America's cultural revolution is just like Mao's - UnHerd

America's cultural revolution is just like Mao's - UnHerd:

• To many who survived the crackdown in China, events in the US are frighteningly familiar

"After leaving China for America two decades ago, my father only returned to his homeland once.
I had turned 18, and I think he wanted to show me something of his youth, of which he spoke little.
 In the dusty village where he grew up, we met an endless stream of old men who wanted to see the village’s prodigal son.
Gifts were offered and extravagant greetings were swapped.
Then, after each visitor had departed, my father would tell me, matter-of-factly, what they did to him during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The harmless-looking retired cadre, now an amiable old man who pinched my cheeks, had been the village party secretary who forced my father to perform manual labour — running after cows with a basket to pick up the droppings — because, as the son of a landlord, he could not be trusted with an education. 
The local businessman, now on his second wife and third Audi, had belonged to a gang of high school children who beat him for being descended from counter-revolutionaries.

...Since the beginning of — shall we call it our 2020 cultural moment? — much ink has been spilled on whether there are similarities between the current protests-cum-riots and China’s Cultural Revolution. 
...To my father, and indeed to many of his contemporaries, the answer is clear.
They had lived through it, and although they cannot put their finger on the why, they can feel a certain febrility in the air which reminded them of the events of half a century ago. 

...As they say, history rhymes but does not repeat itself....
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