When the most important driver in any interaction is “I win, you lose”, there are only two possible outcomes and there are literally no rules to govern what happens to achieve one of those two ends.
On May 16, 1966, Mao Zedong released what would come to be known as the May 16 Notification, and it was on that day that the Cultural Revolution began. To anyone with a grasp of history, an example of that “win/lose” concept comes from China’s version of the “glorious peoples revolution”.
Primary to Mao’s “revolution” was the use of “struggle sessions”. Struggle sessions were key in subduing and controlling a billion people spread across the vast landscape of China, most of which was rural and agrarian in Mao’s time.
Struggle sessions were a form of public humiliation and torture where the target of a struggle session was forced to admit various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim until they confessed. These were not designed to punish the guilty, they were used to shape public opinion and to humiliate, persecute, or execute political rivals and those deemed class enemies – and not only full view of their families, but often with a spouse or child performing as a witness for the state.
Mao warned the people of China that capitalists had snuck into the Communist party, writing, "Once conditions are ripe, they will seize power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie."
Bolstered by the idea that the government had exclusive ownership of the truth, Mao claimed the People’s Republic was constantly under attack by revisionist Communists, whose extremism included an embrace of capitalism. He said Chinese politics was being corrupted by insufficiently revolutionary individuals. The party could not trust anyone, even those within it. The only way forward was to find those traitorous individuals who did not adhere to Maoist Thought and marginalize, imprison, or exterminate them.
In what was the most predictable of predictable outcomes, what ensued was a bloody class struggle.
Mao recognized the need to extinguish any former ideas, no matter how well they worked, and he knew the more mature members of society he experiences and long members, so the only way to eradicate the old was to radicalize the young and the idealistic, inexperienced, energetic youth of China answered the clarion call. Almost immediately, the first Red Guards, Mao’s paramilitary shock troops, were formed.
In the early phase of the revolution mass violence spread over campuses, where teachers and other educators were abusively subjected to frequent struggle sessions, humiliated, and beaten by Red Guards (who were often their own students). Some of the first were students at Tsinghua University High School who set up massive poster displays that graphically and publicly accused their school’s administration of elitism and bourgeois tendencies.
Struggle sessions exist in America today, reasonably mirroring Mao’s practices. Compare Mao’s accusations of bourgeois “extremism” and disloyalty to the government and the nation to the words Democrats use to descript Republicans. Think about how anyone who says a plain truth (like “men can’t be women”) is immediately attacked and usually within twenty-four hours is forced to “apologize” for their wrong think. Think about how Democrats encircle Republicans and demand they repeat the approved words that the election was free and fair, and Biden is the legitimate president.
That’s why “election denial” is now a capital crime.
The extra energy behind the prosecution and persecution of both the J6 protesters and Donald Trump is not because they committed crimes worthy of that energy, it is because they embarrassed the Democrat regime in Congress. How dare they attack the Temple of Government? Who do they think they are, challenging the authority of the priesthood? How dare they violate the sanctity of our air waves? If they tell you the election was the most secure ever, they are bound by the power of those words to believe it – or at least profess they believe it.
Anything less is branded as “disinformation” and “conspiracy theory” and anyone not willing to bend the knee to the official truth is branded an “insurrectionist”, an “enemy of democracy”, and must be shamed and/or removed. Some Democrats are calling for people to be arrested, jailed, and sent to re-education camps for nothing other than holding “harmful” perspectives.
Scary stuff – for Democrats, too.
If you are not a Democrat, and not a sufficiently progressive Democrat, you are a counterrevolutionary and an enemy of the state and anyone who says the wrong word, writes the wrong paper or editorial, retweets the wrong tweet, holds the wrong opinions, or is determined to be a danger to progressive ideology or Democrat electability is persecuted by the crowd – and “wrong” is defined as anything any progressive Democrat doesn’t like.
As history bore witness to Mao’s bloody revolution, it will also record America’s own Cultural Revolution and condemn the modern Maoists who carried it out.
Perfect comparison.
"Struggle sessions" are already here in parts of corporate America for employees who don't submit to DEI or are insufficiently WOKE. "Conform or be gone"
It will get much worse, especially for Christians.
Dark days
An interesting, truth-bearing and well-written analogy.