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.
Another distinguishing feature of the revolutionary movements in 20th century was the cult of personality, which was definitely the case with both Bolshevik and Maoist revolutions (and even modern Russia). When the cult takes over, it becomes self-accelerating because the only way to show loyalty is to show more cult. Eventually even "the personality" cannot do much to moderate it, because that would negatively impact social position of thousands of supporters.
