao Zedong , the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party . In the book of Words by Chairman Mao Tsetung , the paper tiger is mentioned as follows: "Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers." (一切 反动派 都是 纸老虎. Yīqiè fǎndòngpài doū shì zhǐ lǎohǔ.)
“Just as there is nothing in the world that does not have a dual nature (that is the law of the unity of opposites), so imperialism and all reactionaries have a dual nature: they are real tigers and at the same time paper tigers. (...) On the one hand, they are real tigers that eat people, destroy millions and millions of human lives. The struggle of the people is through a time full of difficulties and hardships, its path full of twists and turns. It took the Chinese people more than a hundred years to liquidate the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism in China, and tens of millions of people lost their lives before victory in 1949 was achieved. You see, weren't they living tigers, iron-hard tigers, real tigers? In the end, however, they have turned into paper tigers, into dead tigers, into buttery tigers. These are historical facts. Hasn't one seen and heard all this? Truly a thousand times and a thousand times! In thousands and tens of thousands of cases! Thus, from a long perspective, from a strategic point of view, one has to consider imperialism and all reactionaries for what they really are: as paper tigers. We have to base our strategic thinking on this. On the other hand, they are in turn living, iron-hard, real tigers that can eat people. We have to base our tactical thinking on this. "
Varia
- Paper Tiger Archive & Library of Social Movements Berlin
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cay Rademacher : Mao's end - death of the red emperor . ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: GEO Epoch No. 51 - 10/11, The China of Mao Zedong , p. 134
- ↑ Speech at the meeting of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee in Wutschang (December 1, 1958) quoted in the note on “Conversation with the American correspondent Anna Louise Strong”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. IV quoted from: Words of Chairman Mao Tse-tung
- ↑ http://www.archivtiger.de/wir.html
