The Revolution was launched in May 1966, after Mao alleged that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these "revisionists" be removed through violent class struggle. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials, most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the same period Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions.
Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Cultural and religious sites were ransacked..."
33 comments:
"They replaced it with a photo of Audre Lorde, a black female writer."
Note the article had to tell people who Audre Lorde is/was.
This is the kind of anti-intellectualism you saw in (Godwin Alert).
I don't know who she is, but I think I've seen a pic of her before. Off to wiki...
Okay, a three-fer:
"Audre Lorde (/ˈɔːdri lɔːrd/; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde, February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an African American writer, feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, particularly in her poems expressing anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life.[1] Her poems and prose largely dealt with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity. In relation to non-intersectional feminism in the United States, Lorde famously said, "Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference -- those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older -- know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support."
-Wiki
Off to see some of her poems. They may be damn good for all I know..
Communists are funny like that. Out with the old and in with the dead.
Yeah, so much for inclusivity.
Feminist Nazi's have refused to teach Shakespeare for decades now.
Important post, Deb.
The purists that demand compliance and loyalty to political figures, and who shame and convict others who are often friends, neighbors, and fellow countrymen for being insufficiently appreciative, or patriotic always see themselves as the "good people", the "right thinking". When you start seeing that little devil paranoia, it's time to keep your distance.
Related, I started watching that series on Scientology by Leah Remini. People who have an oversized emotional conviction to something can justify anything they do, no matter how unfair to other people and regardless of how close those people are to them.
Is it okay if I don't think that a Communist takeover of the United States is right around the corner?
P.S. I've been memorizing Sonnet 29. I'm almost done.
It's for my dog.
I mean, seriously, what business does Shakespeare have with an English department?
What business does the English Department have calling itself the ENGLISH Department? That's not very multicultural.
Shakespeare is just Canon fodder.
Years ago I lived in an apartment building just off of Penn campus. Some guy lived right above me.
One day I came home from work to find a hand-written note taped to my mailbox. It contained two spelling mistakes and one grammatical error. It was from the guy upstairs complaining that I'd been playing my stereo too loudly. This surprised me because I made it a point to keep it low and I never played it after 9:00 p.m.
Anyway, I go up there and knock on his door. He answers. Behind him I can see a bong on the coffee table. I tell him I'm sorry. That I'll go to my apartment and put on some music and come back up so I can hear what'll be a good volume from now on. I come back upstairs and the bong is gone.
Anyway, we have a nice neighborly chat. Problem solved.
The punchline? I found out he was a teacher at Penn, in the English department, getting his Ph.D.
True story.
An English Department that tolerates the removal of Shakespeare's portrait from its wall is an English Department that doesn't love english.
"Audre Lorde (/ˈɔːdri lɔːrd/; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde, February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an African American writer, feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, particularly in her poems expressing anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life.[1] Her poems and prose largely dealt with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity. In relation to non-intersectional feminism in the United States, Lorde famously said, 'Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference -- those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older -- know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.'"
IOW Whiny, Leftist pain in the ass.
When she's remembered 400 years later as the greatest mistress of the language, let me know.
The way to get the Bard back on board is to reclassify him into a most favored group. The best shot might be to honor him as gay insofar as he was suspected of that.
I mean, hinting that Lincoln was gay didn't hurt him with the left -- probably even helped him.
Not true chickie. Shakespeare played womans parts. Definitely trans-gender.
You ultimately a very silly man bags.
You amuse me greatly. Thanks.
"He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health,
a boy's love, or a whore's oath."
Does a boy's love really fit with the other untrustworthies?
A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
Now there's the genius of Shakespeare. To conjure up extreme desperation with such economy.
I suspect a lot of old male lefties at university consider "boy's love" a benefit of the job.
Yeah thats why they hang out in pizza parlors. Just sayn'
I think a lot of this anti-intellectualism is due to lazy thinking. Reading Shakespeare and other classics is hard, and it's only going to get worse with our young ones glued to their iphone, scrolling through insipid facebook posts.
deborah, You're spot on about Shakespeare. I mean these feminist idiots refuse to teach many classic male authors. But, you can pick up a Jack London, Hemingway, etc. and read their classics on your own. It's very difficult to understand Shakespeare w/o being taught. There was a great Shakespeare theater in Stratford, CT. Every year in high school we would study the play being performed @ that theater for their Spring production. Then, after reading through the play and having it explained to us by our English teacher, we would go see the play. We saw Macbeth, As You Like It, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare was as much a genius as any person to walk this earth. Shakespeare understood human psychology better than any shrink. Reading Shakespeare helped me in my profession more than any horseshit criminal justice or psychology class.
deborah said...
Yeah, so much for inclusivity.
Inclusiveness to leftists is only if it meets their criteria to be inclusive. Anything else that isn't run through the PC/SJW acceptance filter goes through the usual process of ostracism via characteristic identity labeling that the leftists accuse everyone else with and excluding themselves.
You've got to read the plays and the footnotes a couple of times to catch on, but once you absorb it, it's yours for life. There's always a new version of Hamlet or Richard III every few years with some megastar in a vanity project. Al Pacino did a take on Richard that was extremely impressive. Mel Gibson was surprisingly good as an action hero Hamlet.....Ian McKellen did a modern dress version of Richard with Richard as some kind of Fascist. His jeep gets stuck in the mud, and he cries out "My kingdom for a horse."......How long before we see a Richard III with orange hair?
Nick, luckily with the web...and libraries, the interested person can buy and cliffnotes to educate themselves. I have Shakespeare for Dummies. Haven't done anything with it, but I would like to watch a movie of each play, then see the more important plays on stage. It is amazing, as William says, how they can be interpreted over and over.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries and look upon myself and curse my fate wishing me like to one more rich in hope featured like him like him with friends possessed desiring this man's art and that ,an's scope with what I most enjoy contented least yet in these thoughts myself almost despisig, happly I think on thee and then my state like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth sings at heaven's gate for thy sweet love remembered brings such wealth that then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Hymms.
Said it but didin't type it. Oh well.
deborah, I taught @ a Catholic middle school for a year. I was primarily a history teacher, but in a struggling K-8 Catholic school, you also teach other classes. I had to teach an 8th grade math class which was tough. I also was assigned an 8th grade English class for which I felt adequate. Macbeth was on the curriculum. That is a play I know well. The book the school had for this was a hybrid actual text and cliff notes/translation. It was OK. But provided little context, flavor, or historical perspective as to what was going on in the world @ the time.
'bootless cries,' I like that. Thanks, Bat, I'd never read that one through...I can see how one's dog is an appropriate object for that sonnet. Believe me, I know :)
My fave is
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Nick, the Shakespeare for Dummies goes through the points of the play and has a chart for something or other. But an annotated script would be necessary for word usage and phrases that would be different now.
I watched Laurence Olivier's 1965 version...in brownface. A fair bit of scenery chewing. I later told my daughter that I didn't know Othello killed Desdemona. She pointed to the door and said, 'get out.' lol
Also I did not know that Nabokov's short story title 'In Aleppo Once' was a phrase from Othello. Love this:
and say besides that in Aleppo once,
where a malignant and turbaned Turk beat a Venetian
and traduced the state, I took by the throat the
circumsized dog and smote him thus.
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