Page 144 - Communism in Ambush

Another innocent Chinese executed
during the Cultural Revolution.

shouting out ""kill, kill"" to t the Red Guards
whose task it was to cut victims into pieces.
Sometimes the pieces were cooked and
eaten, or force-fed to members of the vic-
tim's family who were still alive and looking
on. Everyone was then invited to a banquet, where the liver and heart of
the former landowner were shared out, and to meetings where a speaker
would address rows of severed heads freshly skewered on stakes. This fas-
cination for vengeful cannibalism, which later became common under the
Pol Pot regime, echoes a very ancient East Asian archetype that appears
often at cataclysmic moments of Chinese history.
The Red Guards' only source book was the Little Red Book contain-
ing the words of Mao. Every one of them knew this book by heart; more-
over, those who did not know it were denounced as "class enemies" and
could be beaten or even executed on the spot. Even the most normal and
legitimate activities could be declared "anti-Communist" and punished:
The Red Guards, who took themselves extremely seriously, thought it was
a good idea to ban "wastes of revolutionary energy" such as cats, birds,
and flowers. . . In big cities such as Shanghai, teams shaved the head of
anyone caught in the streets with long or lacquered hair, tore up trousers
that were too tight, ripped high heels off shoes, slit open pointed shoes,
and forced shops to change their names. . . . Red Guards stopped
passersby and forced them to recite their favorite quotation from Mao.
Many people were afraid to leave their houses. 98
The Cultural Revolution reached such levels of insanity that finally
the army had to intervene and reestablish order in the country.
Throughout the 1970s China tried to bandage the wounds inflicted by
the Cultural Revolution and repair its damage. Mao died in 1976, joining
more than 60 million who were already dead, victims of torture, slaugh-
ter and benighted ideology.