{"id":1697765,"date":"2022-10-17T08:04:58","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T12:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1697765"},"modified":"2022-10-17T08:05:20","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T12:05:20","slug":"how-maos-cultural-revolution-made-war-on-the-private-mind-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-maos-cultural-revolution-made-war-on-the-private-mind-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How Mao\u2019s Cultural Revolution Made War On The Private Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-maos-cultural-revolution-made-war-on-the-private-mind-2%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1697765&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><em>The following is an excerpt from the author\u2019s new book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1637582021\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ZVUNYQXZU21W&#038;keywords=weaponization+of+loneliness&#038;qid=1665570136&#038;qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjEwIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&#038;sprefix=weaponization+of+loneliness%2Caps%2C184&#038;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Terror of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer<\/a>.\u201d (Bombardier Books, Post Hill Press.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>When Jung Chang went on her first house raid as a member of Mao Zedong\u2019s Red Guard, she was not prepared to see a middle-aged, disheveled, half-naked woman kneeling in a dimly lit ransacked room, shrieking \u201cRed Guard masters! I do not have a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek! I swear I do not!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The victim\u2019s back was filled with bloody cuts from beating, and she banged her head so hard on the floor that blood oozed from her forehead. Jung further reported: \u201cWhen she lifted her bottom in a kowtow, murky patches were visible and the smell of excrement filled the air.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jung feebly asked the woman\u2019s torturer why they were using \u201cviolent struggle\u201d instead of the \u201cverbal struggle\u201d Chairman Mao was said to prescribe. Others in the room agreed with her, but the tormentor immediately shut them down as potential class enemies: \u201cMercy to the enemy is cruelty to the people! If you are afraid of blood, don\u2019t be Red Guards!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cstruggle session\u201d is a feature of totalitarianism widely practiced during Mao Zedong\u2019s Cultural Revolution in China (1966\u20131976.) It is a public exercise in ritual humiliation that serves to break down a person\u2019s sense of self. Struggle sessions are intended to enforce compliance in a person\u2019s thought processes as well as in speech and are therefore a weapon in the war against independent thought. They typically involve forced confessions, mob persecution, and violence. The Red Guards were Mao\u2019s shock troops to enforce purity of thought and rid society of class enemies.<\/p>\n<p>Mao was a founding member of the Chinese communist party in 1921. From then until the founding of the People\u2019s Republic of China in 1949, he played all the roles that led to his rise through the ranks: local party agitator, insurrection leader at the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927, founding member of the Red Army, and guerrilla fighter and strategist. By 1934, while he led the 5,600-mile \u201cLong March\u201d to escape and regroup after being outmaneuvered by Kuomintang forces during the Chinese Civil War, Mao was chosen to lead both the Party and the Red Army. His fortitude during the march became legendary.<\/p>\n<p>Like so many totalitarian leaders before and after him, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party diligently cultivated a cult of personality around him. During the 1930s, the world communist movement hailed Mao as a \u201cstandard bearer of the movement.\u201d Portraits of him were everywhere in China by his conquest in 1949. By the time he mobilized millions of young Red Guards in 1966, he was a virtual god.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the utopian vision of the Chinese Communist revolution can be best described as a utopia of \u201cpure Maoist thought.\u201d It culminated in the Little Red Book of Mao\u2019s quotations. His sayings were committed to memory throughout society the way Bible verses might be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We can reasonably ask if the cancel culture of the early 21st century is much different from Maoist struggle sessions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":1697770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1697765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1697765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1697770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1697765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1697765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1697765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}