I've written a couple of posts about China's Cultural Revolution (1966-76), see "We Thought Mao Was Doing A Wonderful Thing", and Destroy The Four Olds, while, more recently, a number of people have pointed out similarities between those years in China and the recent upheavals in the United States by those seeking to impose the doctrines of the New Racism and Transgender Mania (1), driven by their belief in a conspiracy theory that whites and Jews have conspired to manipulate the structures and the very language of society to attain and maintain their supremacy; see, for instance, Bill Maher's remarks on his show a couple of weeks ago or in the tale of a Georgetown Law School professor regarding the purges at her school, as told in Fighting Back.
But while there are similarities between the U.S. today and the days of the Cultural Revolution, the more I think about it, I believe there are also some distinct differences. These are my initial thoughts on the subject.
To understand what those differences might be, we need to look back on the origins of the Cultural Revolution in China.
In the late 1930s, Mao Tse Tung emerged as the leading figure in the Chinese Communist Party and he maintained that role until the aftermath of the disastrous Great Leap Forward of 1958-62, which was both an economic failure and led to the deaths of tens of million. In the wake of that failure, his position was weakened. Though not sidelined, other party chieftains became more powerful.
In the early and mid-60s, Mao became disturbed as he believed the revolutionary momentum of the 40s and 50s was ebbing as a more "comfortable" class of cadres and bureaucrats emerged within the party. In Mao's view complete destruction of "the old" was necessary and only those committed to a permanent revolutionary society could bring about a new order. In achieving that goal, and regaining his full authority, Mao had an ace up his sleeve, because he remained a cult figure to the masses. The Communist Party's revolutionary educational course consisted of 22 sets of writings, of which Mao was the author of 18. To the Chinese people, he remained the face of the party, though his power base within it was diminished.
When unleashed in 1966, the Cultural Revolution was intended to undo both key institutions and those who controlled them (and, along the way, restore Mao to full authority).
And that is the difference with what we see in the United States since 2020 with the emergence of these anti-democratic theories gestated in the belly of academia, until they burst forth in the wake of George Floyd, just like the creature bursting out of John Hurt's chest in Alien.
The George Floyd riots, which left in the short run, thirty dead and two billion in property damage (mostly in businesses owned by people of color) and, longer term, resulted in upsurges in violent crime and homicides, mostly impacting minority communities, occurred predominantly in cities governed for decades by progressives; cities that turned out to be hotbeds of racism, filled with failing school systems.
Yet the response has been to strengthen the institutions in our society, whether governmental, academic, corporate, or NGO, whose failed policies led to this and, in fact, to double down. We see the academic and teachers union trends of debasing and disabling effective education actually accelerating, telling us that, for instance, the solution to a subset of black children not performing well, is not to figure out how best to help them improve, but rather should be cured by lowering the standards for everyone else. We see major cities and the homeless industrial complex doubling down on the same policies that have only increased homelessness and the descent into disorder. We see academia increasing the purges in the name of diversity while, in reality, creating an intellectual atmosphere of stultifying conformity.
There is a Cultural Revolution in the United States but one driven by the institutions and those in control, one that had slowly increased its power in the first two decades of this century and saw with Donald Trump and George Floyd the chance to aggressively consolidate its power and to finally crush any opposition. Just as in the 1920s and 1930s the communists labeled as fascists anyone opposed to them, today's ideologues needed to create an enemy and label that enemy as racist, fascist, and a threat to democracy, which is, in reality, what the proponents of the American Cultural Revolution stand for; they've revived racial essentialism, embrace the essence of fascism as defined by its original proponents - "everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state", and actively seek to suppress opposition within the institutions they control and by attempting to federalize elections under central control.
I witnessed the hysteria induced by Trump's election, with ravings about the dark night of fascism falling on America with brownshirts in the streets, all to mobilize "the resistance". Strangely, in the months between the election and inauguration what we saw instead were a spate of fake hate crimes and violent threats against Trump supporters, followed in the first few months of his administration by numerous instances of speech suppression on campuses and elsewhere against non-progressives (even if they didn't support Trump) but no suppression by the new administration, all capped by the shooting of Republicans at a baseball practice by a Bernie Bros who was addicted to watching MSNBC. That it was nonsense, didn't matter, the narrative was established and reinforced every day by the institutions.
Of course, Trump himself, being a repellent dolt, played right into it, reinforcing the narrative against him. Whether remarking on Russia and Putin, or making bizarre authoritarian leaning remarks and wisecracks, he thought he was "owning the libs" but instead it was an self-own. And the biggest monumental self-own was his behavior after the November 2020 election with stop the steal and his ratcheting up the rhetoric, all leading to January 6, and providing the perfect image for those who are the real oppressors to wave around in front of the public.
But here's the other strange thing. Trump had bizarre behavior, outside the norm, with his remarks and tweets often rebounding against him. But on substance, domestic and foreign policy, he was not outside those norms. In fact, on domestic policy I would argue that he was overall a weak and ineffective president, presenting no risk or threat to democracy. You might agree or disagree with his tax bill, which increased taxes on the wealthy by limiting the SALT deduction, but there was nothing abnormal or anti-democratic about it. As I've written before, Trump's behavior and rhetoric undercut the substance. Nonetheless, the drumbeat persisted and even became more heated during his administration.
And then we come to George Floyd. After several attempts to build false narratives around people like Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown (Omar Mateen was also false but that was a false gay, not black, narrative), with Floyd there was the perfect vehicle, that horrible 9 minute video portraying police action for which there was no excuse. It wasn't just the short term impact when progressive mayors pulled back the police and unleashed their militias, but the institutions jumping on those events with a grand purge of anyone not fully on board with the conspiracy theory of the New Racism.
The American Cultural Revolution is not about disabling bureaucrats and institutions; they'd already gained control. It is about purging the remaining opposition, an opposition that, while opposing the New Racists, lacks coordinated discipline and power. It is a fragmented opposition. It is not just on the right, but includes many centrists, and indeed a number of people who describe themselves as liberals, progressives, and even socialists, but who understand that the ideology behind the New Racism spells the end of democracy if it should succeed. All of us in opposition are branded as the enemy; as racists, fascists, and enemies of democracy. If this is "Revolution", it is revolution from above.
Another difference with China's Cultural Revolution is that the American version lacks a political icon. In China, Mao towered over everything and everyone, the actions of the Red Guards and others were done with his blessing, and his followers waved Mao's Little Red Book. There is no such political icon in America; Joe Biden and other Democrats just don't fit the bill (interestingly, for some of his supporters, Trump is such an icon) There are cultural icons here, but primarily based on identity - if you are black and have the right ideas you fit the bill, but nothing similar to Mao. That we are going through these times without such a political icon is an indication of the strength of the American movement within existing institutions. This is happening without direction from a Mao-like figure.
One final difference is that the destruction of the Four Olds in China was about completely obliterating the past. Though some of what we are seeing in America is applying strange ideas in new ways, the ideas behind all of it are a throwback, a weird mixture of pre-Enlightenment views on tolerance crossed with the bizarro-world resurrection of the pre- Civil War beliefs of John C Calhoun (who ever thought we'd see the King Cotton thesis revived!).
One aspect that Bill Maher didn't quite get and others have also failed, is that what we are seeing is not just a phenonomen of the far Left (indeed there a folks very much of the Left who strongly opposed all of this), but that it now the governing philosophy of our institutions and of the political party controlling the White House and Senate. It's not just a matter of curbing the excesses of a few.
If you examine the details behind the New Racism and Transgender Mania one realizes it is full of contradictions and incoherence and will eventually run aground in the conflicts between its groups of adherents as they argue over who is most oppressed and who gets to play the oppressor in their new world. The question is when will this occur and how much damage will they inflict on the rest of us in the process?
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(1) Regarding transgender issues, I am supportive of adults making informed decisions regarding transitions; historically a tiny percentage of the population. What I am referring to with the term "Mania" are those, who believe that men and women are different, that gender is not a choice, that mothers should not be referred to as "birthing persons", that object to the use of convoluted language to avoid the truth, that one should be able to ask why men should not be allowed in girls restrooms or women's prison, and whether it is good policy to allow minor children to undergo chemical transitions, and are denounced as transphobic and run the risk of losing their jobs or educational opportunities due to attacks from the maniacs. For more on the worst of this, the transitioning of children read this piece.
I used to think the New Racism and Transgender Mania were independent issues, but after delving into the literature, I realize their proponents believe they are linked. Specifically, they believe that the gender binary was invented by Europeans in the 17th and 18th century in order to maintain white supremacy. The same is believed regarding the nuclear family, supposedly also invented in the same time period in support of white supremacy. In their view, destroying traditional gender roles and the nuclear family are essential to reforming society and overturning white supremacy. It is why the platform of BLM included the abolition of the nuclear family.
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