Red Guards 2.0 With American Characteristics For The Current Era

A large number of (self-defined) oppressed groups are actively fighting the White heteronormative male patriarchy for influence and power.  At present their influence is dissipated in fragmentation, with each group seeking its own redress.

What’s needed for greater success is to unify this myriad of intersectional communities into a brigade under a unified chain of command.

The solution is a little Red Book 2.0, modeled after Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, first published in 1964. Each community should compile its slogans into a chapter (Mao’s quotations were categorized into 33 chapters).  The chapters should then be collated into a little Red Book 2.0 With American Characteristics.  (A photo of President Barack Obama could be placed on the inside front cover for inspiration.)  Then activists could wave their little Red Book 2.0 when shouting slogans at the privileged.

Here, in alphabetical order, is a partial list of chapters that might be included in little Red Book 2.0.

Abortion rights

Antifa

BLM

DACA

Discrimination

Diversity

Environmentalism

Feminism

Global Warming

Global Warriors

Identity

Inclusion

Inequality

Intersectionality

LBGT

Low-income

Marxist left

MeToo

Minorities

Safe spaces

Sustainable

SJW

Trigger Warning

Unconscious bias

I was in Hong Kong in September 1966 at the onset of the local Red Guard movement, which was unleashed as part of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.  We (my spouse and I) were visiting relatives in Hong Kong, who had made plans to leave for Australia in October 1966.  They lived in Cosmopolitan Dock, which was surrounded by a Chinese-populated neighborhood.  Each time we rode into and out of the Dock, gangs of youths waved little Red Books at us chanting pro-Mao slogans.

Riots broke out in Hong Kong in summer 1967.  After months of disruption, Hong Kong’s police crushed the movement as mainland Red Guards and Mao watched quietly from across the border.  (It took another decade for the Chinese army to extinguish the mainland Red Guard movement.)  China’s earnings of foreign exchange in Hong Kong were too important to the mainland to allow chaos and violence to shut down Hong Kong’s economy.  Conservatives who have been shouted down at American universities and escorted off campus with police protection will understand this experience.

American universities are still in the early stage of Red Guards 2.0 for two reasons.  First, unlike the Black Power movement of the 1960s, this time is different.  The movement extends way beyond Black Power due to Harvey Weinstein and others like him.  #MeToo has exposed the hypocrisy of Hollywood, the media, and politicians.

Second, the professoriate of American universities is overwhelmingly White males.  At Stanford, for example, Women and Minorities make up only 28% and 29% respectively of the faculty.  In general, female and minority academics are more liberal than White males, especially older White males set to retire over the next 10-15 years.  As their increasingly female and minority replacements settle in, universities will lean even more to the left on social, economic, and political issues.  From the universities this narrative will spread through K-12 education, the media, Hollywood, business, and government at all levels.

The Black Power movement of the 1960s ­­faded away after a decade, almost exactly as long as it took for the Red Guard movement to dissipate in China.  Perhaps the multi-dimensional character of the Red Guards 2.0 movement in America will last much longer, for a generation or more, until it transforms the American cultural landscape.

This is an exceptionally interesting time to be a historian.