The Cultural Revolution

What the fuck was that all about? From what little I've read, it looks like the youth of China just went nuts for Mao and killed a bunch of people, but that narrative reeks of western propaganda even if there is some truth to it.
What are some good sources on the subject? Red pill me.

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youtube.com/watch?v=6McbfQeIsC4
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Manufactured mass hysteria that is at the root of the cultural wasteland that China is today. True cultural marxism.

Buncha Chinese people destroying everything related to ethnicity-based culture for being "reactionary". Retarded, I know.

Wouldn't mind a cultural revolution if it meant smashing up foreign franchises of American corperations like McDonalds or Footlocker though. Azerbaijan's even got the world's largest KFC.

Entartete kultur!

Nothing of value was lost. Fuck Confucius.

The idea of cultural revolution organically arises from Maoism and general opinion of leftists of the time.

Idea of Maoism was that the capitalist relations will create capitalist culture and capitalist society, unless those things are constantly removed.

Idea of leftism is that the proletariat moves towards socialism naturally, unless something obstructs it.

Cultural revolution was a self-induced coma of the Chinese state to solve both of those problems, to see what the anarchy would result into.

It wasn't successful, but it didn't totally failed, as it immensely redpilled the Chinese mass consciousness: becoming extremely pragmatic and rational thinking people.

Of course, western propaganda is just that: cultural revolution was a powerful enough ideological cause that created things like the Paris spring.

That shit ain't pulled out of Marx or Mao's derriere, it has a historical antecedent in the era of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of China. Both were aimed to bring down Confucian ideas, though.

How exactly is modern China a cultural wasteland, what was its' cultural impact before Mao?

I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that Mao's cultural marxist revolution had more to do with Qin Shi Huang than with both Mao and Marx.


How can a metaphorical term have an exact value?

I don't know. It was you who have made a claim in that regard (that todays' China is a cultural wasteland, and, aparently, wasn't one before Mao), so I'm asking you to back that up and explain - how it is a cultural wasteland today and how it didn't use to be, according to you.

My personal opinion, is that Mao alone produced more cultural value than all of China combined for the past 300 years before him.

this is some next level reddit spacing

Separating paragraphs with an extra space is a standard spacing, faggot.

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Destroy all books except those from Mao, destroy all art, destroy all antiques, sweep up children and teens into a hysterical group-think frenzy, destroying families, engaging in acts of madness like killing all sparrows, taking children from their parents to raise them in murderously incompetent communes, turning an entire nation into a resource pool of narcissistic supply..


You are either profoundly evil, the sort of cretin who actually enjoys living in a prison camp where everything thinking moment is arranged in communal domination or an idiot who views politics like a warhammer game in which you choose those with the coolest aesthetics.

excellent thread, OP

Im trying to learn more, dont bulli

You can never read enough dude

Nice dodge of my question with overexaggerated feels, bruh.
It is an objective fact, that cultural life of the late Chinese Empire was nothing more than consumption of many centuries old classical culture, and thus had exactly zero impact in other countries or even its' own. On the other hand, Mao had most significant worldwide impact. He was studied and revered not just in China (which he created) but in numerous Asian, European and Latin American circles.

It also was grounded in a internal power struggle between Mao (who was sidelined after the great leap forward) and his faction and party members like Deng.

Dude change the culture but keep the material conditions that created it then wonder where shit went wrong lmao

Hong Kong movies are probably more cultural impactful than Mao Ze Dong.

The man tried to be a chinese emperor and he died like one, what's there to say?

Pop culture. Ask anyone born past 2000 if he knows any.

I haven't talked to people born past 2000 but people from 90x and 80x know more about TVB wuxia dramas than Mao Ze Dong.

Did many Chinese emperors were philosophical and political idols of people in Sorbonna, Columbia and Indonesia?

Which is more popular, Mao or Romance of the 3 kingdoms?

Worldwide? Mao. Countrywide? Romance of 3 kingdoms.
Which is more popular? Socrates or Romeo and Juliet?

Is there any statistics to back up that Mao is more popular than RoTK?

RoTK is widely respected worldwide, while half of the world hates Mao or just plainly don't know about him.

An excuse for mao to regain control in the party after he fucked up with the great leap forward

You invoke such disgust in me that I cannot put it into words beyond this very statement.


Inspiring the most cruel and most deranged of all the communists; weatherman underground, shining path, the lambeth slavery case, the khmer rouge, dilletantes from the grande écoles who'd experiment on people as they do on poetry..

If the nazi's exemplified the banality of evil, maoists exemplified the frivolity of evil.

Nope. The neither of those even called themselves Maoists. that would be people in India, Nepal, Indonesia and Philipines. And last but not the least, the best and the brightest youth of France in Paris spring.
Don't ree too hard, little Holla Forumsyp.


I cannot, in all seriousness, continue this autism.

That also reminds me, Songoku is probably more popular than Mao in South America lol

How can someone like the Cultural Revolution and hate SJWs at the same time? The Revolution was SJWs on steroids.

People here don't actually hate sjw

You're the tragedy to the farce, a twitter eunuch most likely, or a fat autist with a mohawk, perhaps both. A fickle shadow without body, serving as a monument to the monstrosity. Like all good monuments, the sound you invoke is the silence of contemplation.

misplacement of revolutionary furvor

My Chinese friend's dad grew up under Mao. I had a drink with him one night and he told me what it was like.

School stopped. Kids he went to school with starved to death. His mother kept him alive by boiling their boots to make soup, then their belts, then worms & bugs. Eventually even bugs & worms were gone in the towns and cities and cannabalism started. Families couldn't stand to eat their own dead children, so they swapped.

One day the government police pulled two of his uncles out of their house and executed them in the street on suspicion of dissidence.
His mother ran away to the woods with him, and kept him alive by peeling the green layer off the back of tree bark & boiling it into a paste.

They lived off of this bark paste & bugs for months. In the end over 27 million people had starved to death, countless executed without trial, because of one man's dream of 'utopia'.

He was a monster, and like so many monsters he believed what he was doing was right and good. A cautionary tale for everyone, especially someone who thinks communism isn't the same damn shit as fascism. It's literally Pepsi vs Coke.

Utopia does not exist. We can only try to make what we have better, a little more every day.

They do, you're just a hamtongued mong with no sense of nuance.

humanists pls go
this is an Althusser board

it appears this thread has attracted all the hot takes one might need for the day

Words without purpose, meaning and practice. Classic, as far as fascist romanticism goes.

I wish it was a hundred million

My Chinese friend's dad grew up under Mao. I had a drink with him one night and he told me what it was like.

School stopped. Kids he went to school with took to self education and political activism. His mother mustered literacy and joined the village council. Eventually the era of great prosperity and justice dawned upon the land.

One day the they exposed american spy and handed him to police, who executed him on the village's edge.

Mao here, you're lying. Self-crit now.

My Chinese friend's dad grew up under Mao. I had a drink with him one night and he told me what it was like.

School stopped. Kids he went to school with took to self education and political activism. His mother mustered literacy and joined the village council. Eventually the era of great prosperity and justice dawned upon the land

Once he shot an American spy and burnt his passports to help make fried rice. Shit was so cash.

My American friend's grandfather grew up under Herbert Hoover. I had a drink with him one night and he told me what it was like.

He dropped out of school because he was too hungry to concentrate or even go to school. Kids he went to school with were sold by their parents. His mother kept him alive by selling their farmland, then their house and other belongings . Eventually all jobs & and foodbanks were gone in the towns and cities and eating belts, later worms & bugs started and eventually starvation kicked in. As I said, families couldn't feed their own dead children, so they sold them.

One day the government police pulled two of his uncles out of their house and executed them in the street on suspicion of being ebil gommies.
His mother ran away to the woods with him, and kept him alive by peeling the green layer off the back of tree bark & boiling it into a paste.

They lived off of this bark paste & bugs for months. In the end over 22 000 000 million people had starved to death by US sanctions and killed by imperialist wars, countless executed without trial, because of the need to maintain the dominance of the US and the capitalists over the masses.

Capitalists are monsters, and like so many monsters they believed what they were doing was right and good. A cautionary tale for everyone, especially someone who thinks liberalism isn't the same damn shit as fascism. It's literally Pepsi vs Coke.

The internal contradictions of capitalism and inevitability of communism arising out of these contradictions do exist. We can make what we have better, and human nature is basically a spook.

This on the other hand..

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Just a megalomaniac having a little fun manipulating the public in his dying breath.

lmao who let jordan peterson into this thread

Imagine culturally revolutionising he baby boomers OP. Just think of it!

Mao cleverly and/or luckily tapped into the massive pent-up frustration of the first generation born post-revolution. They were beyond pissed off with the general totalitarianism of society, which they mistakenly attributed as caused by revisionists, corrupt apparatchiks etc. as opposed to being a normal part of the system, and specifically with the rigid school system. As far as I know, many, if not most, of the students back then attended boarding schools, rarely saw their families, were subject to all manner of strict rules and such.

Mao had been increasingly sidelined in politics since the Great Leap Forward disaster, but eventually made use of his biggest weapon, one the Party not only didn't try to take away from him but in fact kept strengthening: his cult of personality. When he gave the go-ahead for the youth to challenge authority, students were only too glad to obey the Great Helmsman rid the country and the Party of "capitalist roaders". They notoriously went straight to the school directors first, as any Western account will say, as if the students were book-burning Mongol hordes. One key detail here is that school directors back then were Party members appointed to their jobs. In other words, they were part of the Party-State, the newer Party members that prospered without Mao. Them being the first targets of the Cultural Revolution wasn't a coincidence.

From them on, it only got more and more messy. Mao steered the Red Guards against this person or that political line, and occasionally steered other groups too, such as the army, alternating between making one attack the other and vice-versa. And like I said, the cult of personality really was his strongest weapon because no one, absolutely no one but him was above political purge nor physicial violence.

LaTeX faggot, do you speak it?

The great helmsman Mao Tse Tung did 0 things wrong

a fellow mathematician here I see

Physicist, close but no cigar.

It was an attempt to eliminate the liberal wing of the party. It failed miserably and killed any chance for there to be a truly socialist China.

Why didn't the Red Guard support the Gang of Four over Mao exactly?

also bump for good history books/documentaries on it.

720 min documentary footage straight from the GPCR:
youtube.com/watch?v=6McbfQeIsC4

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Where in Marx's actual writings does he call for a Cultural Revolution? He argues the exact opposite, that if you change material conditions the cultural superstructure will naturally follow. Capitalists didn't need to wage a war against Feudal culture, likewise, Communists shouldn't need to wage war against Capitalist culture, it's all just meaningless artifacts. As for the Qin Shi Huang thing, during the GPCR Mao constantly compared himself to him, and also most of the pamphlets and polemics of that time written by the Red Guards referred to him as such and made similar illusions.

*allusions, lel