Today’s Guests
George Orwell – Writer, professional prophet of authoritarian disaster, and weary commentator on mankind’s inability to read his books correctly.
Steve – A MAGA government efficiency officer who considers firing bureaucrats his patriotic duty, much like Paul Revere, if Paul Revere had been galloping around reporting suspicious diversity seminars.
Ms. Chao – A former Treasury Department policy analyst who, until recently, naively believed that data analysis was too boring to be politically dangerous.
Mr. Bao – Former head of the Red Guard in China, a man who knows a thing or two about ideological purges and is here to show the bumbling amateurs how real totalitarianism is done.
Introduction: “And So It Begins”
ALEX:
Ladies, gentlemen, and those of you awaiting your turn before the ideological firing squad, welcome back to Insanely Generative, the only show where history is not merely discussed but actively repeated before your very eyes. I’m your host, Alex, and today, we’re looking at America’s newest grand experiment: The Great DEI Purge.
For those of you just tuning in from under your rocks or perhaps a soon-to-be-cancelled government position, the Trump administration has decided that America has had enough of diversity bureaucrats, equity consultants, and other such nefarious agents of inclusion. The government, we are told, will now be a meritocracy—which is Washington-speak for “we’re deciding who deserves to have a job based on our ideological preferences instead of yours.”
We’ve gathered quite the panel to dissect the implications of all this. First, Mr. George Orwell, who has the unenviable task of watching yet another government use his books as blueprints rather than warnings. George, glad to have you.
ORWELL:
It’s a pleasure, though I must say, the human race is rather determined to keep proving my books relevant, much to my dismay.
ALEX:
Next, we have Steve, a self-described government efficiency warrior who has been instrumental in rooting out bureaucrats who—God forbid—may have once attended a diversity seminar. Steve, welcome.
STEVE:
Thanks, Alex. Listen, what we’re doing here is common sense. The American people are sick of their government being turned into a left-wing indoctrination factory. It’s our job to clean house.
ALEX:
Speaking of houses being cleaned, Ms. Chao is with us—formerly of the Treasury Department’s Equity Hub, until it was unceremoniously tossed onto the scrap heap of history. Ms. Chao, what’s it like to be persona non grata?
MS. CHAO:
Honestly? I’m still trying to figure out how researching barriers to economic access became the same as leading a socialist revolution. But here we are.
ALEX:
And finally, Mr. Bao—a man with real experience in mass ideological purges. Former leader of the Red Guard, an architect of the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Bao, welcome.
MR. BAO:
Thank you, Alex. I look forward to helping your guests understand what a true purge looks like. So far, they seem to be amateurs.
Part 1: The DEI Purge—Steve Explains How It’s Done
ALEX:
Steve, let’s start with you. Walk us through this purge—how did it start, where is it going, and, most importantly, when do we get the book burnings?
STEVE:
Well, first off, there’s no book burning—this isn’t some authoritarian crackdown. We’re simply restoring government to what it was meant to be: a machine that rewards hard work and merit, not identity politics.
ALEX:
Ah yes, “merit.” The magical word that justifies every ideological purge in history. Please, continue.
STEVE:
First, we identified the worst offenders—DEI officers, equity consultants, basically anyone whose job description included words like “inclusion” or “systemic.” Those people? Gone.
Then we dug deeper. A lot of these people weren’t just in DEI offices. They were hiding in HR, in policy research, in legal departments. So we asked agencies to comb through their ranks. Who attended diversity trainings? Who organized equity initiatives? Who, God help them, once wrote a memo using the word “privilege”? Those people? Also gone.
And the best part? We don’t even have to find them ourselves. We set up a tip line. Bureaucrats are turning in their own colleagues. If you knew how many government employees were secret leftists, you’d be disgusted.
ALEX:
Delightful. Nothing quite like turning your workforce into a snitching competition. Very healthy for national morale. Orwell, you’ve written about this sort of thing before. Any thoughts?
ORWELL:
Yes. It’s called a two-minute hate, except instead of shouting at a screen of Emmanuel Goldstein, they’re screaming at their HR department.
But let me tell you exactly how this plays out. First, it starts with the bureaucrats—the “useless” paper-pushers who, supposedly, are not doing “real work.” But here’s the trick: Governments are made of bureaucrats. They handle the dull, necessary things that keep a country running. Tax policy, infrastructure planning, public health coordination—boring, mundane tasks that only become noticeable once they stop happening properly.
When you purge based on ideology rather than competence, you don’t actually remove inefficiency. You remove stability. And what fills the vacuum? Not meritocracy. No, what fills it is a new ideology—one that is just as corrupt, just as self-serving, but wearing different colors.
First, you fire the DEI people. Then you fire the people who worked with the DEI people. Then you fire the people who didn’t report the DEI people. Before long, the question isn’t “Are you competent?” but “Are you loyal?” And once that’s the standard, it doesn’t stop.
STEVE:
Oh, come on. That’s ridiculous. We’re just removing bad actors, not setting up some kind of ideological purity test.
MR. BAO:
Ha! Foolishness. You think you can purge the enemy without building an army of your own? No, no, no. Listen carefully, because I have done this before.
Part 2. Mr. Bao’s Masterclass in Totalitarianism
MR. BAO:
Your mistake is in hesitating. You are cutting heads, yes, but you are leaving too many necks intact.
Let me tell you how we did it in China. We did not merely remove bureaucrats. We deputized the children. Middle schoolers! We gave them armbands and wooden guns and the moral clarity of youth. We made them enforcers, and suddenly, the whole country was policing itself.
You must do the same. Find the young and hungry. Tell them their government has been infested with traitors. Give them authority. Let them march through the halls, calling out names. They will do the work for you.
ALEX:
Ah, yes. Nothing quite as effective as a government-sponsored child militia. Gets the job done every time.
Part 3: The Inevitable Collapse—Orwell’s Tour of History’s Ash Heap
ALEX:
Alright, Steve, Mr. Bao, Ms. Chao—strap in, because Mr. Orwell here is about to do what he does best: explain, in exquisite and excruciating detail, why this little bureaucratic witch hunt of yours is following a script older than dirt, and why—historically speaking—it always ends the same way. George, walk us through it.
ORWELL:
Certainly, Alex. Since Steve here is convinced that ideological purges are simply a matter of “efficiency,” let’s take a brief historical survey of other “efficiency movements” that began exactly this way.
Consider the Soviet Union in the 1930s—Stalin’s Great Purge. At first, it was framed as a necessary crackdown on inefficiency and counter-revolutionary elements within the Party. Just like Steve’s little housecleaning effort, it started with obvious targets—old Tsarist bureaucrats, Trotskyists, people who had already been branded ideological enemies.
But once the purging machinery was in place, something very predictable happened:
First, Stalin ran out of actual enemies, so he started purging former allies.
Then, people in his own administration began denouncing each other preemptively, just in case the axe was coming for them next.
By the end of it, Soviet governance had devolved into a game of bureaucratic Russian roulette—nobody dared to do anything because taking action meant exposure, exposure meant scrutiny, and scrutiny meant a bullet to the back of the head.
And let’s not forget China’s Anti-Rightist Campaign under Mao in the 1950s—same pattern. It started with intellectuals, teachers, and government workers who were deemed not sufficiently enthusiastic about the revolution. The government encouraged people to report “rightist tendencies” in their coworkers and neighbors. The result? A self-perpetuating paranoia spiral. If you didn’t accuse someone, you might be accused next.
Fast forward to America today, and Steve, I must congratulate you. You have, whether by accident or sheer historical illiteracy, stumbled upon the exact same methodology. The only thing missing is the gulags—though I suspect you might have a few empty FEMA camps in mind.
STEVE:
Oh, come on, that’s ridiculous. We’re just cutting government fat.
ORWELL:
Ah, yes, the “fat.” And tell me, Steve, how do you determine what is fat and what is muscle? Because in every ideological purge, the initial justification is always “efficiency.” The Soviets purged “saboteurs” and “wreckers.” The Chinese purged “bourgeois sympathizers.” And now America is purging “woke bureaucrats.”
But the problem with ideological purges is that the standards are always subjective. At first, yo u’re eliminating DEI officers. Then it’s anyone who attended a DEI training. Then it’s anyone who didn’t report someone attending a DEI training. And soon, the only metric that matters is whether or not someone is sufficiently loyal to the new order.
ALEX:
And here’s the fun part, Steve—you think you’re on the winning team, but let me tell you something history guarantees: The purgers always get purged in the end.
Part 4: Mr. Bao Laughs
MR. BAO:
Ah yes, this is what Americans do not understand. You think you can control a purge? Ha! No. The purge is a beast. Once it is unleashed, it grows on its own. You think you are choosing who gets removed, but in reality, you are feeding a system that will eventually turn on you.
I have seen it. I have lived it.
During the Cultural Revolution, we Red Guards started by targeting landlords and counter-revolutionaries. Then we went after teachers and academics. But soon, the Party decided that even among the Red Guards, there were “reactionary elements.” The very same students who had been leading the purges were now accused of harboring bourgeois tendencies. Many of them were sent to the countryside for “re-education,” where they were worked to death in the fields.
Steve, you call yourself a loyal MAGA warrior. But I wonder—are you loyal enough? Today you’re purging DEI bureaucrats. But what happens when the next phase begins? When they start purging people who failed to purge enough DEI bureaucrats?
Do you have proof of your loyalty? Have you reported enough people? Have you been zealous enough? Or will someone, somewhere, decide that you yourself are an ideological weak link?
STEVE:
That’s crazy. I’m on the right side.
MR. BAO:
So were we.
Part 5: The Abusrdity
ALEX:
Alright, let’s step back for a moment and admire the real achievement here. Steve, you’re part of a government project that:
1. Encourages employees to spy on each other.
2. EChaoinates people based on vague ideological criteria.
3. Punishes those who fail to denounce others.
4. Makes government less functional in the name of “efficiency.”
Now, riddle me this: What’s the difference between this and any totalitarian purge in history?
STEVE:
The difference is that we’re restoring freedom!
MS. CHAO:
Freedom? You just described a state-run loyalty test. What happens when a government only hires people who agree with one political ideology? What happens when dissenters are purged?
What happens, Steve, when your side loses power and the next administration decides you are the ideological cancer that needs to be removed?
ALEX:
And let’s not forget the American taxpayers, who, last I checked, pay for this government. It’s their money funding these programs. It’s their money funding this purge. They created these agencies to help them. And now they’re being told that the help they set up for themselves is too woke to exist?
This isn’t “restoring America to a meritocracy.” It’s government by ideological fashion trend. Today’s loyalty test is “No DEI.” Tomorrow’s might be “No weak MAGA supporters.” And the day after that? Maybe it’s “No one who ever used the word ‘equity’ in a sentence.”
Once you replace competence with ideological purity, the entire system collapses. The real question isn’t whether Steve gets his dystopian purge. The real question is who gets to light the next match—and whether Steve is standing too close to the gasoline when they do.
The Next Targets
ORWELL:
You know, Alex, in 1984, the final stage of loyalty wasn’t just purging enemies. It was loving the purge. Steve, you’re not in control of this thing. You’re part of it. And the moment you stop being useful, you’ll be on the list too.
MR. BAO:
Yes. And when that day comes, Steve, remember what I told you: The wooden gun is for show. The armband is real. And the water where the rats drown is always waiting.
ALEX:
And that’s our show, folks! Next week: We discuss the delicate art of banning books while still pretending to care about free speech. Stay tuned!
Overtime: The Ghosts of Purges Past
ALEX:
Alright, folks, I know we were supposed to wrap up, but you know what? The dead don’t keep to a schedule. And if we’re going to be honest about where ideological purges lead, we owe it to ourselves to look into history’s rearview mirror before we drive straight into the same ditch.
Mr. Bao, I want to give you the floor. Tell us about the Red Guard. Not in theory. Not in statistics. I want stories. Give us faces. Names. Moments that still wake you up at night. Let the audience see, up close, what ideological purity looks like when it’s stripped of slogans and left with nothing but blood and regret.
MR. BAO:
Ah, yes. Stories. You Americans, you like your tragedies wrapped in numbers. A hundred thousand dead? A million? The mind cannot grasp it. Too large, too distant. But a single betrayal, a single face broken with tears—that, you will remember.
I will give you five stories. Five moments from my youth. Five ways I learned that once you unleash a purge, it does not stop.
Story 1: The Teacher Who Taught the Wrong History
MR. BAO:
His name was Mr. Zhang. He was my history teacher. A kind man. A fool.
One day, he taught a lesson about China’s past emperors. He said something so small, so innocent, that at the time, I barely noticed: He said that some dynasties had ruled wisely.
That was it. That was his crime. He did not say they were all corrupt. He did not say they were all parasites. He suggested—merely suggested—that perhaps some rulers had done good things. That maybe history was complicated.
One of my classmates reported him. The next day, Red Guards stormed the school. They dragged him to the courtyard and forced him to kneel. We surrounded him.
They gave us wooden clubs and told us: This man has poisoned your minds. He is an enemy of the revolution. Who will be the first to strike?
I did not raise my hand. But others did.
They beat him until he fell. They beat him until his face was pulp. His own students. His own pupils. Some were crying. Some were screaming with laughter. Some only watched.
He did not die that day. That came later, in the labor camp. But his lesson did not die either: It is not enough to be loyal. You must be pure. And if you are not pure enough, you must be destroyed.
Story 2: The Daughter Who Reported Her Parents
MR. BAO:
Her name was Mei. She was 14.
Her father had once been a professor. Her mother, a doctor. Both educated. Both guilty.
She stood in a public square and denounced them. My parents are bourgeois reactionaries. They have polluted my mind with Western thought. I renounce them. I renounce my past. I am loyal to Chairman Mao!
The crowd cheered. She was praised. Rewarded.
Her parents were taken away.
Years later, when the fervor cooled, when the chaos ended, she learned the truth: They had died in a camp. Her father from exhaustion. Her mother from disease.
I met her years after that. She was a wreck. She had been used. She had been made into a tool of destruction. And when she was no longer needed, they abandoned her.
She asked me one question: Why did they make us do it?
I did not answer.
Story 3: The City That Ran Out of Enemies
MR. BAO:
It happened in Sichuan province. At first, the Red Guards targeted the obvious enemies: landlords, scholars, government officials from the old regime. But soon, they ran out.
And then the real purge began.
Students denounced teachers. Workers denounced supervisors. Families turned against each other. The smallest suspicion—a book, a phrase, a moment of hesitation—was enough.
One day, a local Red Guard leader was accused of hesitating before ordering a denunciation. He was beaten to death by his own men.
When the dust settled, the city was in ruins. Businesses shut. Schools empty. The streets filled with banners but no food. There was nothing left but loyalty. And loyalty does not grow crops.
You think this cannot happen in America? You think it is different because you wear suits instead of red armbands? Because you use bureaucratic firings instead of executions?
Let me tell you something: It always starts the same way. It starts with purity tests. It starts with people competing to prove who is the most loyal. It starts with snitching hotlines and ideological crusades disguised as efficiency.
And then, one day, you wake up and realize there’s nothing left but slogans and fear.
Story 4: The Winter With No Food
MR. BAO:
Ah, but the real punishment was not the beatings. It was the famine.
The Great Leap Forward—our glorious drive for progress—had already destroyed our farms. But the purges made it worse. Who would dare say the food policies were failing? Who would dare report that people were starving?
If you suggested the harvest was bad, you were labeled a defeatist. If you proposed reforms, you were a counter-revolutionary.
And so, we pretended. The reports all said the harvests were great. The officials all said the people were thriving.
And in the villages, the people ate bark. They boiled leather shoes. They dug through the frozen earth for roots.
We told ourselves we were building a better world. And the ground was filled with bones.
Story 5: The American Dream, The Final Irony
MR. BAO:
And now, I come to Ms. Chao.
Her family—her own blood—fled from this madness. Her parents were among those who survived. They were teachers. Intellectuals. The very kind of people we destroyed.
They suffered. They were humiliated. They lost everything. And they came to America believing—believing!—that it could never happen here.
And now? Now their daughter is being purged from this government. Not for crimes. Not for incompetence. But because she did her job and the wrong people decided that job was ideological heresy.
Do you see? Do you see it now?
History is not repeating. It is laughing.
FINAL WARNING: CHOOSE NOW
ALEX:
Alright, audience, let’s get something straight. If you’re listening to this, you have two choices:
You can pretend it’s not happening. You can laugh and say, “That’s crazy, this isn’t China, this isn’t the Soviet Union, this isn’t Cambodia, this isn’t Rwanda, this isn’t—”
Or you can realize that it always starts this way, and the only way to stop it is to speak up before it’s too late.
Because this isn’t some imported nightmare. It’s as American as apple pie and blind hysteria.
Ask the ghosts of Salem. They saw this movie first. The same mechanics—the same fear, the same desperate scramble to be on the “right” side, the same weaponization of children as moral judges. A handful of young girls pointed their fingers, made the right noises, and the adults—people who should have known better—decided it was easier to believe than to question.
What happened? People who had lived in the same town for decades, who had shared food, worked the same land, prayed together—suddenly they were enemies. Accusations spread like wildfire. You could be next at any moment. Maybe you hesitated too long before condemning someone else. Maybe you asked the wrong question. Maybe you just seemed like someone who had something to hide.
And the only way to prove your innocence? Accuse someone else first.
If the internet had existed in 1692, the whole country would have gone up in flames. Instead of 20 dead in Salem, it would have been 20,000—200,000—because mass panic doesn’t stop at the town border. It infects everyone.
And now, here we are again. The accusations are different. The puritans wear different clothes. But the game is the same. Snitch hotlines. Loyalty tests. A race to be the most righteous. And the same old lesson: It is not enough to be silent. You must participate.
We know what happens next. The spark is already here. We have seen, across history and across continents, how easily that spark becomes an inferno. And the only question left is: Will you stamp it out, or will you let it burn everything to the ground?
This isn’t about “them.” It’s about you. Right now.
Because the thing about purges is, they don’t stop at the first target. They don’t stop when you think you’ve rid the world of the bad people. They keep going until there’s no one left to denounce but yourself.
And by then, it’s too late.
The Phone Call: “A True Patriot Speaks”
(Just as Alex is delivering the closing, a voice breaks in. The connection crackles. A landline? A call patched in from some low-slung house in the North Carolina countryside, where the flags are big, the guns are polished, and the family Bible sits next to a pile of hoarded ivermectin.)
A MAGA CALLER:
Hold on now, hold on just a dang second! I ain’t normally the type to call in to these fancy radio shows, but I can’t sit here no more listenin’ to this insane hogwash without sayin’ my piece!
First off, all this talk about purges and Red Guards and Stalin and witch trials—y’all got it backwards! It’s us that’s under attack! You think we want to do this? You think we like havin’ to crack down? This ain’t about purgin’ folks for the fun of it—it’s about protectin’ America before she’s gone forever!
Look around! We ain’t even got a choice no more! They wanna force needles in our arms, make us wear masks like we’re livestock, tell our kids they was born wrong, turn our daughters into sons, and let men in dresses into the ladies’ room! They’re slaughterin’ babies in the womb by the millions, callin’ it “healthcare.” They wanna tear down history, erase our flag, mock our Lord, make us ashamed of our own skin, and y’all are sittin’ here actin’ like we’re the problem?!
I’ll tell you what this is. This ain’t some fancy revolution like y’all are tryin’ to make it sound. This is self-defense!
Our leader—our President—he saw it clear as day. He told us what they was doin’. How they was replacin’ us. How they was stealin’ our freedoms bit by bit, laughin’ while they did it. And he told us enough was enough.
We ain’t “purging” nobody, we’re takin’ back our country before it’s too late! Because if we don’t? If we just sit back and let ‘em keep goin’? Then we’re gonna wake up and the whole country’s gonna look exactly like the last four years—a woke hellscape where good Christian folks can’t even say Merry Christmas without gettin’ fired!
And listen, I hear what y’all are tryin’ to say about how we’re gonna end up turnin’ on each other, how purges always come back around. But lemme tell you somethin’—that ain’t us. That’s them! They eat their own, like wolves in a cage! One day they love you, the next day you said somethin’ wrong, and boom—you’re cancelled!
But us? We stand by our own. We’re not like the commies, or the libs, or these weaklings afraid to pick a side. We know who we are. We’re God’s people. We ain’t never gonna turn on each other.
We got loyalty. We got faith. We got the truth. And if y’all think we’re gonna just sit here and let these perverts and baby-killers and globalists take it all away without fightin’ back, then I got bad news for you.
We ain’t backin’ down. Not now. Not ever.
(Silence. A long pause. The air is heavy.)
ALEX:
Well, I’ll be damned.
Orwell, did that sound familiar to you?
ORWELL:
Yes. Very.
MR. BAO:
Indeed.
ALEX:
Because I’ll tell you what I just heard. I heard the voice of a True Believer. A childlike clarity, a faith so absolute, so unquestioning, that it must destroy anything that threatens it. It doesn’t see itself as dangerous. No, no—it sees us as dangerous. It sees tolerance as weakness. It sees restraint as surrender.
And most of all? It sees itself as pure.
That was a sermon, ladies and gentlemen. That was the voice of every Red Guard who ever turned in a teacher. Every Stalinist who ever snitched on a neighbor. Every McCarthyite who ever blacklisted a friend. Every mob that ever lit a match, tied a noose, built a scaffold.
And you heard it straight from the source—this is self-defense, not aggression. This is survival, not destruction.
And that’s the most terrifying thing of all. Because people who believe they are simply protecting themselves are the most dangerous people alive.
MS. CHAO:
Alex… I just… I don’t even know what to say. My parents—they lived through this. I grew up hearing stories about students ratting out teachers, children condemning their own parents. And to sit here, in America, and hear it coming from a MAGA guy—not in whispers, not in secrecy, but proudly, openly—
I just… I thought this country was supposed to be different.
ORWELL:
That’s the cruelest trick of history, Ms. Chao. Every country thinks it’s different. Every country believes it can’t happen here.
Until it does.
Your Choice: Put Out the Fire Now, or Watch It Burn?
ALEX:
Alright, folks. That’s it. That’s it.
If you’re still sitting on the fence, if you’re still thinking this is just politics as usual, if you’re still telling yourself, “Oh, it’s just a little crackdown, it’s just a little purge, it’s not that bad,”—then listen again to our caller. Listen carefully.
Because the fire is already here. The wood is stacked, the gasoline is poured, and the people holding the torches don’t even think they’re doing anything wrong.
History has given us one last warning. Right now, today, we get to decide whether we stamp out the spark or let it burn into an inferno.
Each one of us.
Because if we don’t stop it now—if we let it fester, let it grow—then one day, someone will look back at this moment, at this country, and say the same thing we say now about Salem, about Stalin, about Mao:
“Why didn’t they see it coming?”
“Why didn’t they stop it while they still could?”
“Why did they let it happen?”
We don’t have to.
Choose.
Good night.
Copyright © February 1, 2025 by Paul Henry Smith
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