>>17903000
Marx.

>>17903056
Hitler's mentality was more that of an artist, but I don't think he came up with anything new. He was good at combining pre-existing ideas in German society (like Victorian-era racist and imperial ideologies) and combining them in a way that simultaneously appealed to land owners, industrialists, and military men who were at odds with each other.

>>17903235
I'd put Mao ahead of Stalin in intelligence. Stalin is overrated and he was very one-sided in his thinking.

>>17903265
I find him to be the most fascinating of the communist leaders. He had an interesting way of thinking. It's like everything turns into its opposite. He was writing letters to his wife in the mid-60s that communism (or I guess, the left wing of them, within their own context) was likely going to fail, and that the party's right would come into power in the future, and then he launched the Cultural Revolution anyways. He'd write that he was probably going to fall and be shattered into pieces (metaphorically, like someone bringing down a statue), because he had been built up into such a big figure. (The bigger the rise, the harder the fall.) But that something which turns into its opposite will one day turn into its opposite.

He also had this Buddhist-like idea that everything will be destroyed but something more advanced will replace it. That also went for Marxism. Humanity. Basically everything.

>>17903265
Chinese like theory. Also the interest in Schmitt came about when China was opening up and exploring liberalism a bit and some scholars were interested in learning about liberalism, and Schmitt's work largely concerns liberal systems.