More Mizzou Fall Out; Respected Professor Resigns

This story keeps getting worse and more depressing.

And this is the sort of mediocre, middling mind pushing it.

Lovely. It appears this is the person behind it.

The future is in good hands.

But I'd still sell your bonds if you have any.

Just in case. Lunatics don't give up the asylum that easily.

***

Mizzou. Red China.

Same mentality?

"On August 19, I organized a meeting to criticize the leaders of the Beijing education system," Chen, now 67, recalls. "A rather serious armed struggle broke out. At the end, some students rushed onstage and used leather belts to whip some of the education officials, including the party secretary of my school."

Chen says he was against the violence, but the situation spiraled out of his control. Chen says his school's party secretary later committed suicide, and a vice secretary was crippled as a result of that day's attack.

The same summer, Chairman Mao met with crowds of frenzied Red Guards in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. He endorsed their violent tactics — consisting mainly of beatings with fists, clubs and other blunt instruments. In August and September 1966, a total of 1,772 people were killed in Beijing, according to the Beijing Daily newspaper.

Students beating up their teachers was a shocking reversal in the Confucian society, where educators were once held in the highest esteem.

Now, the teachers who were victimized in the Cultural Revolution are mostly in their 70s and 80s, and the Red Guards have said they wanted to apologize while they still have the chance.
Last October, Chen met with his former classmates and teachers and apologized for the violence he presided over.

Chen Xiaolu is one of the most high-profile former Red Guards to publicly apologize for the attacks against his teachers. "Looking back on it, I believe their human rights and dignity were trampled upon," says Chen, shown here in the courtyard of his Beijing residence.

 

In fact, Chen says, the entire Cultural Revolution was illegal because it violated China's Constitution — though he acknowledges that criticizing the movement as unconstitutional is a way to make his point without being silenced by the authorities.

Chen belongs to the "red second generation." He lives in spacious courtyard home in central Beijing. A black Audi sedan with paramilitary license plates — almost de rigueur for Beijing's power elite — can be seen in his garage.

And yet Chen says he must be careful in his critique of the Cultural Revolution. He's criticizing himself, he emphasizes, not Mao. And he says he's certainly not implying any criticism of China's current leadership.

Red Guards still use the euphemistic jargon of the era, including terms such as "struggling" against class enemies. Critics point out that these vague terms could be considered to include acts such as murder, torture and imprisonment."

Hm. Sounds vaguely familiar all this.