China Red Guards Armband Tianjin Secondary Schools.
This is a red cotton with golden yellow Chinese inscription, "China Red Guards Armband Tianjin Secondary Schools" armband from the secondary schools of the Red Guards of China. The Red Guards were a student's group associated with fanatical devotion to Mao and his Cultural Revolution.
The civil strife in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) that began in the late 1960s and lasted until Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, is known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was a popular uprising against the established authority and bureaucracy of the PRC and the Chinese Communist Party. It has also been seen as a purge by Mao (espousing permanent revolution) of his political opponents, known as the "Rightists."
Mao Zedong relied on the Peoples Liberation Army and The Socialist Education Movement to indoctrinate young people, especially in rural areas, with his ideas. These groups of young people and students eventually became known as Red Guards and were readily identifiable by their red armbands and the Mao's ubiquitous "Little Red Book."
The 'Little Red Book', was the "Holy Bible" of the Cultural Revolution and the photos and footage of assembled students wearing armbands, waving their book, parroting socialist slogans, are one of the Cultural Revolution's most enduring images.
In the end, it would seem that the Cultural Revolution, instigated by the Party's chief, achieved nothing but disorder bordering on anarchy and widespread violence against the established order, often directed at the general population.
ZFC Important Flag
Sources:
Cultural Revolution, Wikipedia, 11 May 2012, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
Brian R. Train, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Cultural Revolution, May 29, 2012, From: http://www.islandnet.com/~citizenx/cultrev2.html
Flag Translation by Prof. Benjamin L. Read, Politics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz letter of 17 February 2012, Zaricor Flag Collection Archives.
Image Credits:
Zaricor Flag Collection
