THE DAY THE POLICE WERE NO LONGER NEEDED
On August 19, 1966 – Chinese students launched a fight for social justice to fight for the rights of the oppressed in China. It was widely believed that the ‘patriarchal system’ in China had been created by the 1% and held down women, minorities, and the working class. The students cried out for a revolution and change, and consequentially launched the infamous Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Students put a red band around their arm to stand in solidarity with the oppressed and called for a change on old ideas that they called the FOUR OLDS. The Four Olds were: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.
The movement was supported by the Chinese media.
Mass demonstrations and looting by the students ensued.Statues were torn down.
Chinese architecture was destroyed.
Classical literature and Chinese paintings were torn apart and burned.
Temples were desecrated.
The Cemetery of Confucius was attacked.
The corpse of the 76th-generation Duke Yansheng was removed from its grave and hung from a tree.
Wealthy homes were attacked and destroyed.
Many families’ long-kept genealogy books were burned to ashes.All of history, in short, was to be removed and replaced. This was the central meaning of Cultural Revolution: That China was going to destroy every trace of its bourgeois (privileged) past and replace it with a new culture built on the principles of Maoism and Marxism.
Communist leaders like President Liu Shaoqi were taken out of power and replaced with men Mao believed were not critical of his reign.
Public leaders who were considered to be oppressive were tried by angry mobs and vigilantes.
Three days later, August 22, 1966, a central directive was issued to stop police intervention. The police were disbanded in the city and the students formed a community solution called the RED GUARD. The RED GUARDS policed the communities and punished anyone who did not agree with their ideas. Even people that supported the movement, but had bad thoughts (“wrong think”) could be punished.
Though many Christians supported the movement in the beginning, they quickly became the number one target of the RED GUARDS and public trials were held to condemn them to death.
Many of those that were on board with the cause of the rebellion, in the beginning, saw that it was not really what they had signed up for, but by then it was too late. The power that the Red Guard wanted had already been given.More people died during the cultural revolution in China than any war, famine, or natural disaster in the history of man. An estimated 20 to 30 million people were killed.
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