Talk:Cultural Revolution/Archive 1
How many tens of millions of people were executed by the Chinese government during this period? Was the term cultural revolution coined specifically to be a euphemism to hide these murders? Have regimes after Mao's acknowledged any of this genocide? Ed Poor, anti-communist.
Not all the murders during that period was done by the government actually. Nevertheless, it was done by the people in power locally. i.e. if the leader of your village didn't like you, he could use any excuse to kill you and got away with murder. Because during that period, the communist government enpowered the mass to do anything they wanted. I was a kid in HongKong during that period, and I still remember watching news about corpses floated into HongKong's water almost everyday. These dead bodies were bundled up like a parcel. Someone just tied up their arms and legs and threw them into the sea. If you said someone did not follow Mao's doctrine, the crowd would carry out the execution.
If you look back in history, this type of mob crime is not unique to communists. For example, witch hunt was done in the name of God. Religious leader said that was what God wanted, and the crowd simply followed.
During the cultural revolution, capitalists, landlords, wealthy people were prosecuted, why? Those who carried out the prosecution had their hidden agenda. Where did you think the wealthy victims' possessions end up? I bet many ex-Red-guards now dig up from their back yard the loots that they collected decades ago. I believe personal grudge and greeds played a bigger role in those murders than political reasons. However, it is undeniable that Mao provided the means.
Cultural revolution was the name they used at the time. One common misconception in the West is that the Cultural Revolution was Communist government versus people when in fact it was much more complex.
Basically Mao thought that the government was being too bureaucratic so he declared war against the Communist Party bureaucracy. He basically encouraged people to out "red" each other, which led to a general breakdown in order with mobs trying to be more revolutionary than each other and lots of people killing each other in the process.
What's significant about the Chinese leaders after Mao is that pretty much all of them were victims of the CR. Pretty much everyone who benefited from the CR was purged between 1976 and 1980.
Ironically the main lessons that the Chinese leadership learned from this period is that really bad things happen if the party loses control.
It's a mistake to say that there are two sides to every story. Usually (as in this case) there are at least six or seven.