{"id":34823,"date":"2018-01-14T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T06:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34823"},"modified":"2020-06-20T16:22:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T20:22:08","slug":"qotd-the-cultural-revolution-of-1966","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/01\/14\/qotd-the-cultural-revolution-of-1966\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Cultural Revolution of 1966"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was proclaimed by Chairman Mao Tse-tung (as he was then spelt) on the 16th of May, 1966. […] It continued ten years, until its author\u2019s death. It was one of the greatest continuing massacres of history \u2014 a work of incredible destruction through which most of the surviving cultural monuments from China\u2019s civilized past were also wiped out. The Chinese Communist Party, which still rules this immense nation or empire, no longer wishes to talk about it. The anniversary has been suppressed, and even in Hong Kong, where media retain some fraction of the freedom they enjoyed under British colonial rule, Internet links to the anniversary have been frozen.<\/p>\n

Led by young, psychopathic Red Guards, it was an unrestrained obliteration of what Mao called \u201cThe Four Olds\u201d \u2014 old habits, old customs, old ideas, old culture. His satanic dream was of a \u201cperpetual revolution.\u201d His principles were ultimately those of the French Revolution \u2014 \u201cimproved\u201d by the models of Leninism and Stalinism, the Hsin-hai Revolution of 1911 (in which the Chinese emperor was deposed), and the imagination of a petty bourgeois from a rural backwater in the province of Hunan (Mao himself). At this day, nothing like an adequate historical accounting can yet be attempted of the Cultural Revolution; nor of Mao\u2019s previous iconoclastic essays; nor of the ways in which subsequent economic accomplishments have depended on them. Crucial sources for such a history remain under the control of the Politburo; and travel within their empire is still regulated by their \u201cguides.\u201d<\/p>\n

The personality cult Mao launched, for the worship of himself as living god, exceeded that of Hitler or of Stalin. (At one point nothing was allowed in print that was not either by or about him.) I note that his image yet adorns Chinese banknotes.<\/p>\n

[…] I had skirted China by then in my own travels, and read other newsy-historical works, and chatted with more than one acknowledged \u201cChina expert\u201d in my quasi-vocation as a hack journalist; and thereby been fed almost entirely with lies. I knew that Maoism was evil, but could not begin to compass how radically evil. A growing appreciation of the grandeur of the ancient Chinese civilization accentuated this. For what was destroyed, in addition to the bodies corresponding to tens of millions of human souls, was of tremendous value, not only to China but to the legacy of the planet.<\/p>\n

To my mind looking back, the Cultural Revolution may be the most sustained and thorough exercise in the cause of \u201cprogress\u201d that men have yet performed.<\/p>\n

David Warren, “Creative Destruction”, Essays in Idleness<\/em><\/a>, 2016-05-16.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was proclaimed by Chairman Mao Tse-tung (as he was then spelt) on the 16th of May, 1966. […] It continued ten years, until its author\u2019s death. It was one of the greatest continuing massacres of history \u2014 a work of incredible destruction through which most of the surviving cultural monuments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,53,41],"tags":[459,780,262,1376,506],"class_list":["post-34823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-censorship","tag-communism","tag-culture","tag-iconoclasm","tag-revolution"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-93F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34823"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58031,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34823\/revisions\/58031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}