THE DESECRATION OF THE CEMETERY OF CONFUCIUS: Over the course of this month in 1966, gangs of Maoist students tore up the Cemetery of Confucius.

On November 29, 1966, they sent the following celebratory telegram to their hero:

Dearest Chairman Mao:

One hundred thousand members of the revolutionary masses would like to report a thrilling development to you: We have rebelled! We have dragged out the clay statue of [Confucius]; we have torn down the plaque extolling the “teacher of ten-thousand generations”; we have leveled Confucius’s grave; we have smashed the stelae extolling the virtues of feudal emperors and kings; and we have obliterated the statues in the Confucian temple!

Swell.  They apparently didn’t mention it, but they also dug up one or more corpses and hung them naked from trees. As the People’s Daily editorialized a couple of months later, “To struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy, and thoroughly eradicate … reactionary Confucianism is one of our important tasks in the Great Cultural Revolution.”

Why? One important reason is that Confucius emphasized filial loyalty. Totalitarianism cannot tolerate the institution of the family: All loyalty must be to the State.