Posted on 11/13/2015 10:02:45 AM PST by Kaslin
Today's undergraduates probably know little, if anything, about the cataclysmic movement in China known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It began in 1966 before all of them (and even a great number of their professors) were born. This massive national crusade, instigated by Chairman Mao Zedong, was intended to create a pure communist man and woman, devoid of the constraints of materialism and personal ambition.
It started with the closing of the schools and the re-education of intellectuals and the bourgeoisie and ended up with years of incredible violence, taking millions of lives. The actual statistics are still a state secret, but a recent biography of Mao states "at least 3 million people died violent deaths and post-Mao leaders acknowledged that 100 million people, one-ninth of the entire population, suffered in one way or another.
I got a personal look at the remnants of the Cultural Revolution in 1979 when on an "activist’s" tour of China. The country was still extraordinarily impoverished and primitive. Propagandistic thought control was everywhere, broadcast on loudspeakers and splayed out on ubiquitous billboards urging the masses to "Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius" (Lin Biao was a former ally, then competitor, of Mao's who died in a mysterious plane crash) or "Smash the Gang of Four," one of whom was Mao's wife, then in disrepute. Whenever you asked a question of your interpreters, even a bland one, you got a rote response. Everyone was too timid to say anything the slightest bit controversial. Newspeak reigned. It was like living in Orwell's 1984 five years early.
So you will excuse me if, from the outset, when I heard how our college campuses were being overtaken with these new-fangled "trigger warnings" and "microagressions," perfect Maoist terminology for our computerized times, it immediately gave me the heebie-jeebies. Thought control, via political correctness, had come to America in the very spot it had begun in China the schools.
Recent events at the University of Missouri and Yale (where I attended graduate school), plus now other institutions, have only increased my apprehension. It's not at the level of the Cultural Revolution professors haven't been asked to wear dunce caps yet and no one (to my knowledge) has been killed but the portents are not reassuring.
Mob rule, not anything close to democracy, is at play. The so-called SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) seem to be functioning as early avatars of the infamous Red Guard, bullying and then threatening violence to anyone whose thoughts run outside what is deemed to be correct.
College professors and administrators quiver in their path. In the case of Mizzou, the president resigned before any concrete evidence of racism was made manifest. It still hasn't been days later. At dear old Yale, it's even more bizarre because there were no imputations of racism in the first place, only that there might have been or might be. Forget Bull Connor and the KKK, inappropriate Halloween costumes were the new danger. It was all about having a "safe space" so feelings wouldn't be hurt, as if the world could be perfect and the human species remade for an extraordinarily fragile generation of coddled students.
Some people ridicule these students as "snowflakes" unable to stand up to the slightest discomfiting words or images. But it is far worse than that. These so-called "snowflakes" are the potential shock troops of the aforementioned Red Guard, American style. There is a fine line between the extreme entitlement that demands to be warned before reading Ovid's Metamorphoses (as happened recently at Columbia) and a kind of narcissistic rage acting out against any presumed enemy in its path. How do you think the CR actually happened in China? Yes, the country was significantly poorer, but the psychological evolution was strikingly similar.
So think twice if you don't think it could happen here. Who would have thought the president of one of our great public universities would lose his job in part because someone said he saw a swastika written in feces on one of the bathroom walls, which now, suddenly, no one can find and might have been a photograph in the first place, if it ever existed?
As we say in Hollywood, it's "The Crucible Meets Animal Farm," the Salem witch trials meets four legs good, two legs bad. But the professors who teach those anti-fascist masterworks aren't doing anything to defend against it. Lobotomized by political correctness they attempt to be even-handed, in the way many did with Mao and Stalin. The same results await them.
And we citizens sit outside our great universities and watch the conflagration. It's only just begun.
Forward, Progress, Transformation, “Change”...
From the Washington Times, April 30, 2012:
New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism
[snip]
Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has [since deleted] an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)."
"The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains.
The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.
The Obama campaign released its new campaign slogan Monday in a 7-minute video. The title card has simply the word "Forward" with the "O" having the familiar Obama logo from 2008. It will be played at rallies this weekend that mark the Obama re-election campaign's official beginning. ..."
Read up on the Cultural Revolution.
Marxists / Maoists completely take over the culture—music, art, literature, media, academia—and use it as a propaganda weapon to totally control the minds of the “masses” while brutally suppressing all dissent/opposition.
I don’t even see that many hipsters any more. I see lots and lots of fat chicks.
Chickens coming home to roost?
“...intended to create a pure communist man and woman, devoid of the constraints of materialism and personal ambition.”
Hahahahaha - that’s a hot one. Just wait until they’re out of college and lining up ten deep for the latest Calvin Klein and drooling over Lexus brochures.
All this campus communism is the modern version of jamming telephone booths, flagpole sitting, and swallowing goldfish.
_______________________________________________________
"God D*** America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11"
--Rev Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's "Black Liberation"(Communist) pastor for 20+ years
"in jail, he [Van Jones] said, "I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists [Rodney King protests]. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'" Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. "I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/the-new-face-of-environmentalism/Content?oid=1079539&showFullText=true
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"The RCP [Revolutionary Communist Party] upheld the 1992 sometimes-violent unrest in Los Angeles and nationally as a 'rebellion' in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdicts. Then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates alleged that the RCP was involved in the 'riots'. Los Angeles has long been one of the RCP's larger and more active branches. William 'Mobile' Shaw was a local leader who recently passed and received public commendation from the party."
http://web.archive.org/web/20120119212258/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,_USA#Activities
“Mob rule, not anything close to democracy, is at play.”
Hmmm, isn’t democracy mob rule by definition?
The little proto Marxists are devouring their own.
Hippies in a new way.
Great observation. We always make the mistake of underestimating Liberals as being "stupid" "brainless" "weak" or whatever term fits.
On the surface, they are all of those things, but they are also absolutely vicious, organized, and motivated.
DO NOT underestimate them.
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