This article argues that dominant political thinking during the Cultural Revolution supported antagonistic and fallacious logic, dictatorial, dehumanizing and violent thoughts and behavior in the service of purism and a fundamentalist ideology. It traces these views back to the Party’s earlier history and to human history in general. Using Pingzhou county, Shanxi province, as an example, the article focuses on the development of these attitudes during the land reform campaign of the 1940s, and their culmination in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. The evidence is based on local archival and interview data regarding these two events. Understanding the origin and development of Cultural Revolution thinking has important implications for understanding events in China today.