Over the years, I have heard many references to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but I never stopped to really understand the extent to which China was thrown into upheaval by mostly young people who sought to purify the country. Here are some websites (and here) and short videos that are among the materials I reviewed tonight. As I studied these materials, I was repeatedly tempted to draw comparisons to the contagion, humiliation and the rhetoric used by the Woke as they try to purify colleges and other American sense-making institutions in modern times. To be clear, is my belief and my hope is that we will not face widespread violence as a result of Woke ideology–there are massive historical and cultural differences between 1960’s China and 2020’s U.S. My comparison of Wokeness to the Chinese Cultural Revolution thus is quite limited in scope, though it is compelling in some ways.
The Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, man-made catastrophes, together far exceed the death toll of any natural catastrophe or even any single war. They were enabled by a government that thought of its citizens the same way our government and Democratic Party think of US citizens today. Your comparison is prophecy.
My parents lived through it, and they find disturbing parallels between it and America’s current Wokeism. In particular, they see an environment where any slightly heterodox opinion can cause you to be labeled as “not being enlightened enough.”
My grandparents nearly had their lives destroyed by the students at their high school during the Cultural Revolution for what they thought were rather innocuous off-the-cuff comments, so much so that my grandfather gave me a Chinese name that means something to the effect of “keep your mouth shut”.
As a not yet tenured junior faculty member at an American university, I find myself following this advice and generally being very careful about any opinions I express in front of undergraduates in particular.