I think that Nien Cheng asks herself the question “Would I not have behaved exactly as the Red Guards had done?” because seeing all of the normally calm, educated high school students pillage houses and ruin lives is hard. It is helpful to think that everyone has an animal part to them, and anyone who is guided to do those horrid things would do them. For example, the students had cut up her good fabric with enthusiasm, simply because they were told to by their mentors and rewarded for doing it. I do think that she would have acted as they did if she were in their situation because they were brainwashed. It said in Red Scarf Girl that all of the Chinese people who had not been alive before the time of Chairman Mao were brainwashed to follow whatever he said without question. She too would have been brainwashed, and done whatever she had to make Mao and her other mentors happy.