Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
01 - The Cultural Revolution
42 Plays3 days ago
“If the father is a hero, the son is a real man. If the father is a reactionary, the son is a bastard. That’s basically how it works.”
A slogan used by Beijing Red Guards, 1966
The Cultural Revolution left lasting wounds in Chinese society, with memories of trauma, loss, isolation and death widespread among survivors.
The MAGA Revolution may yet inflict these terrors on American society. Our only hope is that the millions who oppose this descent into backwardness and madness stand together to resist it.
Transcript
Patriotic Slogans and Execution
00:00:06
Speaker
Long live Chairman Mao, yelled the prisoner. The firing squad lowered their rifles, confused. Long live the Communist Party, he cried.
00:00:19
Speaker
The squad looked at each other, worried. How can you open fire on such patriotic words? You can't shoot a guy shouting long live Chairman Mao like that. The problem was solved by stuffing a handkerchief into the prisoner's mouth and then carrying out the execution.
The Execution of Mayor Yin and China's Cultural Revolution
00:00:42
Speaker
This scene, taken from Chen Roshi's story, The Execution of Mayor Yin, recounts a moment during the Cultural Revolution in China, when half the population had been recruited to spy on the other half, and thought crime, imagined 20 years before in the cool brain of George Orwell, took on a very real and lethal form across China.
2025: Praise for a Transformational President
00:01:06
Speaker
Fast forward to Washington, D.C. in 2025, where we have the following. Mr. President, I invite you to see your pig beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are the transformational president of the American worker along with the American flag and President Roosevelt. And I was so honored to unveil that yesterday.
00:01:31
Speaker
Thus spoke Laurie Chavez de Reimer, our Secretary of Labor.
Cabinet's Servitude and Historical Parallels
00:01:35
Speaker
And then this, there is only one thing I wish for, that the Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes you are the single finest candidate since this Nobel Award was ever talked about to receive that award.
00:01:51
Speaker
So spoke Steve Witkoff, our special envoy to the Middle East. And finally, we have Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury, saying... As we've said very often, economic security is national security and our country has never been so secure thanks to you.
00:02:10
Speaker
You have brought us back from the edge. You have the overwhelming mandate from the American people. You are restoring confidence in government.
00:02:22
Speaker
No firing squads have been assembled just yet on the National Mall.
Political Hypocrisy and Betrayal
00:02:27
Speaker
Despite the ominous promo of the gallows and noose assembled there on January 6, 2021, members of the cabinet are apparently working overtime to ensure their job security at the cost of their self-respect.
00:02:42
Speaker
As Tacitus observed about the Roman Senate in the time of the Emperor Tiberius, consuls, senators, and knights rushed into servitude. The more illustrious the person, the greater their hypocrisy and haste.
Contemporary Echoes of the Cultural Revolution
00:02:57
Speaker
The current tugging of forelocks and bowing and scraping enslavement of intelligent political professionals who really ought to know better is a menacing sign that they are ready and eager to betray the American Republic as well as their own oaths of office.
00:03:14
Speaker
Already, we hear echoes of the Cultural Revolution, with teachers and university faculty doxxed for discussing topics in class like why slavery was a bad thing, why structural racism exists, why the US legal codes are deeply and thematically warped by racism,
00:03:33
Speaker
Lists are published for the naming and shaming and ostracism of these people, led by powerful influencers like the late Charlie Kirk, who delighted in defaming and harassing independent thinkers. Let's get them fired. Let's get them canceled.
00:03:49
Speaker
Chairman Mao would be so proud to see his brutal methods employed by Americans doing exactly what he did to millions in China.
Adoption of Maoist Practices in the U.S.
00:03:59
Speaker
Children were encouraged to denounce their parents, students to denounce their teachers, colleagues to spy and report on private conversations of their fellow workers.
00:04:11
Speaker
Recent news reports of Chinese citizens who survived the Cultural Revolution and are now living in America recount their surprise that the United States is so easily giving itself over to Maoism.
Government Incompetence and Soviet Comparisons
00:04:23
Speaker
One feature of authoritarian regimes that may yet minimize the damage is the robust tendency of a government functionary to be incompetent or drunk or both. Alcohol inebriation among Soviet commissars, police agents, and bureaucrats was a feature of life under Stalin.
00:04:41
Speaker
After the overthrow of the Tsarist government, education, upper-class manners, and intellectual sophistication was likely to get you executed as a counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet element, whereas ignorant behavior, illiteracy, and incompetence was a sure sign that you were a friend of the proletariat, an honest worker,
00:05:02
Speaker
and uncorrupted by Western ideas. So too, we see that incompetence and even drunkenness is now a qualification for a cabinet post in the government of Donald J.
MAGA Movement and Cultural Revolution Trauma
00:05:14
Speaker
Trump. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
00:05:24
Speaker
The Cultural Revolution left lasting wounds in Chinese society with memories of trauma, loss, isolation, and death widespread among survivors.
00:05:38
Speaker
The MAGA Revolution may yet inflict these terrors on American society. Our only hope is that the millions who oppose this descent into backwardness and madness stand together to resist it.
Historical Reflections and Orwellian Visions
00:05:51
Speaker
As a cynical observer of history, I can only trade half smiles with Orwell, who seems to be sitting to my right in an armchair, smoking quietly.