Red Guards

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The Red Guards (Chinese: 红卫兵; pinyin: hóng wèibīng) were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolition in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted. According to a Red Guard leader, the movement's aims were as follows: Chairman Mao has defined our future as an armed revolutionary youth organization .... So if Chairman Mao is our Red-Commander-in-Chief and we are his Red Guards, who can stop us? First we will make China Maoist from inside out and then we will help the working people of other countries make the world red ... and then the whole universe. Despite meeting with resistance early on, the Red Guards received personal support from Mao, and the movement rapidly grew. The movement in Beijing culminated during the Red August of 1966, which later spread to other areas in mainland China. Mao made use of the group as propaganda and to accomplish goals such as seizing power and destroying...

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