The (Silent) Cultural Revolution

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION was a socio-political movement that took place in The People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976.  Chairman Mao launched the movement to reassert his authority over the Chinese government and to preserve “pure” Communist Ideology by purging Capitalist and traditionalelements from Chinese society.

In order to accomplish this, Mao and his Red Guards felt they needed to get rid of Four Olds in order to move forward.  The Four Olds were:

• Old Customs 
• Old Culture 
• Old Ideas 
• Old Habits 

With our present political, social and cultural landscape changing at breakneck speed, now barely recognizableto those over the age of forty, it might be prudent to examine clues from history to garner where we are heading in such a hurry, and at what peril.

It is no secret that in the name of progress, values once cherished are now despised, that Old Customs, such as “traditional ” marriage are now anachronistic, that Old Culture based on Judeo-Christian values or patriotism are being rejected, that Old Ideas about gender are now malleable and that Old Habits, like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance are now viewed as coercive.

Additionally, the current political temperature reflects an infatuation with Socialism, as evidenced by the election of Barak Obama in 2008, who’s campaign posters revealed a not very subliminal message about the change he planned for America. Note the undeniable similarities with historic Socialist propoganda posters:

Currently,  Socialist-cum-Democrat Bernie Sanders is tickling the ears of a mostly young audience as he campaigns for this year’s Presidential Election.  Because as Lenin aptly stated,

“Give me one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world”.

One would not be remiss to notice the purging of Capitalist and traditional elements from our own society today.

Chairman Mao launched his Cultural Revolution in 1966 by shutting the schools down and mobilizing a massive youth movement known as the Red Guards who began their campaign of persecution and terror within China’s capital city, Beijing.  Teachers were systematically harassed, beaten and even killed by their former students- unthinkable in China, where education and teachers were once revered.

The movement quickly spread to Universities, involved harassment of China’s elderly and intellectual population, resulted in the turning in of family, friends and neighbors deemed “reactionary”, ultimately creating such widespread chaos that many Chinese cities reached the brink of anarchy by 1967.

According to Wikipedia, “Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Cultural and religious sites were ransacked.”

It has been estimated that between 1.5 to 3 million people were killed during the Cultural Revolution, and millions of others were imprisioned, tortured, had property seized or suffered humiliation that in some cases pushed desperate individuals to the point of suicide.

But how did it happen?

Simply put, Chairman Mao was the World’s Most Politically Correct Mass Murderer.

Mao was so obsessed with Political Correctness that in 1967 he wrote what became known as “The Little Red Book” which quickly became the ultimate authority for making certain everyone embraced the “correct” views. Every soldier was given a copy of Mao’s “Book of Quotations” and told to study it.

This fanatical obsession with Political Correctness, so virulent during the Cultural Revolution – is no less active today in politics, academia and culture.  As it amounted to the gradual long-term conditioning of the population during the Cultural Revolution, what conclusions ought we draw regarding its effects on the populace today?

In Mao’s China, propagandistic thought control was everywhere. From his “Little Red Book”, to the ubiquitous posters splayed in cities and towns, to propaganda blared over loudspeakers.

Though more subverted today, we are no less inundated with Orwellian “Newspeak” and are systematically coerced into group think by threat of humiliation if we do not ascribe to “acceptable” thoughts and points of view.  We risk loss of property or income as a penalty for adhering to moral or religious convictions,  and social or business ostracization if we do not “tow the line” with current “acceptable” beliefs regarding transgender bathroom use or gay marriage.

Slickly packed as Civil rights issues, these examples are but a few revealing the pressure to conform to Politically Correct thought and behavior.  In reality, by digging deeper we see a more nefarious agenda than “progess”.  What becomes clearer through the lens of history are old Totalitarian patterns re-emerging.

Such patterns seek to homogenize thought and behavior, threaten free speech by silencing “reactionaries” who disagree, attempt to degrade and revise history, “re-educate” those with “Old Ideas“, and use shame as a tool to disarm those who would dare resist the ever widening, regulated, governmental control of the population.

In a time of cheap talk, promises of Hope and Change with little to no follow through, romanticized Socialism, and the pervasive pressure of Political Correctness and Group Think –

Perhaps the most Revolutionary thing we can and must do now is to think for ourselves.  Aloud.

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

-Galatians 1:10