>By the fall of 1966 and into 1967, violence metastasized across China’s cities. Gangs of radicals tried to seize local power, only to be countered by defenders of the status quo fighting for their own survival. Government agencies were ransacked and looted. Party officials were bound up, humiliated, and thrown before the mob, some never to emerge alive. Workplaces, neighborhoods, and even entire cities descended into internecine warfare as faction battled faction, colleague raged against colleague, student pummeled student, and, in many cases, family member turned on family member. Radicalized citizens broke into military armories and pillaged the contents, thus injecting automatic weapons, hand grenades, and artillery pieces into the nationwide melee. China in just a few months had gone from a rigidly ordered society to Lord of the Flies. Though the final death count is still murky, well more than a million individuals likely lost their lives.
> Through it all, Mao wallowed in narcissism, delighting in the chaos he had willed upon the nation. As violence began to spread at the very start of this period, the chairman famously rhapsodized in a letter to his wife, “There is great disorder under heaven—the situation is excellent.” Five months later, on the evening of his birthday in December 1966, he would raise a toast: “To the unfolding of nationwide all-round civil war!”
>In the United States now, I witness things that I never thought I would live to see at home, but that feel ominously reminiscent of the Chinese experience. I see a national leader defiantly rejecting the most fundamental and time-honored of governance institutions, while refusing even to entertain a peaceful transition of power. I see a national leader and much of the public trafficking in wild conspiracy theories about the country’s public institutions, and openly contemplating resolutions through violence and vigilante action. I see various societal leaders, including President Donald Trump, stoking the fires of intra-societal resentment and hatred. And I see the opportunists and abettors reveling in their transgressions of norms, embracing the chaos, and relishing their own moment in the sun. Oh, how tantalizing it is to play with fire and risk burning down the house.
From 2020, but feels even more relevant today than then.
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>By the fall of 1966 and into 1967, violence metastasized across China’s cities. Gangs of radicals tried to seize local power, only to be countered by defenders of the status quo fighting for their own survival. Government agencies were ransacked and looted. Party officials were bound up, humiliated, and thrown before the mob, some never to emerge alive. Workplaces, neighborhoods, and even entire cities descended into internecine warfare as faction battled faction, colleague raged against colleague, student pummeled student, and, in many cases, family member turned on family member. Radicalized citizens broke into military armories and pillaged the contents, thus injecting automatic weapons, hand grenades, and artillery pieces into the nationwide melee. China in just a few months had gone from a rigidly ordered society to Lord of the Flies. Though the final death count is still murky, well more than a million individuals likely lost their lives.
> Through it all, Mao wallowed in narcissism, delighting in the chaos he had willed upon the nation. As violence began to spread at the very start of this period, the chairman famously rhapsodized in a letter to his wife, “There is great disorder under heaven—the situation is excellent.” Five months later, on the evening of his birthday in December 1966, he would raise a toast: “To the unfolding of nationwide all-round civil war!”
>In the United States now, I witness things that I never thought I would live to see at home, but that feel ominously reminiscent of the Chinese experience. I see a national leader defiantly rejecting the most fundamental and time-honored of governance institutions, while refusing even to entertain a peaceful transition of power. I see a national leader and much of the public trafficking in wild conspiracy theories about the country’s public institutions, and openly contemplating resolutions through violence and vigilante action. I see various societal leaders, including President Donald Trump, stoking the fires of intra-societal resentment and hatred. And I see the opportunists and abettors reveling in their transgressions of norms, embracing the chaos, and relishing their own moment in the sun. Oh, how tantalizing it is to play with fire and risk burning down the house.
From 2020, but feels even more relevant today than then.