In the whirlwind of Trump's brazen assault on Washington's policies and practices, echoes of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution are flickering. Most starkly, the intimidation and sacking of the "leftist woke" officials by Trump's zealous acolytes and young "Muskrats" bear eerily resemblance to the actions of Mao and his teenage Red Guards, who in 1966 began purging "rightist capital roaders’' from the Chinese Communist Party and government.

Trump's blitzkrieg of 70 Executive Orders in his first month in power, covering every aspect of American life, has jolted Washington's ossified policy dogmas and government practices.

This onslaught is somewhat reminiscent of Mao's 1966 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which aimed to eradicate capitalist and traditionalist influences within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and obliterate the 'Four Olds' (customs, culture, habits and ideas) in the country.

Some similarities are discernible in intent between Mao's zealotry or ideological purging and Trump's actions, though obviously in vastly different contexts, the scale, nature, and consequences.

 Asserting authority

 Mao launched the Cultural Revolution primarily to reassert his control over the CCP. He targeted leaders like Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and other "capitalist roaders" whom he accused of "revisionism". His other major motivation was ideological purity.

Similarly, Trump has used sweeping Executive Orders to inaugurate his second coming after winning the trifecta – the Senate, the House and the Presidency - to cement his dominance over the Republican Party. 'Revisionists' at odds with his agenda have either been sidelined or been persuaded to re-educate themselves – as many Chinese forced to do during the Cultural Revolution - confessing to the errors of their ways, such as J D Vance, Robert F Kennedy, etc.

Attacking established institutions 

In pursuit of Mao's aim of eliminating "rightist capital roaders", the Red Guards ferociously targeted educational, welfare and religious government agencies and prominent intellectuals and artists.

While the millstone of the US Constitution constrains Trump, he (with Musk) is pummelling a range of Federal Departments – Justice, Homeland, Health, Treasury, and Energy - and decimating agencies such as USAID, Medicaid, Consumer Protection, etc., for allegedly following "extremist left" policies. Emboldened by the Supreme Court's ruling granting presidential immunity for official acts, Trump is testing the boundaries of executive power. (Lincoln and Roosevelt did it too, but their intentions were much more benign - to forge unity, not division.)

Intimidation and uprooting

Mao's dictum, "A Revolution is not a dinner party", underscores his use of mass mobilisation and terror to uproot and purge perceived enemies within the party and state bureaucracies.

Similar intent is reflected in the Trump administration's aggressive reshaping of the federal bureaucracy through intimidation of the "enemies within" and firing officials adjudged as disloyal to him or his agenda. The "Muskrats" are systematically combing through federal agencies confronting seasoned bureaucrats – often just 15-minute interviews - and, reminiscent of Red Guard "struggle' sessions, condemning those not aligned with his vision.

Ideological purges

Mao purged those deemed ideologically impure. Within the restraints of the legal checks and balances in the American system, Trump's "revolutionary administration” (Musk) has pushed for ideological alignment within the government, removing 'left and woke' career officials and replacing them with political loyalists who echo his views. In this context, his statement quoting Napoleon - "He who saves his country does not violate any law" - is not exactly reassuring. Neither is his assertion that “only the President and the Attorney General can speak for what the law is”.

Impact on public services

Mao's Cultural Revolution led to chaos in public services, particularly education and health. There are early indications that Trump's policies are already beginning to disrupt healthcare, social security, and other services, affecting their availability and quality.

The common thread between Mao and Trump is to dismantle the alleged 'deep state' by fundamentally reshaping the existing bureaucratic structures in their ideological visions.

However, their end goals diverge. Mao aimed to destroy the old to build anew, whereas Trump seeks to restore a bygone era of American political and racial hierarchy which dominated American society until the sixties. As his latest plan for "owning" the Gaza Strip to develop it as the Riviera of the Middle East confirms, Trump is motivated by personal greed, callous indifference to moral censure, and elitism. In contrast, Mao was driven by a commitment to China's cause, however deadly the consequences of his blunders.

Moreover, Mao's Cultural Revolution reverberations were largely contained within then 'Third  World' China, causing only stray ideological ripples across its borders. In contrast, Trump's actions challenge the underpinnings of the post-war political, economic and social global architecture in a highly interdependent world.

The aftermath of Mao's revolution enabled Deng Xiaoping, his eventual successor, to launch his pragmatic reforms (("It does not matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice"). What might emerge in the wake of the ‘Trumpified’ Republican Party remains to be seen, but a highly dysfunctional American democracy seems likely in the years ahead.

(The author is a former Australian diplomat with extensive experience in China. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at ahujar@bigpond.com)