The Dalai Lama Is a Marxist and He Wants to Join the Green Party

Ellen Scordato reports:

Yes, at the Dalai Lama's press conference at the start of his four-day visit to New York City, where he's appearing at Radio City Music Hall, that's what he said, and I, along with dozens of other journalists, heard it loud and clear in the small black-curtained press room in the basement...

The Dalai Lama talked about how, when he was a young man in 1954, he admired the Chinese Communists, for their concern for working people, and he wanted to join the Party until the purge of intellectuals following the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1957 destroyed dissent. He talked about capitalism, democracy, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. He said his friends told him to lay low on the "I'm a Marxist" talk...

He was quite energized about ecology; he said humanity seemed to be growing up. And he noted, "Oh, you don't have a Green Party here [actually, the USA does], but if you did, maybe I would join the Green Party!" And he actually threw back his head and laughed quite hard.