What we are seeing in the US very clearly, and to a very much lesser degree here in Australia, are elements of a Maoist cultural revolution, complete with antifa playing the role of the Red guard, a shock force that engaged in urban terrorism, to keep the masses in line. Here is material discussing how the present American revolution has many elements of China’s cultural revolution, and I would not be surprised if behind it all we will find communist China, backing it.
www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2020/6/18/comparison-chinas-cultural-revolution-versus-the-us-today
“The death of George Floyd, an African American, has sparked unrest and turmoil in the United States and around the world. The scale and the intensity of the riots have raised many eyebrows, as well as alarmed many Chinese who came from China and have personally experienced the Cultural Revolution there. Some of them ask: “Are we experiencing another Cultural Revolution or Cultural Revolution 2.0 in the U.S.?” Today, I’d like to talk about some of the similarities between the Cultural Revolution in China and what is currently happening in the U.S. and other countries.
1. Ideological Basis
"Smashing the old world" is the most important ideological basis of communism. The Communist Manifesto says, "The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” When the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, seized power in 1949, it had already "smashed" the previous "old world" and established the so-called "people's democratic dictatorship” and the "People's Republic of China". However, before the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong, the head of the CCP, felt that those were not enough and that it was necessary to continue to "smash" them. Thus, the CCP continued to "smash" its own systems, including the judicial, governmental & administrative, education, cultural and artistic systems, etc. After “smashing” all these systems, the Red Guards or the "revolutionary masses" took over. “Rebellion is justified", or “rebellion is wonderful”, became the loudest slogan, and also bestowed moral and ideological justification and legitimacy to all "smashing". The "rebellion" itself has become more important than why there had to be a "rebellion". Under such circumstances, the entire country was plunged into internal turmoil and chaos, and various so-called “verbal struggles” or “armed fightings” became the new social norm. Normal orders no longer existed. Everyone was eagerly "defending Chairman Mao", and they fought one another to death to defend “Chairman Mao”. In the course of ten years, China was flooded by blood. The death toll was somewhere between 7 to 20 million; the society and the entire economy was on the verge of total collapse. After the Cultural Revolution ended, even the CCP itself admitted that it was a huge national disaster and called it "Ten Years of Catastrophe.” During the current wave of protests in the U.S. and around the world, have we seen any similar ideological manifestations to that of "smashing the old world" and "rebellion is justified" during China’s Cultural Revolution? I don't want to draw any conclusions about this but would like to raise the question for everyone to think about.
2. The Inner Sense of Justice and Fanaticism
After the Cultural Revolution, when Chinese people began to reflect on the catastrophe, it was hard for them to believe that such madness could have happened. For example, to show his loyalty to Chairman Mao, a red guard pinned Mao's badge into his flesh, and when Chairman Mao waved his hand to millions of Red Guards at the Tiananmen Square, many Red Guards couldn’t help crying with emotion, as they were just too excited and honored. However difficult it is for us to understand those people now, at the time, those Red Guard youngsters would not have felt their own frenzy. Instead, their hearts and minds were filled with a tremendous inner sense of justice, as they believed that they were doing something particularly great and righteous. All kinds of craziness, when driven by an inner sense of righteousness, became noble. No one would feel or believe that they were crazy, or overly frenetic. I had always had problems understanding the inner madness of those Red Guards until I read the book "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" published by the Epoch Times in 2004. The book says that the Communist Party is not a normal political party, it is in fact a cult; while in another dimension, it is an evil specter, and this evil specter will dominate or manipulate people in the human world who identify with it to achieve its goals. Only when I read these points did I suddenly understand all the madness of the Red Guards and all those unbelievable phenomena during the Cultural Revolution. With the theory and the statement in the "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party", I felt that everything could be explained. As a matter of fact, at the very beginning of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx announced himself, “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.” Only I didn’t pay much attention before, nor had I tried to understand what lies behind the word “specter”. In 2018, the Epoch Times published another series of articles "How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World". The article begins by saying, “Though the communist regimes of Eastern Europe have disintegrated, the specter of communism has not disappeared. On the contrary, this evil specter is already ruling our world, and humanity must not harbor a mistaken sense of optimism.” If this is true, is the communist specter also behind what is happening today in the U.S. and some other countries around the world? I don't want to draw any conclusions here either. But I am raising this question for everyone to think about. And I do highly recommend that everyone have a read of "How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World" if you haven’t read it yet.
3. Glorifying Violence
From the very beginning, the Communist Party has glorified "violent revolution". In the context of the Communist Party’s doctrine, to overthrow the old world and strike the enemy with "violence" is natural, out of question, glorious, and a great choice. The “righteousness” of the 'goal' gives justification to the 'means' and 'methods'. To pursue the “noble” goals, to achieve communism, or "equality”, violence, especially violence against "enemies" becomes almost as "lofty" as the goals. During the Cultural Revolution, the "righteousness" of such violence exploded in China. It was everyday practice for students to beat up, or struggle against teachers and children against their parents. The use of guns, cannons, and other weapons was also everyday practice among the "rebels”. Sometimes even tanks and gunboats were brought into the fights among different groups of "rebels”, and for the same purpose of “defending our great leader Chairman Mao”. In the current protests, or riots, in the U.S. and other countries of the world, are we also legitimizing, justifying and glorifying violence? I am pretty much sure that I don’t need to give out an answer here, as you must already have one of your own.
4. The Nature and the Manifestation of the Movement
The essence of the Cultural Revolution is the destruction of traditional values, as well as the existing social system and order. The so-called "public security, procuratorial and court systems" established by the CCP itself were completely "smashed". The judicial system ceased to exist and was replaced by mass public denunciation sessions or events. The Red Guards were able to even drag out Liu Shaoqi, the Chairman of China at the time, and publicly denounced and humiliated him. There was no rule of law, not to mention human rights or human dignity. In the current protests in the U.S, we heard about “dismantling the police”, “defunding the police”, “end America”, “cancel culture”, etc.. Do they contain, or are they brewing, the same kind of "spirit" or substance, as that of China’s Cultural Revolution? I also invite you to answer this question yourself.
5. The Need for Power Struggle
As we all know, 35 million or more Chinese people starved to death as a result of the “Great Leap Forward” movement launched by Mao Zedong in the late 1950s to early 1960s. As a result, Mao was forced to admit his own mistakes in1962, and hand over his power to Liu Shaoqi, who was the number two person of the CCP at that time. After that, for Mao, in order to regain his power, "smashing" the power that had been handed over to Liu Shaoqi became a necessity. That was a very important reason why Mao started the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards were actually “rebelling” to meet the needs of their “Great Leader Chairman Mao”, and thus became the vanguard for helping Mao to regain his power. So the various atrocities of the Red Guards could be tolerated and were actually encouraged. Do we have similar needs in the U.S. now? I think everyone can work this out. To be frank, I am very, very, very, very reluctant to get involved in American politics. Several days ago, I said on Twitter that “I am politically ‘blind’ when it comes to exposing the evil of the CCP. CCP is the common enemy for everybody. People should join the force to fight the CCP. After that, the left and the right can fight each other.” However, I see what’s happening in the world now is beyond American politics, or politics anywhere. It’s a fight between the specter of Communism and the free world. It’s a fight for mankind to choose its future. The specter of Communism wants to destroy mankind; and mankind has to defeat it if we want to survive, and prosper.
That’s the reason why I chose to talk about this sensitive issue now.
6. “Social Class Category” and “Racial Identity”
After CCP established its power in 1949, everyone was given a “Social Class Category” according to how much money or land you owned before the CCP took power. If you belong to the working class, or “proletariat”, you are politically righteous, and you can be trusted, and given much power and privilege. If you belong to the exploiting class, you are doomed. Even your children and grandchildren cannot raise their heads and are looked down upon by everybody. Nobody from the working class would want to marry you, or your children, as you would pollute the pure blood of this working-class family, etc. In the US today, while we don’t put people into different “class” according to their wealth, we are also starting to category people based on their color, race, or what their ancestors did in the past in some areas, or to some extent. We no longer treat people or look at people as an individual based on his or her own merit. If you belong to the “wrong race”, it seems you carry some kind of “innate” sin, and you must pay for it. In China, during the Cultural Revolution, landlords’ children were inherently “son of bitch”, or “bastards”, or whatever bad names people wanted to call them, as they belonged to the shameful “landlord” class. If we are making special policies based on people’s race, on the surface, it seems we are protecting the so-called “vulnerable” people in society. But in reality, we are creating division and racism of another kind. And society will only be more divided. A divided society is always what the Communists like. If there is no division, the Communists will create one so that people can fight among themselves to benefit the Communist specter. People who have experienced the Cultural Revolution in China understand this particularly well.
7. “Destroy the Four Olds” and “Cancel Culture”
“Destroy the Four Olds” is a term that many Chinese people are very familiar with. It means destroying “Old Customs”, “Old Culture”, “Old Habits”, and “Old Ideas”. The campaign to destroy the Four Olds began in Beijing in 1966, shortly after the launch of the Cultural Revolution. It is hard to estimate how many books, paintings, cultural relics, temples, and other personal items were destroyed during this campaign. The only thing we know is, it took 5000 years for China to build up the most wonderful, most brilliant, and most profound culture that was once admired and respected by the entire world. But it took only 10 years to destroy almost all of it. Recently a Chinese friend of mine is doing a series of TV programs called “Walking out of cultural death”. For many intellectuals, Chinese culture has already died; and China has already died in the cultural sense. Are we doing the same thing to the culture of America and other countries? Yesterday I saw a friend showing his deep concern on Facebook about the news that some rioters in London are threatening to loot the British Museum, after the defacement of the statues of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. This friend also experienced China’s Cultural Revolution himself, just like me, that’s why the news of possible looting at the British Museum worried him so much. He clearly mentioned that what is happening today made him remember the Cultural Revolution in China.
8. Re-allocate Wealth
CCP’s leader Mao Zedong summarised Communist ideology into a very simple and easy to understand slogan: “Cracking down on the local tyrants and confiscating their lands.” He promised the peasants that they could own landlords' land, and sleep with landlords' young wives if they followed Mao to overthrow the “evil old society”. Taking away people’s property became the most righteous thing to do in Mao’s “revolution”, as those properties belonged to the evil “exploiting class.” Have we seen something similar here and now? Let’s watch a short clip. Below is a short speech made by someone at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, USA, on June 13. (Credit: @FromKalen)
“Okay. I want you to find, by the time you leave this autonomous zone, I want you to give $10 to one African American person from this autonomous zone. And if you find this difficult, if you find it's hard for you to give $10 to people of color, to black people especially, you have to think really critically about in the future, are you willing to actually give up power and land and capital when you have it? If you have a hard time giving out $10, you got to think about are you really down with this struggle?” If 10 dollars are not a big deal, there are other things for a group of people to “give up” and “donate” to another group of people, such as properties. A certain woman in the U.S. has already asked this, but I don’t want to mention her name here.
9. “Blank Paper Hero” and Ziad Ahmed
During China’s Cultural Revolution, there was a very famous “Blank Paper Hero”. His name was Zhang Tiesheng. As he did not know how to answer the questions when taking a national exam on physics and chemistry, he handed in a blank paper and wrote on the back “a letter to respected leaders”, saying that he came from a “politically clean family”, he loved his time in the countryside where he received “education” from the peasants, and that he was disgusted by bookworms, etc. His letter somehow fit the political needs of that time, when the so-called “Down to the Countryside'' movement was in its peak. All urban youth, high school graduates, were sent to the countryside to be “re-educated” and “reformed” by the peasants. Universities stopped admitting students via entrance examinations. Instead, they admitted worker students, peasant students, and soldier students through recommendations. Politically correct workers, peasants, and soldiers who obeyed the party could go to universities if their leaders recommended them. Therefore, Zhang Tiesheng, who didn’t know physics or chemistry, became a “Blank Paper Hero” for daring to challenge the conventional examination system. He later even won a seat in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in 1975. For 10 years, qualified students were refused by the universities, while politically correct workers, peasants, and soldiers became heroes for not having to master any knowledge. Have we seen similar things in the U.S? In 2017, high school senior Ziad Ahmed, was accepted to Stanford University after writing #BlackLivesMatter exactly 100 times in his application essay. There was a famous movie in China’s Cultural Revolution called “Breaking with Old Ideas”. In this movie, there was a famous scene in which the Communist Labour University was selecting students. When a professor questioned a young peasant’s qualification, as he only had one year’s high school education, the party secretary grabbed the hand of that peasant and declared that the “calluses on this hand are his qualification for the university!”
Let’s watch a short clip from this movie:
Professor: How many years did you go to school?
A Peasant candidate: I attended one year of high school.
Professor: Too little education.
Party Secretary: For years, the landlords and the bourgeoisie have been using education level to block our way. Can we be blamed for lack of education? No! The responsibility lies with the Kuomintang, the landlords, and the bourgeoisie! It’s been only 9 years since the liberation. if only people who have much education can attend the Communist University, we are effectively shutting out the children of workers and peasants.
Some say you have to be qualified to go to university. What are the qualifications? The capitalists have their capitalist qualifications, the proletarians have our own proletarian qualifications! The first qualification for admission to the Communist Labour University is the working people! The hard calluses on this hand are the qualification! Comrades of poor and middle-class peasants, do you think he is qualified? After the Cultural Revolution, this kind of movie once only made me laugh. Now, seeing what’s happening in the world, I don’t feel like laughing anymore. Instead, I am worrying that this could be our new reality. If we compare carefully, there are many other similarities, but I am afraid today I am running out of time. So, I’ll stop here. And I do hope that we don’t repeat the mistakes and tragedies of the Cultural Revolution of China.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyR2P9wb9yg
There are chilling parallels between cultural revolution and present-day West. Indeed, political correctness very much seems to come from Chairman Mao’s essay of where correct ideas come from. Basically, from his class of intellectuals.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_01.htm