red guards
Leftist protective forces
Red Guards were militant youth mobilized during China's Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), tasked with purging "capitalist" and traditional elements from Chinese society.
Mao Zedong encouraged students to form these groups, which attacked intellectuals, destroyed cultural artifacts, and enforced ideological conformity, often violently.
The term now evokes zealous young enforcers of political orthodoxy: The online mob acted like digital red guards.
- militiaNon-professional armed force
- chinaFine ceramic tableware
- communismCollective ownership system
- youth movementOrganized effort by adolescents
- uniformsStandardized institutional clothing
mobilization · rebellions · ideologies · armband · mass rallies · Tiananmen Square · propaganda · Cultural Revolution · political campaign · revolutionary · revolutionary spirit · revolutionary fervor · class struggle · agitprop · reeducation · book burning · denunciations · political violence
red guardsrightists
Those with conservative politics
revisionists · moderates · old guard · establishment · reactionaries
red guardsanti-communists
Opponents of Marxist ideology
Kuomintang · Nationalists · fascists · Chiang Kai-shek · counterrevolutionaries
red guardsintellectuals
People of scholarly pursuits
scholars · teachers · professors · landlords · rightists
red, guard, reds, guards, redden, reddish, redder, reddest, guarded