Propganda and indoctrinationAs earlier discussed, the chinese cultural revolution was primarily a way to revieve the image of Mao Zedong and to eliminate his political enimies. The main wasy by which he achived this was through parpaganda and indoctrination be made part of the typical education for things such as, Mao Zedong's advice and sayings (Chen 2016). These indoctrinated students became the infamous Red Guard, a group of highly revolutionary military group that followed the ferver created by Mao Zedong (Ramzy, 2016). The Red Guard sought for anyone that went against the communist ideals of Mao Zedong, including intelectuals, landlords, wealthy pesents religious and spirtitual leaders, westerners, anyone with any western influence (other than Karl Marx, of course) and anyone who said anything negative about Mao Zedong. These people would often be publicly embarassed, forced to where dunce caps on their heads and then publicly executed. These revolutionary groups quickly turned on one another as there was no "true" Red Guard as so every group fought the other through their "rightousness" and fear of being wrong(Gao, 2010).
|
Torture and InterrogationThe Red Guard captured their very own teachers and tortured them endlessly. Neither interegator nor prisonor would know what the crimes the prisinor had supposedly commited, leading to surreal interview sessions where, in struggling to remember what crimes they never commited, they would confess small bits of "wrongdoing" , such as jaywalking or forgetting to water their flowers. These sessions would only stop when the Guard was satisfied with the answers they had been given and then they would only end with the prisonor's death (Shapiro 2016). The only way out of these torturous conditions, typically by jumping out of a window. Over 200,000 people chose this over this path.
|
Terror on the countrysideIt was during the Chinese Cultural Revolution that many educated young people were being sent down to work on farms and the Revolution only spurred it on as over sixteen million people, including the current presedent of China, were sent to the countryside. The simmiler reign of terror that wept through the cities afflicted the countryside, where anyone who even joked about Mao Zedong would be humiliated and publicly executed. The Red Guard also destoryed the four olds, culturally significant items to China, including shrines, artifacts, temples, and anything old that didn't have a nessisary purpose(Kamm, 1989).
|