[Note: This letter on personal resilience was written by our founder, Simon Black.]
Fourteen year old Gao Yuan was attending a boarding school in China when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966. And that’s when his life changed forever.
Even though the communists had won the Chinese Civil War and been in total power since 1945, Chairman Mao still believed that there was too much capitalist influence in China.
So he decided to completely rewrite literature, history, and the entire education system.
School instruction switched from teaching math and science, to activism.
Students like Gao Yuan were encouraged to find and punish “revisionists” who sought to undermine the revolution’s progress, including their own parents and teachers.
One teacher fell under suspicion because, even though he routinely spoke of China’s natural beauty, he didn’t ever praise Chairman Mao.
Other teachers were denounced for wearing western clothes or engaging in borgeois activities— like drinking wine or buying an expensive radio.
Gao Yuan liked his teachers and hesitated to participate. But he was even more afraid of being labeled an evil revisionist himself. So he joined the mob and began accusing teachers and parents.
The assistant headmaster committed suicide when accused of revisionism. Gao Yuan found his body, and even though he had liked him, Gao assumed the suicide proved the man must have been guilty of thought crime.
Another teacher died under mysterious circumstances. Soon the rest of the faculty fled, and the school fell under the control of the students.
That’s when the situation really turned bizarre.
Factions quickly formed like rival gangs, and the students turned against one other. Each group accused the other of failure to live up to the full revolutionary spirit, finding micro-transgressions everywhere.
Students were killed— one suffocated after have had a sock stuffed in his mouth. Another was tortured to death. One girl committed suicide rather than be captured by a rival student group. Several children died in an accidental explosion while attempting to make bombs.
This was NOT an isolated incident; as the Cultural Revolution spread, similar incidents occurred across China in government offices, factories, schools, and the military.
Gao Yuan eventually fled the school, only to find that his father had been “canceled” by local students for caring too much about farming and economics, and not enough about party politics. He lost a prominent position in county government.
When Gao Yuan finally returned to his school months later, he found the campus destroyed— shattered windows, unmarked graves, bombed out buildings, and utter chaos.
Years later he recounted his experience in a book called Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution.
Now the US is entering its own Cultural Revolution. While any rational person can see many forms of discrimination that still exist, we are being force fed a narrative that White Supremancy is at the core of everything.
It has become so ridiculous that, according to one California state math education group, saying 2+2=4 perpetuates white supremacy.
The only way to fix it is for “anti-racists” to identify and punish the oppressors, i.e. people who believe that 2+2=4.
This is among the many lessons that now dominate school curiccula in many districts in the Land of the Free.
Kids are being taught Critical Race Theory, and a brand new history based on the New York Times’s 1619 Project.
Books that have been at the cornerstone of literature classes for more than a century are now being cancelled. Math and science are blasted as racist and transphobic.
Students at an elite private school in Manhattan called Grace Church High School now dedicate hours each week to “anti-racism” instruction.
Segregated sessions force white students to attend classes which teach them that objectivity and individualism are features of white supremacy.
They are taught to find and report racial “micro-aggressions” of their teachers and peers— for instance, if someone insists they don’t care about someone’s skin color.
Challenging, questioning, or engaging in discussion about systemic racism is taken as proof that the transgressor is racist.
A former teacher at the school, Paul Rossi, attempted to introduce debate about the topic in a segregated, ‘whites only’ learning session.
He was accused of harassment, and told his failure to accept as gospel the critical race narrative created “dissonance for vulnerable and unformed thinkers” and “neurological disturbance in students’ beings and systems.”
This is what educators honestly believe— that differing opinions and constructive discussion are literally harmful to students’ brains.
Rossi was forced to resign. But it’s not just teachers who are cancelled.
Students are also punished for questioning Critical Race Theory, and they are reprimanded if they don’t speak up in support of it.
Teachers suggested that the school “officially flag” students who remain silent, believe in meritocracy, or suggest that everyone be treated with respect regardless of skin color.
Incredibly, a new government regulation proposed by the US Department of Education last month will prioritize special federal funding to schools which focus on this sort of thought control .
The national media reinforces this dogma. When parents speak out against Critical Race Theory being taught in their children’s schools, the media blasts them as white supremacists.
Recently, 70% of a Texas town voted for school board members vehemently opposed to Critical Race Theory, in a local election where about three times as many voters as usual turned out.
Yet NBC reported it was a “bitterly divided election”. Really? Does a 70% to 30% victory with massive voter turnout sound bitterly divided?
It’s clear based on these (and other) election results that the majority of the population opposes this cultural revolution.
The people who are trying to cancel Western Civilization are just a small, extremely vocal minority. The problem is, they control the media, the big tech companies, the universities, and most of the federal government, so their message seems much more popular than it really is.
This revolution has even spread to the military and intelligence agencies, with everyone from the CIA to US Special Operations Command prioritizing wokeness over national defense.
And of course, dozes of major corporations from Disney to Coca Cola have jumped on the bandwagon too.
History has much to teach us. And the key lesson from China’s cultural revolution is that these movements don’t suddenly disappear.
Now, you might be surprised to hear me say that the strongest way to fight back against this movement is to VOTE.
But I’m not talking about the broken political process.
I’m talking about the vote you make with your money.
If you disagree with a company’s woke politics, stop buying their products. Honestly. If you hate the fact that Disney is ultra-woke, but you’re not willing to give up your Disney+ membership, then you may need to rethink your priorities.
Same goes for Woka Cola, or any other major brand.
There’s also the vote you can make with your feet.
If your state or local government has totally lost its mind, consider moving. You can’t fix your neighbors’ way of thinking, but you can might be able to find greener pastures elsewhere.
