Totalitarian leaders need two things to survive. Unquestioned support for their “inner circle” and the pretense of an action, i.e. a real or invented incident. The crucial time point for the rise of totalitarianism in Germany in the 1930s was the German leader's decisive events of June 30 to July 2, 1934, commonly referred to as the “Night of the Long Knives.” In quick action, the rising German commander took action against the Sturm Abeilung, or Brown Shirts. The National Socialist leader would not have reached this point without the Brown Shirts, the rough, violent, and unruly element that was vital to his rise. However, he was on shaky ground, and for years had worked to develop the Black Shirts as his inner circle. During several days of violence, the German leader used the Black Shirts to arrest, execute and eliminate the Brown Shirts for their “crimes.” It was classic, thuggish, treacherous, limitless, totalitarian. Herr Hitler could not live without the Brown Shirts until he no longer needed them and dispensed with them like a used plastic object through the Black Shirts.
Mr. Xi is displaying similar traits in his efforts to consolidate his power within the Chinese Communist Party. He took power in 2012, but it was not until the unprecedented October 2022 party congress that Xi actually began the slow-moving “Night of the Long Knives” movement, at which Xi unceremoniously and notoriously booted his predecessor from the chamber. It is a tactic that the German leader never used, but something that Mr. Hussein (an admirer of the German leader) did routinely in Iraq and would have been proud of. That party congress saw Mr. Xi elected to an unprecedented third term, and from this point on, it was game on, as Xi created an accelerating wave of purges that led to a full-scale purge in late December 2023 as Xi delivered an unequivocal teaching point and life lesson. For anyone who might consider opposing the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. This was Xi Jinping's “Night of the Long Knives.”
She cleans the house extensively
Upon his return from Uzbekistan in September 2022, after Putin's intimidation over his failures in Ukraine, rumors of palace plots and coup attempts in China exploded. Xi had to act decisively because in October 2022 there was a party congress. The White Paper Revolution occurred immediately after the Party Congress on a large scale and frightened Xi and the entire leadership of the CCP. All of these events led to the “Night of the Long Knives” in December 2023, in which nine generals and admirals were liquidated en masse by being expelled from the National People's Assembly.
The black comedy about Soviet command palace intrigues was The Death of Stalin. Shi is trying to be smarter and more sophisticated, but the same dark comedic chaos is likely happening now. Among the nine current flag officers removed are three former commanders or deputy commanders of the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force; One is a former Air Force chief and the other is a Navy chief in charge of the South China Sea. Four officers were in charge of the equipment.
Before the batch of nine was removed during the Night of the Long Knives, immediately before that, other replacements were made:
Li Shangfu (equivalent to co-chair): Missing, possibly dead
Wei Feng He, Li's ancestor: missing, possibly dead
Wang Shaojun (central guard unit commander, no real American equivalent): Dead
Chen Gang (equivalent to Foreign Minister): Missing, possibly executed
The commander-in-chief of the missile force, Li Yuchao, also disappeared, along with his deputy Liu Guangbin and former deputy Zhang Zhenzhong (these may be the three referred to in the newsletters of the nine current officers who were dismissed).
The BRICS conference did not go well
The much-lauded Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping in August 2023 was supposed to be the international equivalent of the party congress in October 2022. This was intended to be an Olympic gold medal ceremony like China's effort to unseat the United States. Up until this point, Xi had had one success after another:
Spy balloons fly around the world, especially over American missile fields and bomber bases, without any resistance: check
Expansion of spy base in Lourdes, Cuba: verification
Yellen's humiliation during her visit: check
Pretending to care about what Blinken said during his visit: Check
Expansion of spy base in Lourdes, Cuba for military training and announced as Blinken returns to America: Verified
Allowing vague and ridiculous virtue signaling from John F. Kerry while he is the biggest polluter on the planet: check
Taking over drug cartels in Mexico's ungoverned zone and manufacturing fentanyl more efficiently: check
Using fentanyl produced in Mexico under Chinese supervision and killing 10,000 Americans a month in 2023 and 70,000 total in 2022, the number of Americans killed in the combined forty years of fighting in the Vietnam War and the War on Terror: Check
Sending hordes of military-age males trained as paramilitaries into America across the unsafe southern border and decisively engaging in “legal” and illegal cannabis production and distribution as a gateway drug toward fentanyl: CHECK
Luring Saudi Arabia to sell oil in yuan and conclude a peace deal with Iran: Verified
Setting up the BRICS conference as the main event for building a coalition to overturn American leadership in the world: check
Successfully using a captive White House occupant and his son to destroy America: achieved
Xi was not at his best in the BRICS, which was disrupted by many events that even the best totalitarians could not control. Prices collapsed in China shortly before the BRICS conference. This price collapse was a stark indicator of the health of China's real economy. Then, historic floods devastated Beijing and the regime tried to use residents' neighborhoods as a trench, causing anger and fury unprecedented since the White Paper Uprising last year.
After dismissing his foreign minister and the leadership team of the nuclear force just before BRICS, Xi sent Wang Wentao to read a statement in the opening part of the conference. When Xi appeared, there was a strange struggle and the doors closed behind him as the South African guards struggled and jostled with the Chinese entourage. It's a bit modest for the self-proclaimed leader of the New World Order.
Cleaning house significantly undermines preparations for an invasion of Taiwan, but that does not mean the Chinese Communist Party will not try
China's Night of the Long Knives does not bode well for China's military preparedness for an imminent attack on Taiwan. If Xi is assessing the list of successes of China's borderless plan to oust America as a global leader, then China's proxies in the form of Russia, Iran, Hamas, the Houthis, the Somalis and Venezuela are having great success in setting arson fires around the world to distract and divert the world's attention. Overwhelms the United States with world leadership.
But anything can happen, as the film “The Death of Stalin” showed. Xi may impose a reckless campaign anyway in the Western Pacific despite withering military leadership. China's “Night of the Long Knives” may be just the last domestic measure before Xi Jinping strikes in the Western Pacific. Anything to bring down America before Trump returns.
All views are personal and do not reflect the views of any organization.
