Is it just me, or does it feel like we’ve been living through a Chinese Communist style cultural revolution over the past two decades? The 2020 threat by the president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York – “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it” – certainly seems to signal the truth of this feeling.
You may have noticed the social reengineering and move toward centralized federal planning during the Obama and Biden administrations. Suddenly, if you were a Christian, you were wrong. If you weren’t their chosen color, gender, or gender identity, you were wrong. If you were too wealthy according to the modern Democrats, you were wrong. If you drove a gasoline car or truck you were killing the planet. Frankly, at this point, I’ve lost track of everything leftist Democrats tell us is wrong.
Unfortunately, this rhetoric infiltrated every aspect of American society. At its height, nobody was allowed to sit on the supposed social injustice sidelines as businesses, entertainers and athletes were forced to take a stand and use their platforms to further Democrat causes. One theme that clearly demonstrates the maliciousness of this way of thinking was the indoctrination of children and college students to the point that many cut off their conservative parents completely.
This identification of Americans by groups is wrong. The rewriting of Western civilization history is wrong. Politicization of every aspect of life is wrong. And the well-funded cultural Marxist revolution that we’ve endured for decades is the wrong path for the greatest nation in human history.
Fortunately, President Trump was reelected in 2024, almost singlehandedly slowing the leftward attempt to pit American vs. American and reduce civil discourse to a thing of the past.
That’s good, because we don’t want to go down the road of Party Chairman Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that killed an estimated 500,000-2 million people between 1966 and 1976.
If you’re not familiar with the history of the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution, it was horrendous, dividing citizens into two groups by social status and political identity. The red group was comprised of communist peasants, while the black group was made up of the traditional middle class or higher so-called counterrevolutionaries, i.e., the people that historically led Chinese society. During the Cultural Revolution, members of the red group had a free hand when dealing with the black group. In many cases, this included public shaming, grievous bodily harm, and sanctioned murder.
But grouping people by the government’s new criteria was just the start, as the Chinese Communists attempted to erase traditional Chinese culture in its entirety. They began by attacking intellectuals and traditional Chinese religions – Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. The Communist government sent red group mobs to destroy buildings, relics, books, art, and any symbol they could find of traditional Chinese culture. In this environment, mob rule was fine if the mob was comprised of poor red communists exacting their revenge. The government also reeducated the young and turned them against their parents and teachers if the adults weren’t perceived to be suitable communists.
Simultaneously, the central Chinese Communist government wrote ambitious five-year plans that, among other things, directed everyone to make steel with anything they could get their hands on. But it’s hard to be a global leader in steel production when the people that once ran the factories were purged and the remaining rural peasants don’t know the first thing about opening or operating new steel plants.
No matter how dedicated one was to the party line, it was difficult to run an economy with starving workers. When China experienced bad crops and famine, the Chinese Communist government blamed the birds and told everyone to kill as many as possible. Then came the insects that no longer had natural predators managing their numbers. You can probably guess that policies like these ground industrial and agricultural production to a halt as workers tried to survive on about 1,500 calories per day.
It’s impossible to paint an accurate picture of the misery inflicted on the Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution. But by 1976, even the Communists realized they’d gone too far. The reason you see “Made in China” tags today and hear about strategic issues concerning Chinese control of rare earth minerals, semi-conductors, etc., is because the Chinese Communist Party reoriented the Chinese economy when Mao Zedong died. This shift from centrally planned to market-oriented economy is what made the Chinese economic recovery possible after their disastrous Cultural Revolution.
Unfortunately, there are obvious parallels between the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution and the past two decades in America. But luckily, we didn’t suffer as much as the Chinese because our representative republic held together, continuing to reject the cultural Marxism peddled by modern Democrats.
But don’t believe for a minute that this internal struggle is over. At every election, including nonpartisan municipal contests, it’s imperative to continually reject these terrible Democrat ideas at the ballot box.
Dr. Tobias Vogt von Heselholt (shortened to “Vote”) is a retired U.S. Army officer, former professor, author, and elected member of the Alabama Republican Executive Committee. For more, see his author page at Amazon.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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