The Three-Body Problem, by Chinese scifi novelist Cixin Liu, opens with a scene depicting a "struggle session" from the Cultural Revolution. His vivid writing personalizes the experiences I've seen in overview in historical documentaries, and read and heard about at the Rewi Alley memorial in Springfield.
Can we, as netizens, learn from the bitter experience of the Cultural Revolution, and shift from mass denunciation to cooperative problem-solving?
Have we all been mistakenly using the net - and social media in particular - as the exercise ground for never-ending struggle sessions? I've always tried to explain why I disagree with people, while implicitly upholding their right to hold and express their ideas. But I'm sure there are plenty of times when I've failed at that.
BTW this dark period in China's recent history was not, as historically ignorant anticommunists tend to imply, the actual communist revolution. That began before WW2 and ended not long after the Red Army defeated the invading Japanese, while the Cultural Revolution began almost 2 decades later, in 1966. It seems, in hindsight, that in his declining years, Mao created a monster, a revolutionist cult that even he couldn't control, although it pretty much fizzled out after his death in 1976.
The "monster" is a fundamental problem with violent revolutions. Can't speak about Maoism but the need for violent revolution was the distinguishing feature of Marxism and then even more so of Leninism and Stalinism.
In short, the violent revolution results in negative selection by eradicating reasonable supporters and promoting those ready for indiscriminate violence.
Bertrand Russell perfectly noted that among Bolsheviks already in 1920:
