My friend and mentor Orville Schell puts very clearly what many people with experience in 20th century China are thinking: The parallels with the nihilism and chaos-for-its-own-sake of the Cultural Revolution years. www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/d... - ThreadSky

jfallows.bsky.social • 19 hours ago

My friend and mentor Orville Schell puts very clearly what many people with experience in 20th century China are thinking:

The parallels with the nihilism and chaos-for-its-own-sake of the Cultural Revolution years.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/donald-trump-mao-zedong-cultural-revolution-parallels-by-orville-schell-2025-02

Comments

dandwig.bsky.social•18 hours ago

I’ve been thinking of this as “the great leap backward” for a while.

popsbury.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Another parallel is with 'vulture capitalism', where an entity is acquired and stripped of its assets for personal benefit.

Benefits for Musk/Trump: diminished constraints, enhanced power and financial benefit.

whateer2023.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Totally opposite!

Cultural Revolution aimed to smash all religions and traditions, either temples, Daoist shrines, mosques, churches, and ancestral halls.

MAGA seeks to put a Bible in everyone’s hands.

Although both are chaos, but their differences will become clearer in hundred years.

riwoche.bsky.social•18 hours ago

Splendid Orville Schell analysis with a brutal conclusion: "Mao, who would have welcomed the catastrophe now unfolding in America, must be looking down from his Marxist-Leninist heaven with a smile, as the East wind may finally be prevailing over the West wind – a dream for which he had long hoped."

freebird2024.bsky.social•18 hours ago

Anyone familiar with the Cultural Revolution can see the shadow of the Red Guards in DOGE’s movement.
Anyone who knows how Mao launched the Cultural Revolution and how Xi successfully amended the constitution to secure his third term can foresee what Trump will do.

mikkel-gnoer.bsky.social•18 hours ago

Another parallel between Mao and Musk, not just Trump, is of course the abusive father. And Musk's penchant for self-created chaos. The connection to the Silicon Valley self-valorizing shibboleth of "disruption" bears further comparison as well.

beingsass.bsky.social•18 hours ago

💯

zkahn.bsky.social•19 hours ago

Hello Mr. Fallows! I hope you are well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on my latest piece covering some of the most unique legislation proposed in the past two weeks, and I would really appreciate your feedback!

You can read it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/zachkahn/p/the-most-unique-legislation-proposed?r=43zlkt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Thanks and enjoy your evening!

lanzafab.bsky.social•18 hours ago

Truly one of the stupidest things I have read so far. It is historically ridiculous both in the analysis of the CR (from the psychologizing of Mao to the recovery of Richard Solomon) and in the comparison itself.

jackacid.bsky.social•19 hours ago

If Mao was the Great Helmsman, what is Trump?

rsgreacen.bsky.social•19 hours ago

Remember the drunken captain of the Exxon Valdez?

jackacid.bsky.social•19 hours ago

Trump has the ship of state on the rocks, that's for sure.

kaiserkuo.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Sure, there are some parallels, but to jump in so quickly with the psychologizing of Mao—really, Orville? It's about his relationship with his father?—just puts me off this right away. Plenty of chaos candidates in Western political history to draw on. Berlusconi, more recently. A. Jackson. H. Long.

kaiserkuo.bsky.social•13 hours ago

The other thing is this flattening of Mao to one decade of his life — the last decade. No defending him in that decade or even the one previous to that, sure, but he was a revolutionary in politics for his whole adult life, and accomplished much—including in building the Party he went on to wreck.

stevenjs.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Mr. @jfallows.bsky.social There is a paywall

bethly711.bsky.social•16 hours ago

3/And this revolution’s executioner-in-chief would appear to be the world’s richest person, Elon Musk."

bethly711.bsky.social•16 hours ago

2/Palantir CEO Alex Karp, whose co-founder Peter Thiel is also a Trump acolyte, recently described the new president’s overhaul of the United States government as a 'revolution” in which 'some people will get their heads cut off.'

bethly711.bsky.social•16 hours ago

1/"The Trump administration has an equally voracious appetite for disruption and chaos.

bethly711.bsky.social•16 hours ago

cowanon.bsky.social•17 hours ago

The Great Leap Backward

ejgoldstick.bsky.social•17 hours ago

I have been thinking about Mao and Stalin lately, and others have mentioned the Cultural Revolution as comparable to Trump's MAGA, so Schell's informed perspective is more than welcome.

1/2

ejgoldstick.bsky.social•17 hours ago

The only solace I find is the hope that the ideals of Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Lincoln, *and* MLK will emerge intact to the same degree as Confucianism and the mixed economies of Xi's China have been consolidated.

In fact, perhaps Xi will take this situation as an important lesson...

2/2

paulsummergrad.bsky.social•18 hours ago

The young DOGE apparatchiks who arrived in agencies and requiring staff to say who they would fire i.e. denouce have an immediate resonance with the Red Guards. We however have a much longer history of democracy and not 3500 years of monarchs and dynasties losing the Mandate of Heaven

brentstahl.bsky.social•18 hours ago

I was thinking yesterday of the similarities-of-function of the DOGE boys (& right-wing young tech bros) & Mao's Red Guard.

enjohnston.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Yes but as my friend @giantwhispers.bsky.social pointed out to me, Mao had been in power for 20 years at that point, and had absolute power. Let's not give them (symbolic) power they ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE, and that we can and must help make sure they never do.

melissahbuckner.bsky.social•18 hours ago

With serious comparisons of Trump’s first 30 days to Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and Hitler’s Dismantlement of Democracy in 53 Days, the world may not be ready for what’s coming.

chinaheritage.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Jim: you might also enjoy this:

https://goldkorn.substack.com/p/how-to-commit-a-self-coup-in-the

jfallows.bsky.social•16 hours ago

Wilco thank you.

or7f.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Teaching there, one of my Chinese bosses pointed to this chaos as a very strong negative. Yes, it shattered the status quo. But at such a cost as to be almost ineffective in the result.

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