Sydney McLain

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Shi, Xia

Area of Concentration

History

Abstract

This thesis examines the complex and evolving relationship the Red Guards had with the concept of victimhood during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Motivated by Mao’s anti-bourgeois rhetoric, young students in cities across China expressed their beliefs in the form of public humiliation and beatings directed towards class enemies during the period of continuous social upheaval initiated by Mao in the Cultural Revolution. Though there is a diversity of topics covered in modern scholarship on the subject, much of it follows the mainstream narrative of the Red Guards as a group of adolescents committing brutal arts of violence upon the bourgeois enemies of the Chinese Communist Party. While plenty of information has been given on first-hand Red Guard accounts and the detailing of various events throughout the Cultural Revolution, the scholarship fails to explicitly connect the Red Guards to the cycle of victimhood they experienced during this time. This thesis intends to fill the gap between the common portrayal of the Red Guards as simply violent attackers and the often neglected fact that they also experienced persecution from both external and internal forces. It first discusses the Red Guards’ violent attacks against their extraneous enemies, moves on to detailing the factional infighting of the Red Guards attacking each other, and concludes with the examination of the Red Guards’ exile at the hands of Mao. Through these different perspectives, this thesis argues that the Red Guards’ role as either an enemy or victim was never static, frequently changing in Mao’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution.

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