It is known that what were called "the Red Guards" were in fact a mass Student-Led paramilitary social movement that was actually activated and guided by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, amid the main period of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which Mao himself had instituted. According to a Red Guard pioneer, the development's points were:
"Chairman Mao has defined our future as an armed revolutionary youth organization...So if Chairman Mao is our Red-Commander-in-Chief and we are his Red Guards, who can stop us? First we will make China Maoist from inside out and then we will help the working people of other countries make the world red...And then the whole universe."
You can say that they existed to persecute individuals who were not completely supportive of Mao's ideals