The following information on Sidney Rittenberg was excerpted from Historian emerita Alaoui's history report written up on February 24th, 2023, and presented to the Societies on March 27th, 2023. It was an excellent report, and I thank her eternally for collecting and presenting this information. 

Sidney Rittenberg was born in 1921 in Charleston, South Carolina to a Jewish family. After graduating from Porter Military Academy he turned down a full-ride offer from Princeton University to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied philosophy. He gained membership into the Dialectic Senate in 1937 but had to be reinstated for membership after not paying his dues. During his tenure as a senator he also joined the US Communist Party, and tentatively introduced more radical opinions to societal discourse. Rittenberg can be described as someone who was extremely vocative in the Dialectic Society. In contrast to Hatem, his name appears frequently in the Di-Senate minutes from 1937 to 1941. Some of his most notable contributions to Senate discourse include a proposal for the National Birth Control Association, which would exist as a segment of Roosevelt’s recently minted New Deal. Couples would have to submit a request for birth 11 months before they anticipated said birth; each family could possess only one child. When asked why the American people would want to comply with such an institution, he replied that “People would obey this law due to their natural willingness to obey laws.” 

As recorded by Margaret Evans, who was the clerk at the time, he spoke out against compulsory military participation of collegiate men at the May 10 1938 regular meeting. He lost the election for Sergeant-At-Arms for the 1938 Fall term and then relapsed into defunct membership. When reinstated for the second time in November, he partook in several debates concerning free speech and university affairs. Rittenberg spoke in favor of admitting black students to UNC–albeit with the most cursed lexicon there could be for such a topic–and worked to reinstate the Dialectic Senate as a legislative body on campus with the intent to increase liberalism in student politics. 

After graduating from UNC, Rittenberg earned a Master’s degree from Stanford in Chinese. He then arrived in China as an Army private near the culmination of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Ever the Marxist-Leninist, he claims in his documentary The Revolutionary to have traveled for 45 days on foot in the Yan’an hinterlands to meet Mao Zedong. In 1945 he sought out the mountain caves where the Communist Party’s leaders lived; the next year would be spent arguing dogma and philosophy with Mao and Deputy Zhou Enlai, “dancing with Mao’s wife Jiang Qing” and traveling the countryside. A year later, Rittenberg joined the Chinese Communist Party.

In a similar fashion to Ma Haide, Rittenberg became acquainted with the Red Army’s endeavors; as an official translator for the party’s propaganda corps, he intermediated Mao’s conciliatory and political efforts during the zenith of the People’s Republic. Not only would he gain coveted access to the upper echelons of the Maoist regime, but his profile as an American in the Communist East would render him a powerful scion for both admiration and resentment. 

For even Icarus must suffer the fall.

While the Cultural Revolution would not evolve to its fullest extent until the 1960s, discourse concerning China’s civil future would cement the foundations of the PRC into the global chaos surrounding ideology. Tension and paranoia marred the 1950s, trickling well into the next decades as the Cold War waned over states. Thus would begin Sidney Rittenberg’s lifelong probation in two contending worlds; that of revolution, and that of journalism. On a similar plain, Hatem’s devotion to public service and family life would grant him eternal tribute by the people. 

Rittenberg’s growing fame meant he was constantly watched by allies and foes. Shortly after he officially joined the CCP, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin would telephone Mao to tell him that Mr. Rittenberg was in fact an American spy sent to “undermine the revolution.” He was arrested and put in solitary confinement for 6 years. These 6 years seemed to have granted him some time for reflection and sharpening of politico-philosophical ideals. After his release in 1955, he still remained avidly loyal to Mao’s regime and began a career in journalism and radio broadcasting for several Party agencies, including the New China News Agency and Radio Beijing. During the Great Leap Forward, he worked hard to spread propaganda against anti-Maoist thought. The most iconic photographs of Rittenberg’s figure are of him verbally lashing out, hypnotizing an audience with what can only be Communist speech. He would fall in and out of the chairman’s personality cult; nevertheless, his devotion to the Party’s doctrine only ever increased. 

Throughout the 1960s Rittenberg delivered a series of speeches attacking several well-known figures in the Communist sphere, including former CCP Vice Chairman Liu Shaoqi and the leader of the Belgian Communist Party, Jacques Grippa. His most famous speech, given in Tiananmen Square in 1966 is forever memorialized by The Revolutionary. In it, he both praises and critiques Mao, fueling resentment that would result in his second and longest arrestation not long after. This time, the Chairman’s wife, Jiang Qing, accused him of attending a secret meeting after the speech to plot against the government. Mr. Rittenberg spent ten years in yet another episode of solitary confinement; meanwhile, his third wife (for the first and second had both divorced him due to ideological disagreements) would be sent to a labor camp. If the first imprisonment had strengthened the prisoner’s support of Communism, the second time around did quite the opposite. In the 7 & half-long, 3 & half paces wide cell that he occupied, Rittenberg formulated a disdain for Maoist thought. When Mao died and a string of political prisoners were released, the now twice-convicted Rittenberg moved his family to the United States. Ironically, all that Maoist ideology stood for, Rittenberg reversed in his mind. This very man, who for over three decades conspired at the highest maximum against Western media, retired from his revolutionary days to start a capitalist empire in California.

Rittenberg flourished in California as a newly minted entrepreneur. The sudden desire for repatriation initially worried members of the Carter Administration; he nonetheless expressed a hardened intent to contribute to America’s business sector. Using his extensive network of contacts and knowledge of China, he became a corporate advisor for rising magnates in computation like Bill Gates and Michael Dell. Teaching them how to cash on China’s growing economy, he returned to China several times to take prospective clients on tours of the municipal growth in the Southeast. Rittenberg also retired from his journalism career to partake in several interviews and campaigns. His prolific contributions to the Carolinas’ Jewish community are cemented by projects such as the College of Charleston Jewish Heritage Collection. His last decades were spent lamenting the eccentric and devoted revolutionary he had once embodied; in a 2013 interview with the Financial Times, he called Mao a “great historic leader and a great historic criminal.” His memoir, The Man Who Stayed Behind, includes a prosaic lament that likens him to Doctor Ma Haide: “I had been right to help those who were working for a new China,” he said. “I had been dead wrong, however, in accepting the party as the embodiment of truth and in giving to the party uncritical and unquestioning loyalty.” Rittenberg died in 2019 at the age of 98.