Linda Jaivin Shades of the Cultural Revolution: from Mao to Musk

It would have been the furthest thing from Elon Musk’s mind, but his call for Americans to denounce public servants they think should be fired on the social media platform X is a perfect example of what Mao Zedong, in his analogue world, called ‘mass dictatorship’. In China, mass dictatorship reached its apotheosis in the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976, which resulted in nearly two million deaths and incalculable damage to China’s culture and heritage as well as the collapse of political and economic institutions. To know the history of the Cultural Revolution is to better understand the world today, from Beijing to Washington.

Linda Jaivin is a prolific cultural commentator, essayist and the internationally published author of thirteen books, including The Shortest History of China, which has been published in 23 countries and counting, and her latest, Bombard the Headquarters: China’s Cultural Revolution. She studied Asian History at Brown University in the US and has studied and lived in and reported from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. She is also a translator of film subtitles for Chinese films and has been an editor of The China Story Yearbook (published by the Australian Centre in the World at the ANU). She lives in Sydney.
Photo credit Anna Hay

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