Free Republic

At the height of the frenzy of China’s Cultural Revolution, victims were eaten at macabre “flesh banquets”, but 50 years after the turmoil began, the Communist Party is suppressing remembrance and historical reckoning of the era and its excesses. Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos. Teenaged Red Guards beat teachers to death for being “counter-revolutionaries” and family members denounced one another while factions clashed bitterly for control across the...

At the height of the frenzy of China’s Cultural Revolution, victims were eaten at macabre “flesh banquets”, but 50 years after the turmoil began, the Communist Party is suppressing remembrance and historical reckoning of the era and its excesses. Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos.