From Masks to Struggle Sessions
June 9, 2020
HURRICAN BETSY writes:
How on earth did this happen? I have known for years that we were too depraved to continue as if life was normal, and that something would occur to bring it all down but I did not think it would happen in my lifetime. How deluded I was. Anyway, this is a great article:
During the Maoist Cultural Revolution, in struggle sessions, the guilty party – accused of selfishness, ignorance, and the embrace of bourgeois ideology – was pilloried with verbal and sometimes physical assaults by her comrades–until she broke down and confessed her characterological and ideological flaws. ‘Autocritique’ or self-criticism often began with voluntary submission of the guilty party, who subjected herself to a brutal verbal self-inspection and denigration before the jury of her comrades. Autocritique and struggle sessions could lead to imprisonment or death as the comrade was often found to be insufficiently pure. Today, they lead to diminished social standing, public humiliation, and the loss of jobs.
In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, we see these personalized, Maoist-derived rituals in full force. The examples are legion and include New York Times Editorial Page Editor James Bennet’s forced resignation amid a staff revolt after Bennet published an op-ed by US Senator Tom Cotton (R – Arkansas) entitled“Send in the Troops” (in response to widespread rioting in US cities). After backlash from fellow professional athletes, New Orleans Saints NFL star quarterback Drew Brees issued two apologies for suggesting that kneeling during the national anthem amounted to “disrespecting the flag.” White parishioners in Houston genuflected before their black compeers, apologizing for centuries-long racism. ‘Hamilton’ playwright and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda and ‘Hamilton’ producer Jeffery Seller apologized for not speaking up soon enough about the Floyd killing. “We spoke out on the day of the Pulse shooting. We spoke out when Vice President Mike Pence came to our show ten days after the election,” Miranda said, evincing the requisite disgust when uttering the name “Mike Pence.” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell issued a video statement on Friday saying “we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier” when they protested police brutality by taking a knee during the national anthem. Stan Wischnowski, the top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, announced his resignation days after discontent among the newspaper’s staff erupted over a headline on a column about the impact of the civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
