In my view, Western elites want to forget the Cultural Revolution because the horror that happened in China 50 years ago is too similar to what liberalism is now attempting in the West.

The Cultural Revolution, which took place roughly from 1966 to 1976, was one of the bloodiest and most insane periods in the history of communism. It was an attempt to try and purge Communist China of all Western ideas, from Christianity to capitalism. An estimated 2 million were killed, and 30 million were hounded and punished. …

After the failure of Mao’s economic Great Leap Forward, a program of collectivization that resulted in tens of millions of deaths, Mao saw the Cultural Revolution as a way to turn things around: “Our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road … so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.”

Particularly enthusiastic in their extremism were university students, known as the Red Guard. In Red Memory, the Cultural Revolution is described as “an ideological crusade — a drive to reshape China’s hearts and souls. … People were to be remade or removed.”

[It was Robespierre on steroids. The Left doesn’t like to discuss it because, as Mark argues, it’s becoming their playbook in the Woke Era. All of the CRT/DEI/ESG enforcement has set the table for a new level of cancel culture that they hope to impose. — Ed]