This is Not the American Cultural Revolution https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/08/this-is-not-american-cultural-revolution.html

In a new piece, I explain why the analogy many people are making between the BLM protests and the Maoist Cultural Revolution are wrong-headed.

This idea that the CR started with tearing down statues, as is happening in America right now, is very common. @eriktorenberg asked me in a podcast interview this week https://overcast.fm/+LDKdzd3OY  what I thought of this comparison. This is an extended version of my reply to him.

In the post I identify several ways in which the two movements are fundamentally different:

Those are differences in end goals; just as different were the means. As I note, some 1800 people had been killed, and another 70,000 forced from their homes weeks before statues went down

We are nowhere near this level of violence. "Tearing downs statues did not lead to mass death; mass death led to tearing down statues."

This is the conservative equivalent to the "Bush is a Hitler in waiting" or "Trump is a step away from a Nazi revival." Seems credible to the true believers, but silly when you actually think about the history involve.

You can deplore a lot of the societal reaction to BLM without imagining we are a step away from totalitarian teenage death squads at your door.

My advice: Question the intentions or the knowledge base of anyone who blithely compares the two movements.

https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/08/this-is-not-american-cultural-revolution.html