“In a covenant among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society.” – Hans-Hermann Hoppe

It’s best to trigger people initially so one can make sure that either people who have no actual interest leave the discussion or so that those who want to know “why?” will actually stay and listen.

I did so in my last article as well, which was advocating for voluntary taxes, which became clear in the comment section that essentially everyone blasting it didn’t even have any education on the subject. This isn’t new in today’s society. From what one can gather simply by watching the news or videos online of people asking each other to “name the politician who said X. Turns out it was Y who you support and not who you thought” that the educational system is a giant flop. We see tons of millennials who are ignorant about simple economic theories, we see tons of “useful idiots” going around advocating for systems that, if implemented, would literally kill them first and there is a ton of fault to go around.

I am not sure how many people here follow social media in other countries, much less their politics, but in China this last week there were reactions all across Chinese social media websites such as Weibo, where people were essentially wondering if the US was telling us we’re going through a cultural revolution, much like the one that they went through under Mao Zedong.

In May 1966, Mao initiated this revolution by riling up the lower and middle class and forming the Red Guard, a paramilitary social movement. To quote CNN, they wanted to achieve “peace through violence.” The Red Guard’s first “mission” was to go after the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. Art was burned, books were destroyed and museums ransacked, names were replaced with new revolutionary types and heritage sites all around Beijing were attacked, including that of Confucius.

Of course, it didn’t stop. Anyone who knows world history should know it continued. Statues destroyed, mummies exhumed and desecrated, ancient texts and religious symbols burnt. Eventually once enough of this went by, the Red Guard moved on from the culture to attacking people, and people who resisted the Red Guard were labeled “counter-revolutionaries” and would eventually lead to murders, massacres, torture, kidnapping, public humiliation even pressured into suicide.

Capitalists and those deemed to hold “right-wing” views were actively being targeted and rooted out. All the while starting actually back in 1962 and ending in 1979, over 15 million youth were sent to the Chinese countryside to undergo “reeducation,” where students from the cities were sent into the mountains and country to learn how to contribute to the communist state. Dai Sijie wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, in which he recounts things that would happen in this time of reeducation. A cinematic adaptation came out later on as well. Eventually the Red Guard had been seen as expendable as they had done their part and the People’s Liberation Army was sent in to put them down and send them back to school, where they were then considered counterrevolutionaries and banned. I give you the useful idiots.

This Cultural Revolution in China isn’t necessarily new. The Soviets went through it, Pol Pot in Cambodia, as well as Cuba. As can be seen by historical facts, these cultural revolutions quite clearly have one thing in common: communism. Which brings me to my next part.

For many here in the states, Antifa is this new group that has come out of nowhere, a group some aren’t even sure how to feel about. Those ignorant of who they are and their history quickly equate them to servicemen storming the beaches of Normandy, when the ironic history is that they were far from it. Antifa, like today, were a group of communists in Germany prior to and sometime during the Nazis’ rise to power (they, of course, were put down by Hitler’s Gestapo).

There have been instances of Antifa groups showing up again since the 1980s, both here in the states and in Europe, but they hadn’t gained much traction in the states until recently.

In the meantime, though, they had grown and mastered their tactics in European countries. I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last three years learning about them, through conversations with some who have been attacked and some who just found videos of attacks all across Europe. The UK, Sweden, Germany, France and Italy, which are just a few of the countries who have been plagued by Antifa groups, and their tactics are eerily familiar. Like Mao’s Red Guard, Antifa works by claiming those who aren’t in line with their ideology are the enemy and so they are fascists, and because they are fascists, they should have every right to physically assault them. They dox people, harass them, attack them and they try to get them fired from their jobs. They have attacked statues (including classical statues in Italy) and historical monuments, and call people who defend history, European culture and overall those who call for peace and moderation fascists and fascist apologizers and enablers. In their minds they have achieved peak levels of moral superiority, they can do no wrong.

If one can’t recognize the similarities between them and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, than I can’t help any further. Not only are they communists, but they use the exact same tactics. It isn’t a surprise that some are immediately going to “they’re going to revise history” because it has happened before, time and time again.

While libertarians and moderates tend to take a neutral stance and call out all extremes on both sides of the aisle (and rightfully so), we shouldn’t be so comfortable and complacent when it comes to Antifa. Just this last weekend, the Boston free speech rally was bombarded with thousands of protesters who came because the mainstream media and other groups had told them that the people holding the rally were white nationalists. Similarly, the march on Google rallies that were supposed to have been held around the nation were also claimed to have been white nationalist rallies. Once again, they were lying.

According to CNN, there were nine white nationalist rallies to be held last weekend, yet those rallies were the march on Google rallies.

Yet, the fact of the matter was that it said specifically on march on Google’s code of conduct that they “disavowed not only violence, hatred and bigotry and all groups that espouse it such as White Nationalists, KKK, Antifa, and Neo-Nazis.” They even went further and said that they are not an alt-right event, saying that the event was held for those of every background who supported the First Amendment.

It’s pretty clear to me, in my opinion, that the media is intentionally lying about these marches, while Antifa is continuing their attempt at a cultural revolution. Meanwhile, they both attack moderates and libertarians who disavow all sides of violence as enablers of Nazi’s and white supremacists and, in Antifa’s eyes at least, we are no different from fascists ourselves (considering we are capitalists, this isn’t surprising).

I would honestly have people discuss all of this and the quote by Hoppe, I don’t think any of us certainly want to pick a side or commit violence, but we must always remember it is a possibility and a right given to us at birth. Do we want a cultural revolution where we are targets as well? If not, how do we go about stopping it, do we have the ability to stop it without taking up arms? Again, this is something I think none of us want to think about, but it’s something we should keep in our minds, and at the very least stay vigilant.

* Jarod Goodwin is an archaeology student in his mid-twenties. He’s worked in the grassroots movement for the election of Jim Webb in 2016, and in informing foreigners and locals alike to the different political sides of things like Brexit, the Dutch election, French election, Canadian, Swedish, and Brazilian politics.