American Thought Leaders - The Dark Parallels of China's Cultural Revolution and Today's America: Survivor Xi Van Fleet

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2"From a very early age—kindergarten—we were taught that our parents are just biological parents. The real parents is 'the Party,' and Chairman Mao. And so, if there's a conflict between choosing your own parents or the Party, you should always, always choose the Party. And that's basically what the Red Guards did."In this episode I sit down with Xi Van Fleet, who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. She’s the author of the new book, “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.”"Communism is about abolition of private property. But I would say, more important than that, is the abolition of independent thinking. It's really, really about control of peoples' minds. And also, it's about dividing people. They don't want to rule over a united population," says Ms. Van Fleet.We discuss her childhood under Mao's regime, and what it was like to be subjected to brainwashing, re-education, and struggle sessions. We also examine woke indoctrination today, and how ideologues are adopting Mao's methods of re-writing history and destroying the nuclear family."Here, especially today in schools, you are supposed to go to 'trusted adults,' not your parents. And so, they do not say 'Party,' but it is very similar. They want to cut the ties between parents and children. Why? That's how you control the children," says Ms. Van Fleet.

From a very early age, we were taught that our parents are just biological parents. The real parents is the party. And so if there is a conflict between choosing your own parents or the party, you should always, always choose the party. In this episode, I sit down with Shi Van Fleet, a survivor of China's cultural revolution. She's the author of the new book Mao's America, A Survivor's Warning. Here you are supposed to go to trusted and doubts, not your parents. So they did not say party, but it is very similar.

They want to cut the ties between parents and the children. Why? That's how you control the children. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janje Kellek. Before we start, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of our podcast, American Hartford Gold. As you all know, inflation is getting worse. The Fed raised rates for the fifth time this year. And Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is telling Americans to brace themselves for potentially more pain ahead. But there is one way to hedge against inflation. American Hartford Gold makes it simple and easy to diversify your savings and retirement accounts with physical gold and silver.

With one short phone call, they can have physical gold and silver delivered right to your door or inside your IRA or 401k. American Hartford Gold is one of the highest-rated firms in the country with an A-plus rating with a Better Business Bureau and thousands of satisfied clients. If you call them right now, they'll give you up to $2,500 of free silver and a free safe on qualifying orders. Call 855-862-3377. That's 855-862-3377. Or text American to 65532. Again, that's 855-862-3377 or text American to 65532. Xi Van Fleet, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Thank you. This is exactly two years after the first interview. Thank you so much for having me back.

I went back and looked at your interview from then and man what a great piece. I want to link it for those that are watching on our streaming service on the web and so forth. It was an incredibly powerful, raw interview where you showed remarkable parallels between what's happening in America and your own experience during the Cultural Revolution in China. It brought tears to my eyes listening to that interview. Thank you. Thank you, by the way, for referencing it in your new book, which is what we're going to talk about today. You really dug deep into understanding these parallels and what it means. Why don't we just start off there? I want to recap a little bit

your background, where you were born, what happened, how you came to America, and when you started seeing things that reminded you of the past. Yes. I was born in China. I spent my first 26 years in Mao's China. And I spent my entire school years, which was only 10 years, Mao cut it from 12 to 10 because he said education is useless. So I spent that 10 years in Cultural Revolution. After I graduated from high school, there was nothing for us, nothing for the young people. So we were all sent to the countryside to do what?

To get our re-education from the peasants. So I worked in the countryside under primitive conditions for three years until Deng Xiaoping took power and opened universities. And through examination I was able to go to college at the age of 19 and to study English. And after that I was given a job to teach in the Teachers College. And there I met some American teachers. In the early 80s China started to open up and a lot of volunteers from America came to teach. And I met a friend and she helped me to get

assistantship to come to America and so I went to Western Kentucky University and that was 1986. Tell me what it was like during the Cultural Revolution and how you were involved and you brought quite a few fascinating anecdotes from your own experience there in the book. And so I just want you to tell me about that time because for a lot of us here in the West, we have no idea. Just to summarize in one word, chaos.

And it's pretty much overnight. Everything just turned upside down, everything. School was closed because the teachers and administrators were ousted by the kids. And I was in elementary school and I saw students attacking teachers. And one day, I was in a classroom, and saw on the blackboard, teacher left a note, no schools for three days. And that three days lasted for two years. So during those time, we were out every day on the streets, really watch what's unfolding in front of our eyes,

the Cultural Revolution, the struggle sessions, the parade of those being denounced, and eventually it turned into violence and total chaos. And we saw the cancel culture by the Red Guards. And I saw them going to people's homes, taking out everything that's considered old, traditional, and destroy them. And I saw them brutalize people, stopping girls who have the incorrect hairstyle and chop their hair off. It is absolutely chaos. Well, and one of the things you hear about the Cultural Revolution, right,

is that sometimes people were down, sometimes people were just kind of murdered and there was no reaction, right, from the regime. So that emboldened the people doing this. So it almost became a kind of a craze. Yes, absolutely. The first killing in the Cultural Revolution was done by a group of girls in middle school. So they tortured and beaten and tortured their assistant principal and then eventually killed

her. And actually, they were a little scared. They're just like 12, 16 young girls. So they reported to the Cultural Revolution Committee. And the answer is, well, if she died, then she died. And that emboldened the Red Guards, and the violence started to be really the commonplace. And the Red Guards went after the so-called black class people and killed over 1,700 in a month in Beijing alone. After that, it become, took over the whole country

and even in my province and in my city. You know, you said overnight. You know, suddenly you have chaos, right? But what was it that changed? What was it, was there an edict? Was there, like, this is what we want to understand here. They started with so-called peaceful ways to denounce the people in power. And how they do that? They use the big character posters. It's kind of like today's social media. They

have whatever they wrote in big piece of paper with big big letters and put on a wall so everybody can read. My memory was overnight there were just big character posters everywhere on campus and so people just go there and read it. And I was too young. I was only in the first grade. I could not understand the content, but I could understand that they were denunciation of teachers and administrators.

And there was a lot of cartoon going on. And I could figure out that everything this is about is the whole system is bad and needs to be overthrown. And so that's how it started. And that is absolutely overnight. On the street you see all sorts of slogans, all sorts of posters. And that's the starting point. And eventually from there, it becomes violent. Well, and so this is the thing that can be difficult to understand because Mao had power

already. Of course, we'd had the Great Leap Forward, which was disastrous and people were aware of this, of course, many. And so Mao had many threats.. This was, as I understand it, his reaction to that and his opportunity to purge yet another group of people. This was basically communists going after communists. That is something that is very hard for a lot of people to understand. I have to tell you, it's very difficult for me to understand. But it is a cultural revolution. It's a revolution against Mao's own party, the CCP. And it's a revolution against his own institutions.

For what? Why? It's for his own power. Because he feels like he was losing power. And he feels like whatever they have been doing for the past 27 years was not radical enough. And he wants to fundamentally transform China. And transform into what? Into a more radical version of Marxism, and that's Maoism. Of course, your book is titled Mao's America. One thing before we go there, actually, I'm just remembering you talking about you actually participating in some of these struggle sessions effectively. Again, it's hard to imagine that being the reality, but there you were.

Tell me about that. There were all sorts of struggle sessions. The struggle sessions, you can call it like a hurricane. You can see a huge rally of people and have those people who were denounced standing on the stage and they have to admit they were the counterrevolutionaries, they were whatever they labeled that put on them. So those are the big hurricane, I said hurricane type of struggle session. But everyone has to go through it. It's not something just for those being denounced.

We have this called criticism and self-criticism. It is something everyone has to go through, including kids in school. And what you do, you denounce yourself because you always have to compare yourself to Mao's instruction from that little book and say, you haven't done enough in this respect or in other respect. And then that's not it. You have to denounce others. You have to say, so and so, I saw one day you did this and that's not really what you should do according to Mao's instruction. So that is routine. So that's the kind of struggle session I've been through.

It's called gentle, milder version of the real struggle session, but it is a way of life during the Cultural Revolution. There's this one moment in the book where you describe yourself holding Mao's portrait up on stage and feeling so proud that... Tell me. Everyone wants to be part of it. If I were just, I say if I were just four years or maybe five years older, I definitely will be part of the Red Guards. So I was too little and I just joined my cousin who were the real Red Guards. And they have this propaganda, Mao Zedong thought propaganda team.

And so it came to my town. So I joined them. So they have to give shows everywhere they stop. And I was given the task of carrying Mao's portrait to lead the team on stage and I was so proud of myself. So it is something that swept everybody away. There are people who saw this and understand what it was. I think a lot of people just don't. A lot of kids, it's just something that you feel like they have to join. Just

imagine, just think about 2020, the riots, the BMM, so many, so many people joined it. They really, do they really understand what it was? But they joined it. And we saw the, when I saw the videos of just thousands of thousands of people got on the street thinking they're doing something great. Do you feel like you were brainwashed? Absolutely. That is the result of brainwash. I was too little to do any damage. But what's the Red Guards?

They were absolutely brainwashed. They were brainwashed to the point that they believe their purpose of life is to follow Mao's instruction and do what Mao told them to do. And just because of that, Mao was able to control them and to really, the Cultural Revolution is really the revolution of the youth. Mao used them to take power, and Mao used them to destroy the traditional culture and all the institutions. It's all done by the young people. Why could they do that? Because they're all brainwashed.

I'm thinking about James Lindsay's The Marxification of Education. Of course, he wrote the introduction to your book. But we didn't realize how deeply in our educational system in the U.S. and Canada that this whole oppressor-oppressed ideology has been embedded at such an early stage in life? I mean, this is one of the big parallels you draw out. Yeah, I think in China there is a little bit difference because Mao had power. CCP had power. They totally controlled the educational system. They absolutely, they did decide what to teach. And of course, it's

all Marxist and Maoist values. But here, a lot of people just don't understand because they were never taught the history of communism. And a lot of the things that they heard sounds kind of good, sounds kind of like, yeah, you want to be inclusive and you want to be empathetic, you want to love, you want to accept. And so this is something that people like me who've been through the Cultural Revolution, who've been through the Cultural Revolution, who've been through or lived under communism, we see through right away because the same thing was taught to us. But people here, they don't understand it.

But because it's deceptive, a lot of people just accept it without understanding that it is what they're supporting actually is evil. Where is the commonality between what teachers are doing today, and I say not all, of course not all teachers, but many, and what they're being taught, and what was being taught to teachers in Maoist China? Yeah, in Maoist China it's very simple. From a very early age, kindergarten, we were taught that our parents are just biological parents. The real parents is the party and Chairman Mao. And so if there is a conflict between choosing your own parents or the party, you should always, always choose the party.

And that's basically what the Red Guards did. Many of them denounced their parents. Many of them reported their parents and ended up with their parents being executed. And here, especially today in school, and you are supposed to go to trusted adults, not your parents. And so they did not say party, but it is very similar. They want to cut the ties between parents and the children. Why? That's how you control the children.

You're just reminding me, in the gender-affirming care ideology, that basically this is a so-called standard of care that's being applied for many children in schools where the counselors are basically, they'll say things like in front of the kid to the parent, would you like to have a dead child or a living child, i.e., if you don't go along with our approach, your child will commit suicide. The parent becomes sort of the outsider. Absolutely. And then they made it sound like it's the government that is the real protector of those children. There's no such thing as someone else's child. No such thing as someone else's child.

Our nation's children are all our children. And that's exactly what happened in China. And I'm sure in all our communist countries. You know, another thing that's very striking to me is this hostility towards honest accounts of history or accurate accounts of history. Yes, that is always something that the communists do. In order to control the children, you have to rewrite history. And in China, the history was totally, totally rewritten. And the history that I learned was absolute fiction. And I have, even today, I still have to detox all this junk they put in my mind.

Those who control the present control the past. And when you control the past, you control the future. And so to me, there's so many people here in America, they don't see what we see. Why? Because they don't know the history. The history was so whitewashed. And in school, they were taught the crimes of the Nazi, the crimes of slavery. Few of them know the crime committed in the name of communism.

Far more people killed, were killed under communism, but they were taught communism is about the sharing. That's rewrite history. Well, a testament to that is a whole lot of young people view it as a positive system. I mean, there's been multiple surveys done on this. It's astonishing. I think this is a Chinese expression. It's putting the powder on the face of communism, right?

Absolutely. I was talking to a co-worker of mine, and she said her new daughter-in-law called herself a communist. I said, do you know what that means? Do you know that sounds like someone tell the Jews that they are Nazi? But she said, really? Yeah. That is how bad things are. That they absolutely have no idea.

Why? It's because they were taught that way. It's almost like, you know, it's actually the successful people, whoever is successful, those are the people that are cast by the system and related ideologies as the oppressor, irrespective of whether they're oppressing anybody? Yes. What do you think? That's actually the operating system for Marxism. In China, how did they do that?

They identified those rich as the problem, as the problem for everything that China was experiencing. So the goal is to eliminate the rich so that they can achieve equity. And so the rich were those who were successful people, including Mao's own father. Mao's father was a prosperous and peasant, rich peasant, and he described how his father got rich. He did not exploit anyone, oppress anyone. He worked hard and he was smart, made a lot of good decisions. So in communism, wealth is the original thing. And they are the problem. That they are the reason for everyone else's misery.

And here same thing, we see the same thing happen. And so the Chinese were supposed, or the Asians in general, according to the skin color, we were not white, right? We were supposedly the people of color, and not anymore. And we are now called white adjacent. So why? Only one reason, we're just too successful. So they do not, they do not want people to be successful. When you are successful, you are independent

and you are not easy to control. And they like people to be dependent so that they can control them. But not only that, they want to make this a divisive way to set people against each other. They really ferment resentment and hatred to those who are successful. I think you've said that the term racist essentially means the same thing as counter-revolutionary back in the day. Yeah. Everything during the Cultural Revolution is whether you are with them or against them. If you were not in line with them exactly, you are counterrevolutionary. Same here. Sometimes you see people being called racist and it's just ridiculous because they're not saying anything. Like, mass is racism.

In America, it's just replaced by the word racist or the model racist, you know, that bigot, extremist, whatever, phobia. To use that to cast people out and put you in the enemy's camp. Then they can denounce you and they can punish you. This is actually just a really, really important point. I want to dwell on this for a moment. The idea is there's the correct ideology. you're supposed to know what that is. And really, it comes from ostensibly the people in power and it says, this is what it's supposed to be. And if you don't agree with it completely, basically, now you're potentially being a counter-revolutionary or any number of these other slanderous terms, basically, that are used, right?

Yeah, especially an early stage after the CCP took over power. Everyone learned it quickly. Being rich is bad, right? Look rich is bad. Think like a rich is bad. Look rich is bad. Think like a rich is bad. Everyone wants to look like a proletarian, especially those intellectuals. Because the intellectuals are the next group. Yes. To look, think, act like a bourgeois is bad. you know, it's bad. So everyone wants to look like a

proletarian. And the same here. Think white is bad. Act like white is bad. If you study hard, you act like white, right? And you'll be outcasted. Okay, so let's talk about the features where you find these similarities. One of them, of course, is education. We just discussed how basically having the teachers follow this ideology is a really important element. We talked about a kind of red guard that's functioning at the will or at the acceptance of the ruling class. That's another feature. We talked about this antipathy to the nuclear family, which that's another important commonality. What else do you think is very important? Communism is about abolition of private property. But I would say more important than that is abolition of independent thinking. It's really, really about control of people's mind.

And also it's about dividing people. They don't want to rule over a united population. They will always try any way they can to divide them. And how? In China it was relatively simple. They divide people by class. And that was Mao's identity politics. And they don't just divide you and just say you are a rich peasant, landlord, or poor

peasant, whatever. You get a label. You absolutely get a label, and that label is part of you. It's your identity. If you are categorized as the black class, which is a propertied class, and you are the enemy of the state, and that label or that identity becomes hereditary, that's so important to understand. It passed on to your children and your children's children. And that's what we see in America, identity politics. They divide people, subdivide, sub, sub, sub, subdivide.

They will never stop. And here, we still have class, right? Bernie Sanders still used class to divide people, the haves, the have-nots, the 1% versus 99%. By the way, that's exactly the figure that Mao came up with when he analyzed the Chinese population in the 20s, he said, we got 1% against the 99%. So Bernie Sanders, they got the same number, and I don't think it's a coincidence. And then in America, race, sex, and sexuality. Even during the COVID, they were vaxxed and unvaxxed. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. You make this very interesting distinction in the book where, in China, it was the majority being set against a minority, so to speak. But here,

it's the other way. It's actually backwards. It's the minorities that are being set against a minority, so to speak. But here it's kind of the other way. It's actually backwards. It's the minorities that are being set against the majority. They know that is a disadvantage. You are setting a small group against a big group. That's why they keep expanding the small group. The list just goes on. Now, we mentioned some, race, sex, gender, sexuality, and age. If you are fat, you become a victim. It just goes on. Why? Because they want to expand the minority. The thing that jumps to my mind here is really there's this feature of this version that we're experiencing in the West, which is this weaponization of empathy. We want, in general, people want to help the minorities, want to be positive towards the

minorities. And so that is, I think, one of the ways in which this whole ideology was snuck in. I think woke is really a weaponization of people's goodness. The goodness of want to love the neighbors, want to love their fellow citizens, and want to accept and want to be empathetic and use it against them. One of the things that's very potent with the approach of using race as this tool for the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy is that it is actually somewhat hereditary. You don't have a choice. You would have to take significant steps to try to change that. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. The race, CRT, is really the most potent, to me, the potent weapon to divide people. Yeah. More so than the class. You know, in Chinese, in Chinese we look like, okay, where you live, where you work, people know which class you belong to, but you can get away from it in a public space. Nobody knows who. But the race is something that you wear it, you are. It's always there, and it's much, much more potent than class.

Something that I've been thinking a lot about recently because of the Hamas attacks on Israel that happened recently is just the potency of hatred. In the Cultural Revolution, did people just hate the— Hate. The whole thing is driven by hate. Communism is built on hate. Hate what? Hate the enemy. Who were the enemies? The party tells you so. The party tells you who were the enemies. And so when I grew up, we were taught the black class were our enemy. And those who failed to follow the Party in locksteps were our enemy. And I mention that in my book. The word people in China is called Renmin. And the people who were condemned as the enemy is called di ren, or class enemy, jie ji di ren. So you either belong to people or you belong to enemy. Once you become enemy, you're no longer people.

Your humanity was taken away from you. And so anything done to you was justified. That sounds familiar now? That is how they teach the children to think, black and white. Once the party condemns you as enemy, anything can be done to you. Nothing is too much. Right now what we see on the streets of people who just support Hamas. Why?

Because it's simple. They identify Israel as oppressor and then the Palestinian as oppressed. Once that definition is made, it's very easy. It's very easy to justify anything that the oppressed did to the oppressor, including terrorism, including slaughter, murder. And that's how they indoctrinate the children, indoctrinate the youth. Black and white thinking based on oppressors oppressed,

enemy or people. I want to say this, the book is fantastic. I endorse it. Thank you. It's incredibly important. The Cultural Revolution in China, what's happening in America are not the same. At the same time, there are incredibly striking parallels, and I think you do a fantastic job at documenting them. It's a chilling reality, and it makes you wonder, could we end up in a situation like the Cultural Revolution in China if this is left unchecked?

I think your answer is yes. Yes. I think Mark Twain said that history seldom repeats itself, but often rhymes. Because China is not America. The time is different. The culture is different. The culture is different. And so I think it's a mistake to compare it as if it's apple to apple. No, but it rhymes. And when you look at the big picture and connect the dots,

they're exactly the same thing. You talk a bit about you deprogramming yourself, right? And I find that an incredibly important piece. You know, people will be able to read your book and sort of understand the extent of these parallels, and they're shockingly extensive. But what about your journey from being the proud holder of the Mao portrait to where you are today? What did that look like? Well, it's a long journey and sometimes it is something that it's not like I'm making

an effort, today I'm going to detox. It's gradual and I think it has a lot to do with my desire to assimilate. And people now say, why we want to assimilate? We want multicultural. My question is, why do you want to even come here? What made you want to come to America? I want to come here because I know America is great. It's great for everyone, for individuals. But it took me, it's a journey, but it took

me a long time to appreciate what makes America great. It took me a long time to even grasp the concept that our rights were from God. For the longest time, I thought our rights were from the government, because that's how I grew up. The government allowed me to do this, not allow me to do that. I think a lot of people still don't understand. They come here and they don't even bother to learn of this great country and its history and its values, because they were discouraged to do that. They were taught you should be proud of your culture and multiculturalism is what

makes America great. No. Multiculture is not what makes America great. What makes this country great is because the American values and what are those values from? It's rooted in Christianity. So that took me a long time and I have to get rid of this idea that rich is evil. I really, for a long time, I just feel like they were rich because they exploited others. I mean, I have to say, probably just 20 years ago, I still believe it. Yeah, I think, yeah, how can they get rich? The only way they can get rich is by exploiting the poor. And it's something that the young people firmly believe today.

As that belief system has grown, I think the actual exploitation has grown. Because of course, all these things have a kernel of truth in them. Yes, there are some people that get rich this way. Yes, the system can be set up to be stacked against the poor, for example. But the irony is it's precisely in these communist societies where that is so extreme. Capitalism is not perfect, of course. There's no such thing as perfect system. But in capitalism, you have the choice to say no. You absolutely have the choice to say no. They can give you unbelievable low wage, and you can't walk away. Not in a communist country. Not in the

communist system. You're stuck where you are. You have no freedom to make that choice. Well there is one choice in that system you have to make, but for some people that choice is unconscionable, which is to become the model worker, the model Communist Party member, right? And then maybe you will be advanced. That's not a choice. So how do you get ahead in the communist system? First of all, you'd better have your roots being read, meaning you come from a good family background,

you were from a proletarian background and and then you are in the red camp. That's the first step that then you have a head start. But if you're not and then you still have a way to to advance but first you have to cut ties with your bad family. You have to cut ties with your past. You have to denounce yourself. You have to give up yourself so that you are totally, totally in line with the party line. And then you may have a chance to advance. That's chilling because I'm afraid that that's a bit of a parallel in our society today or increasingly so.

Whatever the dominant ideological approach is. Today, yeah. If you want to advance, you'd better go along with the ideology, even if it's a lie, and you know it is a lie, and you know women is women and men is men. But if you want to advance, you'd better go along with that lie. As we finish up, you mentioned cancel culture a number of times through our conversation. It strikes me as one of the key instruments of what's happening here and, frankly, what was happening there. Tell me about that.

I believe that the real goal for the woke revolution or the American cultural revolution is to change the culture and to destroy everything in the past the traditional value the traditional family the traditional institutions, everything. So what happened in China is the four old that we talked about at least in my last interview. The old ideas, old tradition, old custom and old habits have to be destroyed. Why? So that it can be replaced by Maoism. And that's what's going on here today. They want to destroy

everything that is traditional and replace with the woke ideology, which is Marxist ideology. Only when they destroy everything, burn it down to the ground, can they build back, not better, but worse, so that they can take power. I want to go back to when I first became aware of you. You were, I guess, testifying. You were speaking at the Loudoun County School Board meeting. Why don't we talk about what you think is to be done in our

current moment? I know that is a big question and a lot of people ask that question and looking for a simple answer. There's no simple answer. I always say the first thing that we need to do is understand what is really happening. And I have to say, not everybody understands it. Not every conservative understands what's really going on. And you can't fight back something that you don't understand. And that's why I wrote that book, is to tell Americans what's going on in America is nothing new. It happened before. So only when you understand that, we can take the next step to expose it, and then we also need to take action and get organized. And I always tell people, start local. And the first and the most, most important thing is to get the right people in the school board. Because in order to win

this war, we have to win our school system, education system, because those children are the future of this country. Well, Xi-Wan Fleet, it's such a pleasure to have had you on again. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you all for joining Xi-Wan Fleet and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.