https://hyperallergic.com/1016649/donald-trump-cultural-revolution/
"Following the Trump administration’s May announcement that all international
students at Harvard University — fully 27% of the student body — must either
transfer or face deportation, Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered an address
justifying the government’s actions. There were eerie historical echoes to her
statement blaming so-called anti-American radicalism at the nation’s colleges
and universities; Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made a comparable remark about
Iran’s institutions of higher education in 1980. Similarly, it would be easy to
imagine Iranian Minister of the Interior Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani’s 1980
declaration that there should be a ban on “activities of all political groups
in universities” being uttered today by Stephen Miller, White House deputy
chief of staff for policy. Khomeini, in a 1981 radio address following his
order to purge Iranian universities of “heretics,” thundered that “It is
incumbent on both teachers and students … to do their best to identify corrupt
elements and to cleanse schools of the dirt of these people.” And though it’s
better composed than most Trump Truth Social posts, it wouldn’t be a stretch to
imagine that appearing on the president’s social media page.
The similarities between the sentiments of extremists in Iran’s government 45
years ago and the United States today are obvious, so much so that the chilling
statement by Kevin Roberts, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation —
that “we are in the process of a second American Revolution, which will remain
bloodless if the left allows it to be” — is perfectly in the spirit of
Khomeini.
Whether Otto von Bismarck’s Prussian
Kulturkampf from 1871 to 1878 or
Chairman Mao Zedong’s Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, governments
of both the right and left have occasionally implemented sweeping, oppressive,
and frequently violent state-mandated social rebellions. Rather than simply
altering political arrangements, a cultural revolution sees a nation go to war
with itself. Under such a state, the government targets universities and media,
museums and memorials. Marked by the negation and destruction of a nation’s
institutions, such a process is by definition nihilistic. It is by nature
anti-tradition, even if pursued by those on the right, whose conservatism has
traded conservation for fervent authoritarianism. Finally, despite being
controlled by a central power, cultural revolutions are inevitably chaotic.
Though Trump and Mao are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and few
would confuse the United States president with the supreme leader of Iran,
there are certainly leadership similarities. In
The Cultural Revolution: A
People’s History, 1962–1976 (2016), Frank Dikötter described Mao as “erratic,
whimsical and fitful, thriving in willed chaos,” a leader who governed by
instinct and improvization and who relished a “game in which he could
constantly rewrite the rules … [where] people scrambled to prove their
loyalty.” Sound familiar?"
Via Joyce Donahue.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
