Oof, where to even start? So imagine, if you will, the wild ride known as 2022 where protest chants in China echoed: “We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution.” Yep, folks were throwing shade at Xi Jinping for channeling his inner Mao Zedong. The grip on power, the shushing of dissent, and let’s not forget the personality cult. Politics in China feels like a rerun sometimes, doesn’t it?
But hang on, let’s untangle this side of chaos. Xi’s all about rules and the Communist party’s hawkish stronghold. Mao, though, he was a chaos enthusiast, letting the masses do the heavy lifting. Now, do a double take because over in America, Trump was turning things upside down in his own flavor of disruption. Folks are starting to see the man behind the orange curtain as a reflection of a bygone era. An empire of misfits falling because of one man’s ego trip, loud and proud. Very déjà vu, don’t you think?
I stumbled on this essay doing the rounds, some legal brainiac, Zhang Qianfan, dubbing it “America’s Cultural Revolution.” Trump, unlike the ol’ dictator-loving Xi, uses confusion and public uproar like a playbook. It’s Mao’s “great disorder under heaven” vibes, like history stuck on repeat.
But come on, let’s not go overboard. I mean, the Cultural Revolution was hella brutal—millions dead, culture wrecked, dreamers silenced. Mao was in power until the universe itself hit the reset button on him. America’s got its checks and balances, atleast on good days. What’s happening now is more like echoes, not carbon copies.
Folks like Jiayang Fan saw Trump’s fiery rhetoric and paranoia as straight outta the migrant playbook. Then there’s this piece from Geremie Barmé, saying Mao painted himself the outsider ready to overthrow old systems. Looking into historical patterns for my book “Red Memory,” it is like deja vu with Trump amplifying division, instead of unity like others promised. It gets under your skin.
Trump 2.0 just cranks the volume up. Mao went on his destructive spree post-The Great Leap Forward—an epic fail leading to famine and mass death. The man wanted payback! Michel Bonnin notes similarly that post-election, we’ve seen the unfiltered Trump, like the crazed haze around a purer Mao. Boundaries are so last season.
Of course, Trump’s parallels with Mao make some folks’ skin crawl, especially the right-wing crew. They’d rather compare the Cultural Revolution’s chaos to reactive campus protests. But, come on, the Red Guards were Mao’s fiery puppet army.
Unlike Mao’s violent posse, Trump’s swapped experts for… well, less expert ideologues. Trust the gut, they say, even as the economy plays Jenga. Makes you nostalgic for the “follow Mao’s whim” approach.
Bewildered insiders are as common as chaotic tweets (thanks, Truth Social). Trump, like Mao, tosses out confusion like it’s confetti, then watches the chaos stew.
So, what’s the takeaway from China’s bleakest chapters? First, Mao’s unchecked power ran wild because no one stood up to him. Cue today’s GOP, business moguls, and their willful ignorance. Second, nothing is forever. After Mao’s end, China experienced a renaissance of sorts. Hope left its mark despite Beijing’s clenched fists.
If even a regime as rigid as China’s can rebound, maybe just maybe, post-Trumpism, there’s a better horizon for America too. But that damage—it’s gonna leave a scar, the kind that doesn’t fade easily.
