The West has entered its own Cultural Revolution

And it could get much worse

“Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell.” So begins Frank Dikotter’s “Mao’s Great Famine”, a painfully detailed account of ideologically manufactured mass starvation, torture and murder. In this time, some 45 million lives were callously ended. By the beginning of 1962, even those complicit in the deaths of millions had summoned the courage to question Mao’s collectivist zeal, and for the next few years his influence waned.

China’s Cultural Revolution of 1962-76 was to be Mao’s apotheosis. By this time Mao was looking to safeguard his legacy, and to do that he would destroy as much of the past as necessary. Students would be his instrument. On Aug 12th, 1966, Mao addressed “a million students in Tiananmen Square” and “over the following months, he review[ed] a total of 12 million Red Guards in Beijing.” (Dikotter, xxiv). And then they were set “free” — so long, of course, as they did what their ideological masters bid.

The bonds of Chinese culture layered carefully over centuries were not easily destroyed. Families clung tightly to heritage and their Confucian ideals, but naked realism often meant losing them in order to survive. In a country which had venerated the old for millennia, day succumbed to night. The four olds as they were called: old customs, old thinking, old ways, old culture came under systematic and manic attack.

In classrooms across China, suitable students were empowered to act against their peers and teachers and then loosed on the nation. Given free transportation, they destroyed thousands of places of worship, grave sites, libraries and private homes. “In the village of Huizhou, tons of family documents were loaded on carts to be burned in the town square. But the worst loss was in ruined lives. In some places the mass hysteria of the time snapped all bonds of humanity, as if violence took on a life of its own.” (Dikotter, P. 486)

In cemeteries, thousands of grave sites were destroyed. Ideological fervor leapt into depravity as bodies were exhumed. “Headstones were systematically smashed, crosses broken and memorial plaques and inscriptions obliterated with cement or smeared over with paint.” (Dikotter, p. 85)

Teachers clinging to tradition, or even historical truth, were denounced by colleagues or students. School closures and ideological purges created a situation where “a whole generation had lost ten years of education.” As the ideology became far more important than any real knowledge or means of insight, a generation of children were raised to know only “Maoist Thought”. In scenes eerily familiar to ones today, monuments were torn down and set upon without consequence.

In the West today we see the echoes of China’s maelstrom. Many of the targets appear frighteningly similar. Monuments to Macdonald, Churchill, Lincoln and Ryerson have all been vandalized. Marxist class struggle has metastasized into Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory, and its adherents have many of the same objectives. Consider the continued highlighting of military scandals, the burning of Catholic churches, defund the police and RCMP, the fear of job loss, the shame thrust upon our flag and by extension all Canadians.

What were Mao’s apparatchiks thinking as reports of millions of deaths could no longer be denied? They believed themselves morally righteous, and yet all around them was evidence of the opposite. What were those fortunate enough to still be living in the cities thinking? And did they reassure themselves that the latest atrocity would be the last and that things would now get better?

In today’s West, Marxism has quietly made resurgence in education and in the office place. Even businesses are so fearful of “woke” disapproval that they routinely showcase their adherence to politically correct illiberal ideas, trading the principles that secure our freedom to be seen as one of the “good guys”.

It’s easy to understand why people dare not deviate from ideological orthodoxy given the consequences for stepping out of line in this day and age. Those driving the latest iteration of Marxism in Canada may not have the power to torture or kill their ideological opponents, but they certainly have considerable impact on careers and reputations, relationships and more. Unfortunately, they will continue to bulldoze courageous dissidents one by one until enough of us decide that the woke’s approbation no longer carries any moral weight or legitimacy.

We must simply stop abiding by their rules about what opinions can be held and what words can be used. We are the majority, and as soon as we agree to no longer go along, this Marxist pall will lift.

This post was written by an anonymous supporter of Woke Watch Canada. Also from this author - Don’t Let The Woke Re-Write History