Truthiness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness" on his political satire show The Colbert Report.

Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.

The concept of truthiness has emerged as a major subject of discussion surrounding U.S. politics during the late 20th and early 21st centuries because of the perception among some observers of a rise in propaganda and a growing hostility toward factual reporting and fact-based discussion.

Etymology

American television comedian Stephen Colbert coined the term truthiness in this meaning as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd" during the pilot episode of his political satire program The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005. By using this as part of his routine, Colbert satirized the misuse of appeal to emotion and "gut feeling" as a rhetorical device in contemporaneous socio-political discourse. He particularly applied it to U.S. President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Colbert later ascribed truthiness to other institutions and organizations, including Wikipedia. Colbert has sometimes used a Dog Latin version of the term, "Veritasiness". For example, in Colbert's "Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando" the word "Veritasiness" can be seen on the banner above the eagle on the operation's seal.

Truthiness was named Word of the Year for 2005 by the American Dialect Society and for 2006 by Merriam-Webster. Linguist and OED consultant Benjamin Zimmer pointed out that the word truthiness already had a history in literature and appears in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), as a derivation of truthy, and The Century Dictionary, both of which indicate it as rare or dialectal, and to be defined more straightforwardly as "truthfulness, faithfulness". Responding to claims by Michael Adams that the word already existed with a different meaning, Colbert, presumably exploiting his definition of the word, said, "Truthiness is a word I pulled right out of my keister".

Use by Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert, portraying his character Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, chose the word truthiness just moments before taping the premiere episode of The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005, after deciding the originally scripted word – "truth" – was not absolutely ridiculous enough: "We're not talking about truth, we're talking about something that seems like truth – the truth we want to exist", he explained. He introduced his definition in the first segment of the episode, saying: "Now I'm sure some of the 'word police', the 'wordinistas' over at Webster's are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word'. Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true. Or what did or didn't happen."

When asked in an out-of-character interview with The Onion's A.V. Club for his views on "the 'truthiness' imbroglio that's tearing our country apart", Colbert elaborated on the critique he intended to convey with the word:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word ...

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the President [George W. Bush] because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true? ...

Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

During an interview on December 8, 2006, with Charlie Rose, Colbert stated:

I was thinking of the idea of passion and emotion and certainty over information. And what you feel in your gut, as I said in the first Wørd we did, which was sort of a thesis statement of the whole show – however long it lasts – is that sentence, that one word, that's more important to, I think, the public at large, and not just the people who provide it in prime-time cable, than information.

At the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, Colbert, the featured guest, described President Bush's thought processes using the definition of truthiness. Editor and Publisher used "truthiness" to describe Colbert's criticism of Bush, in an article published the same day titled "Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner – President Not Amused?" E&P reported that the "blistering comedy 'tribute' to President Bush ... left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close" and that many people at the dinner "looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting – or too much speaking 'truthiness' to power". E&P reported a few days later that its coverage of Colbert at the dinner drew "possibly its highest one-day traffic total ever", and published a letter to the editor asserting that "Colbert brought truth wrapped in truthiness". On the same weekend, The Washington Post and others also reported on the event. Six months later, in a column titled "Throw The Truthiness Bums Out", The New York Times columnist Frank Rich called Colbert's after-dinner speech a "cultural primary" and christened it the "defining moment" of the United States' 2006 midterm elections.

Colbert refreshed "truthiness" in an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on July 18, 2016, using the neologism "Trumpiness" regarding statements made by Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. According to Colbert, while truthiness refers to statements that feel true but are actually false, "Trumpiness" does not even have to feel true, much less be true. As evidence that Trump's remarks exhibit this quality, he cited a Washington Post column stating that many Trump supporters did not believe his "wildest promises" but supported him anyway.

Coverage by news media

After Colbert's introduction of truthiness, it quickly became widely used and recognized. Six days after, CNN's Reliable Sources featured a discussion of The Colbert Report by host Howard Kurtz, who played a clip of Colbert's definition. On the same day, ABC's Nightline also reported on truthiness, prompting Colbert to respond by saying: "You know what was missing from that piece? Me. Stephen Colbert. But I'm not surprised. Nightline's on opposite me ..."

Within a few months of its introduction by Colbert, truthiness was discussed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the Associated Press, Editor & Publisher, Salon, The Huffington Post, Chicago Reader, CNET, and on ABC's Nightline, CBS's 60 Minutes, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

The February 13, 2006 issue of Newsweek featured an article on The Colbert Report titled "The Truthiness Teller", recounting the career of the word truthiness since its popularization by Colbert.

The New York Times coverage and usage

In its issue of October 25, 2005, eight days after the premiere episode of the Report, The New York Times ran its third article on The Colbert Report, "Bringing Out the Absurdity of the News". The article specifically discussed the segment on "truthiness", although the Times misreported the word as "trustiness". In its November 1, 2005 issue, the Times ran a correction. On the next episode of the Report, Colbert took the Times to task for the error, pointing out, ironically, that "trustiness" is "not even a word".

The New York Times again discussed "truthiness" in its issue of December 25, 2005, this time as one of nine words that had captured the year's zeitgeist, in an article titled "2005: In a Word; Truthiness" by Jacques Steinberg. In crediting truthiness, Steinberg said, "the pundit who probably drew the most attention in 2005 was only playing one on TV: Stephen Colbert".

In the January 22, 2006 issue, columnist Frank Rich used the term seven times, with credit to Colbert, in a column titled "Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito", to discuss Republican portrayals of several issues (including the Samuel Alito nomination, the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, and Jack Murtha's Vietnam War record). Rich emphasized the extent to which the word had quickly become a cultural fixture, writing, "The mock Comedy Central pundit Stephen Colbert's slinging of the word 'truthiness' caught on instantaneously last year precisely because we live in the age of truthiness." Editor & Publisher reported on Rich's use of "truthiness" in his column, saying he "tackled the growing trend to 'truthiness,' as opposed to truth, in the U.S."

The New York Times published two letters on the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner, where Stephen Colbert was the featured guest, in its May 3, 2006 edition, under the headline "Truthiness and Power".

Frank Rich referenced truthiness again in The New York Times in 2008, describing the strategy of John McCain's presidential campaign as being "to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness", Rich explained that the campaign was based on truthiness because "McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it." Rich also noted, "You know the press is impotent at unmasking this truthiness when the hardest-hitting interrogation McCain has yet faced on television came on 'The View'. Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him on several falsehoods, including his endlessly repeated fantasy that Palin opposed earmarks for Alaska. Behar used the word 'lies' to his face."

Recognition

A church sign stating, "Truthiness and Consequences", taken March 10, 2007, in Cape Coral, Florida

Usage of "truthiness" continued to proliferate in media, politics, and public consciousness. On January 5, 2006, etymology professor Anatoly Liberman began an hour-long program on public radio by discussing truthiness and predicting it would be included in dictionaries in the next year or two. His prediction seemed to be on track when, the next day, the American Dialect Society announced that "truthiness" was its 2005 Word of the Year, and the website of the Macmillan English Dictionary featured truthiness as its Word of the Week a few weeks later. Truthiness was also selected by The New York Times as one of nine words that captured the spirit of 2005. Global Language Monitor, which tracks trends in languages, named truthiness the top television buzzword of 2006, and another term Colbert coined with reference to truthiness, wikiality, as another of the top ten television buzzwords of 2006, the first time two words from the same show have made the list.

The word was listed in the annual "Banished Word List" released by a committee at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in 2007. The list included "truthiness" among other overused terms, such as "awesome" celebrity couple portmanteaus such as "Brangelina", and "pwn". In response, on January 8, 2007, Colbert said Lake Superior State University was an "attention-seeking second-tier state university". The 2008 List of Banished Words restored "truthiness" to formal usage, in response to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike.

American Dialect Society's Word of the Year

On January 6, 2006, the American Dialect Society announced that "truthiness" was selected as its 2005 Word of the Year. The Society described its rationale as follows:

In its 16th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as the word of the year. First heard on The Colbert Report, a satirical mock news show on the Comedy Central television channel, truthiness refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. As Stephen Colbert put it, "I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year

On December 10, 2006, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary announced that "truthiness" was selected as its 2006 Word of the Year on Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year, based on a reader poll, by a 5–1 margin over the second-place word google. "We're at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people's minds, and truth has become up for grabs", said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. "'Truthiness' is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue." However, despite winning Word of the Year, the word does not appear in the 2006 edition of the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary. In response to this omission, during "The Wørd" segment on December 12, 2006, Colbert issued a new page 1344 for the tenth edition of the Merriam Webster dictionary that featured "truthiness". To make room for the definition of "truthiness", including a portrait of Colbert, the definition for the word "try" was removed with Colbert stating "Sorry, try. Maybe you should have tried harder." He also sarcastically told viewers to "not" download the new page and "not" glue it in the new dictionary in libraries and schools.

The New York Times crossword puzzle

In the June 14, 2008 edition of The New York Times, the word was featured as 1-across in the crossword puzzle. Colbert mentioned this during the last segment on the June 18 episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and declared himself the "King of the Crossword".

BBC "portrait of the decade"

In December 2009, the BBC online magazine asked its readers to nominate suggestions of things to be included on a poster which would represent important events in the 2000s (decade), divided into five different categories: "People", "Words", "News", "Objects" and "Culture". Suggestions were sent in and a panel of five independent experts shortened each category to what they saw as the 20 most important. The selection in the "Words" category included "Truthiness".

Research

There is a growing amount of research on how the truthiness of a claim is inflated by the accompanying nonprobative information. In particular, in 2012, a study examining truthiness was published by a group of students from three universities in the paper "Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness". The experiments showed that people are more likely to believe a claim is true regardless of evidence when a decorative photograph or irrelevant verbosity appears alongside the claim.

Also in 2012, Harvard University's Berkman Center hosted a two-day symposium at Harvard and MIT, "Truthiness in Digital Media", exploring "concerns about misinformation and disinformation" in new media.

The Truthiness Collaborative is a project at USC's Annenberg School "to advance research and engagement around the misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and other challenges to discourse fueled by our evolving media and technology ecosystem".

Tribalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism

Tribalism is the state of being organized by, or advocating for, tribes or tribal lifestyles. Human evolution primarily occurred in small hunter-gatherer groups, as opposed to in larger and more recently settled agricultural societies or civilizations. With a negative connotation and in a political context, tribalism can also mean discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty.

Definition

The term "tribe" derives from the ancient Latin word "tribus" and can be defined to mean an extended kin group or clan with a common ancestor. A tribe can also be described as a group who share the common interest of mutual survival and preservation of a common culture. The proverb "birds of a feather flock together" describes homophily, the human tendency to form friendship networks with people of similar occupations, interests, and habits. Some tribes can be located in geographically proximate areas, like villages or bands, and although telecommunications in theory could enable groups of people to form tribe-like communities, digital tribes and social networking websites are not quite tribes in that they do not inherently provide the mutual survival of both the individual members of the tribe and for the tribe itself, as tribes do.

In terms of conformity, the word "tribalism" has been defined as a "subjectivity" or "way of being" social frame in which communities are bound socially beyond immediate birth ties by the dominance of various modalities of face-to-face and object integration. Ontologically, tribalism is oriented around the valences of analogy, genealogy and mythology. That means that customary tribes have their social foundations in some variation of these tribal orientations, while often taking on traditional practices (e.g. Abrahamic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), and modern practices, including monetary exchange, mobile communications, and modern education.

Tribalism in a political sense refers to the strong political solidarity typical of post-truth politics.

Social structure

The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case. The relatively small size of customary tribes results in a social life which usually involve a relatively few significant political or economic distinctions between individuals. As a result, social hierarchy is uncommon, and deep bonds are made between individual members.

A tribe often refers to itself using its own language's word for "people", and refers to other, neighboring tribes with various words to distinguish them as other. For example, the term "Inuit" translates to "people".

Types

Tribalism implies the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group. Based on strong relations of proximity and kinship, as well as relations based on the mutual survival of both the individual members of the tribe and for the tribe itself, members of a tribe tend to possess a strong feeling of identity. Objectively, for a customary tribal society to form there needs to be ongoing customary organization, inquiry, and exchange. However, intense feelings of common identity can lead people to feel tribally connected.

The distinction between these two definitions of tribalism, objective and subjective, is an important one because while tribal societies have been pushed to the edges of the Western world, tribalism, by the second definition, is arguably undiminished. A few writers have postulated that the human brain is hard-wired towards tribalism, but that claim is usually linked to equating original questions of sociality with tribalism.

Concept evolution

Tribalistic mentalities often lead to violence and war, as seen in cave paintings

Tribalism has a very adaptive effect in human evolution. Humans are social animals and ill-equipped to live on their own. Tribalism and social bonding help to keep individuals committed to the group, even when personal relations may fray. That keeps individuals from wandering off or joining other groups. It also leads to bullying when a tribal member is unwilling to conform to the politics of the collective.

Some scholars argue that inclusive fitness in humans involves kin selection and kin altruism, in which groups of an extended family with shared genes help others with similar genes, based on their coefficient of relationship (the amount of genes they have in common). Other scholars argue that fictive kinship is common in human organizations, allowing non-kin members to collaborate in groups like fraternities.

Socially, divisions between groups fosters specialized interactions with others, based on association: altruism (positive interactions with unrelated members), kin-selectivity (positive interactions with related members) and violence (negative interactions). Thus, groups with a strong sense of unity and identity can benefit from kin selection behaviour such as common property and shared resources. The tendencies of members to unite against an outside tribe and the ability to act violently and prejudicially against that outside tribe likely boosted the chances of survival in genocidal conflicts.

Modern examples of tribal genocide rarely reflect the defining characteristics of tribes existing prior to the Neolithic Revolution; for example, small population and close-relatedness.

According to a study by Robin Dunbar at the University of Liverpool, social group size is determined by primate brain size. Dunbar's conclusion was that most human brains can really understand only an average of 150 individuals as fully developed, complex people. That is known as Dunbar's number. In contrast, anthropologist H. Russell Bernard and Peter Killworth have done a variety of field studies in the United States that came up with an estimated mean number of ties, 290, roughly double Dunbar's estimate. The Bernard–Killworth median of 231 is lower because of upward straggle in the distribution, but it is still appreciably larger than Dunbar's estimate.

Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell expanded on this conclusion sociologically in his book, The Tipping Point, where members of one of his types, Connectors, were successful by their larger-than-average number of close friendships and capacity for maintaining them, which tie together otherwise-unconnected social groups. According to such studies, then, "tribalism" is a hard-to-escape fact of human neurology simply because many human brains are not adapted to working with large populations. Once a person's limit for connection is reached, the human brain resorts to some combination of hierarchical schemes, stereotypes and other simplified models to understand so many people.

Negative outcomes

Anthropologists engage in ongoing debate on the phenomenon of warfare among tribes. While fighting typically and certainly occurs among horticultural tribes, an open question remains whether such warfare is a typical feature of hunter-gatherer life or is an anomaly found only in certain circumstances, such as scarce resources (as with the Inuit or Arabs) or only among food-producing societies.

Certain tribes use forms of subsistence such as horticulture and foraging that cannot yield the same number of absolute calories as agriculture. Those subsistance methods thus limit those tribal populations significantly, especially when compared to agricultural populations. Jesse Mathis writes in War Before Civilization that examples exist with low percentage rates of casualties in tribal battle, and some tribal battles were much more lethal as a percentage of population than, for example, the Battle of Gettysburg. He concludes that no evidence consistently indicates that primitive battles are proportionately less lethal than civilized ones.

The realistic conflict theory is a model of intergroup conflict, arguing that in a real or perceived zero-sum system, conflicts arise over shared interests for finite resources. The 1954 Robbers Cave experiment involved researchers putting 12-year-old boys into groups, where they formed their own ingroups, before then developing hostility and negativity towards the other group during simulated conflict over finite resources in a zero-sum game.

Criticism

Pastoralist Sami celebrating Easter

Various authors, such as Aidan Southall, have attacked the notion of tribe as a tool of colonial ideology, and identified modern tribalism as a product of colonial governance in Africa. The Africa Policy Information Center describes the term, and tribalism in particular as a byword for ethnic strife, as invoking negative stereotypes of Africa as a land of primitive and territorial peoples.

An April, 2021 article published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine titled "Tribalism: The Good, The Bad, and The Future" by Zahir Kanjee and Leslie Bilello of Harvard Medical School was retracted due to protest from readers over the use of the terms tribe and tribalism. The article was then republished with the title "Leadership and Professional Development: Specialty Silos in Medicine" along with an apology from the editor-in-chief. The revised version of the article substituted the terms groups and medical specialties for tribes, and siloed and factional for tribalism.

January Storm

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Storm 

 

January Storm
Part of the Cultural Revolution
Goals	Seizure of political power in Shanghai
Resulted in	Coup successful: Shanghai Municipal Committee overthrown; formation of the Shanghai People's Commune Increased intensity of seizure of powers and violent struggles Outbreak of the February Countercurrent

The January Storm, formally known as the January Revolution, was a coup d'état in Shanghai that occurred between 5 January and 23 February 1967, during the Cultural Revolution. The coup, precipitated by the Sixteen Articles and unexpected local resistance towards Maoism in Shanghai, was launched by Maoist rebel factions against the city's party leadership under the directives of the Cultural Revolution Group (CRG) through Maoist leaders such as Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen and Yao Wenyuan, with backing from Mao Zedong, Kang Sheng, and Jiang Qing. The coup culminated in the overthrow of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of Chen Pixian, Wei Wenbo and Cao Diqiu, and led to the creation of the Shanghai People's Commune on 5 February 1967.

Modeled after the Paris Commune, the CRG leaders in Shanghai planned to introduce direct democracy for the city's new leadership, but the nature of its implementation generated severe opposition among the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s top echelons, who viewed it as a potential threat towards the Central Committee and State Council grip of power on China's domestic affairs. Meanwhile, the political instability from seizure of powers and rise of violence through violent struggles between rebel factions alarmed top generals of the People's Liberation Army, resulting in joint efforts by several CCP veterans to resist the radicalism of the Cultural Revolution in the February Countercurrent. Ultimately, the commune collapsed within 18 days after Mao Zedong retracted his support, and was reformed under a revolutionary committee jointly administered by a "triple alliance" of military personnel, revolutionary cadres, and the revolutionary masses.

Although the commune in Shanghai ended in failure, it was influential in inspiring rebel factions throughout China to form revolutionary committees of their own, which eventually started a series of seizure of powers that led to armed violent struggles nationwide throughout 1967, effectively marking a new and more violent stage in the Cultural Revolution.

Background

On 16 May 1966, Mao Zedong, paramount leader of China, launched the Cultural Revolution through the 16 May Notification. At the end of 1966, it became evident that Mao and the Cultural Revolution Group in Beijing had underestimated the ability of local party organizations to resist attacks from the Red Guards. While Maoist influence was strong around the capital, many regional party divisions resisted by merely paying lip service to Maoist teachings while countering attacks of local Maoists. To break the stalemate which had begun to form, Maoist leaders called for the "seizure of power by proletarian revolutionaries", a concept originally mentioned in the Sixteen Articles, an influential party statement of the aims of the Cultural Revolution approved by the Chinese Communist Party in August 1966.

Rising radicalism and discontent against Shanghai's leadership

Throughout the 1960s, Shanghai was the most industrialized city in China and accounted for almost half of the country's industrial production. When the Cultural Revolution began in the summer of 1966, the city experienced the formation of Red Guard groups proclaiming their loyalty to Mao. The movement quickly became highly radicalised and factionalised with attacks on local bureaucratic authorities and government buildings, challenging the administration of Cao Diqiu, the Mayor of Shanghai, Chen Pixian, the head of the Shanghai Municipal Committee, and Wei Wenbo, the head of the Party's East China Bureau.

By autumn 1966, social unrest spread from institutions to factories. On 6 November, several rebel groups formed an alliance under the Headquarters of the Revolutionary Revolt of Shanghai Workers, led by Wang Hongwen, a textile worker and mid-level party functionary.

The formation of the Workers' Headquarters perplexed Shanghai's leadership; even Maoist leaders of the CRG did not take a clear position initially. The Shanghai bureaucracy under Chen and Cao opposed the group and declared it illegal, viewing the group as counterrevolutionary. Tensions escalated on 8 November 1966, when the Workers' Headquarters presented several demands to the Shanghai Municipal Committee that attempted to challenge the party's power. The committee refused, causing a three-day siege at Anting. The reaction from Beijing was one of caution. Their first response was to send a telegram drafted by Chen Boda, which urged them to back down and return to work. However, the telegram was shunned by the Workers' Headquarters in an unprecedented manner.

After the impasse, the CRG sent Zhang Chunqiao to address the situation in Shanghai. The CRG did not give Zhang a specific mandate on his mission. Upon his arrival in Shanghai on 11 November, Zhang performed a thorough investigation and thereafter accepted their demands. After intense negotiations, Zhang reached an agreement with the Workers' Headquarters by officially recognising the group's legitimacy while resolving their disputes through local conferences in Shanghai, rather than with the Beijing leadership. Zhang's response was praised by the CRG and Mao.

Dismantling party authority in Shanghai

Although the crisis at Anting was dismantled, tensions remained with the Shanghai leadership because the agreement negotiated by Zhang contradicted the city's position. Local party officials responded by establishing the Scarlet Guards, a "loyalist" group composed of skilled factory workers and technicians, aimed at opposing the Workers' Headquarters in favour of the legitimacy of local authorities. Further incidents occurred in December 1966, when the Workers' Headquarters accused the Shanghai Municipal People's Government of causing several controversial political incidents, which severely disrupted the city's social order.

The conflict between the Workers' Headquarters and Scarlet Guards reached a high point in the early morning of 30 December 1966, when a riot erupted between both groups in the Shanghai party headquarters at Kangping Road. The violent struggle, the first of its kind in Shanghai, injured 91 and led to over 300 arrests. By afternoon, a mission of ten thousand members of the Scarlet Guard left Shanghai for Beijing in an attempt to seek support from the Central Committee for negotiations to resolve the conflict. On 31 December, the Scarlet Guards launched a general strike amidst chaos, paralysing Shanghai's economy. In a last ditch attempt, the city's officials attempted unsuccessfully to raise wages and bonuses to quell the unrest. On the other hand, the mission to Beijing was intercepted by the Workers' Headquarters while travelling towards Kunshan, causing another riot which damaged the Shanghai–Nanjing railway. Even though party officials tried to call off the mission, six to seven thousand members continued and reached Beijing. After the incident at Kunshan, the group was dissolved and ceased to exist.

History

Launch of coup

Chen Pixian condemned by the Red Guards in a struggle session at People's Square, 6 January 1967.

On 1 January 1967, People's Daily published a New Years editorial titled Proceeding the Cultural Revolution until the very end, which declared that 1967 will be a year of "violent struggles nationwide", and that it will be a year where "proletariats team up with a small party faction of capitalist roaders and cow demons and snake spirits to attack [us]". Afterwards, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan represented the CRG as "researchers" to head for Shanghai to plan a hostile takeover against the city's administration.

On 4 January 1967, rebel factions seized control of Wenhui Daily. A coalition of twelve rebel factions under the Workers' Headquarters drafted a pamphlet titled Message to all the people of Shanghai – Capture the Revolution, boost production, utterly shatter the new offensive of the capitalist roaders, which was signed and approved by Chen Pixian. The pamphlet was printed and organised into 290 thousand copies of Wenhui Daily that day and was distributed across the city. Message to all the people of Shanghai appeared as the front-page article of the same newspaper the next day. On 5 January, rebels seized control of Jiefang Daily. The next day, 32 rebel factions under the leadership of the Workers' Headquarters initiated a struggle session aimed at "overthrowing the Shanghai Municipal Committee". Those condemned and humiliated in the session included hundreds of bureaucrats involved within the party's East China bureau, the Shanghai Municipal Committee, and the Shanghai People's Committee, notably against Chen Pixian, Cao Diqiu, and Wei Wenbo. The struggle session, witnessed by a million people, passed three resolutions:

1. Cao Diqiu is dismissed as the mayor of Shanghai;
2. Chen Pixian must explain his "anti-revolutionary crimes", and;
3. The Central Committee must reshuffle the Shanghai Municipal Committee.

After the meeting, all party leaders were dismissed from their positions, while the administrative powers of the committee and the People's Committee were terminated. This struggle session is seen as the start of the coup d'état. On 7 January 1967, rebel factions took control of Shanghai Radio and Television. On 8 January, Zhang and Yao ordered the creation of the Shanghai Revolutionary Production Line Headquarters. The pair then created the Committee on Protecting the Cultural Revolution as the city's de facto judicial body. Later that day, rebel factions agreed to draft an Urgent Notice for the city, which was published in Wenhui Daily on 9 January under the agreement of Chen Pixian.

Mao proclaims support

Mao Zedong, March 1967.

On 8 January 1967, during a conversation with members of the CRG, Mao Zedong declared his support of the Shanghai rebel's actions. He stated that the events showed "a class overthrowing another class, [that] it is a great revolution", and stated that "[rebels] seizing powers of two newspapers is a national issue. We must support their seizure." He believed the "revolution" in Shanghai provided "hope" for China, in that the events would not just influence East China but nationwide. Under the instructions of Mao, the CRG represented the Central Committee and the State Council in penning the congratulatory letters hailing all "revolutionary rebel factions" in Shanghai, and urged other revolutionaries in China to follow the Shanghai rebel's actions.

On 9 January 1967, People's Daily published the contents from Message to all the people of Shanghai, adding an editorial supervised by Mao. The editorial stated that Message to all the people of Shanghai is a "document [that] represents the wave of the great red flag towards the Great Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao", and "blows the signal of the continuing offensive against the capitalist roaders". On 11 January, under the direction of Mao, the Central Committee, State Council, Central Military Commission, and CRG issued a joint-statement congratulating the Shanghai rebel factions. The letters stated, "The series of revolutionary acts have become a model to follow for all workers, all people, and all revolutionaries." The statement was published in People's Daily the next day.

On 16 January, Red Flag published Proletarian Revolutionaries, Unite, an editorial approved by Mao. The article stated, "The working class of Shanghai...have seized power from the small party faction of capitalist roaders". For the first time, Mao urged revolutionaries to seize local power for the Central Committee. Seizure of power became legitimised under the leadership.

Creation of the Shanghai commune and faction infighting

Shanghai People's Commune 上海人民公社
People's commune of China
Location of Shanghai in China
Government	Revolutionary committee
• Type	People's commune
Chairman
• 1967	Zhang Chunqiao
Historical era	Cultural Revolution
• Established	9 January 1967
• Proclaimed	5 February 1967
• Disestablished	23 February 1967

On 19 January 1967, Zhang Chunqiao arrived at Shanghai and met several leaders of local rebel factions. On the same day, all rebel factions would open a meeting at the Shanghai Communist Party School, and proposed seizing power at the city to form a people's commune modeled after the Paris Commune. They named their coup d'état as the "January Revolution", intended to resonate with the similarly termed October Revolution, which received approval from members of the Gang of Four.

After discussions, it was agreed that the body was to be named as the "New Shanghai People's Commune". Thirty-two major rebel factions were tasked to draft a proclamation, which was titled All hail the January Revolution – The proclamation of the New Shanghai People's Commune. On 22 January, People's Daily published an editorial titled Proletarian Revolutionaries, Form a Great Alliance to Seize Power from Those in Authority Who are Taking the Capitalist Road! The article described the January Revolution as a "revolutionary storm". Even though Maoists rebel factions under the CRG and Workers' Headquarters were in a minority, the group had the backing of the central leadership in Beijing. After 23 January, the central leadership ordered local units of the People's Liberation Army to support the Maoist cause, thus the Shanghai Garrison under its commander Liang Zhengguo was compelled to provide assistance.

Despite the uniform stance of rebel factions during the toppling of the Shanghai bureaucracy, following the coup, a power vacuum had formed as no party had agreed on a united authority. Radical groups like the Workers' Second Regiment criticised this new commune as one imposed from Beijing rather than self-determined by the workers. Violence again broke out in between workers groups in the city and lasted through February 1967. Throughout this period, there were several coup attempts made by other organisations, but they were suppressed by Zhang's forces.

As early as 10 January, the headquarters of the Eighth Rebel Workers Army (Workers' Eighth Army) occupied the Shanghai party headquarters, declaring they had assumed control of the city. By 15 January, the headquarters of the Shanghai Third Red Guard Revolutionary Rebel Faction Army (Workers' Third Army) and the Workers' Headquarters Second Regiment declared a coup, announcing that they would assume control of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and the East China Bureau. Both factions sent a telegram to the Central Committee demanding that Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan be appointed as the mayor and deputy mayor of Shanghai, although Zhang did not endorse the attempt.

On the morning of 22 January 1967, the Workers' Third Army declared a new coup by taking control of the municipal committee, claiming to have received support from fifty rebel groups. On the night of 24 January, the Shanghai Vocational Schools Red Guards Revolutionary Committee (Red Revolutionary Society), whom had been a staunch ally of the Workers' Headquarters, declared a countercoup by claiming support from 23 rebel factions. Between 28 and 30 January, the Red Revolutionary Society initiated the 28 January Anti-Zhang Chunqiao Campaign, which resulted in violent struggles; On the morning of 30 January, the CRG issued an emergency telegram to the Red Revolutionary Society, condemning the Red Revolutionary Society's actions and halting the campaign. After this incident, the rebel group was dissolved. On 2 February, members from the Workers' Second Regiment declared the formation of the Shanghai Revolutionary Rebel Coalition Committee, which announced another minor countercoup, but did not succeed.

On 23 February 1967, the Shanghai People's Commune was renamed as the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee.

Following the coup's success, Mao Zedong recommended that the people's commune in Shanghai be renamed as the "Shanghai Commune". After receiving a telephone call from Wang Li, Zhang ordered the rebel factions to rename the local authority as the "Shanghai People's Commune", receiving approval from his superiors. On 5 February, the Shanghai People's Commune was formally established. In his inaugural speech, Zhang hailed the formation of the commune "as the collapse of the totalitarian capitalist rule of the municipal committee and people's committee" and the "seizure of power of the revolutionary proletariat of Shanghai."

Controversy once again ensued over the declaration. While finalising the Proclamation, the thirty-two major rebel factions responsible for its drafting had disputes over the order of signatures, with most organisations attempting to put their names on top of the signatories. Furthermore, when news of the commune's founding was publicly announced, over six hundred independent rebel factions fought to join the commune's newly created regime. Zhang compromised with the rebel factions by promising the creation of a temporary "triple alliance" administrative authority, composed of military personnel, revolutionary cadres, and the revolutionary masses of the thirty-two major rebel factions.

Mao retracts support and collapse of commune

See also: Revolutionary committee

你们这摊子有错误。所有省市都叫人民公社，那全国就叫中华人民公社啦，也不要中央、国务院了。[This is a mistake. Once all the provincial cities are called people's communes, why not just call our country the People's Commune of China, and ditch the Central Committee and State Council?]

Mao Zedong in a private meeting, 6 February 1967

The proclamation of the New Shanghai People's Commune stated that leadership of the commune was to be selected through democratic elections similarly employed in the Paris Commune; while a revolutionary committee was to be appointed as a transitional authority. In a meeting on the afternoon of 6 February with Zhou Enlai, Chen Boda, Jiang Qing and Ye Jianying, Mao in turn criticised the Shanghai proclamation, calling it a "mistake". He refuted the proclamation's contents and feared that its implementation would reduce the Central Committee and State Council's influence on domestic affairs. He also ordered all newspapers to prevent the commune from publishing the proclamation. While a telegram sent by the commune's leadership to Beijing stated that the hostile takeover was inspired by Mao's campaign, Mao was publicly silent on the events in Shanghai. Subsequently, the Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily were muted on developments in Shanghai, in contrast to the latter's extensive coverage of the establishment of the people's commune in Heilongjiang.

Between 12 and 18 February 1967, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan returned to Beijing. In their consultations with Mao, he backtracked on his suggestion of calling the city government a "commune", stating that such a body is not compatible with the party as the party's authority should be paramount. Zhang and Yao would return to Shanghai to relay Mao's instructions. On 23 February, the Shanghai People's Commune was reformed as the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee. The original transitional revolutionary committee remained, while the system of direct democracy modeled after the Paris Commune was abandoned. Zhang was appointed as the committee's director, while Yao, Wang Hongwen, and Xu Jingxian were appointed as deputy directors. Information of this change was made public in a televised address by Zhang on 24 February 1967, who was forced to explain the reasons of the withdrawal after the views of Mao's support towards the founding of the commune and its Marxist leadership were widely publicized. This address marked the collapse of the commune after only 18 days in existence.

Aftermath

Start of seizure of powers

Shanxi rebel factions organising a seizure of power ceremony, c. April 1967.

After the outbreak of the January Storm, it created a ripple effect throughout China, causing a series of revolutions and seizures of power in several provinces, such as in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Guizhou, Heilongjiang, and Shandong. Revolutionary committees sprung up after violent seizure of powers, while rebel factions gained a foothold within the country's politics. From now on, the Cultural Revolution would take a new and more violent stage.

Violent struggles between rebel factions

See also: Violent Struggle

During the coup, several rebel factions under the leadership of the Revolutionary Red Society initiated anti-Zhang protests throughout Shanghai, which was met with violent struggles with different rebel factions. He Shu opined that the events in Shanghai did not result in a successful seizure of power as intended by the CRG, instead it backfired by generating infighting within the CCP through factional attacks on the CRG.

Influenced by the events in Shanghai, coup attempts occurred in numerous regions across China, but due to power struggles among different rebel factions, violent struggles became common. During the January Storm, factional conflicts increased in intensity as rebel factions began to attack soldiers and arsenals, who opposed the "capitalist roaders" within the PLA, seizing weapons and creating militias, with some regions declared under military administration due to the inflamed violence. On 6 June 1967, the Central Committee, State Council, CMC and CRG issued the June 6 Order in an attempt to halt violence within the Cultural Revolution. However, by summer, with the endorsement of Jiang Qing, nationwide violence escalated. In July, rebel factions in Shanghai engaged in armed shootouts, resulting in 25 deaths by September 1967. Following the events in January 1967, the Workers' Headquarters began to experience a factional split. A power struggle occurred between the central leadership of the organisation under Wang Hongwen and the lumpenproletariat, notably the Workers' Second Regiment under Geng Jinzhang, which threatened urban warfare in Nanshi. During alleged peace talks, Geng was ambushed and imprisoned for over two months by Wang's forces, which resulted in the dissolution of the Workers' Second Regiment. Zhang's loyalty towards the party was also in question among the Central Committee. In late-March, Zhang had gone absent in two major conferences which was attended by top party officials such as Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, and Mao Zedong. This absence spiraled into accusations of treachery, which was published in an article titled Ten Reasons in Wenhui Daily on 12 April 1967. On 20 April, a second Anti-Zhang Chunqiao Campaign was initiated in Shanghai, with a turnout well exceeding the first held by the Red Revolutionary Society.

In the months following the events in Shanghai, the nationwide political climate changed rapidly. Most independent rebel factions weakened and collapsed from constant conflict. In almost every city and work unit, rebel factions would combine into two rival factions only. As time went on, the head-on clashes between rival factions became increasingly formalist and lacking in political content. Between 1968 and 1976, a million skilled workers from Shanghai were sent to rural underdeveloped areas in Inner China to share their "revolutionary experiences" and to assist in national development. Some radical leaders who had opposed the January Revolution were publicly executed in April 1968.

Military opposition towards the coup

Main article: February Countercurrent

你们把党搞乱了，把政府搞乱了，把工厂、农村搞乱了，你们还嫌不够，还一定要把军队搞乱。这样搞，你们想干什么？[You people [CRG] have messed up the party, messed up the government, messed up the factories and villages, and yet you think its not enough, and now you tried to mess up the army. What are you trying to gain from this?]

Ye Jianying, Zhongnanhai, 11 February 1967

 

The four marshals of the Three Olds and Four Marshals that opposed the Cultural Revolution.

Clockwise from top-left:

• Ye Jianying, 1897–1986
• Nie Rongzhen, 1899–1992
• Xu Xiangqian, 1901–1990
• Chen Yi, 1901–1972

On 11 February 1967, during a Politburo meeting at Zhongnanhai, seven top generals in the PLA, Ye Jianying, Nie Rongzhen, Chen Yi, Xu Xiangqian, Tan Zhenlin, Li Xiannian, and Li Fuchun, collectively nicknamed as the Three Olds and Four Marshals expressed their dissatisfaction on the events in the Cultural Revolution, blaming the CRG for promoting revolutionary behaviour among soldiers, creating instabilities within the army. In a confrontation at Huairen Hall, Ye condemned the CRG's actions in the presence of Kang Sheng, Chen Boda and Zhang Chunqiao, questioning the motives of the CRG that had shrugged the Politburo's power.

A separate confrontation on the afternoon of 16 February in Zhongnanhai escalated the conflict between the politicians. When a request by Tan Zhenlin to reverse Chen Pixian's dismissal was ignored by Zhang Chunqiao, Tan furiously slammed Zhang for attempting to "eradicate the old party elements". On that night, Zhang, Wang Li, and Yao Wenyuan organised the statements made by the generals in the meeting, and under the arrangements of Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng, were sent to Mao for briefing on the morning of 17 February. On the night of 18 February, Mao chaired a Politburo meeting with other top leaders to express his support for the Cultural Revolution. He angrily criticised the seven generals for their remarks, stating that "if someone opposes the CRG I will resolutely oppose him!" Mao also threatened that "if the Cultural Revolution fails, I will personally leave Beijing with him (Lin Biao), and we will fight a guerilla war on the Jinggang Mountains." He even taunted Chen Yi, stating that he and Tan Zhenlin that they could return the exiled Wang Ming and Zhang Guotao to the party, and said, "if we're still adamant that we're weak, why not let us ask the United States and Soviet Union to come along?"

Mao ordered investigations to be made on Tan, Chen and Xu. He declared that the group was merely expressing its views, but required the three generals to conduct self-criticisms." From 22 February to 18 March 1967, the Central Committee conducted seven meetings evaluating the generals, with Jiang, Kang and Chen Boda labeling this particular opposition as the February Countercurrent. The generals were also denounced by Lin Biao as a "serious anti-party act". Afterwards, the Politburo would be suspended, with the CRG assuming its powers, becoming China's top decision making authority. Ye Jianying would be influential in executing the Huairen Hall coup in October 1976 after Mao Zedong's death, which led to the dissolution of the CRG and the downfall of the Gang of Four.

Evaluation

Consolidation of power and the "triple alliance" model

The Sixteen Articles of August 1966, an influential enactment which dictated Mao Zedong's leadership in the Cultural Revolution, included requirements of direct elections in the country for the creation of the CRG and related committees such as those in the Paris Commune. However, the decision by Mao Zedong in early-February 1967 to enact a "triple alliance" administrative model for the newly reformed-Shanghai Revolutionary Committee represented a complete deviation from the CRG's initial interpretations of the principles as dictated by the Sixteen Articles. Maurice Meisner wrote that the events in February 1967 "revealed that all political power in China ultimately resided in, and attributed to, one man (Mao Zedong) and his 'thought'," and that "the cult of Mao Zedong had now become all-persuasive that the Chairman could decide not only the fate of individuals but the destiny of social movements." Meisner concluded that the revolution in Shanghai effectively warned the proletariat that the "right to rebel" as encouraged in the Cultural Revolution, was "not a right inherent in the people but one granted them by the authority of the deified Mao."

No democratic elections of any kind were held in Shanghai as of 1970; the SRC's leadership was instead appointed and approved only by the Central Committee. Although Mao denied universal suffrage in Shanghai, in other regions in China, the "triple alliance" model had indeed accommodated local elections. In spite of this, these electoral results proved to be heavily disadvantaged against the rebel factions and pro-CRG politicians, as conservative CCP politicians won landslide victories, such as in the Tianjin revolutionary committee elections of 23 March 1967. These events served to strengthen Mao and the CRG's distaste on direct elections in subsequent years.

Interpretation of the coup in China and reassessment

During the Cultural Revolution, propaganda magazines such as Red Flag portrayed the January Storm as the starting point for seizures of power throughout the country in 1967. In a political report from the 9th National Congress in April 1969, the overthrown bureaucrats of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and Shanghai People's Committee were described as capitalist roaders whose power "had been seized under the leadership and support of Chairman Mao and the headquarters of the proletariat".

However, reassessments of the coup after the end of the Cultural Revolution were negative, as the event became a typical example of politicking from the disgraced Gang of Four. CCP-sanctioned historian Jin Chunming wrote in 1988 that the January Storm was a proxy used by the Gang of Four to consolidate inner-party power. He wrote that the events in Shanghai "is not a revolutionary storm, but an anti-revolutionary countercurrent", and that the chaos resulted from the coup d'état was used advantageously by "a small group of nefarious individuals...to control the party's power". He Shu, on the other hand, argued that the actual importance of the coup was overblown by Mao, who "did not cared for the rebel factions who seized local political power in other provincial cities, but had sole affection towards the workers rebel factions in Shanghai who took the credit". Official histories published by the CCP described the January Storm as an event approved by the government that was "uncontrollable" and ended in "complete chaos" as "[the revolution] that is 'against anything'... causing uncountable conflicts, even leading to deadly armed struggles".

Cultural adaptations

January Revolution, documentary shot by Tianma Studios, January 1967.

January Storm, a play written by the Shanghai Theatrical Society, 1967.

January Storm, a 16-page periodical published by the editing department of the Gong Zongsi, June 1967.

A grand festival, movie directed by Xie Jin, 1976; movie remains unfinished due to the downfall and arrest of the Gang of Four.