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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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the great leap forward, the cultural revolution, and, my favorite, the four pests policy.

The local SJWs and ardent supporters of these policies, unlike in Western societies, were never permitted to grab structural control over social life after marching through the institutions, and were only deputized as mindless executors of the political moves of the supreme leader. Once he was dead, all power was stripped from them by his successors, they were suppressed and their legacy was undone under the official slogan of Setting Things Right. (I briefly described this period here on the old subreddit.) Due to political and cultural peculiarities I’m afraid this great feat is something that will never be achieved in any Western country. If anything of this sort will ever come to pass, it can only happen through bloodshed and complete collapse. In this sense, I think OP is right – the Chinese are doing it all better.

With respect to the one-child policy I think it needs to be pointed out in defense of the Chinese commies that pretty much everyone else in the world was falling for the same nonsense back then. The notion that runaway overpopulation was causing mass poverty, famine and wars seemed irresistible.