Recently, “Huoyan” shared a news story about American police arresting Chinese parents in the U.S. for punishing their children by making them stand in place. Afterwards, the comment section discussed the phenomenon of private family oppression in both the East and West, briefly analyzing why “Internet Addiction Schools” exist in both cultures, and what stance oppressed children should take regarding parents sending them to such schools. Parents’ oppression of children and children’s dependence on their parents are often rooted in economic foundations. This exposes the hypocrisy of the victim-blaming prevalent in today’s Confucian society. The true solution to oppose Internet Addiction Schools is to elevate the issue to a political level—it’s not just about “fighting corrupt officials but not the emperor.” The emergence of these schools is the result of China’s decaying capitalist system combined with barbaric Confucianism and feudal family slavery. Opposing capitalism, private ownership, and the oppression of children by private family owners means leading oppressed students onto a revolutionary path—connecting their suffering with that of workers, peasants, and women, elevating their pursuit of personal liberation to the broader goal of social liberation of the oppressed classes, uniting with the masses and the proletariat to strike against the common enemies—capitalism and private ownership. This is the only way forward. Although these arguments are still just a rough outline and not a full article, I think they are very meaningful. I am sharing this post alone for everyone to discuss.
Yamata_no_Oroji:
The nature of private family owners around the world is to oppress children. Due to the formal democratic systems of some Western imperialist countries, parents have to restrain themselves somewhat, but once they have the chance, they still fiercely oppress children, treating them as tools for speculation without independent personalities. In the past, the U.S. also had similar “Internet Addiction Schools,” called correction centers, which were very brutal. Children could be sent there for even minor disobedience, and the mortality rate inside was very high, leading to large cemeteries for buried children. Due to strong public opposition, many were shut down, but some still exist. For example, the daughter of the Hilton family was once sent there.
[Details link]
https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20240715A02BCC00
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19KZAYUEDR
https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20231203A01UBJ00
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élan_School
Yamata_no_Oroji:
Currently, among students opposing Internet Addiction Schools, there is a sad and angry trend. Some students, although against these schools and even having been sent there by feudal parents, simply oppose the schools themselves, viewing them as a means for bourgeois to profit through unscrupulous methods. They do not trace the roots of these schools’ operation—namely, the rampant influence of Confucianism in China. They believe many feudal parents are deceived by these schools or that the education methods are wrong—they still love their children. This shows that these students lack social practice and understanding of Confucianism; on the other hand, most children are not as morally corrupt or deliberately rebellious as feudal parents slander them to be. Even when subjected to severe mental and physical abuse, they still hold illusions about their parents’ good intentions. Feudal parents, on the other hand, use the most brutal means—beating, insulting, deceiving, and slandering their children, even the children of oppressed children worldwide. For example, many children in these schools try to write letters to their parents asking for rescue, but parents use excuses like “travel” or “elderly illness,” exploiting children’s desire to repair family ties or attachment to elders, tricking them into these schools. I can’t find words to describe this method—feudal parents are truly shameless in slandering their children.
Some students’ tendency to whitewash feudal parents can be understood through the lens of petty-bourgeois women’s love-centric ideology in capitalist society. Their dependence on parents is deeper in daily life and spiritual contact, as they rely on parents to survive in capitalism. Even if rescued by social organizations, friends, or public opinion, they often have nowhere to go, returning to their families or becoming homeless or missing. They were sent into these schools by their parents, and returning home is like returning to hell. A report by Jidi Studio titled “After Escaping the Special Training School, Teenagers Begin ‘Revenge’” mentions such cases:
“Another more realistic problem is, after escaping the school? Liang Zhi said most of the students they rescue, especially minors, are eventually sent back home. Parents are invariably surprised, asking, ‘How did you come out?’ When Liang Zhi and the children talk about the abuse and beatings they endured in the school, the parents’ expressions are very normal—some think ‘beating is the only way to control children.’”
“Liang Zhi feels helpless at this moment—‘What else can we do but send them back home?’ He once rescued a boy, but after returning home, the boy’s QQ suddenly disconnected, and he never responded again. Liang Zhi knows the boy was sent back in again.”
Yamata_no_Oroji:
Children’s social status is so low that, even in a country heavily influenced by Confucianism like China, parents can freely abuse children—so long as they don’t kill them, they usually won’t be prosecuted. Even if they do, they are whitewashed by middle-class ideology and lightly sentenced because children are considered private property of parents in capitalist society. Their speculative activities are partly seen as benefiting the parents or as inheriting the family’s small private property, or as future high-value commodities. Before engaging in social labor, their social status is very low. In socialist society, this situation would fundamentally change because children would no longer belong to individual families but to society as a whole. Their learning and labor would not be for inheriting a capitalist family or exchanging bride prices but for becoming successors of socialism and fighting for the grandest cause in the world. In such a society, feudal parents who harm their children for personal gain would be despised by all.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1r9xpexEMy
Found a video about American “Internet Addiction Schools.” Just delete the middle space, and the link will auto-play. These schools claim to be “wilderness survival” education but actually terrorize and abuse children with impossible hardships, frightening them into accepting parental oppression. In a capitalist society, children still need wilderness survival, but the U.S. as a formal democratic country dares not do such direct abuse as China’s middle-school. These American “Internet Addiction Schools” have been repeatedly attacked by the public.
Red Tactics:
It seems that China’s so-called militarized summer camps are also similar in essence, though less extreme.
Yamata_no_Oroji:
Military summer camps are similar to Internet Addiction Schools—they are also direct abuse.
1967.1:
I once attended a military summer camp. Out of fascist ideology, I wanted to play with weapons, so I asked to go. But I was forced to stand for several days under the sun by some barbaric people. On the last day, during the closing speech, they self-congratulated, saying things like “We are good to you, although we were a bit harsh.” Now I think that person should have been beaten to death.