This interview and the book are excellent.

I watched the whole thing. My three takeaways.

1. In China they used class to separate the people because they were all mostly Han Chinese. In the US they're using race.

2. The Red Guards in China (taking the first sentence from Wikipedia to get some of this right)

"The Red Guards were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolishment in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted."

The Red Guards publicly shammed and even killed people. The author said it was easy to kill once people are divided into the oppressed and the oppressors.

Once the Red Guards gained enough influence, they started fighting amongst themselves for power and were eventually crushed by the CCP. The useful idiots were eventually crushed. (this is what these idiots never seem to understand, once they have fulfilled their use they are never rewarded, they are just no longer necessary)

3. Many of these Red Guards were from universities. The author named the top two elite universities of China at the time. Sound familiar? Harvard, Yale, etc. (I think there is also hubris here as what motivates them is power.)

Thus, the intelligent and indoctrinated make the best useful idiots. They make the best totalitarian tools.