Impromptus

Remembering a Red terror, &c.

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In a famous, or infamous, photo, young Song Binbin ties a Red Guard armband for Mao Zedong during a ceremony in Tianenmen Square, Beijing, China, on August 18, 1966. (Public domain via Wikimedia)
On Mao’s Cultural Revolution; hurricanes and politics; the pronouns thing; ‘Latinx’; Steph Curry; and more

‘Song Binbin, Poster Woman for Mao’s Bloody Upheaval, Dies at 77.” That is the heading over an obituary in the New York Times by Trip Gabriel. What was the “bloody upheaval”? The Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 until Mao’s death in 1976. Why was Song Binbin a “poster woman”? In a famous photo, she placed an armband on Mao’s sleeve — an armband of the Red Guards. This was during a ceremony in Tiananmen Square on August 18, 1966. Approximately two weeks before, Song Binbin had participated in an important event — an event that was an opening act of the whole blood-soaked period.

She was one of the high-school students who beat their principal to death. Trip Gabriel writes the following:

On Aug. 5, 1966, students attacked Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old mother of four who headed the school. She was kicked and beaten with sticks spiked with nails. After passing out, she was thrown onto a garbage cart and left to die.

Later, Song Binbin went to America, where she earned degrees at Boston University and MIT. Subsequently, she returned to China. Almost 50 years after the murder of Bian Zhongyun — in 2014 — she apologized for her role in that murder.

Here is some more from Mr. Gabriel’s obit:

In 2004, Wang Youqin, a schoolmate of Ms. Song’s who later became a historian at the University of Chicago, published “Victims of the Cultural Revolution,” a book that included a description of the death of Ms. Bian and of Ms. Song’s role in the turmoil at the girls’ high school.

After Ms. Bian’s death, Ms. Wang wrote, “every school in China became a torture chamber, prison, or even execution ground, and many teachers were persecuted to death.”

Last year, I published an article headed “An Intrepid Chronicler of Evil.” “One of the most remarkable people I have ever met,” I began, “is Youqin Wang,” who “has dedicated her life to researching and documenting the Cultural Revolution.” I first spoke with her, and wrote about her, in 2001. The truth about the Cultural Revolution is suppressed in China — taboo; dangerous. Witnesses and survivors who have talked with Youqin Wang, giving their testimonies, are brave. So is the chronicler herself, of course.


More in China

The Cultural Revolution stands as a textbook example of the depravity and carnage that can result from popular frenzies.

In 2004, I reviewed a remarkable book — a slim little volume — called “Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard.” The author is Fan Shen. Some years later, in 2011, I wrote,

I feel like I know a secret — like I know about a masterpiece, hidden from the world. Gang of One is the kind of book that might be read hundreds of years from now. Really. Odd to say, but I feel it true. The publisher is a humble one, the University of Nebraska Press. As far as I’m concerned, they are in possession of a literary, and human, diamond.

• Many of us contain several political and philosophical strains. They are competing, or can be. I prize tradition, order, rule-making and rule-following (as long as those rules are just). I also prize individualism — even to the point of eccentricity or iconoclasm — and “Don’t Tread on Me.” (I am, in short, an American conservative, as this type was understood for generations.)

Here is an interesting case. I have linked to an Associated Press report headed “A Black student punished for his hairstyle wants to return to the Texas school he left.” Darryl George wants to wear his hair a certain way. But the school has a dress code, which includes hairstyle, and young Mr. George’s choice violates it. Who ought to win?

Personally, I sympathize with both the school and the student, leaning toward the school, and hoping that Darryl George can find another school that welcomes, or at least tolerates, his hairstyle. (Blessed is a market.)

(By the way, some of us, follically challenged, would rejoice to have any hairstyle at all.)

• Below is a message from Marjorie Taylor Greene, delivered last week. She is a Republican congresswoman from Georgia who sits on the Homeland Security Committee.

In the last several years, many people have asked me, earnestly, “What’s so bad about populism?” One of the things at the root of populism is conspiracy theory. Usually, the theory of the moment, whatever it is, pits a bad “they” against innocent, victimized “us.” Elites — shadowy, string-pulling elites — against Real People. This can be silly. It can also be combustible, dangerous, as we have seen over and over.

It’s silly — laughable — until it isn’t.

But speaking of laughing: Michael Che had a good line about Greene’s tweet on Saturday Night Live: “I don’t know who ‘they’ is, but it has been a suspiciously nice Rosh Hashanah weekend.”

• Donald Trump has been a spout of lies about Hurricane Helene: claiming that the Republican governor of Georgia can’t get in touch with the Democratic president; that the feds and North Carolina Democrats are withholding aid from “Republican areas”; that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) is diverting funds to immigrants, so as to deprive Real Americans of relief. The whole populist playbook, or much of it.

Obviously, there are many Americans who believe Trump’s lies. They are “true believers”; such believers, we will always have with us. But the most important division, I think, is not between those who believe the lies and those who don’t.

No, the most important division is between people who care and people who don’t. People who think the lies matter and people who don’t. People who say, “This is not right, this is damaging,” and people who yawn or say, “Yeah, but whatever advances the party, the tribe.”

• Some Republicans, in North Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere, are telling the truth about Hurricane Helene and the federal response, even in the atmosphere of a general election. I commend them. Truth-telling of this sort should not take guts, but it does.

I think of 2012 and the presidential election that year. A lot of Republicans were mad at Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, for cooperating with President Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. They accused him of “hugging” Obama, physically. It was an issue in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.

For instance, Christie and Senator Rand Paul were arguing about national-security policy — national-security policy at home: search warrants and so on. Paul said, “I don’t trust President Obama with our records. I know you gave him a big hug, and if you want to give him a big hug again, go right ahead.”

There are papers to be written about natural disasters and presidential elections. Maybe there have been.

• An AP report is headed, “New analysis suggests national debt could increase under Harris, but it would surge under Trump.” If there comes a day when our fiscal house collapses under the weight of debt, people will ask, all indignant, “Who allowed this to happen?” The correct answer will be: “We, the People.”

• Score one for the champ — i.e., Martina Navratilova:

• A report of interest, from USA Today: “Virginia teacher who was fired over refusing to use student’s preferred pronouns awarded $575,000.” I have a question, one I have been asking for years, and to which the answer cannot be known: Will the pronouns thing prove a kind of fad? Like the hula hoop or lava lamp? Or is it here to stay, a permanent part of the human condition?

For a long while, I was thinking fad. Now I’m not sure.

• Is “Latinx” a fad? It must be the ugliest word ever devised — even uglier than “impactful.” A different report is headed, “Awareness of ‘Latinx’ increases among US Latinos, and ‘Latine’ emerges as an alternative.” Better, I suppose: but “Latino,” “Latina”; “Latinos,” “Latinas” — que lindas palabras, what beautiful words. Certainly less negatively impactful than those others . . .

• I began my column by citing an obituary by Trip Gabriel. Here is another one, which begins,

David Burnham, a former investigative reporter for The New York Times whose exposé of corruption in the New York City Police Department in 1970 led to public hearings; tarnished top officials, including the mayor; and inspired the movie “Serpico,” about Mr. Burnham’s chief source, Detective Frank Serpico, died on Tuesday at his home in Spruce Head, Maine. He was 91.

The obit notes that Burnham “was known for a scrupulous faith in facts.” An unusual cat, this Burnham. I will relay some more info from the obit.

That 1973 movie, Serpico, was based on a book by Peter Maas. Detective Serpico had first asked Burnham to collaborate with him on a book, but Burnham said no. Arthur Gelb, in his memoir City Room, put the matter as follows: “Burnham, ethical to the bone, did not feel he should profit from having performed a public service.”

Burnham went on to investigate the nuclear-power industry, via his informant Karen Silkwood. Once more, I will excerpt Trip Gabriel’s obit:

Her story was told in the 1983 film “Silkwood,” starring Meryl Streep in the title role, but again Mr. Burnham declined a chance to have his reputation lifted aloft by Hollywood. He told Nora Ephron, one of the two screenwriters, that she could not use his name in the script.

Explaining his reason in an essay in The Times in 1984, he wrote, “To be a character in a historical event which has been reinterpreted by Hollywood for its own dramatic purposes is an irritating and frustrating experience.”

Yes, an unusual cat, the reporter David Burnham.

• Maybe I could close with a little Steph Curry — no, not a video of him in action, on the basketball floor, but a slice of him in an interview. Curry is a great athlete, yes, but I think he has also entered national-treasure territory:

Good to see you, everybody, no matter what the news, no matter what the weather. Talk to you later.

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