Crazy Youth - How Students Turned into Murderers
Most Red Guards were teenagers. Most Red Guards were students in high school and college, they were the ones who tortured the most. The image above shows really, how young the Red Guards were. Cho, as shown above, was a 15-year old high school girl when she became a Red Guard Leader.
Now when we imagine the Red Guards, you don't really imagine kids being leaders and torturing others, do you? No, in our minds, kids are innocent, there is no way they would force hundreds to commit suicide, right? The majority of participants in the Red Guard movement were teenagers.
How did Mao influence the youth to commit violence?
"Young, impressionable brains are vulnerable, dynamic and highly responsive to positive feedback." This study from the Society of Neuroscience shows that the teenage brain's reward system is extremely sensitive. Meaning that teenagers are, as said before, highly responsive to positive feedback.
What does this have to do with the Red Guard movement? Well, at the beginning of the movement, it was Mao who allowed and even encouraged violence when rallying with the Red Guards at Tiananmen Square. Positive feedback, especially from an authoritative figure, would have had a huge impact on the Chinese youths' brains.
Then why did the violence even start in the first place?
Mao encouraged the Red Guard movement's violence at the start, but it was not the catalyst which had inaugurated the violence. Many historians say it was because of the oppressive nature of the cultural revolution which made the youth feel anxious and crazy. Violence was the only way to 'release' in an era of censorship and oppression. The youth felt that they had freedom with the Red Guard movement, it was like the youth couldn't exercise their freedom anywhere else so all their energy went into helping Mao denounce traitors of the Communist Party, leading to violence.
