“Mao Tse-tung’s Thought Is the Telescope and Microscope of Our Revolutionary Cause” was an editorial published on June 7, 1966, in People’s Liberation Army Daily (Jiefangjun Bao) that captured the essence of the early days of the Cultural Revolution. In the spring and summer of 1966, countless editorials extolling the Cultural Revolution appeared in some of China’s most important newspapers. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), often referred to simply as the Cultural Revolution, was one of the most chaotic and tragic periods in the history of modern China. Devised by the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong (also spelled Mao Tsetung), the Cultural Revolution was ostensibly a campaign to rid the country of “capitalist roaders” who had used culture to promote bourgeois ideas. A capitalist roader in this context refers to those people who were supposedly harboring capitalist sentiments. In reality, the movement also became a means for Mao to remove his enemies from power.