There are a lot of reasons that we don’t want to ever go in the direction of Communism, even as the left seems to want to drag us there, kicking and screaming.

One of those reasons happened at the Party Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, and you can see it play it out all on video in a chilling moment. Hu Jintao, the former president, is sitting at the left hand of the current leader, Xi Jinping.

Early drama: Hu Jintao seen being led out soon after reporters are led into the main hall pic.twitter.com/pRffGZF60I

— Danson Cheong (@dansoncj) October 22, 2022

Hu was approached by a man in a surgical mask who grabs him by the arm and tries to pull him up. Li Zhanshu, the chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, the top leadership team in China, appeared to try to help Hu, but one of the men in the masks blocked him out, and his colleague Wang Huning, another party leader, behind him tried to pull him back. In a communist society like this, intervening in a removal out of kindness will get you on the blacklist as well.

Hu didn’t want to go and was resisting being removed, perhaps knowing if he did, he wasn’t coming back. As they tried to pull him out, he turned to Xi, as if to appeal to him and Xi just nodded his head, ignoring him and staring straight ahead. Hu put his hand on the shoulder of Premier Leqiang, a proponent of economic reforms and one of his proteges. Then, Hu was led away.

Perhaps the most telling thing was as Hu was being led away, so many of the people in the front row weren’t looking at him, as any normal person might under the circumstances — they were trying to stare ahead without any reaction–the sign of people who have been conditioned as to how to react, because they’re afraid they might be next.

Many speculated that he was removed in broad daylight for all to see by Xi, as a sign to all who were at the Congress, not to mention the world.

There was no official explanation given for what had happened to Hu, and it took place right after the international media was let into the hall, which could suggest it was done on purpose right at that point, so all could see.

Any discussion of the incident or “Hu Jintao” on the Chinese Twitter-like Weibo platform was censored.

What happened to Hu? We don’t know because they are not saying, and they may never officially say.

But the problem with Communism is that people are “disappeared” all the time, and people continue to stare straight ahead as the cruelty goes on. This appears to be a particularly cruel episode of it, before the whole Congress — they’re not even bothering to offer up an alternative explanation. It also appears to be Xi’s way of saying “I can make anyone go away” — a sign that things are only going to get worse for the future of China, as he tightens his hold on absolute power with this Congress.