During Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China, ‘struggle sessions’ were public spectacle events that included the shaming and humiliation of dissenters or people who deviated from the Party line, in front of enraged mobs. In the past two weeks, the term has been used for the phenomenon of white people publicly taking the knee and attempting to denounce their ‘white privilege’, the denouncing of celebrities who failed to support BLM loudly enough, and the hounding of people from their jobs for criticising the riots or for questioning white privilege.

How did the protests escalate to a 21st century form of a cultural revolution? Is there a chance that the totalitarian spirit now expanding in the public sphere will spillover in politics? And how can one fight the battle of ideas in such a toxic public sphere?

Don Watkins is the co-author of Equal Is Unfair, Free Market Revolution, and In Pursuit of Wealth. He is the Director of Education at the Center for Industrial Progress.