{"id":294213,"date":"2025-04-28T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=294213"},"modified":"2025-04-27T10:11:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T09:11:25","slug":"trumps-cultural-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/04\/trumps-cultural-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Cultural Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The First Thing We Do Is We Kill Intellectual Inquiry<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution in China, 1966<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Apr 2025\u00a0– I\u2019m in Lisbon, speaking at a conference the Banco de Portugal is holding to commemorate the revolution that brought democracy to Portugal 50 years ago. I worked at the Bank in 1976 and have been a friend of Portugal ever since. And while Portugal has faced many challenges since the Carnation Revolution, all in all its democracy has flourished.<\/em><\/p>\n

Alas, democracy in my own nation is now under dire threat. So I thought I\u2019d write a short post about that today. Probably another brief post tomorrow. Then my wife and I will be on a bike trip, with at most quick notes from the road<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump has been treated very, very badly. At least that\u2019s what he says all the time, and there\u2019s no reason to doubt that it\u2019s how he feels. Hardly a day goes by without an outburst like this:<\/p>\n

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Above all, he clearly feels rage toward people who, he imagines, think they\u2019re smarter or better than him.<\/p>\n

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And he and the movement he leads, composed of people possessed by similar rage, are seeking retribution<\/a>. Retribution against whom? Yes, they hate wokeness. But three months in, it\u2019s obvious that the MAGA types want revenge not just on their political opponents but on everyone they consider elites \u2014 a group that, as they see it, doesn\u2019t include billionaires, but does include college professors, scientists and experts of any kind.<\/p>\n

It took no time at all for the Trumpists to move from trying to purge government agencies of DEI to trying to control the content of medical journals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t try to sanewash what\u2019s happening. It\u2019s evil, but it isn\u2019t calculated evil. That is, it\u2019s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It\u2019s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you want a model for what\u2019s happening to America, think of Mao\u2019s Cultural Revolution.<\/p>\n

But wait, wasn\u2019t Mao hard left while America has been taken over by the hard right? Well, why do you think there\u2019s a big difference between the two? I\u2019m a believer in horseshoe theory<\/a>, which says that the extreme left and the extreme right are more like each other than either is like the political center. For example, among Britain\u2019s unions there is a hard-left faction that has no counterpart in the United States. Some of its positions, notably making apologies<\/a> for Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, look a lot like MAGA.<\/p>\n

And in America some leftist commentators have effectively become spokesmen for the tech-bro right<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China\u2019s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cultural Revolution was, of course, a huge disaster for China. It inflicted vast suffering on its targets and also devastated the economy. But the Maoists didn\u2019t care. Revenge was their priority, never mind the effects on GDP.<\/p>\n

The Trumpists are surely the same. Their rampage will, if unchecked, have dire economic consequences. Right now we\u2019re all focused on tariff madness, but undermining higher education and crippling scientific research will eventually have even bigger costs. But don\u2019t expect them to care, or even to acknowledge what\u2019s happening. Trump has already declared that the inflation everyone can see with their own eyes is fake news<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is, however, one big difference between Chairman Mao in 1966 and President Trump in 2025: Trump probably \u2014 probably<\/em> \u2014 doesn\u2019t have the cards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Until a couple of weeks ago, as one institution after another capitulated to Trump\u2019s demands, it was hard to avoid the sickening feeling that American civil society would fold without a fight. But as I said, Trump and his movement are driven by visceral urges, not strategy. And right now it looks as if they overreached. In different ways, the rendition of innocent people to gulags in El Salvador \u2014 don\u2019t call it deportation \u2014 and the assault on Harvard seem to have stiffened spines. And the catastrophe of Trump\u2019s economic policy has alienated businesspeople who would otherwise have served as his useful idiots.<\/p>\n

America as we know it may yet perish. But at this point we seem to have a chance.<\/p>\n