Our very own Red Guards
What’s happening now in the United States, at an ever-increasing pace, is rule by mob. But it’s a special sort of mob. The internet and social media, especially Twitter, facilitates the process. Its main practitioners are leftists, mostly but not entirely young.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes, and this movement bears a resemblance to the Maoist Cultural Revolution’s Red Guards.
I believe the first time I made that comparison was in this post from six years ago entitled: “Robert J. Birgeneau is the latest casualty of our embryonic Red Guards.” Six years! Obama was president, and you’d think they’d be happy. And perhaps they were – with the president. But not with anyone with whom they disagreed.
Before I re-read it, I no longer remembered who Robert J. Birgeneau was. But the pattern was familiar and already set – and in this case that includes the subject matter:
Another would-be commencement speaker bows out in response to pressure from students who deem him insufficiently pure for their tender sensibilities.
Birgeneau refused to say sufficient mea culpas, the price he would have had to pay for the privilege of addressing the august students and faculty of Haverford:
“Some students and faculty members at Haverford, a liberal arts college near Philadelphia, objected to the invitation to Mr. Birgeneau to speak and receive an honorary degree because, under him, the University of California police used batons to break up an Occupy protest in 2011. He first stated his support for the police, and then a few days later, saying that he was disturbed by videos of the confrontation, ordered an investigation.
“Those at Haverford who objected to his being honored asked Mr. Birgeneau to apologize and to meet a list of demands, including leading an effort to train campus security forces in handling protests better; he refused.”
I called the movement “embryonic” at the time – after all, it was six years ago. But looking back, I bet it was a lot more developed than I knew. Later in that post I added:
My comparison is hyperbole. The current crop of American students isn’t killing or beating anyone—yet. Nor is their target their professors, but that’s probably because their professors have for the most part already been purged and are pure. In fact, at Haverford and at other colleges where commencement speakers have been recently driven out, the protesting students are joined by professors. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, with professors leading the way.
Note the word “yet.” And note the participation and even leadership of the leftist professors. Some of them have found the movement has come back to bite them, but that’s what always happens when making a tasty leftist omelet.
Then in 2018, two years ago, I wrote another Red Guards piece. This time I made it clear I was not being hyperbolic.
A difference between now and then is much of it today is entirely self-inflicted without the new Red Guards having a thing to do with it.
NASCAR just banned the Confederate flag at its events after the only African-American driver on the tour called for it. Putting aside the question of whether that flag should be flying or not, there’s no question that NASCAR is spitting in the face of a meaningful percentage of its fan base when they could have politely declined and faced no significant punishment.
The number of people who would have stopped watching is close to zero. The number of sponsors who would have abandoned the sport is probably only a bit more than that. All the Twitter rage from the Left would have been met with even greater vociferousness from NASCAR fans. There really is no credible threat here and I think the bosses at NASCAR know that. They’re doing it to themselves.
The Red Guard had to work a lot harder to get that kind of abasement.
Mike
There really is no credible threat here and I think the bosses at NASCAR know that. They’re doing it to themselves.
The phenomenon of elites taking a dump on their natural constituency (see George W Bush) has now reached institutions you would have thought would be immune forever. This will not end well.
“This will not end well.”
You’d have thought the twin lessons of the NFL and Star Wars would have been learned. NFL ratings took a big hit over the Kaepernick nonsense, which some people at the time tried to deny but when they stopped the protests and the ratings rose, I don’t think there’s any other credible explanation. And you can make a legitimate argument that the idiots put in charge of Star Wars have cost Disney at least a billion dollars at the box office in just five years, with untold losses in merchandising and future projects.
Mike
In their arrogance and naivete our wannabe red guards may at some point move into the suburbs and, that is when the National Guards will be allowed to intervene. Dem. Governors know that rural areas didn’t vote for them, alienate the suburbs by allowing antifa/BLM to threaten suburbanites personally and they know that they’ll be voted out of office.
Liberal wokeness has boundaries.
I didn’t know that about Birgeneau. I knew him vaguely when he was Chairman of the MIT Physics Department. He always struck me as someone who was trying to come across as Mr. Tough Guy and puffed himself up because he’d been recruited from Bell Labs, which at the time was still one of the most important physics departments in the world. He went into academic administration and went on to be the Chancellor of the University of California. He must have been ultra-woke by then.
The events of the past month and the riot days since are hardening the polarisation of our nation. We are two irreconcilable halves. The claim that a civil war ethos is coming comes and goes away, predictably.
Who knows if the following signifies sound and furies of no significance or not. But here’s a cry from a composer who cannot stand (self-) censorship any longer. Not your typical red neck spouting rebel.
I re-post his message at freerepublic.come in its entirety:
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3854293/posts
The reference to the persecuted Soviet era great composer Shostakovich is several fold. He was subject to denunciation and loss of his career in 1936, and many friends and family members were imprisoned or killed in Stalin’s Great Terror; in 1948, his works were banned. And finally, late in life, his memoir had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union because of state censorship, and was published in the free West. Ominous parallels indeed.
The cases of the Leftist persecution of people on the Right is growing impossible to keep up with. Tipping point, anyone?
Neo: I called the movement “embryonic” at the time – after all, it was six years ago. But looking back, I bet it was a lot more developed than I knew.
Not like anyone tried to warn you or such…
[remember the other warnings of what i said was coming? its still coming]
and so the people of new germany complied and hoped the spirit would pass over them
that somehow, their lack of action or realizing how many straws were on the camels back
Nobody knows exactly where we are headed, but it certainly will not end well. Our society is deteriorating at a much more rapid pace than I ever imagined. I envisioned the occurrence of something akin to pretty much everything that’s happened in the last two weeks (in particular the total capitulation of corporate America to BLM, and all the easily falsifiable myths they spin, along with the censorship and repercussions for anyone who disagrees too openly)…but I didn’t expect it for at least another five years. Yet here it is.
The worst is yet to come. We have a presidential election in five months, which will result in one of two scenarios.
1. Trump is re-elected. Maybe narrowly, maybe overwhelmingly. Either way, the left, the Deep State and the pathetic, dwindling number of Never Trumpers will not accept it. The “Russia interference” canard will be regurgitated with fifty fold intensity. If Democrats retain the House, Trump will be impeached again…within a year. In the meantime, Trump’s victory will be the pretext for far more extensive, and violent, Antifa action. Some other incident (perhaps another police killing of a black person) will be the catalyst for a serious insurrection. Trump’s response, whatever it is, will provide the grounds for a hard coup attempt. Whether it succeeds is unknown, but the mere attempt is a crossing of the Rubicon and America as we knew it is finished.
2. Trump is defeated. This will temporarily calm the frothing mob of angry leftists, sanctimonious MSM mavens and bitter Never Trumpers. But the calm will be a brief, eye of the hurricane, intermezzo. Does anyone really believe Joe Biden will be anything more than a senile figurehead? His vice president, cabinet and the Democratic Congressional leadership will be the power behind the throne, with the Deep State the power behind their thrones. Once again, some random incident (likely the police killing a black person) will be the grounds for the progressive red guards coming down HARD on “racists” and “white supremacists” (with the full force of the federal government behind them). To be clear:
Racist – Anyone (of any race) who disagrees with anything Black Lives Matter and their fellow travelers advocate.
White Supremacist – Any white person who does not show “sufficient fealty” to Black Lives Matter and their fellow travelers.
Sufficient Fealty – Whatever Black Lives Matter decide they want in the moment…subject to change at any time, for any reason.
Neo: note the participation and even leadership of the leftist professors. Some of them have found the movement has come back to bite them, but that’s what always happens when making a tasty leftist omelet
Now this is actually the funniest part of it all… these people who claim history is on their side, have obviously not studied history… or they must have cherry picked it to swiss cheese…
Mao’s intellectuals? what happened?
Russian Intellectuals? what happened?
German Intellectuals? what happened?
Professors of Tianeman? what happened?
then there was the snappy sitcom of Castroites and the professors
[not to be confused with phoebe phiggalilly of nanny and the professor]
led by that famous band Chavez and the chavistas, singing their classic tunes
to the thump thump thump of the tap tap tap on the automatic weapons..
As a status class, the intelligentsia includes artists, teachers and academics, writers, and the literary hommes de lettres. Individual members of the intelligentsia are known as intellectuals.
[snip]
the political reactionaries joined the right-wing White movement for counter-revolution, some became Bolsheviks, and some remained in Russia and participated in the political system of the USSR. In reorganizing Russian society, the Bolsheviks rid themselves, by fair and foul means, of class enemies, by way of deportation on Philosophers’ ships, forced labor in the gulag, and summary execution. The members of the Tsarist-era intelligentsia who remained in Bolshevik Russia (the USSR) were proletarianized.
they join the armchair self proclaimed intelligentsia as Obrazovanshchina…
[Have they decided to relight the ovens again? they already have a class that is unprotected, targeted, and who fits the bill]
TJ-
What about Prokofiev ?
++++++++
Heh, I am the only Haverford graduate to read this blog. I am maybe one of four total alumni in the recent (past 50 years or so) history of the college who is an evil right-winger. There was a prosperous businessman who declined an honorary degree in maybe the 1970s (the college is ever money-grubbing), but in researching all past commencement speakers, I find they have all been bleeding heart Leftists back to about 1900.
In 1991 I attended a Haverford commencement at which one of the speakers (awarded an honorary degree) spent three of her five minutes screaming at the assembled several thousand on a beautiful June day–parents, siblings, little kids, grandparents, guests–“ALL MEN ARE FUCKERS”.
Screaming, not yelling.
Mind, this is a co-ed college, of moderate academic repute, so only half the graduating class and half the attendees were men.
It was Katherine MacKinnon, a lesbian professor of law.
What did the college do? Seize her mike? Pull the plug? No, the admin did nothing.
Now it is a “sanctuary campus”. Fortunately its endowment is not huge, and it will surely dwindle over the future because the woke won’t earn enough to contribute.
“Life and Death in Shanghai,” the autobiography by Nien Cheng, documents the Cultural Revolution and rise of the Red Guard in China. Her house was looted, she was imprisoned and her daughter murdered for her crimes of working at a foreign firm (with permission of the government) and having some money.
Her teacher friends were denounced’ “struggled against,” lost their jobs and some were injured and killed by the very students they had taught.
Rereading this shows parallels with the current situation, students rioting, taking over parts of the cities, people denouncing themselves and others over crimes that even their ancestors may have committed.
How long until people’s ancestry will be checked to see who has “evil” in their background who can be renounced?
In the book, what was acceptable and laudable one day was grounds for arrest the next. No one spoke of their real beliefs or the truth to another in fear of being denounced. Her own brother had “confessed” and accused her of things which were impossible but that didn’t matter to the inquisition.
Hopefully, we will never reach this phase but it looks like we are getting close to it.
@Cicero… wait… wait, the ladies are going to say to the men, aren’t you going to “do something” and the men will walk away, there is nothing for them to fight for, stand up for, or get out of “doing something” after so long…
That part going to get real interesting
(given what i have read in lots of commentaries)
It will be another Groucho moment as they pull out a candy roll and toss them a “life saver”…
For the NASCAR commenters
Nascar driver Ray Ciccarelli took to Facebook Wednesday to announce he is leaving the sport once the 2020 season is over. In his Facebook post, Ciccarelli said he does not like the direction Nascar is headed, adding that he does not believe in kneeling during the National Anthem nor does he believe in taking away the right for people to fly whatever flag they choose. He made the announcement shortly after Nascar decided to ban the Confederate flag from its races and tracks. Ciccarelli explained that he could care less about the Confederate flag,
Something that the [Liberal] crowd doesn’t mention-
pardon my capital letters but,
AS OF YET,
RACISM has not been proven as the cause of the death of George Floyd.
Reports say-
the police-officer that attacked George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, has had 18 complaints filed against him, about his police work.
Derek Chauvin, reports say, has also had a history of overboard tactics, including overboard physical tactics, when- stopping fights at a nightclub where Chauvin had a job as a bouncer.
It hasn’t been reported that Chauvin has been racist to Black people, while Chauvin was at either of these jobs.
It looks like Mr. Chauvin is someone who might have done police brutality in his past, so it could be- that this fatal crime could be a case of his doing [police brutality], rather than racism.
Maybe it will be proven in a court of law, that Chauvin was motivated by racism, when he did the deadly attack on George Floyd, and if this is proven, I will gladly agree with that finding.
However, I think it is better to wait for [a court-of-law] prove that this crime was a crime of racism, before coming to the conclusion that racism was the cause of this crime.
I JUST POSTED on my page that I had spent three hours engaging my opponents about Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives Matter, and stated that I needed to research Maoist struggle sessions because I suspected I had just been exposed to one! Then I came here. Thanks Neo!
The students were always out there, in their righteous anger ready to punch someone out. The rioters were always out there, ready to smash and grab.
The similarity is
a) the Red Guard got it going when the leadership, Mao etc…, want to cement their power after some really hideous years ruining the economy, and
b) our leadership; in political office, in corporations; really are such craven weasels to throw everyone else under the bus to save themselves (for a few months).
Unless things change, I fear we may be on the way to an American version of the Great Cultural Revolution.
Appeasement has only led to bloodier conflict.
Prior to Mao, it was called “Mau-Mauing.” [how irrelevant is that one vowel?] Now it’s called “playing the race card.” Tomayto, Tomahto.
Speaking of the Red Guard, it was no coincidence that it took place at the same time Mao Zedong and his “Thoughts of Chairman Mao” were popular with Sixties leftists. John Lennon’s lyric about “carrying pictures of Chairman Mao” wasn’t pulled out of thin air.
I keep saying we are headed to our very own Cultural Revolution. (Read about that in China.) Political correction was the first step, and now this.
If we don’t push back against this, we are going to be destroyed.
RE: Eeyore mood: Thanks for referring to”Life and Death in Shanghai”, a most powerful book that I would urge everyone to read.
I listened to it as I drove across country and was chilled to the bone.
If people really want to understand what that Cultural Revolution was like, I urge them read this book.
That is where we are headed if we just passively wait to see what happens.
It is beyond terrifying.
“That is where we are headed if we just passively wait to see what happens.”
I’ll deal with it when it gets to my little stretch of heaven in flyover country but I am not going to stick my neck out an inch over what’s happening in Seattle, New York City, or other such places. That’s not because the media and the Left would come after me. It’s because major voices of supposed conservatism would come after me and too much of the rest of conservatism would care more about being “nice” to their friends, acquaintances, and enemies than my livelihood or life.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/america-begins-to-see-more-clearly-now-what-its-black-citizens-always-knew/
Mike
Mr Bunge:
The major voices of supposed conservatism would come after you? And you cite National Review as an example of such voices.They ain’t that and haven’t been that for a while. See Ace’s critique of the article you cite.
Ace.mu.nu
Are there monsters under your bed too? Seriously dude. 😉
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has written a sagely piece on our national moment, confronting tyrants and the evils they wreak.
“There are seminal moments in American history that test every fiber of our nation’s soul.
“We are facing one now.
“Revolutionary forces are causing every American citizen to question which direction the country is heading. To determine the outcome, we must examine our nation’s history to project ourselves forward into the future.”
Read it all: “Exclusive from Gen. Flynn: Forces of Evil Want To Steal Our Freedom in the Dark of Night, But God Stands with Us” https://www.westernjournal.com/exclusive-gen-flynn-forces-evil-want-steal-freedom-dark-night-god-stands-us/
Were Hillary president, the (red) Dem Guards would be out in even greater force, so the Dems need to have a leader/ director to move farther along on the Liberal Fascism path.
I believe the aftermath of the riots will increase support for Trump, rather than decrease it, despite the Dems’ lies. (70% re-election, down from 80% because the economy really is worse, because of the Wuhan virus.)
Any interested in Sci-Fi should read The Three-Body Problem, by Chinese author Cixin Liu. Great story with one of the main characters a brilliant daughter of a professor who suffered under the Red Guards. Very vivid descriptions.
My 14 y.o. son recently wrote a short music Theory paper about Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, so I recently learned a bit about him. Now I’m reminded of Dr. Strangelove and the US President’s call to the Russian leader:
“Dmitri, I’m sorry too.”
PC & Cancel Culture has long been moving towards an end to Free Speech, with professors leading the way. All colleges with less than 30% professors as Republicans should be losing their tax-exempt status based on a lack of “diversity”, and “diversity” should be defined to legally mean the acceptance of all political beliefs of members of the US Congress.
Colleges shouldn’t escape “false advertising” lawsuits.
I was just thinking about Lisa Page getting a job on CNN – but none seem interested in M. Flynn yet (or he’s not?). So more to read… thx in advance.
“The major voices of supposed conservatism would come after you?”
Have you suffered a head injury affecting your short-term memory? Try using Mr. Searchy to look up “Covington” and “Nick Sandmann.”
And if you think a President Jeb Bush or a President Marco Rubio wouldn’t thrown Brett Kavanaugh to the wolves within a few days of that smear campaign, I think you’ve got a bigger problem than your memory.
Have you gotten that new “Paul Ryan Love Pillow” yet?
Mike
Lisa Page: CNN or MSNBC?
Mr Bunge:
Those conservative voices coming after you! You raised the dreaded Paul Ryan among the cast of demons that bedevil your every hour it seems. Is there something about pillows that is a problem in your personal life? Please keep that to yourself as it would be TMI.
And posting “some other guyism” again, (Mike, think all caps for the next word) focus. Last time I checked neither Rubio nor Jeb! made it through the 2016 primary so it is hard to comment on something that never happened. Again, focus. 😉
I do not think that the ‘Red Guard’ scenario is viable in most of the US. It can only occur where the police are on the side of the rioters, or have been ordered to stand down. Standing down will not long prevail when violence is done to the silent majority and/or to the police. I suspect that the majority of LEO’s will stand by their oath. And iirc, something like half the states have stand-your-ground laws which seriously changes the balance of power between struggle’ers and struggle’ees.
I seriously expect that US citizens in most of the country will defend themselves. And the anarchist ninja LARP’ers will not like it. In in the absence of police, any citizen is entitled to defend themself. Presuming that a grand jury can be found to indict, do the Guards actually have enough interest in a civil society to turn up on jury lists? Jury nullification will be common. And if the Keith Ellisons, and Judge Gleesons of the left are presiding, they might end up at the wrong end of a ‘struggle’ session themselves. And might even deserve it.
All of the above presumes that DJT does not declare certain areas under the Insurrection Act, and send in the troops to restore order. Although technically sedition and treason are different things, it is a distinction without much difference in reality. And lots of this *is* sedition.
(If DJT sends in troops, to avoid agit-prop false flags, I think it would be absolutely necessary that the ROE is that the troops have bayonets fixed and carry NO ammunition, until they are fired upon. ROE *then* would allow ‘active defence’. I kinda suspect that if rioters fire on troops, the troops will be delighted to respond vigorously.
Up here in the not-so-frozen North of the 49th, I have no worry about Red Guards and struggle sessions. *Our* fearless leader will appease everyone and the violence will be avoided.
( Cannot find font sarcastic… I know I installed it..)
My question is, when the country splits I-5 to I-95 red, coasts blue, what are we going to do about the blue enclaves: Ann Arbor, Chicago, Madison, Austin, and so forth? Should we relocate them to the blue zone, or leave them there within walls and with special access roads between? Now I understand the difficulties the Israelis are having separating themselves from the Palestinians.
Saunders:
India was divided into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, So we can surely evict a few million Leftists from the cities you list. Maybe make them all move into Montana! 2 suitcases each, and lots of trains! Use voting registrations and leave the GOP minorities behind to own things. Being registered as independent means getting in line for a train.
The southern border of Yankeeland will be Maryland’s northern border. And we gotta keep Long Beach and San Diego for Pacific access.
“Please keep that to yourself as it would be TMI.“
I’m sorry your parents never spanked you as a child because then you wouldn’t be such a little twit about it when I rhetorically spank you around here.
Again, if you can’t dispute it challenge the things I write, any other criticism falls flat. It just reminds everyone you’re a little tyke who can’t get over how mean I was to you.
Mike
Mr Bunge:
Here is a clue. It is a waste of time to respond to your latest hypothetical situation about past events with some guys which never happened (President Jeb! or President Rubio and the Judge Kavanaugh confirmation, to refresh your memory). Mental masturbation is what it would be, arguing a counterfactual.
You’re just spanking yourself again.