Such is the times. Some truly weird stuff is happening in China: nostalgia for Communism is surging among the youths [perhaps not dissimilar to some of what’s happened in the West given an embrace of the far-right isn’t possible or applicable]. A video commentary of the 2017 Chinese film Youth 芳华 has gone viral last few days (and swiftly taken offline by censors) after the video creator recoded a 1970s military-troupe love story as an allegory for the 1976 Gang of Four coup.

Faced with a slowed economy offering fewer opportunities and in fact a job crisis, Chinese Gen Z are now flooding video hosting sites with nostalgic edits, romanticizing the Cultural Revolution’s “pure” collectivism and ignoring the era’s violence - turning a tragic film into escapist Mao-chic fantasy. The youths are basically “waving the red flag to oppose the red flag” and putting the censors in a serious and awkward bind.

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