Is a Chinese Style Cultural Revolution Brewing in America?

Of Two Minds ^ | 04/10/2021 | Charles Hughes Smith

[SeekAndFind]

The lesson of China's Cultural Revolution in my view is that once the lid blows off, everything that was linear (predictable) goes non-linear (unpredictable).

There is a whiff of unease in the air as beneath the cheery veneer of free money for almost everyone, inequality and polarization are rapidly consuming what's left of common ground in America.

Though there are many systemic differences between China and the U.S., humans in every nation are all still running Wetware 1.0 and so it is instructive to consider what can be learned from China's Cultural Revolution 1966-1976.

China's Cultural Revolution was remarkably different from the Party's military-political victory of 1949. Where the political revolution was managed by the centralized hierarchy of the Communist Party (CCP), the Cultural Revolution quickly morphed from a movement launched by Mao into a decentralized mass movement against all elites, including Party and state elites which had been sacrosanct and untouchable.

The Cultural Revolution is not an approved topic in China today, and that alerts us to its importance.

Although ostensibly launched by Mao (as part of his 1966 purge of Party rivals), the Cultural Revolution very quickly devolved into a decentralized, semi-chaotic movement of Red Guards, students and other groups who shared ideas and programs but who acted quite independent of the Party's central leadership. (In systems language, semi-chaotic dynamics are emergent properties.)

If you examine Mao's statements that supposedly launched The Cultural Revolution, you'll find they're not much different from his many pronouncements in the 1950s and early 1960s, none of which sparked a violent national upheaval. The Cultural Revolution cannot be traced back to Mao's control or plans; rather, Mao served as the politically untouchable inspiration for whatever measures the local cadres deemed necessary in terms of advancing (or cleansing) the people's revolution.

The important point here is that the Cultural Revolution was not controlled by the political authorities, even as they maintained control of the Party and central government hierarchy in Beijing. But this was nothing more than an illusion of control: the forces of the Cultural Revolution had broken free of central command and control, even as the Red Guards expressed their loyalty to Mao and the principles of the Party as the politically approved cover for their rampage.

That's the irony of Cultural Revolutions: the authorities cannot claim it is a political counter-revolution because the cultural revolutionaries proclaim their loyalty to the ideals and principles the authorities claim to be upholding.

Cultural Revolutions in effect claim the higher ground, eschewing political influence for direct action in the name of furthering the ideals which the authorities have abandoned or betrayed.

Given the fragmentary nature of The Cultural Revolution, the history is equally fragmentary-- especially given the official reticence.

A recent academic book, Agents of Disorder: Inside China's Cultural Revolution, provides granular detail on the fragmented, decentralized, rapidly evolving dynamics of the movement:

"(The author) devoted decades to examining the local records of nearly all of China's 2,000-plus county-level jurisdictions. He found that factions emerged from the splintering, rather than the congealing, of class-based groups. Small clusters of students, workers, and cadres struggling to respond to Mao's shifting directives made split-second decisions about whom to align with. Political identities did not shape the conflict; they emerged from it. To explain this process of identity formation, he offers a theory of 'factions as emergent properties' and suggests that similar dynamics may characterize social movements everywhere."

In other words, groups modified their alliances, identities and definitions of "class enemies" on the fly, entirely free of central authorities. Factions splintered, regrouped and splintered again. In the chaos, no one was safe.

Those who lived through The Cultural Revolution are reticent about revealing their experiences. Even in the privacy of their homes in the U.S., their voices become hushed and their reluctance to give voice to their experiences is evident.

The unifying thread in my view is the accused belonged to some "counter-revolutionary" elite --or they were living vestiges of a pre-revolutionary elite (children of the landlord class, professors, etc.)--and it was now open season on all elites, presumed or real.

What generates such spontaneous, self-organizing violence on a national scale?

My conclusion is that cultural revolutions result from the suppression of legitimate political expression and the failure of the regime to meet its lofty idealistic goals.

Cultural revolutions are an expression of disappointment and frustration with corruption and the lack of progress in improving everyday life, frustrations that have no outlet in a regime of self-serving elites who view dissent as treason and/or blasphemy.

By 1966, China's progress since 1949 had been at best uneven, and at worst catastrophic: the Great Leap Forward caused the deaths of millions due to malnutrition and starvation, and other centrally planned programs were equally disastrous for the masses.

Given the quick demise of the Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom movement of open expression, young people realized there was no avenue for dissent within the Party, and no way to express their frustration with the Party's failure to fulfil its idealistic goals and promises.

When there is no relief valve in the pressure cooker, it's eventually released in a Cultural Revolution that unleashes all the bottled-up frustrations on elites which are deemed politically vulnerable. These frustrations have no outlet politically because they're threatening to the status quo.

All these repressed emotions will find some release and expression, and whatever avenues are blocked by authorities will channel the frustrations into whatever is still open.

A Cultural Revolution takes the diversity of individuals and identities and reduces them into an abstraction which gives the masses permission to criticize the abstract class that "deserves" whatever rough justice is being delivered by the Cultural Revolution.

As the book review excerpt noted, the definition of who deserves long overdue justice shifts with the emergent winds, and so those at the head of the Revolution might find themselves identified as an illegitimate elite that must be unseated.

I submit that these conditions exist in the U.S.: the systemic failure of the status quo to deliver on idealized promises and the repression of dissent outside "approved" (i.e. unthreatening to the status quo) boundaries.

What elite can be criticized without drawing the full repressive powers of the central state? What elite will it be politically acceptable to criticize? I submit that "the wealthy" are just such an abstract elite.

To protect itself, a repressive status quo implicitly signals that the masses can release their ire on an abstract elite with indistinct boundaries--a process that will divert the public anger, leaving the Powers That Be still in charge.

But just as in China's Cultural Revolution, central authorities will quickly lose control of conditions on the ground. They will maintain the illusion of control even as events spiral ever farther from their control. The falcon will no longer hear the falconer.

In other words, once the social pressure cooker valve gives way, then the unleashed forces soon grasp that there are few limits on what they can criticize as long as they do so within an implicitly approved narrative--for example, "the wealthy" hoarded wealth and power and so it is just to claw it back by whatever means are available. Since the government failed to do so, the people will have to do so.

The extreme inequalities of wealth and power that are now the dominant dynamic in America are heating the cultural pressure cooker, and when the pressure can no longer be contained, then being recognized as wealthy will shift very quickly from something desirable to something to avoid at all costs.

The lesson of China's Cultural Revolution in my view is that once the lid blows off, everything that was linear (predictable) goes non-linear (unpredictable, fragmented, contingent, emergent, prone to extremes, uncontrollable). If America experiences a Cultural Revolution, the outcome won't lend itself to tidiness or predictability.

To use an analogy from previous blog posts, if the pendulum is pushed to an extreme, when it's released, it will reach an equivalent extreme (minus a bit of friction) at the opposite end. That could be an unexpected but entirely foreseeable Cultural Revolution.

Those who claim that can't happen in America are safely outside the pressure cooker, protected by a delusional confidence that since I'm doing great, everyone is doing great. Since real political agency is no longer allowed, then the pressure will find release outside the political system. It's just Wetware 1.0 running defaults few recognize.



Of related interest:

The West's Descent into 'Cultural Revolution' 1/18/19

Can't Get You Out of My Head (2021) - Part 1 of 6-- Adam Curtis documentary series which includes extensive footage and commentary on China's Cultural Revolution.

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (book)

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (book)

Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege (book)

[100%FEDUP]

I could have sworn we already are......

All signs point to that!

[GOPJ]

What elite can be criticized without drawing the full repressive powers of the central state? What elite will it be politically acceptable to criticize? I submit that "the wealthy" are just such an abstract elite.

The term 'elite' as used by conservatives is NOT the same as 'the 1%' term used by progressives.

Their Marxist stand it based on greed and a a desire to steal from the producers what's NOT theirs to start with. The 'elite' as defined by conservatives are white liberal 'elites' - private school mediocre people in positions of power based on corruption, family pull or 'old boy networks'... John Kerry is a white liberal 'elite' in that style... College professors who teach our young to hate our country... etc. Money has nothing to do with it...

[BobL]

ANYONE who thinks that the people now in charge are not in the early stages of a ‘Cultural Revolution’ are CLUELESS.

...but look at the bright side, we got rid of those two RINOs in Georgia!!!!

[Blood of Tyrants]

I seem to remember that it happened in the mid 60s. But it has been many years since I took that Chinese history class.

[ealgeone]

It’s already here.

[The_Media_never_lie]

The “denouncing officials” photograph above, is why we cannot give up our guns.

[Peter ODonnell]

The analysis seems to be disjointed — the Cultural Revolution was Mao’s attempt to purify the communist revolution — he urged young party activists to denounce all elements of capitalist or “bourgeois” thought coming into the administration of the communist society.

So I’m not sure how we get from this early, somewhat ambiguous stage of communist revolution, to a critical mass of ideologues within that movement being angry enough with its slow pace to take on such elements as they see them.

On our side we have no dog in the hunt, we don’t want any part of some fractured communist movement to win any revolution. And we are not quite there yet, although if the voting system isn’t fixed then perhaps were are there.

I think the article seems to take some position that young people might rebel against the status quo for some other set of reasons, which would be good perhaps, but not anything very similar to the late 1960s Cultural Revolution.

[TigersEye]

I called what is happening an American Cultural Revolution at least 10 months ago.

Welcome to the party, Pal!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

This BBC “In Our Time” podcast is an excellent primer on The Cultural Revolution. You can also find it on Apple Podcasts.

[wac3rd]

So you think. And I hope. I see boys that are in middle school high school and college to act like elementary school kids. There may be a lot of guns but I don’t know if there’s a lot of people willing to use them.

[Truthoverpower]

No

because we got lots and lots and lots of weapons

and lots and lots and lots of ammunition

And guess what?

We know how to use it

[arthurus]

It might be a long wait. too many conservatives are still wearing masks.

[arthurus]

I don’t see any evidence that the will to use them is there. I see a lot of posturing but no organization.

[Gratia]

The author is a moron and CCP/DS apologist.

Mao unleashed the chaos. By definition he did not “control” every aspect of it, it was CHAOS, used against the Chinese people and against Mao’s “enemies” or potential enemies, and also created to divert attention from Mao’s abject failures which were undeniable and threatening to Mao.

Mao WAS the government. Mao WAS THE CCP. And Mao was the object of worship by the Red Guards, who competed with each other to prove who worshipped Mao more. The Red Guards were no more revolutionists than the SS, actually less so.

The Red Guards were manipulated by Mao throughout, and the “revolution” was stopped when Mao wanted it stopped.

The author has a Deep State propaganda point he is making for the chumps and suckers. He wants people to believe that Antifa/BLM is organic, and not directed from above.

Red Guards were government agents, like Antifa/BLM, whose chaos is always done in support of the goals set by TPTB.

[Louis Foxwell]

The ennui of the adolescent class is ripe for a revolution of meaning and purpose. Progressive politics and its cultural expression are the cause of youth meaninglessness. They live in a libertine bubble in which everything and nothing is available.
It is the very Godlessness of leftist culture that is the source of its rot.
Belief in God provides meaning, ultimate purpose, values that are enduring, commitment to quality, and so forth. Atheism is a cowardly refusal to accept moral responsibility.
The state is no god. It is fouled by the corruption that elevates its leadership. Without the ultimate authority of God over it the state is a force for destruction.
Without God we are a nothing people going nowhere.

[PIF]

Mao hated traditional Chinese culture in all its aspects. He wanted it destroyed in order to free China from western domination and make it a world power in its own right. This was to be accomplished by The Great Leap Forward Backward where backyard smelters produced worthless steel among other things.

Later, after his death in '76, his wife headed the Gang of Four (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Hongwen) pushed the boundaries too far and with their squabbles, collapsed a month after Mao died.

That collapse led to the reinstatement of Zhou Enlai and to the rise of Deng Xiaoping who made China a more open and free country which was later reversed by Xi Jinping.

[Renkluaf]

No because the Chinese weren’t armed.

[PIF]

Agreed; puffy chests and armchair generals as far as the eye can see.

any real resistance aimed at anything like returning the voting system to the people, restoring American culture and the United States as constituted, faces lots of problems - the biggest initial one is how to organize without any apparent organization, lest they be tracked down and imprisoned.

[kearnyirish2]

Right - it isn’t “brewing”, it is already here!

[Old Yeller]

People aren’t going to use them until they have nothing left to lose. Maybe not even then.