The first weeks of Donald Trump's second term as US president have quickly provoked a sense of déjà vu among those familiar with Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Chinese social media hastened to amplify these connections, most often in a satirical spirit.
The similarities seemed incongruous—so vast is the difference between communist China in the 1960s and 1970s and Donald Trump's United States in the mid-2020s.
Yet they are obvious.
Some wise minds had already described the psychological closeness between Trump and Mao at the beginning of the American president's first term 1 .
But from 2025 onwards, the reference to the Chinese Cultural Revolution becomes even more compelling for several reasons.
In both cases, we are dealing with a kind of coup d'état perpetrated by a leader against the political system of which he was the highest leader - what is called in Spanish an autogolpe, or self-coup d'état 2 .
On the other hand, Trump's second term places greater emphasis on ideological issues than his first - the term "cultural revolution" is even directly used by his advisers.
Trump in 2025 and Mao in 1966 have scores to settle, revenge to exact.
Michel Bonnin
There is, of course, no direct connection between the two events in the sense that Mao's Chinese Cultural Revolution influenced Trump's. Nor can the damage caused to America and the rest of the world by Donald Trump's actions since his re-election be equated with the human and economic catastrophe that the Cultural Revolution has represented for China and the Chinese people.
Yet, despite the differences, it is possible to point out the similarities that link the two events.
From a purely hypothetical perspective, such a comparison involves extending the analysis by imagining the problems that Trump—and Americans in general—will have to face in light of the Chinese experience.
Trump in 2025 and Mao in 1966 have scores to settle, revenge to exact.
Trump versus the Democrats, whom he accuses of stealing the 2020 election from him and trying him for his failed coup attempt; Mao versus the "realistic" Party leaders who took charge from the late 1960s to save the country from famine and economic collapse caused by his flagship project: the Great Leap Forward.
Mao's responsibility for this famine, which is undoubtedly the greatest in human history—at least 35 million deaths—is enormous. Not only because he was the one who imposed the aberrant policy of the Great Leap Forward on his colleagues, but above all because in July 1959, during a plenum where it was planned to reorient economic policy in the face of the famine that had already begun to strike, he had violently attacked those who dared to speak part of the truth and imposed by terror the continuation of a terribly murderous policy. At the end of 1960, he was forced to let his colleagues repair the damage, but the damage was done: the famine would kill until 1962. Mao counterattacked in the autumn of 1962 and the Cultural Revolution exploded in mid-1966.
So here are two former leaders locked in denial of their defeat and their mistakes, all the more eager to take their revenge because, even if they were able to escape a public and definitive loss of face, they are not safe, in the near or distant future, from having their past turpitudes brought back to the table.
The Cultural Revolution has been called the "Second Chinese Revolution" 3 and Trump's second term, presented as "the second American revolution" by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and mastermind of Trump's overall program for this term, the 2025 Project. He clarified that this revolution might not become bloody if the left lets it happen. 4 .
In both cases, this revolution could have been avoided if the ruling power had dared to impeach a leader who bore grave responsibility. By granting him immunity—which was an encouragement to irresponsibility—the country was taking a major risk for the future.
The two revolutionary leaders have always been convinced that they were right and that they are far superior politicians. If they must take revenge and get rid of those who opposed them, it is because, given their age, they are aware that their last chance has arrived to show who they are and make history. While there is still time, they must both clean out the Augean stables and erect their own golden statue forever: Mao in 1966, like Trump in 2025, are politicians who seem entirely "inhabited by their mission," narcissistic personalities in the process of writing their glorious testament.
For Mao, it seems clear that he wanted to leave a wholly glorious mark on history, as shown by his repeated references to the first emperor of China and the way he organized his own cult as early as the 1930s. But Trump's desire for glory should not be overlooked either: the self-published images of himself as a king or Superman and his avowed fantasy of winning the Nobel Peace Prize like Obama are clear signals.
Kevin Roberts, the father of the 2025 Project, said that this revolution might not become bloody if the left lets it happen.
Michel Bonnin
At the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mao warned that his revolution should "touch the souls of the people" (Decision of August 8, 1966). It was to profoundly change the country's culture and accelerate the formation of the communist "new man."
On the American side, even before Trump's electoral success, his ideological supporters had also spoken of carrying out a "cultural revolution" in the United States. In his inaugural address , the new president insisted that America would never again be " woke , " just as Mao had declared that the Cultural Revolution would eradicate "revisionism" in China. Trump wants to build a new America just as Mao wanted to create a new China in 1966.
In fact, the Great Helmsman had already believed he had founded it in 1949, but according to him, revisionist leaders had prevented the success of his mission during those first "seventeen years" that he would violently denounce in 1966, just as Trump would have been prevented from achieving everything he wanted during his first term because of members of his entourage who were not "true believers" but bureaucrats, members of the "deep state."
The Cultural Revolution appears in both cases as an absolute necessity to fully accomplish a political revolution of exceptional ambition: for one, it was a question of accelerating the advent of communist society - the supreme stage of the evolution of humanity according to Marx - and for the other of bringing about in the United States a "Golden Age", a biblical reference adapted to Trump's messianic will.
Two versions of paradise on earth, then, and not limited to a single country. Both have a universal ambition. In China, the objective was to make Maoism the beacon of the world socialist revolution, at a time when the USSR had lost, according to Mao, all legitimacy due to its "softness" and even its "betrayal" of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism. The Red Guards, later transformed into "educated youth" sent to the countryside, openly expressed this objective by imagining that their army would carry the revolution throughout the world until the capture of "the last white spot on the planet: the White House." 5. In the same way, Trump, and especially his vice-president JD Vance, do not hide the fact that they want to replace European governments with far-right governments so that the American conservative revolution spreads throughout the world.
The paradox is that this ambition for universal exemplarity coexists with a fierce desire for self-sufficiency.
According to Mao, one must only "rely on one's own strength." The Soviets, furious at being publicly attacked and no longer able to influence China, withdrew with their money and experts in 1960; by 1966, all foreigners had been expelled from China, and the People's Republic's only remaining ally was Albania. On the American side, the country was closing in on itself. Trump claimed that he would put "America first" and, after decades of globalization, that he also wanted to "rely on one's own strength" and protect the American economy by imposing a wall of tariffs. All trade with the rest of the world, including the reception of foreign students and researchers, was blocked or discouraged.
Anti-intellectualism is an ideological tendency that unites Mao and Trump.
Michel Bonnin
In this heroic struggle, both personal and national, the time is no longer for half measures, but for a ruthless radicalism that accepts in advance the suffering of the people and the chaos in the country.
Certainly, there must be leaders to run the government, but Trump and Mao are keen to reduce their number and, above all, to choose only those close to them and loyal to them, eliminating all experts and other experienced officials whose advice might run counter to the ideas of the supreme leader and cause him to deviate from his objective.
"Those who don't know rule those who know." This Chinese _expression_, which Mao justified and reclaimed in 1958, was never better illustrated in China than during the Cultural Revolution when, from 1968 to 1971, many institutions, including schools and universities, were run by "Army representatives," most of whom had a primary education but enjoyed Mao's trust. Similarly, in the choice of Trump's top ministers and advisors, blind political loyalty clearly trumps all other criteria.
Surrounded by obedient worshippers, the great man can undertake the fulfillment of his promises.
But as Mao said, "to build, you must first destroy."
In China, the Cultural Revolution first attacked the "Four Old Things" (old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits), with the aim of building the "four new things." In practice, this meant attacking intellectuals, artists, and experts, representatives of the old culture who had never accepted the "ideological reeducation" to which they had been intensively subjected since 1949—but also the monuments and works of art of the past that did not correspond to the new "proletarian" culture that the "new China" needed.
Anti-intellectualism is an ideological tendency that unites Mao and Trump. The latter attacked intellectuals, all suspected of "woke" thinking; his Vice President J.D. Vance having declared that "universities are the enemy," academics and researchers were treated as such. Some lost their jobs, particularly in fields of study deemed useless by the administration, and many lost their research funding. Political power imposed a thought police on them, as in China, notably by introducing taboo words in research projects and interfering in the selection of their students.
Universities that did not comply with the rules lost their state subsidies.
Journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to convince scientists to agree to interviews.
Often, researchers ask to remain anonymous.
With academic freedom no longer respected in the United States, we are witnessing the flight of academics who can, an ironic situation for the former beacon of the "free world."
Beyond scientists, both leaders attacked science itself as an objective discipline. Mao always defended the idea that proletarian science was different from bourgeois science. Like Stalin, he supported applications of "proletarian science" that brought disaster to his country. As for Trump, he has described climate science and all technologies seeking to replace fossil fuels as "nonsense." It stands to reason that such an attitude will have disastrous consequences for the future of the country, as well as for the rest of the world.
The new US president insisted that America would never be " woke " again , just as Mao had declared that the Cultural Revolution would eradicate "revisionism" in China.
Michel Bonnin
Both men also wanted to control art and control history.
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the first ad hominem attack came from a historian who had written a play about a Ming Dynasty event that could be seen as an allusion to Mao. Attempts to advocate for the possibility of free debate on historical issues were met with violent attacks on this "bourgeois" conception.
Trump, for his part, has also decided to take control of art and history, interfering with the content of museums and even having the director of one of them fired, guilty of presenting too many portraits of non-white people. There is clearly a plan among the Trumpists to impose a history conforming to their conceptions by all means. The investigation accompanied by a 120-day ultimatum, launched by the White House in the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the American Republic, to impose on the important museums of the Smithsonian a vision of American history conforming to that of Trump is an example of the similar logics linking the two cultural revolutions and of the serious Stalinist-Maoist drift in which the American administration is engaged .
After the intellectuals, Mao attacked his main adversaries: the leaders at all levels, from the highest to the most humble, who had formed the entire political and administrative backbone of the country. Among the latter, some would not survive—such as President Liu Shaoqi, to whom Mao had had to hand over the day-to-day running of the country but who would die without care in a provincial hospital.
Trump also quickly attacked federal workers, who were seen as " woke " and useless. Many lost their jobs, and government agencies like USAID disappeared; others, like the Department of Education, lost thousands of employees.
To accomplish this cleansing of intellectuals and bureaucrats, the two leaders used quite similar methods, despite the difference in the degree of brutality.
Mao encouraged young pupils and students to form groups of Red Guards—later called “rebels” when other categories joined them—who did not hesitate to enter the homes of people suspected for the most bizarre reasons of being “class enemies.” They were encouraged to search their homes, burn books and works of art, and publicly beat them, sometimes to death. They also beat and humiliated their teachers. When Mao encouraged them to seize power in the administrations, the cadres became their victims.
Trump, meanwhile, created a new institution without a legal basis called DOGE, entrusted to Elon Musk, who hired young people with no knowledge or experience in the federal administration, but invested with the exorbitant power to decide which civil servants could or could not keep their jobs. Musk had given them a very Maoist instruction, based on radical destruction before reconstruction: the "zero budget." In this work of destroying hated structures, the two leaders accept without hesitation the risk of a certain disorder. They are self-confessed troublemakers, and destruction is one of the bases of their power. On his birthday, December 26, 1966, in front of the leaders he had invited, Mao raised his glass "to the next generalized civil war throughout the country." For them, conflict is a foundation. The foundation of Mao's thought, as the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt noted with admiration, is at the beginning of the young revolutionary's first published text: "Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of prime importance for the revolution." 6
Trump is arguably the first leader of a democratic country for whom the conflict between friends and enemies is equally fundamental, both as a worldview and as a method of government. In his decisions, he leaves no room for the intermediate concept of ally. Among the designated enemies, there are also foreigners who have immigrated illegally, who are accused of every crime and spectacularly persecuted to please a whole segment of the population. And even this aspect of Trumpism is not without parallel in the Cultural Revolution, during which all people of "bad" social or political origin were persecuted—some considered unworthy of living in the cities were rounded up and sent back to the village of their more or less distant ancestors.
The brutalization of American politics has been growing steadily since the 1990s, but Trump has taken it to an extreme.
Not only does Trump, like Mao, use violent language towards his political opponents and any public figures who displease him, but verbal violence naturally leads to encouragement of physical violence.
Since the beginning of his second term, the assassinations or attempted assassinations of Democratic congressmen, the mistreatment of elected representatives and the countless death threats received by Democrats or Republicans not loyal to Trump have spread an atmosphere of terror in the American political class. 7. This is another similarity—despite the significant differences in degree—between the two cultural revolutions.
When DOGE was launched, Musk gave a very Maoist instruction, based on radical destruction before reconstruction: the “zero budget”.
Michel Bonnin
Just as Mao clearly encouraged violence and punished those who sought to limit it, Trump's early pardon of all Capitol rioters signaled his support for political violence by far-right groups.
One similarity may have made the conditions for the emergence of the two cultural revolutions favorable: the over-representation of the rigid and unenthusiastic character of the previous regime.
On the one hand, Chinese youth lived in the shackles of a very strict and competitive school system and in a totalitarian and poor society—both in consumer products and in opportunities to do exciting things.
On the other hand, in Trump's rhetoric, the many Americans left behind by globalization could only resent the elites , feel overwhelmed by socio-cultural changes, and dream of a time when men dominated women and whites dominated blacks and Latinos. In universities, puritanism and the law of political correctness created a stifling atmosphere, sometimes bordering on the ridiculous. The upheaval that is taking place therefore appears as a breath of dynamism and the unexpected that delights a part of the population. The two leaders provide a gloomy people with a spectacle that is sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing, but always fascinating : an attempt to re-enchant a somewhat sinister world through entertainment .
Both sides are willing to forget that the supreme savior is himself part of the elite, and at the highest level. The main thing is that he seems to have understood the popular discontent and aspirations.
The problem is that this spectacle requires the destruction of a system that had its historical logic.
Bearers of a messianic project justifying disorder and violence, the two leaders cannot use modern and rational models of government of the liberal democratic or "bureaucratic" type à la Max Weber - even revised by Lenin.
They need to rely directly on the people using their charisma.
The more shocking the leader's statements, the more he deviates from what is expected of a respectable leader, and the more he is adored.
Michel Bonnin
Their ideal is to avoid intermediaries as much as possible.
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mao governed essentially by directives of a few lines that were immediately sent throughout the country. When they arrived, even in the most remote village, people were woken in the middle of the night to parade and celebrate this new gift of the wisdom of the Great Helmsman. The next day, newspapers and radio broadcasts were filled with the directive, endlessly commented on and celebrated. Even if Mao managed the feat of quickly telling every Chinese person what to do or think, he still could not avoid relying on propaganda officials at all levels. He would no doubt have liked to be able to do like Trump: send a message at any time on his own social network to be immediately read by his millions of followers .
Disintermediation is essential in their way of governing.
In this charismatic model, it is essential that people have faith in the superior vision and unwavering will of the leader. Trump, like Mao, has never hesitated to create his own propaganda. The official White House website is full of praise for the president, in a visual and verbal style reminiscent of that of the People's Republic of China. A section was created in February 2025 entitled "Victories are happening every day under President Donald J. Trump," which regularly provides examples of the president's great deeds. 8. One cannot help but think of the many times the Chinese media claimed that Chairman Mao led the people "from victory to victory."
In both cases, the destruction of the existing system must not only remove all obstacles to the realization of the leader's grandiose plan but also unite the leader and his people by providing them with an exciting spectacle and inviting them to a violent celebration.
The more shocking the leader's statements, the more he deviates from what is expected of a respectable leader, and the more he is adored.
This carnival, where all social taboos are shattered, also aims to surprise and paralyze the adversary, who no longer has many points of reference to defend himself. Kamala Harris's visible dismay on the day of Trump's inauguration echoes that evident on Liu Shaoqi's face during his last appearance at the Tiananmen rostrum.
At the head of his revolution, the leader cannot accept the slightest opposition: one does not oppose a demigod, especially if one knows he is vindictive. Any lack of respect is tantamount to sacrilege, and any differing point of view is disrespectful. Constant flattery is the rule. There is no other option.
In China, the Cultural Revolution was thus the pinnacle of the personalization of power and the cult of personality: no emperor had had as much arbitrary power over the destiny of each Chinese person, nor had received such daily worship from his people, as Mao.
While Trump may not be able to reach such heights, he has managed to make presidential power a personal object by governing by decree from an Oval Office transformed into a royal living room, by organizing a large military parade on his birthday , by receiving foreign dignitaries in his personal residence in Florida or at his private golf course in Scotland. He has also endeavored to abolish the separation of religion and politics, and to foster a religious veneration of his person, notably by obtaining significant support from evangelicals despite his private life. When a political meeting at the White House begins with a collective prayer in which God is thanked for having given Trump to America, one can only think of the many Chinese political meetings beginning with the collective reading aloud of a few pages from Mao's Little Red Book by the standing leaders, who ended the session with the cry of "Long live, long live, long live Chairman Mao!"
Mao always paid attention to his public appearances. But it was during the Cultural Revolution, and especially at the time of the launch of this seditious movement against the system, that he made his political actions a great spectacle.
At the head of his revolution, the leader cannot accept the slightest opposition: one does not oppose a demigod, especially if one knows that he is vindictive.
Michel Bonnin
The best example of this is his memorable swim across the Yangzi in Wuhan on July 16, 1966. By this time, he had already floated the idea of the Cultural Revolution but had disappeared, leaving Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to struggle with the implementation of the movement. He suddenly decided to return to Beijing via Wuhan and personally participate in the annual river crossing. Photographers and journalists helped to produce a historical event based on the photos of Mao in the water and on a pontoon in a bathrobe and the rave reviews of the exceptional athletic performance of a man his age (73). This performance truly launched the Cultural Revolution from a political point of view. It took on a sacred character and led to commemorative river crossings in the following years, bringing together hundreds or thousands of people throughout the country. In this original form of mass religious rite, huge portraits of Mao were pushed on buoys at the head of the swimming processions and those who could sang songs in praise of the Great Helmsman and his exploits.
Among other great spectacles, the eight times Mao received the Red Guards from all over the country—twelve million in all—in Tiananmen Square also reached Hollywood heights.
The Cultural Revolution was first and foremost a huge happening during which Mao made the youth reenact the Revolution. They had been inundated since their early childhood with films and other shows depicting the revolution as Mao wanted to present it. Finally, these young people, frustrated at being only spectators of their parents' glory, received from their idol the opportunity to reenact the revolution for real . It didn't matter if the "enemies" thrown to them were in no way the dangerous "buffalo-bodied, snake-headed demons" designated for their vindictiveness: the main thing was to cosplay in old military uniforms, beat people up, and believe themselves to be heroes. Of course, it wasn't the real Revolution they were reenacting, but the mythical version that Mao had previously made them swallow. It was spectacle upon spectacle and, very often, theatre of the absurd – the basis of the absurdity being that it was a “rebellion on the orders of the Emperor”, the oxymoron that best sums up Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Before politics, Trump's first job is reality TV .
Since his second term, Trump has continued the show in a sort of permanent session that has lasted for more than six months. By inviting the media to all his activities and announcing provocative and often worrying decisions that change from one day to the next, by organizing diplomatic discussions at the highest level in front of the cameras— like the dramatic altercation with Zelensky to “make very good television” —by striking spectacular poses like when he brandished the table of customs duties that he had decided to impose on all the countries of the world as if brandishing the Tablets of the Law, he has had no trouble achieving the desired result: monopolizing the stage and the attention of the public, including the international public, day after day.
The imposition of an irrational vision on the country ultimately encounters resistance. In the face of this resistance, we also find similarities between Trump and Mao: the resistance of individuals and social groups can always be overcome by the use of force and even terror, in addition to the systematic use of propaganda and control of public speech. In a totalitarian regime, Mao went very far in this direction. Trump, in an initially democratic regime, is more handicapped—but he has gone further than any of his predecessors, for example, by sending the army, against the advice of the governor of the state concerned, to ban demonstrations, by flouting the decisions of the judicial counter-power, and by creating an atmosphere in which many Americans no longer dare to publicly say what they think—including on social media. The border police, less controlled by judicial institutions, already seem to have a tendency to cross the threshold from simple police to political police, whether with regard to foreigners or Americans returning to the country. 9. By affirming Trump's complete immunity from prosecution as president, the Supreme Court has, in a sense, de facto granted him full powers. This institution, largely won over to his cause thanks to judicious appointments, exposes the deep flaws in American democracy and the risk of a development that could further reduce the differences between Mao's China and Trump's America—even if this is still an incomplete process.
" Zalan gongjianfa "—to smash the public security, procuratorial, and judicial organs—was one of the first slogans of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Some of these organs continued to exist formally, but instead of obeying Party orders and established laws, they had to obey Chairman Mao's directives directly and solely. Thus, the police had no right to intervene when the Red Guards beat their victims, sometimes to death, in full view of everyone: they were explicitly forbidden to do so. However, they had to produce the files they had on all the residents of their neighborhood and report to the "little generals" families of poor social or political origin.
The Cultural Revolution was initially a huge happening in which Mao reenacted the Revolution for the youth.
Michel Bonnin
Similarly, Trump has launched a systematic attack on judicial independence and openly declared that he will not obey judgments that seek to restrict his absolute power. He has also personally attacked individual judges.
Armed from head to toe with the weaknesses of the system and the enthusiasm of his followers, Donald Trump can ignore his opponents. But the most difficult obstacle for this kind of leader to overcome is less the resistance of opponents than the resistance of reality: when the dream that has been sold fails to materialize or turns into a nightmare, scapegoats must be found.
Both Mao and Trump used it immoderately.
This tendency is facilitated by the heightened atmosphere of conflict into which the country has been deliberately plunged: since enemies are everywhere, they are certainly to blame for the fact that things are not going as well as promised. The most fanciful accusations are there to exonerate the great leader and reinforce the hatred instilled in the minds of true believers. The conflict can thus take on violent, even bloody dimensions, as was the case during the Cultural Revolution: for the despot, civil war and mass terror are better than the loss of power.
Trump isn't there yet. But he regularly accuses his many opponents, from the Fed chairman to Joe Biden, of all sorts of crimes and imaginary misdeeds. Some are even called "enemies of the people." He also doesn't hesitate to threaten them with dire consequences, which could become more worrisome if the political atmosphere becomes even more tense.
The rejection of science, the refusal of an objective truth independent of the desires and interests of the supreme leader, simply leads to the denial of reality and the imposition by terror and propaganda of an alternative reality, which everyone must accept under penalty of serious trouble.
In 1959, the highly respected Minister of Defense, Peng Dehuai, angered Mao by sending a letter describing the reality of the famine. He would lose his job, his freedom, and then his life during the Cultural Revolution.
In July 1962, Liu Shaoqi would speak again of this famine and the cannibalism it had caused in a private conversation with Mao, later reported by his wife. He too would die. Previously, tens of thousands of local cadres who had described the effects of the famine in their homes to their superiors would be blamed for the same famine, beaten, and executed, adding to the staggering death toll.
Trump never hesitates to pretend to have forgotten what he said publicly two days earlier that contradicts his new instructions.
Michel Bonnin
With Trump, the little boys who claim the king is naked in Andersen's fairy tale are victims of royal retribution—although the consequences don't reach the same level. One might have thought that the phenomenon of punishing those who speak uncomfortable truths would subside after the period of "reckoning" regarding the aftermath of the Capitol assault. Not so. This is evidenced by the dismissal on August 1, 2025, of the head of statistics, guilty of having released—as was her duty—unemployment figures that contradicted the President's triumphant declarations. 10 .
The power to impose an alternative reality on the people is also very useful when one wants to regularly change one's mind without being criticized for the zigzags of one's policy - it is a privilege of the despot to have always been right.
Mao continued to radically change his strategy during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, often with dramatic consequences—such as regarding the role of the army in the revolution and its right to use its weapons.
Trump, for his part, never hesitates to pretend to have forgotten what he said publicly two days earlier and which contradicts his new instructions.
It is possible that the many advantages available to the leader of the American Cultural Revolution will allow him to continue his logic for some time—or even that he may, or may be compelled to, move to a higher stage of despotism .
But if we look back to the precedent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the fate of the Great Helmsman, sooner or later, certain problems may threaten this development.
As a rule, a government of this type can last for quite a long time.
It remains strong as long as the charismatic leader has the strength to act.
The Cultural Revolution lasted ten years, until Mao's death.
His real weakness was the problem of succession. Mao, who perhaps had the intuition, tried several solutions before his death. All failed. He first thought of an outsider , Lin Biao, whom he had made the high priest of his cult before and during the Cultural Revolution, then his designated successor at the time of the restoration of the system in 1969. But their relationship quickly aroused paranoia on both sides. In 1971, Lin Biao tried to flee to the USSR with his wife and son in a military plane that crashed in Mongolia for reasons still unknown to this day. He resolved to give a leg up to a representative of the old bureaucracy, whose efficiency and a certain form of loyalty he appreciated: Deng Xiaoping. But Deng went too far in "revisionism" and Mao abandoned him to the vindictiveness of the radical true believers. Finally, not having confidence in their abilities to govern the country, he chose a provincial leader whom he believed would be ideologically loyal to him while also being capable of managing affairs: Hua Guofeng . Two years after Mao's death, he was gently pushed out by the old Party leaders - Deng Xiaoping at their head. From that moment on, Mao's political orientation was called into question and the country embarked on a reform policy diametrically opposed to everything that the Great Helmsman had defended during his life and particularly during the Cultural Revolution.
What lesson can Donald Trump supporters learn from this?
The doubts about the solidity of the Trump-Musk couple - which we expressed a few months ago, comparing it to that formed by Mao and Lin Biao 11 —were confirmed even faster than we thought. Of course, Musk was never an official heir: he couldn't even become president—not having been born in the United States—but there was clearly a "filiation" relationship between the President of the United States and the richest man in the world that could have allowed the latter to play an important role in the long term. But charismatic power fosters paranoia. The greatest closeness can suddenly turn into extreme suspicion and disappointment. This is what happened when Musk realized that Trump had no intention of "returning the favor" and would pursue his projects without regard for the opinions or interests of his young protégé. From that moment on, the damage can be significant for both. There is no worse enemy than someone who knows you intimately. While Lin Biao's son, Lin Liguo, circulated the sharpest denunciation of Mao's despotism imaginable at the time, Musk, after the falling out, fired the most powerful missile ever used against Trump by declaring that his name appeared in the Epstein case files.
In both cases, the most serious damage suffered by the great leader is the doubt that settles in the minds of his worshippers. The Lin Biao affair played a decisive role in the former Red Guards losing faith in Mao's superhuman character. Musk, unlike Lin Biao, survived the breakup—although some facetious Chinese internet users claimed that Musk was shot down over Alaska while trying to escape by rocket to Mars, another example of the constant Chinese comparison between the two cultural revolutions. So Musk can still cause damage to his former master—even if the Party of America he wants to create is unlikely to win many votes in the midterm elections, he could muster enough to tip the balance in favor of the Democrats in some districts.
The question of succession could be settled by the existence of a young vice-president, adored by the Trumpist elite: JD Vance .
But it's not at all certain that he'll be able to maintain good relations with Trump in the long run, or, if so, that he'll be able to easily inherit the old leader's charisma. Trump doesn't rebuff worshippers who propose amending the Constitution so their idol can serve a third term—on the contrary, he passively encourages them.
So there is a good chance that the question of succession will pose problems in the future.
The Cultural Revolution did not survive Mao.
Less than a month after his death, the radical leaders were victims of a kind of coup d'état fomented by the Army and the surviving senior leaders. Referred to as the "Gang of Four," these former loyalists among the loyalists were arrested and publicly tried in a full trial, breaking with the tradition of public denunciations and humiliations of the Cultural Revolution. The authorities, however, encouraged a movement of denunciation, mainly based on satirical cartoons and demonstrations after ten years of extreme tension.
Significantly, at the end of Mao's reign and in the transition years, the only leader who enjoyed great prestige among the population was Zhou Enlai—who died eight months before Mao. He represented bureaucracy, government expertise, and moderation—values that were the opposite of those Mao had sought to convey to the Chinese people through the Cultural Revolution.
After ten years of turmoil and suffering, the Chinese population seemed to have understood that an efficient bureaucracy, despite its traditional arrogance, was preferable to absolute arbitrariness and chaos. The leaders who survived understood that the system needed to be profoundly reformed, economically and politically, reducing the chances of a new absolute despot emerging. As for the former Red Guards and youth sent to the countryside, they had been disgusted by revolutionary hubris and dreamed only of "democracy and the rule of law," to borrow the slogan of the Democracy Wall Movement, which they launched in late 1978.
History will tell whether, at the end of Trump's reign, a radically opposing political force can emerge and gain the broad support of a disillusioned population, as happened in China in the late 1970s.
The Cultural Revolution did not survive Mao.
Michel Bonnin
The other problem that is likely to haunt Americans for a long time, if we refer to the precedent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, is repairing the damage done.
Mao had said that it was necessary to destroy before building. The problem was that it was also much easier to destroy than to build.
The destruction of the "Four Olds" under Mao was profound, radical and traumatic.
But the "four new features" never took shape.
China's temples, statues, paintings, literature, and entire cultural heritage suffered enormously; no product of "proletarian culture" was able to replace them. The best intellectuals, writers, artists, and scholars were prevented from working—killed, "committed suicide," sent to camps, or simply stifled by censorship during the best years of their lives—and an entire generation was deprived of education, many even being exiled to work in the fields. The most basic moral values were denigrated and destroyed, with nothing to fill the gaps or heal the wounds. The economic backwardness at the end of the Cultural Revolution was so impressive that it was only by completely changing its direction that China was able to modernize. As for the political and administrative system, it had suffered profoundly. The only "benefit" of its decline was that it enabled a radical anti-Maoist reform that followed shortly after the death of the Great Helmsman. But the scars left by conflicts within administrations and institutions have never been completely healed.
Certainly, the damage is less enormous in the United States.
But they are beginning to become real. What is destroyed in the federal administration, in sensitive institutions like security and diplomacy, or in universities and research centers, will be difficult to rebuild.
The decline of American soft power caused by the abandonment of entire sections of the institutions that represented the United States' involvement in the world will take a very long time to repair.
Talent will be lost and the country risks finding itself helpless in the face of new international challenges.
As was the case in China, the resentments left by brutal human relations risk remaining open wounds and accentuating the deep fractures in American society.