Fox News, January 26: Fort Worth ISD is looking into a teacher's social media post urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to go to North Side High School to remove students believed to be in the U.S. illegally.

There’s been a tsunami of talk about Hitler and the Third Reich coming from the liberal punditocracy in recent times. To me, the correlations are absolutely, obviously, and alarmingly apt. But there’s another era in history that also deserves our attention during this time of existential dread, mistrust, and deep hostility and despair.

In 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong launched his new revolution (aka the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) to root out the remaining bourgeoisie that were leftover in China after his Communist Party won the war against the Nationalist Party (ie, Chiang Kai-Shek’s capitalists) in 1949. Chiang and his Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 , with countless cultural treasures; China has wanted to re-absorb the break-away group ever since, and may soon feel empowered to do so. Note: All quotes come from Wikipedia.

Red August, beginning on 18 August 1966 led to the deaths, displacements, public humiliation, lynching, and torture, of multiple thousands of intellectuals, teachers, writers, and businesspeople. The main perpetrators of this violence and cruelty were young people, many of them students, known as the Red Guards. Revolutionary Committees of Red Guards and Communist bureaucrats required all citizens to engage in endless “self-criticisms,” and to admit their “capitalist leanings.”

Villagers were encouraged to turn upon one another, using long-standing, non-political disputes as an excuse to turn their neighbors in to the enforcing authorities as “Capitalist back-sliders.” In several parts of the country, some angry villagers/vigilantes consumed the hearts and bodies of their “enemies.”

“In the massacre, methods of slaughter included "beheading, beating, live burial, stoning, drowning, boiling, group slaughters, disemboweling, digging out hearts, livers, genitals, slicing off flesh, blowing up with dynamite, and more".^[1][7] In one case, according to official records, a person had dynamite bound to the back and was blown up into pieces by other people (天女散花)—just for fun.^[1] This crime was led by Cen Guorong (岑国荣), who was once the Director of the Trade Union of Guangxi and had served as a representative in the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh National Congresses of the Chinese Communist Party.^[1]

In another case of 1968, "a geography instructor named Wu Shufang (吴树芳) was beaten to death by students at Wuxuan Middle School. Her body was carried to the flat stones of the Qian River where another teacher was forced at gunpoint to rip out the heart and liver. Back at the school the pupils barbecued and consumed the organs."^[7][10]”

The Communist party knew about these aberrations, and although they did not officially condone them, neither did they take steps to end the behaviour. Many writers took, or attempted to take, their own lives as they helplessly watched the intellectual class be completely wiped out; those who survived were “sent down” to the countryside to perform back-breaking jobs with no access to correspondence with family or colleagues. Most of them never returned to the cities, their families, or their work.

“During the massacres, Mao Zedong publicly opposed any governmental intervention against the student movement, and Xie Fuzhi, the Minister of Ministry of Public Security, instructed police and public security organizations to protect the Red Guards instead of arresting them.”

“Xie Fuzhi, the national police chief, said it was "no big deal" if Red Guards were beating "bad people" to death.”

This was the beginning of the Red Terror, and it lasted, essentially, until 1976. There was suspicion and even glee among the Red Guards, and lives could be ended or ruined, families ripped apart, by a “tip” that was never researched by any authorities.

In 1979 I earned a B.A. in Chinese Studies from Lewis & Clark College. When I was able to visit Mainland China, the population was still reeling from the after-effects of the Cultural Revolution. I loved China, the Chinese language and culture and history. With a huge EXCEPT: Except for the completely bizarre Cultural Revolution. These were not, surely, could not be, the Chinese people I had studied and loved and lived amongst in Hong Kong for six months. I was too naive, then, to realize that this was a nakedly authoritarian regime. Now, of course, I know how to identify such a regime. Don’t we all.

We studied an earlier Mao campaign called “Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom.” Citizens were encouraged to honestly critique their government with the guarantee that there would be “no repercussions.” Folks spoke out. Then, the honest critique-ers were rounded up and banished from their communities, families, and livelihoods, publicly humiliated, and sent to prison camps for “re-education,” or executed.

“From 1962 to 1979, 16 to 18 million youths were sent to the countryside to undergo “re-education.”

As we now watch our country and its proud, incredible heritage being ripped to shreds, the mistrust is palpable. Who will be the next person turned in to ICE by anyone with a grudge, or a dislike of folks that are “different”? Your neighbor, your friend, your classmate? Will any of them be white? Will they be herded onto military planes wearing leg shackles and handcuffs for the crime of seeking a better future?

The United States is experiencing its own Cultural Revolution, and it does not feel there’s any way to stop it. It seems ironic that we have just now welcomed The Year of the Snake. Gong Hay Fat Choi, guys.

I honestly do not believe we come back from this. Not in my lifetime, anyway.

And in a Fort Worth middle school, a math teacher reportedly told students that they do not belong here because they are Hispanics and Mexicans and it didn't matter that they were born here.

It will take you less than 5 seconds to read this, but a lifetime for these kids to forget it.

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Tidbits For The Week of January 27, 2025

Brigit’s What I’m

CURRENTLY LOVING ➡️  Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, Ben Meiselas, Timothy Snyder, Lucian Truscott, Alexander Vindman, and Steve Schmidt. Because I don't trust the legacy media anymore. 
THINKING ABOUT ➡️  How you never know how good it is until it's gone. 
LISTENING TO ➡️ The Beatles, Revolution. "But if you want money for people with minds that hate...."