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That scene really stuck out to me when I read it. It enraged me. It reminds me of some of the "softer" floggings going on today when Professors won't adhere to

That scene really stuck out to me when I read it. It enraged me. It reminds me of some of the "softer" floggings going on today when Professors won't adhere to the new collectivism of our University system.

jahnu 5y ago
I find these comparisons unhelpful. What happened in China during the Cultural Revolution is on such a different level of awfulness it just isn't even the tiniest bit comparable to anything controversial or problematic happening in West right now. Even today what is happening in China, and even the freer parts like Hong Kong, is still far removed from issues in the West. Even as a "thin end of the wedge" argument it's just weak. It hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries and it hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of real issues (such as that raised in the article above) in free, Western countries.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - elefanten 5y ago
    I don’t support or agree with the far left, or any of the identity culture warrior / critical theory / wokeness or whatever other adjacent thing you wanna roll up in that. But this comment is just unhinged nonsense. This is akin to the claims that Jan 6 was a coup attempt. “The left” is not a homogenous organized force (rofl, come on, the trope is that the left eats itself) which has organized militants on standby. Antifa and Patriots are both larping idiots alike. It’s the contagion and mutation of bad ideas that’s a bigger problem. A semantic pandemic.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      The Red Guards were mostly larping idiots, too. Many were literal children. The difference is they had substantial support both societally (either out of fear or ideology) and from the top by Mao, who saw them as a weapon he could harness. America isn't at that point, but we do ourselves no favours by pretending that it can't happen here. The ingredients are available, even if the execution isn't yet.
      - bangkoksbest 5y ago
        Uhhh China has centuries of history of peasant movements rising up in improvised make-shift revolts. I don't think you understand how real revolution was for people in China. It was absolutely not a LARP. Just looking from 1850 to Mao, there was: The Taiping Rebellion (30m dead), 2nd Sino-Japanese War (20m dead), Dungan rebellion (15m dead), Miao rebellion (5m dead), Red Turban rebellion (1m dead), Panthay rebellion (1m dead), Punti–Hakka wars (1m dead), Nationalist purges (1.5m dead), various Warlord Era conflicts (500k dead), 1911 revolution (200k dead), Boxer Rebellion (100k dead), and 1st Sino-Japanese war (50k dead). Not to mention residual deaths from the two World Wars not directly attributable to the conflicts above, but which would still number more than the losses the USA suffered in both wars. The American Civil War was about ~750k dead. There is absolutely no comparison between the traumatic social conditions of 1940s China with even 21st century China let alone the United States. They were definitely not "role playing".
        mannerheim 5y ago
        Regardless of China's history, I find it hard to regard literal children who grew up in peacetime styling themselves as revolutionaries as they fought to further entrench the most powerful man in the country as anything less than LARPing.
      - mbg721 5y ago
        The ingredients were always there; we're a nation founded by Puritans. What's supposed to save us is a robust system of checks and balances, coupled with strong protection of individual rights.
    - cm2187 5y ago
      They will still successfully bully speakers at conferences, threaten their security. I don’t think the cultural revolution is such a far fetch comparison. Somewhere between the cultural revolution and the Hollywood blacklist/McCarthyism. And the exercises of forced public contrition if you violate the orthodoxy are right in the middle of the cultural revolution. As is the gilt of class (now “whiteness”), or the liberal use of "fascism" in every sentence (now "white suppremacy" associated with everything in America on MSNBC).
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      Sorry but how ridiculous to claim "the left is not organized"? They have been organizing for more than a century. Of course they have groups and meetups and plans and guerilla tactics and what not. Maybe they are different groups and they are not united under one command, but that is not necessary to wreak havoc these days. Here in Germany they have "alternative housing projects" complete with strategies to prevent the police from entering. Of course the organize and talk strategies. And they also have government support, politicians applauding when antifa beats up memebers of the opposition. They will also threaten third parties like restaurants that host meetups of politicians they disapprove of. They are always on "standby" because they often have no jobs and hang out consuming drugs until a chance arises to get some action.
      - KarlKemp 5y ago
        lol.
        kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
        Yes it is all just for good fun. Until it suddenly isn't.
    - the_only_law 5y ago
      HN comments have become increasingly more retarded over the past few years. Sadly it’s not for “hackers” (though it’s debatable that it ever was)
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Iron law: Left-wing violence, no matter how apparently coordinated, is nothing but a series of random attacks carried out by punk kids looking to keep Nazis out of their space, whose only connection to a broader movement is ideological -- not part of an organized force, doing it for the right reasons. Right-wing violence, no matter how apparently haphazard or the result of lone-wolf action, is the result of a tightly coordinated network of fascists taking orders (through covert "dogwhistle" channels) directly from conservative leadership, up to and including the White House if a Republican is in office, acting on a master plan to undermine democracy and overthrow the government in a coup. Corollary: We're not the conspiracy theorists, the far right are the conspiracy theorists.
    - CheezeIt 5y ago
      The left does support antifa in every place where they don't get prosecuted.
  - bangkoksbest 5y ago
    As a former Antifa-kid (I don't go to punk shows anymore as 30 something, unfortunately), it's pretty surreal how off base and delusional this is. Antifa is primarily made of: i) dweeb grad students who have read too much Left "theory" but are really just liberals, ii) liberal punks whose primary goals are keeping cryptofascism out of their communities and cooking veggies from the local farmers market (not necessarily in that order), and iii) anarchist punks whose primary goals are keeping Nazi punks out of dive venues and cooking vegan chili from dumpster veggies (not necessarily in that order) You will have more success herding cats than in getting that motley crew to agree on a single policy action, let alone organizational action. That such a group have invokes for you a specter of Weimar-era Nazis is kind of embarrassing, and speaks to an utter lack of diversity in social experiences. The teen smoking weed in a Dead Kennedys hoodie down the street from you has probably has an Antifa sticker on his laptop, and perhaps he'd love to throw a brick through a Starbucks window... but that's not Kristalnacht. Taleb btw is nowhere near as fragile as to fear Antifa as some vanguard force for e.g. Nazism or sectarian ethnic militancy. He's literally more concerned about random bitcoin fanatics.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      The threaten people with political affiliations they don't like on a regular basis, with violence. And they have government support in my country (Germany). Turns out even "dweeb grad students" sometimes like to beat up folks, apparently.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I find it somewhat amusing, in that the attacks on someone like Wilson for his minor prejudices and ill-chosen wordings looks petty and out of proportion when considering all the worse offenders in the world, just as the attacks comparing this situation to the acts of authoritarian regimes is out of proportion. There is a nice sort of proportionality to how everything is hysterically overdone and out of proportion! That said everything is on a sliding scale here, and the worst enforcement of orthodoxy on the mildest offenders can certainly be compared to much lesser attacks if they stem from similar impulses. If you cannot make a comparison of this sort then the world would be a place with unconnected events and patterns, and no real way of defining or discussing how situations move from a not bad condition to a very bad one, or in the other direction. There would never be such a thing as warning signs or worrying trends, because those things would not be relatable to absolutely awful things they might lead to. Conversely if you were living with awful things there would be no reason to discuss how they could improve, because the improved version of life would not be comparable. How can you make legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries if you cannot compare bad with less bad?
  - guelo 5y ago
    I just don't see how you can make a slippery slope argument when comparing dictators with the power of massive governments to changing political youth culture. Especially when this left culture keeps losing politically and has little state power. The anti-CRT hysteria has resulted in a bunch of laws mandating changes to curriculums without input from educators, to me that's closer to the old communist dictators.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      Many of the worst parts of the Cultural Revolution were driven by the Red Guards, a political youth culture group with no formal government power. I don’t think American youth are gonna start beating their teachers to death, but it’s wrong to think that only things the government does can matter.
- nverno 5y ago
  The story of the turmoil at Evergreen college [1] a few years ago has enough similarity. Kids there cornered, berated, and essentially held hostage professors- it's pretty unbelievable. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM
  - andi999 5y ago
    What I dont understand, if you have a hostage situation can the police not handle it appropriately?
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      Not in anarcho-tyranny world.
  - reportingsjr 5y ago
    The last time the evergreen college protests were brought up to me, it was by a friend who had started leaning right and he mentioned something similar to what you said. When I looked more deeply in to it, the only mentions of people being held hostage came from far right sources, such as the youtube channel you linked, with little credibility. Watching recordings of what happened it's hard to take you seriously when you say people are being held hostage.
    - no_butterscotch 5y ago
      The president was kept in his office by students, and wasn't allowed to go pee: https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45 https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45. Though he swears ignorance to this (see the clip).
- roenxi 5y ago
  The same emotions and scenes that played out under communism play out everywhere, they are depressingly human scenes. The triumph of liberalism is coming up with systems that, if followed, transcend the natural monkey-isms of humans. Things like law courts that decide based on evidence rather than common knowledge or deciding tricky questions by vote rather than by what "good people" think. And giving people freedom to do icky things and then letting the good be remembered with the bad. It can simultaneously be true that the West is a long way from communism and that these scenes look a lot like what happened in times when communism was seriously tried. These are the same dynamics that got out of control and into the halls of power.
- alushta 5y ago
  The comparison is very apt. My mother always says how this current climate in the US reminds her of the Cultural Revolution, and told me on many occasions about how one of her physicist friends got "struggled" against because he had the temerity to claim that the sun had black spots, and it was taken a a veiled criticism against Chairman Mao and the party. It was just a struggle session where he had to wear the dunce cap--no jail time, but I'm sure it was quite a frightful experience.

jahnu 5y ago

I find these comparisons unhelpful. What happened in China during the Cultural Revolution is on such a different level of awfulness it just isn't even the tiniest bit comparable to anything controversial or problematic happening in West right now. Even today what is happening in China, and even the freer parts like Hong Kong, is still far removed from issues in the West. Even as a "thin end of the wedge" argument it's just weak. It hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries and it hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of real issues (such as that raised in the article above) in free, Western countries.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
[flagged]
- elefanten 5y ago
  I don’t support or agree with the far left, or any of the identity culture warrior / critical theory / wokeness or whatever other adjacent thing you wanna roll up in that. But this comment is just unhinged nonsense. This is akin to the claims that Jan 6 was a coup attempt. “The left” is not a homogenous organized force (rofl, come on, the trope is that the left eats itself) which has organized militants on standby. Antifa and Patriots are both larping idiots alike. It’s the contagion and mutation of bad ideas that’s a bigger problem. A semantic pandemic.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    The Red Guards were mostly larping idiots, too. Many were literal children. The difference is they had substantial support both societally (either out of fear or ideology) and from the top by Mao, who saw them as a weapon he could harness. America isn't at that point, but we do ourselves no favours by pretending that it can't happen here. The ingredients are available, even if the execution isn't yet.
    - bangkoksbest 5y ago
      Uhhh China has centuries of history of peasant movements rising up in improvised make-shift revolts. I don't think you understand how real revolution was for people in China. It was absolutely not a LARP. Just looking from 1850 to Mao, there was: The Taiping Rebellion (30m dead), 2nd Sino-Japanese War (20m dead), Dungan rebellion (15m dead), Miao rebellion (5m dead), Red Turban rebellion (1m dead), Panthay rebellion (1m dead), Punti–Hakka wars (1m dead), Nationalist purges (1.5m dead), various Warlord Era conflicts (500k dead), 1911 revolution (200k dead), Boxer Rebellion (100k dead), and 1st Sino-Japanese war (50k dead). Not to mention residual deaths from the two World Wars not directly attributable to the conflicts above, but which would still number more than the losses the USA suffered in both wars. The American Civil War was about ~750k dead. There is absolutely no comparison between the traumatic social conditions of 1940s China with even 21st century China let alone the United States. They were definitely not "role playing".
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        Regardless of China's history, I find it hard to regard literal children who grew up in peacetime styling themselves as revolutionaries as they fought to further entrench the most powerful man in the country as anything less than LARPing.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      The ingredients were always there; we're a nation founded by Puritans. What's supposed to save us is a robust system of checks and balances, coupled with strong protection of individual rights.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    They will still successfully bully speakers at conferences, threaten their security. I don’t think the cultural revolution is such a far fetch comparison. Somewhere between the cultural revolution and the Hollywood blacklist/McCarthyism. And the exercises of forced public contrition if you violate the orthodoxy are right in the middle of the cultural revolution. As is the gilt of class (now “whiteness”), or the liberal use of "fascism" in every sentence (now "white suppremacy" associated with everything in America on MSNBC).
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Sorry but how ridiculous to claim "the left is not organized"? They have been organizing for more than a century. Of course they have groups and meetups and plans and guerilla tactics and what not. Maybe they are different groups and they are not united under one command, but that is not necessary to wreak havoc these days. Here in Germany they have "alternative housing projects" complete with strategies to prevent the police from entering. Of course the organize and talk strategies. And they also have government support, politicians applauding when antifa beats up memebers of the opposition. They will also threaten third parties like restaurants that host meetups of politicians they disapprove of. They are always on "standby" because they often have no jobs and hang out consuming drugs until a chance arises to get some action.
    - KarlKemp 5y ago
      lol.
      - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
        Yes it is all just for good fun. Until it suddenly isn't.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    HN comments have become increasingly more retarded over the past few years. Sadly it’s not for “hackers” (though it’s debatable that it ever was)
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Iron law: Left-wing violence, no matter how apparently coordinated, is nothing but a series of random attacks carried out by punk kids looking to keep Nazis out of their space, whose only connection to a broader movement is ideological -- not part of an organized force, doing it for the right reasons. Right-wing violence, no matter how apparently haphazard or the result of lone-wolf action, is the result of a tightly coordinated network of fascists taking orders (through covert "dogwhistle" channels) directly from conservative leadership, up to and including the White House if a Republican is in office, acting on a master plan to undermine democracy and overthrow the government in a coup. Corollary: We're not the conspiracy theorists, the far right are the conspiracy theorists.
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    The left does support antifa in every place where they don't get prosecuted.
- bangkoksbest 5y ago
  As a former Antifa-kid (I don't go to punk shows anymore as 30 something, unfortunately), it's pretty surreal how off base and delusional this is. Antifa is primarily made of: i) dweeb grad students who have read too much Left "theory" but are really just liberals, ii) liberal punks whose primary goals are keeping cryptofascism out of their communities and cooking veggies from the local farmers market (not necessarily in that order), and iii) anarchist punks whose primary goals are keeping Nazi punks out of dive venues and cooking vegan chili from dumpster veggies (not necessarily in that order) You will have more success herding cats than in getting that motley crew to agree on a single policy action, let alone organizational action. That such a group have invokes for you a specter of Weimar-era Nazis is kind of embarrassing, and speaks to an utter lack of diversity in social experiences. The teen smoking weed in a Dead Kennedys hoodie down the street from you has probably has an Antifa sticker on his laptop, and perhaps he'd love to throw a brick through a Starbucks window... but that's not Kristalnacht. Taleb btw is nowhere near as fragile as to fear Antifa as some vanguard force for e.g. Nazism or sectarian ethnic militancy. He's literally more concerned about random bitcoin fanatics.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    The threaten people with political affiliations they don't like on a regular basis, with violence. And they have government support in my country (Germany). Turns out even "dweeb grad students" sometimes like to beat up folks, apparently.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I find it somewhat amusing, in that the attacks on someone like Wilson for his minor prejudices and ill-chosen wordings looks petty and out of proportion when considering all the worse offenders in the world, just as the attacks comparing this situation to the acts of authoritarian regimes is out of proportion. There is a nice sort of proportionality to how everything is hysterically overdone and out of proportion! That said everything is on a sliding scale here, and the worst enforcement of orthodoxy on the mildest offenders can certainly be compared to much lesser attacks if they stem from similar impulses. If you cannot make a comparison of this sort then the world would be a place with unconnected events and patterns, and no real way of defining or discussing how situations move from a not bad condition to a very bad one, or in the other direction. There would never be such a thing as warning signs or worrying trends, because those things would not be relatable to absolutely awful things they might lead to. Conversely if you were living with awful things there would be no reason to discuss how they could improve, because the improved version of life would not be comparable. How can you make legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries if you cannot compare bad with less bad?
- guelo 5y ago
  I just don't see how you can make a slippery slope argument when comparing dictators with the power of massive governments to changing political youth culture. Especially when this left culture keeps losing politically and has little state power. The anti-CRT hysteria has resulted in a bunch of laws mandating changes to curriculums without input from educators, to me that's closer to the old communist dictators.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    Many of the worst parts of the Cultural Revolution were driven by the Red Guards, a political youth culture group with no formal government power. I don’t think American youth are gonna start beating their teachers to death, but it’s wrong to think that only things the government does can matter.
nverno 5y ago
The story of the turmoil at Evergreen college [1] a few years ago has enough similarity. Kids there cornered, berated, and essentially held hostage professors- it's pretty unbelievable. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM
- andi999 5y ago
  What I dont understand, if you have a hostage situation can the police not handle it appropriately?
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    Not in anarcho-tyranny world.
- reportingsjr 5y ago
  The last time the evergreen college protests were brought up to me, it was by a friend who had started leaning right and he mentioned something similar to what you said. When I looked more deeply in to it, the only mentions of people being held hostage came from far right sources, such as the youtube channel you linked, with little credibility. Watching recordings of what happened it's hard to take you seriously when you say people are being held hostage.
  - no_butterscotch 5y ago
    The president was kept in his office by students, and wasn't allowed to go pee: https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45 https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45. Though he swears ignorance to this (see the clip).
roenxi 5y ago
The same emotions and scenes that played out under communism play out everywhere, they are depressingly human scenes. The triumph of liberalism is coming up with systems that, if followed, transcend the natural monkey-isms of humans. Things like law courts that decide based on evidence rather than common knowledge or deciding tricky questions by vote rather than by what "good people" think. And giving people freedom to do icky things and then letting the good be remembered with the bad. It can simultaneously be true that the West is a long way from communism and that these scenes look a lot like what happened in times when communism was seriously tried. These are the same dynamics that got out of control and into the halls of power.
alushta 5y ago
The comparison is very apt. My mother always says how this current climate in the US reminds her of the Cultural Revolution, and told me on many occasions about how one of her physicist friends got "struggled" against because he had the temerity to claim that the sun had black spots, and it was taken a a veiled criticism against Chairman Mao and the party. It was just a struggle session where he had to wear the dunce cap--no jail time, but I'm sure it was quite a frightful experience.