Progressivism seems to be a contagious mental illness. Remember China’s Cultural Revolution only 50 years ago? It was just the same. Op-ed.
By Giulio Meotti, INN
Chinese Liberation Army soldiers before image of Supreme Leader Xi
In China the “cultural revolution” began with the destruction of the pianos, torn to pieces (often together with the pianists). Then the violins (and the hands of the violinists). The music of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and all the other dirty “bourgeois ideologists” was then forbidden.
Young people plundered the temples, knocked down the beautiful statues of Chinese antiquity and finished them off with a hammer.
Citizens suspected of “revisionism” brought out to the streets. It was no longer possible to go out into the streets of Beijing without meeting men and women with signs proclaiming “I am a landlord” on their chest.
Opera singers were sent to the countryside. The Forbidden Imperial City, the Temple of Heaven, was transformed into an encampment and a curtain of red paint was spread over many of its paintings. All churches were barred.
It didn’t happen in the Middle Ages, but just 50 years ago. And look at China today.
Do you remember anything of it?
In Charleston I saw Whites parading in chains in a reverse form of slavery, to repent their “sins”. It’s a predictable progression if you want it. First you push people to get on their knees and the next inevitable step will be to put chains around their necks. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave no longer exists – at least, not in the public domain.
They have put chains on the head of a generation, stoned it with years of lies about racism, inequality, with historical and social recriminations. And this is the result. The clowns of progressivism, a mental illness. It will end up with disadvantaged blacks asking privileged whites to pay for them.
The statue of Theodore Roosevelt (26th President of the United States and a Nobel Peace Prize winner) in front of the New York Museum of Natural History will be removed. This time it will not be street fanatics who will bring it down, but the fanatics who run the museum.
The next step will be to empty the European museums of “colonial” masterpieces. There is the Nefertiti statue from the Neues Museum in Berlin, the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum in London, the Parisian Quai Branly museum full of African works of art, to name just a few.
This wave of self-hatred will only leave the West with the broken pieces of its own past and culture.
Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. In addition to books in Italian, he is the author of the book “A New Shoah“, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and of “The Vatican Against Israel:J’accuse” published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.
In high school in the mid 70s, I was given textbooks and articles by famous professors from all over the world explaining that the Chinese Cultural Revolution was an experiment in democracy and the most non-violent and peaceful revolution in history. It was a special high school for actors, musicians or ballet dancers who were already professionals or semi-professionals. Some of them went on to become quite famous and influential. We’ve been hearing that word, “peaceful” a lot, again. to describe this civil insurrection and those who provide cover for it.