In simple terms....folks in your neighborhood, village or town would gather in a group, and you WOULD BE asked (forced is a better word) admit your faults, problems, weaknesses, etc.
This would turn into a humiliation session very quickly.
Physical violence and beatings? They were generally allowed. You couldn't kill the idiot, but you could rough them up enough that they felt the pain.
Accusations would be thrown at the guy or gal.....with no one caring if they were true or not. In some ways....it was just pure entertainment for the crowds gathered.
At some point in the 1930s....as communism spread in China....they adapted to the gimmick as well.
As time went by....these were fairly scripted out, with intended goals at each session.
At some point in both the history of the USSR and Mao-China....the struggle sessions were deemed 'finished'. There was simply not anyone much left to humiliate or anything to admit.
In the book '1984', this whole philosophy was laid out and referred to as the 'two-minutes of hate'. It was meant as a tool for people to get aggressions out, and everyone was a target at some point in time.
If you look around today....these struggle sessions are fully implemented and used in various settings (high school, college, churches, places of work, the news, entertainment, etc).
People rarely identify this as a 1920s Soviet or 1930s Chinese-Communist gimmick, but that's where they all originated.
Just curious how we forget what history has come and gone.
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