Red Guards

Hundreds of thousands died in purges often led by youth militias known as the Red Guards.

In a recent essay, author and university professor Zhang Sheng noted that “in the past people summoned the Red Guards, now people summon the ‘little pinks’” – a popular nickname for the virtual army of online nationalists.

Her desire for a global tabula rasa outstrips that of even the most fanatical Red Guards, who still dominate her mental landscape.

During the Cultural Revolution, a turbulent decade beginning in 1966, she endured beatings from Maoist “red guards” due to her family’s previous “landlord” status.

The Night of the Long Knives, the murder of Leon Trotsky, the Red Guards, the Khmer Rouge — each was the result of a radical movement further purifying its core membership and ideology, and something very similar is taking place among today’s Republicans.