Bo Xilai's supporters take to blogs to show their support for former chief
New Leftist bloggers rally behind their fallen idol, saying he was toppled on trumped-up charges because fellow party leaders feared his influence
The downfall of former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai , who was famous across the nation for his promotion of "red culture" and communist ideology, has stirred cries of distress from his so-called New Leftist supporters.
Many of those supporters are mourning the fact that the party has once again failed to advance the leftist agenda advocated by the disgraced "princeling".
They even claimed that the "alleged crimes" committed by Bo, which were outlined in charges reported by state media on Friday, did not lead to his downfall, pointing instead to his failure to bring China back onto the political path set out by the late Mao Zedong .
"The charges that Xinhua reported are nothing; many other senior officials have done much worse," said Mao Jianhui , a diehard New Leftist and supporter of Bo in Nanjing , Jiangsu .
"We still support Bo, because he was a rare leader who dared to speak for the majority of the people and who thought about the livelihood of the poor. This [thinking] was passed down by Mao Zedong."
Mao Jianhui, a veteran who said he was not related to the former leader, said that being a New Leftist meant advocating the party's political agenda as seen during Mao Zedong's era.
They saw this as another way to narrow the wealth gap that resulted from the "capitalist thinking" of former leader Deng Xiaoping .