I haven't read that book, but the Wikipedia article gives a reasonable account based on what I've read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards#Origins https:/

I haven't read that book, but the Wikipedia article gives a reasonable account based on what I've read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards#Origins >But are you really telling me that China in 1966 was a free enough society that students could just start an independent political movement that took over the country? It wasn't a free society by any stretch, but the students' radicalism was in line with the prevailing zeitgeist... they denounced university officials as intellectual elites, corrupted by bourgeois notions that threatened the success of the revolution. Meanwhile, Mao faced ongoing struggles to maintain and consolidate power, so he found endorsing their ideas useful. But the movement itself rapidly spun beyond his direct control.