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Given that all of us want racial tension healed and vulnerable communities empowered, any criticism of the group Black Lives Matter (BLM) automatically sounds bad.

But it’s possible for Black lives to matter without us feeling the need to support to an organisation that is stoking division and taking its cues from Karl Marx.

You’re likely aware that Patrisse Cullors, one of BLM’s three co-founders, has openly and proudly announced that she and Alicia Garza — another co-founder of the group — are trained Marxists who are well-versed in Marxist ideology.

You may also have read BLM’s What We Believe manifesto, which barely hides a Marxist worldview that seeks to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and pits oppressed against oppressor.

It is not just the Marxist beliefs of BLM that should be of concern to everyday Westerners, however. In a recent video released by controversial radio host Paul Watson, it is quite evident that BLM are carrying out Marxist agitation tactics in public.

In a sobering montage of footage that juxtaposes BLM protests with the Maoist revolution in China, the parallels between the two are striking.

The difference, of course, is that the Marxist uprising in America is still in its infancy. In the United States, the rule of law still prevails and the democratic system is yet in place. God willing, it will remain this way. But as three months of protests and rioting continue, it is becoming more obvious that many in the BLM movement have a Marxist agenda for the future of their country.

Read the video’s transcript below, or watch it here.

One of the mob’s weapons of psychological warfare is humiliation and ritual public shaming. And I’m not just talking about social media cancel culture — I’m talking about literal public shaming in public.

Wouldn’t it be chilling if the exact same tactics used by the Red Guards during the psychological terror campaign of China’s Maoist Cultural Revolution were being used today? Yes it would. And yes they are.

During the Cultural Revolution, dissidents and opponents of the revolution were humiliated and shamed in the streets by baying mobs of Marxist-Leninist agitators. At the time, these displays were known as “struggle sessions”. The goal was to use verbal and physical abuse to force the accused into expressing both physical and ideological fealty, and ultimately confessing their thought-crimes.

So what were the characteristics of Maoist struggle sessions? The mob would subject the target to repeated rhythmic chants as a form of re-education.

The mob would force the target to kneel as another form of ritual public shaming. The target was made to wear blackboards describing their alleged crimes and sins.

A target who professed their innocence, maybe by refusing to conform to groupthink and intimidation, was regarded by the Maoists as the most guilty.

The mob would be incited to target landowners, who they were indoctrinated to believe were the architects of their oppression. The mob would be incited to attack religious shrines.

The mob would be encouraged to erect their own murals and shrines to honour and ordain their ideological deities.

The goal of the mob was to rid the country of the old ideas, enacting reverse cultural imperialism.

The mob would be incited to attack shops and businesses perceived not to be fully supporting their cause.

The mob would be incited to target street signs and lobby for street names to be changed, in doing so, re-educating their class enemies to be ashamed of their heritage.

The mob would be incited to believe that looting and stealing was merely the just re-appropriating of wealth.

Now I’m not saying that the activities of BLM have reached anywhere near the level of terror dished out by the Red Guard. But I’m starting to notice some similarities.

Victims of the Maoist Cultural Revolution were not just publicly shamed for their beliefs — they were executed for them. Of course that would never happen in America, would it?

Dissidents and thought-criminals who refused to cave to the mob were also taken to re-education gulags. Of course that would never happen in America, would it?

In 1984, George Orwell described the “two minutes of hate” which was akin to public shaming training for the citizens of Airstrip One. The rage that one felt was an abstract undirected emotion — a shaming ritual which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blow-lamp.

Just as BLM agitators are able to change their rage on a whim — from targeting a senator to a diner to an old woman — all seen as being born with original sin because of their skin colour.

“The object of Ire could be anyone,” writes James Panero. “What matters is the display of denunciation and the pitiless scorn that must be arbitrarily shown.”

The impact of public shaming is also reflected in political polls. In the case of both Brexit and Donald Trump, the polls got it spectacularly wrong. Part of the reason for that was because voters were reluctant to tell pollsters their actual voting preference.

Whatever the strength of their private beliefs, public shaming had made people ashamed of expressing support for Brexit or Trump.

Expect that phenomenon to be repeated in 2020.

Ritual public humiliation struggle sessions were happening in China right up until 1978, when reformist Deng Xiaoping abolished them.

In Maoist China, without explicitly calling for political violence, the political class was nonetheless able to legitimise and incite it.

In the United States, the political class has achieved the exact same thing: no explicit call for violence, but the subtle legitimisation and incitement of the mob to carry out Maoist-style psychological warfare against the American people.

Now the same political class is using the threat of that same mob to intimidate Americans into voting them into power.

History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.

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Image courtesy of Clay Banks on Unsplash.

Embedded photo: On September 12, 1966, Li Fanwu, governor of Heilongjiang Province, was shaved and tortured by the Red Guards because he was regarded as having opportunistic ambitions due to his similar appearance to Chairman Mao.