The Cultural Revolution is not completely off limits for discussion in China, but it’s hard to talk about it in tones that suggest it was anything other than a terrible historical error — the fault of a few erring leaders — that the Party itself successfully corrected, and that it’s time to move on.
All of this historical revision (in the most literal sense of that word) is in service of the Communist Party’s never-ending and desperate attempts to avoid the gravitational pull of the black hole at the center of 20th-century Chinese history: the “Great Leap Forward” and the subsequent, entirely avoidable, famine, which may have annihilated as many as sixty million Chinese. It is, of course, an open question as to whether revealing the truth of that apocalyptic crime against the Chinese people would result in the downfall of the regime, but the Communist Party simply cannot risk it. It is the original sin of the CCP, the damned spot that simply will not out, all the dogs which did not bark. Hence the focus on the Cultural Revolution, which, contra Mao, the Great Leap Forward makes look like a dinner party.
Sixty million dead! And the vast majority of Chinese know nothing of the truth. But daily they walk on the bones of the starving dead, now rendered down into dust, because denial of the horrors they perpetrated on their own people forms the foundation of the Communist Party’s rule.
Truly, the bricks of modern China are mortared with blood.
Those counter-revolutionary sparrows had to be liquidated for society to progress (and they were asking for it – they were getting fat on the worker’s food).
Indeed they were.
I didn’t think even George Orwell could have dreamt up such scenario!
Stephen Walsh
8 months ago
Distortion of the collective memory can happen in the West too. In the 1990s, 70% of Catholics in Northern Ireland surveyed said they had ‘no sympathy’ for the reasons republican groups gave to justify their violence. Only 6% said they had ‘a lot of sympathy’ with the terrorists’ rationale. In the South, Sinn Fein had almost no support – around 1% of the vote. Today – after decades where criticism of Sinn Fein, or any harking back to the IRA campaign of murder and intimidation of the community was considered by the Irish political, media and academic establishment to be bad form – 69% of nationalist voters in Northern Ireland agree with the statement that there was ‘no alternative’ to the IRA’s campaign. Sinn Fein are likely soon to dominate the government on both sides of the border. An “Up the ‘RA” culture dominates amongst young people in Ireland where ugly celebrations of sectarian violence (euphemistically called “rebel songs”) and bigotry against Northern Unionists and the British of a sort which would have been considered very backward in the 1980s is now fashionable. The murderous reality of the Troubles (other than a few cherrypicked events like Bloody Sunday, memorialised because they suit a particular narrative) has been airbrushed out of history.
Maybe you could show me some examples of sectarian bigotry or violence in Irish rebel songs, Stephen. I’ve heard them all my life and have never come across a single sectarian sentiment but maybe you know better
Where’s the sectarian violence, Charles?
The Foggy Dew
Twas down the glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I
Those armored lines of marching men
In squadrons passed me by
No pipe did hum nor battle drum
Did sound it’s dread tattoo
But the Angelus bell o’er the liffey swell
Rang out of the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin Town
Lay hung out the flag of war
‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky
Than at sulva or sud e bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath
Strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia’s huns, with their long range guns
Sailed out o’er the foggy dew
‘Twas England bade our wild geese fly
That small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by sulva’s waves
On the fringe of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by pearse’s side
Or fought with Cathal Brugha
I’m sure their names we will keep where the fenians sleep
‘Neath the shroud of the foggy dew
But the bravest fell as the requiem bell
Rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide
In the spring time of the year
And the world did gaze, with deep amaze
At those fearless men, but few
Who bore the fight so that freedom’s light
Might shine through the foggy dew
Who bore the fight so that freedom’s light
Might shine through the foggy dew
Might shine through the foggy dew
Might shine through the foggy dew
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
In the little streets of Belfast, in the dark of early morn
British solders came a-running, wrecking little homes with scorn
Hear the sobs of crying children, dragging fathers from their beds
Watch the scene as helpless mothers watch the blood fall from their heads
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Not for them a judge or jury or indeed a crime at all
Being Irish means they’re guilty, so they’re guilty one and all
Around the world the truth will echo, Cromwell’s men are here again
England’s name again is sullied, in the eyes of honest men
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Proudly march behind our banner, proudly march behind our men
We will have them free to help us, build a nation once again
All the people step together, proudly marching on your way
Never fear or never falter ’til the boys come home to stay
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
O Charles, it warms the cockles of my heart to know you’ve heard the lament of Kevin Barry 🙂
Will you be going to see the Wolfe Tones when they tour England later this year?
Incidentally I find it rather odd that Mr Devlin sees fit to write out both ‘ballads’ in full.
As both are in English and the late Sinéad O’Connor’s diction is perfect why bother?
If you can evade your nursing home gaolers it would be a delight to have you join in a rousing rendition of The Men Behind The Wire.
Steve Murray
8 months ago
Is there any real difference between seeking to suppress history and rewrite it? What China seeks to do, certain cultural warriors in the West seek to do by other means, and i’m not at all sure which strain of censorship will ultimately prove to be more corrosive.
Whilst Chinese citizens who fell foul of the state were made to denounce themselves for their “crimes”, the grovelling apologies demanded in the media by those offending some zeitsensibility or other are more than mere echoes of the same impoverishment of humanity.
The Cultural Revolution is not completely off limits for discussion in China, but it’s hard to talk about it in tones that suggest it was anything other than a terrible historical error — the fault of a few erring leaders — that the Party itself successfully corrected, and that it’s time to move on.
All of this historical revision (in the most literal sense of that word) is in service of the Communist Party’s never-ending and desperate attempts to avoid the gravitational pull of the black hole at the center of 20th-century Chinese history: the “Great Leap Forward” and the subsequent, entirely avoidable, famine, which may have annihilated as many as sixty million Chinese. It is, of course, an open question as to whether revealing the truth of that apocalyptic crime against the Chinese people would result in the downfall of the regime, but the Communist Party simply cannot risk it. It is the original sin of the CCP, the damned spot that simply will not out, all the dogs which did not bark. Hence the focus on the Cultural Revolution, which, contra Mao, the Great Leap Forward makes look like a dinner party.
Sixty million dead! And the vast majority of Chinese know nothing of the truth. But daily they walk on the bones of the starving dead, now rendered down into dust, because denial of the horrors they perpetrated on their own people forms the foundation of the Communist Party’s rule.
Truly, the bricks of modern China are mortared with blood.
Not to mention the “War of the Sparrows’.
Those counter-revolutionary sparrows had to be liquidated for society to progress (and they were asking for it – they were getting fat on the worker’s food).
Indeed they were.
I didn’t think even George Orwell could have dreamt up such scenario!
Distortion of the collective memory can happen in the West too. In the 1990s, 70% of Catholics in Northern Ireland surveyed said they had ‘no sympathy’ for the reasons republican groups gave to justify their violence. Only 6% said they had ‘a lot of sympathy’ with the terrorists’ rationale. In the South, Sinn Fein had almost no support – around 1% of the vote. Today – after decades where criticism of Sinn Fein, or any harking back to the IRA campaign of murder and intimidation of the community was considered by the Irish political, media and academic establishment to be bad form – 69% of nationalist voters in Northern Ireland agree with the statement that there was ‘no alternative’ to the IRA’s campaign. Sinn Fein are likely soon to dominate the government on both sides of the border. An “Up the ‘RA” culture dominates amongst young people in Ireland where ugly celebrations of sectarian violence (euphemistically called “rebel songs”) and bigotry against Northern Unionists and the British of a sort which would have been considered very backward in the 1980s is now fashionable. The murderous reality of the Troubles (other than a few cherrypicked events like Bloody Sunday, memorialised because they suit a particular narrative) has been airbrushed out of history.
Soldier F has been ‘on trial’ since January.
Unlike Corporal Major Dennis Hutchins (late Life Guards.) he just won’t DIE.
The article concerns China. Why this whataboutism?
Are you new to UnHerd may I ask?
Maybe you could show me some examples of sectarian bigotry or violence in Irish rebel songs, Stephen. I’ve heard them all my life and have never come across a single sectarian sentiment but maybe you know better
The foggy dew:- Sinéad O’Connor, R.I.P.:-
The men behind the wire:- Wolfe Tones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaS3vaNUYgs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRtiA00tYeA
Well Mr Devlin?
Where’s the sectarian violence, Charles?
The Foggy Dew
Twas down the glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I
Those armored lines of marching men
In squadrons passed me by
No pipe did hum nor battle drum
Did sound it’s dread tattoo
But the Angelus bell o’er the liffey swell
Rang out of the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin Town
Lay hung out the flag of war
‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky
Than at sulva or sud e bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath
Strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia’s huns, with their long range guns
Sailed out o’er the foggy dew
‘Twas England bade our wild geese fly
That small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by sulva’s waves
On the fringe of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by pearse’s side
Or fought with Cathal Brugha
I’m sure their names we will keep where the fenians sleep
‘Neath the shroud of the foggy dew
But the bravest fell as the requiem bell
Rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide
In the spring time of the year
And the world did gaze, with deep amaze
At those fearless men, but few
Who bore the fight so that freedom’s light
Might shine through the foggy dew
Who bore the fight so that freedom’s light
Might shine through the foggy dew
Might shine through the foggy dew
Might shine through the foggy dew
I would have thought “Britannia’s huns with their long range guns” qualified.
What about “armoured cars tanks and guns……”?
I doubt if you would like to be described as a Hibernian Hun, would you?
Show me, Charles
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
In the little streets of Belfast, in the dark of early morn
British solders came a-running, wrecking little homes with scorn
Hear the sobs of crying children, dragging fathers from their beds
Watch the scene as helpless mothers watch the blood fall from their heads
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Not for them a judge or jury or indeed a crime at all
Being Irish means they’re guilty, so they’re guilty one and all
Around the world the truth will echo, Cromwell’s men are here again
England’s name again is sullied, in the eyes of honest men
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Proudly march behind our banner, proudly march behind our men
We will have them free to help us, build a nation once again
All the people step together, proudly marching on your way
Never fear or never falter ’til the boys come home to stay
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire
Same again, but do answer my first question, which I repeat, “ would you like to be referred to as a “Hibernian Hun”?
ps, I almost forgot, what that ridiculously sentimental dirge KEVIN BARRY then?
O Charles, it warms the cockles of my heart to know you’ve heard the lament of Kevin Barry 🙂
Will you be going to see the Wolfe Tones when they tour England later this year?
Only if I can get a “day release pass”.*
Incidentally I find it rather odd that Mr Devlin sees fit to write out both ‘ballads’ in full.
As both are in English and the late Sinéad O’Connor’s diction is perfect why bother?
(* Camden 16th November?)
If you can evade your nursing home gaolers it would be a delight to have you join in a rousing rendition of The Men Behind The Wire.
Is there any real difference between seeking to suppress history and rewrite it? What China seeks to do, certain cultural warriors in the West seek to do by other means, and i’m not at all sure which strain of censorship will ultimately prove to be more corrosive.
Whilst Chinese citizens who fell foul of the state were made to denounce themselves for their “crimes”, the grovelling apologies demanded in the media by those offending some zeitsensibility or other are more than mere echoes of the same impoverishment of humanity.
Wang Xiaobo. Noted. And thanks.