Tarra Theisen HIST 265 Salvation Through Fear: An Analysis of Perpetrated Violence Within Chinas Cultural Revolution Within

Communist China after the revolution of 1949, power was centralized in the state government. Heralding control over everyday Chinese life, the state under Chairman Mao sought to inspire and instill revolutionary ideals especially amongst the young. With the Cultural Revolution campaign beginning in 1966, young members of society like Rae Yang were so inspired to save the revolution from a backward slip into bourgeois capitalism through work as Red Guards. In instilling passionate revolutionary fervor within these ranks, young revolutionaries acting as vanguards of the proletarian struggle sought to ideologically purify the masses through varying tactics of violence. As violence was aimed at all levels of society, Red Guards acted through the justification of Maos call to arms and an inspired dedication to their evolving interpretation of revolutionary ideals. Through personal reflection, Yang further suggests that the eventual emergence of a culture of fear and paranoia would ultimately alter such justification to demand the use of violence as a method of sustaining Red Guard power and security. Rae Yang reflects on the ideological structure of her youth as the foundation for her evolution into a successful Red Guard corps member. As the daughter of revolutionary cadres, Yang matured within a household of Party structures and ideals. In addition to the recollection of her parents revolutionary careers and demeanors, Yang also writes of their revolutionary living quarters and the practices acquired within the jiguan, or the revolutionary cadre yard compound.1 She notes that, Everything in this big yard was a

Rae Yang, Spider Eaters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 31.

Theisen 2 state secret and that as she matured, she came to admire the unyielding revolutionary heroes and despise the traitors.2 The order of such jiguan reflected the material manifestation of socialist order within China at the height of Party power. The secrecy, hierarchy, and sense of ideological loyalty embodied by the yards were traits inculcated in the youth who grew up within them. Revolutionary ideals and fervor was further instilled within the Beijing 101 Middle School, where Yang was educated amongst peers of similar backgrounds. Here, students were cultivated as the nations most reliable, most courageous, and most brilliant youths who would later take power at the helm of state leadership and control.3 This environmental influence on young Chinese like Yang set up their evolution into Red Guard ideological purists who would truly believe in the strict enforcement of Party ideals at any cost. The children of revolutionary cadres sense of ideological elitism at schooling age set them up as perfect candidates to evolve into Maos army of ideological purists and vanguards beginning in 1966. With Chairman Maos call to arms ideologically and physically in the Cultural Revolution, he asserted the power of Red Guard youths to utilize violence in defense of socialist ideals and purity. Maos cult of personality inspired both a personal idolatry as well as a sense of revolutionary fervor and elitism within the revolutionary ranks. The belief that the youth were vanguards saving the revolution in China as well as setting the stage for socialist triumph in the world accorded the Red Guard with an enormous amount of power and justification to complete their task by any means necessary.4 Yang recollects believing that, It was Chairman Mao who set us free by allowing us to rebel against

Ibid., 50. Ibid., 92. 4 Ibid., 121.

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Theisen 3 authorities.we were answering [his] call to combat the revisionist educational line.5 In such combat, she further cites violence as both inevitable and necessary to a great revolution.6 Her firm belief in the justification of such action is reflected in the use of violent diction and imagery within her memoir. As part of her militant envisioning of the class struggle, loyal bands of Red Guards are pitted against counterrevolutionaries and capitalist roaders who seek to overturn the progress of socialism.7 The Red Guard is described as armies of passionate youth who will meet the challenge of the struggle in the storm. Young revolutionaries are the seeds of fire in Maos spring wind, in addition to acting as his brave young generals and little red soldiers.8 Yangs use of these terms suggests that she saw herself as part of the inevitable fight in which she believed in the defense of revolutionary ideals. The idolatry of Mao amongst the general youth and his exhortation of violence as the primary means to ultimately win the class struggle justified such aims. Yang recalls the passion, dedication, and inspiration of her life as one such revolutionary: We [Red Guards] were soldiers going out to war against an old worldWe will enlighten and organize the masses, dig out hidden enemies, shed our blood, and sacrifice our lives for the final victory of the Cultural Revolution.9 With the justification of purifying the revolution against a fall into bourgeois capitalist ideals, Red Guards used varying tactics of violence and manipulation to root out accused counterrevolutionaries from all facets of Chinese life. At its core was a desire to rid society of impurities and opposition to the socialist order, often in forms of campaigns like

Ibid., 115. Ibid., 134. 7 Ibid., 131. 8 Ibid., 130-146. 9 Ibid., 131.
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Theisen 4 the eradication of the Four Olds and the classification of class enemies as facetious capitalists or superstitious snake demons and cow ghosts.10 Party leaders who had lost favor found themselves labeled as impure capitalist roaders, while scholars and intellectuals, even the teachers of Beijing 101 Middle School, were denounced as conspirators and radicals.11 Yang recalls that even Liu Shaoqi, once at the core of Party leadership, was later criticized as the biggest capitalist-roader in the Party.12 Red Guards also targeted the ordinary citizens of everyday life to eradicate the old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits of society. To accomplish this, Red Guards used blunt physical violence as well as less overt psychological manipulation. Yang describes in detail the beatings and hardships that Red Guards inflicted on citizens, from the young Zhang Heihei13 to Teacher Chen of Beijing 101.14 The stories of Red Guards creating storms in restaurants, trains, and even private homes went largely unchallenged by the common population.15 Even the Red Guards targeting of observant Taoists as spiritual opium mongers and parasites was successful.16 These campaigns were propagated by the use of public humiliations and shamings, often in the form of written dazibao against supposed counterrevolutionaries especially intellectuals and teachers. In describing the power and ease of such a task, Yang remarks that one should, Take up a pen, use it as a gun.17 The image of the gun reflects strongly on the power of written criticism as a tool fostered by the Red Guards in their atmosphere of violence. Therefore,

Ibid., 133. Ibid., 123. 12 Ibid., 123. 13 Ibid., 230. 14 Ibid., 119. 15 Ibid., 126-133. 16 Ibid., 147. 17 Ibid., 118.
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Theisen 5 the violence that the Red Guards perpetrated was of varying forms and targeted varying levels of society. The revolutionaries went largely unchallenged as no one dared to protest the Guards mission of protecting socialist ideals, in fear of being challenged themselves. Yang notes that the Red Guards soon came to depend on this sense of unchallenged strength and authority noting, Now those who had made decisions for us teachers, parents, administrators were swept aside by the storm. We were in charge.18 Though the violence that the Red Guards perpetrated was justified by the need to revive ideological loyalty and purity, their actions overwhelmingly acted to instill fear within the population and to increase the Guards sense of boundless power and authority. As the work of the Red Guards progressed within the Cultural Revolution, Yang continually considers the justification for such power and authority, finding that violence also became a necessary method to define and reassert the Red Guards strength and mission. With the power of the revolutionary youth established as Maos ideological corps, heightening tensions and paranoia of counterrevolutionary infiltration highlighted the need to save face and to continually maintain the appearance of acting revolutionary. The use of overt violence became crucial to a Red Guards security and reputation as a loyal revolutionary cadre. In analyzing this change, Yang recounts that her initial justification for action as a Red Guard was embodied in the image of the revolutionary hero with her dreams. This hero saw no greater cause than the fulfillment of the revolutionary task, even by means of violent tactics.19 She was proud of her status as a Red Guard, glad of the power she had over [the people].20 Over time however, the ideological justifications were

Ibid., 120. Ibid., 104. 20 Ibid., 227.

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Theisen 6 overtaken by the more immediate need of self-preservation. Yang questions herself in a personal confrontation: Am I a hero or a coward? Am I loyal to Chairman Mao or sympathetic to a class enemy? These
questions I had to answer with my action, not with empty words. Other Red Guards were watching me. I was watching others. We were witnesses and judges for one another. I could not afford to let others see my weaknesses.21

In this sense, it was imperative to maintain the appearance, strength, and outward conviction of a Red Guard revolutionary. Yang suggests that through such need, the hold of ideological justification was overshadowed by the environmental need to demonstrate power and authority through violent means. In Spider Eaters, Rae Yang reflects that Red Guard revolutionaries truly sought to revive ideological awareness within the Chinese people at the outset of the Cultural Revolution. Acting as Chairman Maos armies for change, Red Guards saw themselves as the vanguard of the peasantry and pure socialist ideals. With the multifaceted and aggregate use of perpetrated violence to accomplish these goals, the revolutionary youth created a culture of fear and paranoia that would ultimately reassert the use of violence as a means of their protection and security. Though the Red Guard initially perpetrated violence as a justified means to protect the socialist order under Maos guidance, they were forced to later justify such violence as means of self-preservation within the culture of fear instituted through their purifying tactics.

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Ibid., 230.