The May 4th Movement was a Chinese anti-imperialist and nationalist movement that began on this day in 1919 when more than 4,000 unversity students took to the streets in protest of the Treaty of Versailles. These protests became a national and cultural movement that served as an inspiration for later left-wing movements.

On the afternoon of May 4th, over 4,000 students of Yenching University, Peking University, and other schools marched from many points to gather in front of Tiananmen. They shouted slogans as "struggle for the sovereignty externally, get rid of the national traitors at home", "do away with the Twenty-One Demands", and "don't sign the Versailles Treaty".

The next day, students in Beijing as a whole went on strike and in the larger cities across China. Students, merchants, and workers joined the protests. The demonstrators appealed to the newspapers and sent representatives to carry the word across the country. In Shanghai, a general strike of merchants and workers took place, negatively impacting the economy.

The May Fourth Movement served as an intellectual turning point in China; it was a seminal event that radicalized Chinese philosophical thought. Western-style liberal democracy had previously had a degree of traction amongst Chinese intellectuals. Still, after the Versailles Treaty (which was viewed as a betrayal of China's interests), it lost much of its attractiveness. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, despite being rooted in moralism, were also seen as Western-centric and hypocritical.

Many in the Chinese intellectual communities believed that the U.S. government had done little to convince the other nations during the Versailles negotiations to adhere to the Fourteen Points and observed that the United States had declined to join the League of Nations. As a result, they turned away from the Western liberal democratic model. The victory of the Russian October Revolution in 1917 gave direction to the development goals of the Chinese working class. Marxism began to take hold in Chinese intellectual thought, particularly among those already on the Left. During this time, that communism was studied seriously by some Chinese intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao.

In the years that followed, many Chinese political thinkers turned to leftist politics in the wake of the political upheaval of the May 4th Movement. In 1939, Mao Zedong claimed that the May Fourth Movement was a stage leading toward the fulfillment of his own communist revolution.

The May Fourth Movement twenty years ago marked a new stage in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism. The cultural reform movement which grew out of the May Fourth Movement was only one of the manifestations of this revolution. With the growth and development of new social forces in that period, a powerful camp made its appearance in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a camp consisting of the working class, the student masses and the new national bourgeoisie. Around the time of the May Fourth Movement, hundreds of thousands of students courageously took their place in the van. In these respects the May Fourth Movement went a step beyond the Revolution of 1911

-- Mao Zedong

Here is a list of Trans rights organizations you can support :cat-trans:

Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Foundations of Leninism :flag-su:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:

Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

Come listen to music with your fellow Hexbears in Cy.tube :og-hex-bear:

Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:

!genzedong@hexbear.net :deng-salute:

!strugglesession@hexbear.net :why-post-this:

!libre@hexbear.net :anarxi:

!shrekland@hexbear.net :what:

Next Friday 7th of May at 8 pm CST we will watch

:gamer: Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris :turtle-pogger:

on hexbear cytube :og-hex-bear:

did you missed the first and second gamera films and want to watch the 3° one? well here is the link to the first movie :president-parrot: :turtle-pogger:

and Here is the link to the 2° movie :posad: :turtle-pogger: part 1 , part 2

  • RostislavAlexeyev [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    MANIFESTOS ARE THE NEW MEME

    In this essay I will address the rise of the author as a brand within the Internet. Currently, an author has the power to shape an entire segment of the Internet within hours. This power often translates into an online following that translates into sales and media exposure.

    Yes, memes have captured the attention of the global public, but I believe that the rise of the author as a brand will dominate the online landscape in the next decade.

    It is the author who creates the form of his/her story and the form of the culture in which the story is told.

    The most effective author today is not the one who can execute a great blog post, or whose photos look fantastic on Facebook.

    The best ones are those who create a unique message in their story that can divide and polarize the world; a scissor statement.

    These writers can turn a few paragraphs of a novel into a living platform that starts conversations, produces highly engaged readers and even has an impact on culture in ways that are greater than most paid brand ambassadors.

    THE ROLE OF THE AUTHOR IN SOCIAL MEDIA

    It is the author who creates the form of his/her story and the form of the culture in which the story is told.

    This is where all of the “content” really begins: the author’s ability to create a story that readers connect to and that they become emotionally attached to.

    People today use the Internet to express their true selves. In turn, writers are now responsible for crafting their online presence and building a brand that is a reflection of the content and messages they are sharing.

    Author’s’ messages live beyond a single account, a permanent internet presence is impossible as all things digital are finite.

    MERE FUCKING BYTES IN THE WIND

    • RostislavAlexeyev [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      THE AUTHOR IS THE MEDIUM

      An author’s content lives on beyond the limitations of the web. The rest of the world (and you are part of this world) watches on. What does this mean?

      It means that content creators have become a form of digital culture and are taking this form to the next level.

      Here are four ways in which the author as a brand will influence social media and culture in general.

      NOT THE MESSAGE

      It is a mistake to view the author of a brand as the creator of a message. Yes, he or she is an influential figure in an area of creativity, but this is not where their story begins.

      The author is merely the medium by which the message is shared, whether the message is being broadcast by a newscaster, the front page of a newspaper or the words on a book’s back cover.

      The idea is not to create a brand to preserve the author, rather to create an incredible story that is expressed through the form of the author and the message in which they are engaging the reader.