China - Red Guards Tianjin Secondary Schools.
This is an armband of the Red Guards, a student's group associated with fanatical devotion to Mao and his Cultural Revolution. The civil strife in China that began in 1966 and continued until Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976 is known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was a popular uprising against the entrenched authority and bureaucracy of the Party and government. It has also been seen as a power struggle; a purge by Mao (espousing permanent revolution) of his political opponents, known as the "Rightists."
Mao Zedong relied on the Peoples Liberation Army and The Socialist Education Movement to indoctrinate young people, especially in rural areas, with his ideas.
These groups of young people eventually became known as Red Guards and were readily identifiable by their red armbands and the Mao's ubiquitous Little Red Book.
The famous 'Little Red Book', would become the Bible of the Cultural Revolution and the sight of huge crowds wearing armbands and waving this book and chanting slogans from it would become one of its most enduring images
In the end, it would seem that the Cultural Revolution, instigated by the Party's chief radical, achieved nothing but chaos and violence.
ZFC Important Flag
Sources
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Andover High School, May 29, 20121, From: http://www.csimpson80.com/new_page_12.htm
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Islandnet.com, May 29, 2012, From: http://www.islandnet.com/~ltmurnau/text/cultrev.htm
