Sometimes voluntary, sometimes coerced or imposed, sometimes manipulative, the public humiliation of White people in the West is reminiscent of the struggle sessions conducted during the Cultural Revolution in China. This article takes a look at both.
- The West’s historic parallel with China
- Struggle sessions during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)
- More examples of modern day struggle sessions
- Protect your children from this abuse
Class enemies are denounced, their supposed crimes written on placards hung from necks, faces splattered with ink 1966.
White Houstonians kneel down and ask for forgiveness from the Black community for years of racism 2020.
The West’s historic parallel with China
What better way to start the article than with reflections from a man who sees what’s happening in the West, from the lived experience of his family in Communist China. Simon Boyi Chen’s family lived in China during the Cultural Revolution. His grandfather was forced to confess in a struggle session, after which the mob “threw him on a railway track to die under a running train”. Chen remarks on the historical parallel between what’s occurring in the West, and Maoist China. The similarities compelled him to speak out.
The opinion piece Chen is referring to is an article entitled “Racist Like Me — A Call to Self-Reflection and Action for White Physicians” which was written by Deborah Cohan, a Jewish physician and published in The New England Journal of Medicine. In it Cohen publicly confesses to being a racist. However, rather than being a personal confession, Cohen speaks for all White physicians. “And yet I am racist, shaped by the sometimes subtle tendrils of white supremacy deeply embedded in our culture. I mean this not as a sanctimonious admission of guilt, but as a call to self-reflection and action for us white physicians.”
Simon Boyi Chen shares some further reflections. He notices the manufactured nature of the article “that sounds really scripted and gives of the impression it is contrived for an unstated motive [ ] written for show rather than moral contrition”.
Maybe Deborah Cohen is seeking the social approval that comes from publicly portraying Whites as racist, guilty of oppression and demonstrating supremacy over others. Or maybe the motive is more manipulative; to create an environment where this anti-White message is seen as the norm and countering it, subversive.
Is Cohen a voluntary victim of a modern day struggle session or a protagonist?
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Struggle sessions during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)
Further examples from the present day are profiled later in the article, but first a brief overview of struggle sessions in China during the Cultural Revolution. The struggle sessions were used by the Chinese Communist Party as a means of influencing and controlling the population; securing allegiance to the regime; humiliating, torturing and sometimes murdering their enemies; and undermining any opposition.
Struggle sessions were held at homes, workplaces or larger venues, where those targeted would be verbally and physically abused by a jeering crowd to elicit confessions for imaginary crimes.
The victims of the struggle sessions included intellectuals, landowners, landlords, those deemed to have bourgeois tendencies, or associated with them in someway. They were portrayed as ‘class enemies’, ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and as an impure element hidden within Communist China holding back progress and socialism.
The sessions involved humiliation, torture and sometimes ended with the death of the victims. They where often highly planned and managed. “Dramatic devices such as staging, props, working scripts, agitators, and climactic moments were used to efficiently engage the emotions of the audience—to stir up resentment against the targeted groups and mobilize the audience to support the regime“. Mühlhahn, Klaus (2009). Criminal Justice in China: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 182–183.
One important characteristic of the struggle sessions in China was that victims were pressurised into confessing crimes they had not committed, and oftentimes that they did not even understand, in order to appease the baying mob.
Some of those involved as assailants in the struggle sessions were forced into taking part, others were jealous or held grudges against the accused. Many were young people who Mao targeted to ‘lead the struggle for purity’.
Lin Zhu, wife on the ‘father of modern Chinese architecture’ described how she struggled to understand how hundreds of millions could have participated in such cruelties.
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More examples of modern day struggle sessions
In Communist China a large proportion of the population were persuaded to believe that the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals were the enemy. They developed a ‘righteous anger’ against these people who they saw as undermining the socialist cause. By creating this anger, and having people be complicit in the violence of the struggle sessions, the Communists increased allegiance to their regime.
In the West it’s not the bourgeoisie or intellectuals who are targeted; it’s White adults, White children and those who do not subscribe to Critical Social Justice activism.
Our Police are complicit Police in the US and UK have subjected themselves to public humiliation in front of large crowds. Their actions may have been voluntary, coerced or to foster conditions where shaming Whites for imaginary crimes becomes the norm.
America The narrative for the Black Lives Matter protests was that the death of George Floyd was racially motivated and evidenced systemic racism against Black people. Although without substance it led to protests and demands for people to kneel or subjugate themselves in support of the Black Lives Matter cause.
In Massachusetts protesters lay down on the pavement for over eight minutes in remembrance of George Floyd’s death. Urged by chanting Police Chief Michael Shaw joined the crowd laying face down on the pavement. His action was met by a cry of “It’s not enough” supported by a cheering crowd.
United Kingdom During an operational briefing about Black Lives Matter protests, Hertfordshire Constabulary warned officers that those who do not kneel at rallies “may become the focus of the protesters attention” and “kneeling was a positive reaction to the protest group.” The police were being coerced not only by a baying mob but also by their own employers.
Image from the Black Lives Matter protests in Hoddesdon town centre, June 2020.
In all innocence? Following the death of George Floyd people gathered in the Third Ward to pay tribute, with White Houstonians kneeling down and asking for forgiveness from the Black community for years of racism. “We need to show a symbol that we truly do apologize for what’s been done to our Black brothers and sisters.” said Bobby Herring, the founder of the nonprofit organization ‘Eyes On Me’. Black people accepted the apology and knelt with the Whites in prayer.
Some of the Black people were clearly moved by the actions of the Whites and they subsequently joined with the White people in prayer, but this does not hide the fact that the White people were apologising for things they had not personally done and were relaying the message that White people, as a group, are guilty of harming Black people and publicly supplicating yourself is required by way of an apology.
Aggressive public humiliation In the US in 2020 it is possible to approach a random White women and, using the phrases of Critical Race Theory, intimidate her into physically supplicating herself and confessing to her ‘crimes’.
Smooth Sanchez’s YouTube account featuring this and similar videos was subsequently removed. Whether this was the anti-White content or because he misrepresented himself as an employee of Black Lives Matter we don’t know. But he was not prosecuted for hate crimes and has since started a new channel under the same name.
White children are not exempt The ‘So Sorry’ logo and Whites wearing chains to apologise for slavery and the ‘African holocaust’ are the work of David and Pam Pott, the Lifeline Expedition and the Fountain Gate Trust. Over the period 2000 – 2012 they organised walks across Europe where the white campaigners wore t-shirts that read ‘So Sorry’ while their black counterparts wore traditional African clothing and armbands that signified forgiveness.
The adults involved in this public humiliation may well have volunteered. The school children did not.
As with the struggle sessions in China, these children are being humiliated for a crime they did not commit, and they are forced to say sorry for a crime they do not understand. To understand slavery is to know it was a worldwide evil and that all races were, at some time, slave traders and also slaves.
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Protect your children from this abuse
Give your children the understanding they need and permission to say no and extract themselves from situations where public shaming of White children and White people is happening.
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Article published 18 September 2020