Xi Van Fleet

Speaker 1 Shortly after George Floyd died, Memorial Day weekend 2020, people began to say that what was happening in the United States bore some resemblance to what happened in China 50 years ago, the cultural revolution with red guards and struggle sessions, public humiliations, public atonements, a kind of secular frenzy that looked very much like a hate-centered religious rite.

Speaker 1 The Cultural Revolution. But what's that overstatement? Well, Shee Van Fleet has seen both.
She's Chinese.

Speaker 1 She was seven years old in 1966 when the Cultural Revolution started and 17 when it ended with Mao's death in 1976. And along the way, she became one of its victims.

Speaker 1 She moved to this country, to Kentucky, in 1986, and she's been here ever since. So she has seen both revolutions firsthand and she's written a new book comparing them with a warning.

Speaker 1 It's called Mao's America. And we're grateful to have her, Shee Van Fleet, in the studio with us now.
She, thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker 2 Thank you. This is unbelievable that I'm here with you.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm so grateful you are. So you were seven years old when the Cultural Revolution started, the equivalent of first grade.

Speaker 1 When, what was the moment that you realized something strange and important was happening in China?

Speaker 2 Yes. To me, my memory is it happened overnight.
And overnight, I just noticed there's a lot of what's called big character posters everywhere. It's just big pieces of paper and with

Speaker 2 words written in very large letters so everyone can read it from distance, kind of like today's social media.

Speaker 1 Crude propaganda.

Speaker 2 Yes, it's really

Speaker 2 the posters is really of people

Speaker 2 denouncing others. In my school, I remember

Speaker 2 the papers were denouncing administrators or teachers. And it's overnight.
And it's just everywhere and in the cafeteria because that's the only place that a high wall that's indoor.

Speaker 2 And it's just from a ceiling, from the floor to the ceiling. And it's a class stopped.
And so one day I went to the classroom and I saw a note on the blackboard. No class for three days.

Speaker 2 And that three days lasted for two years. Two years? Two years.
No school.

Speaker 2 Because this school was, like all the other institutions, was shut down by the Red Guards. And the Red Guards And I think nowadays more and more Americans are familiar with that.

Speaker 2 And Red Guards were the kids from elementary school to universities. So they took over the country.
So there's no school for two years. So

Speaker 2 what did we do as a kid? We went to the street. So every day we went to the street, we watched the cultural revolution unfolding.

Speaker 2 And that is struggle sessions, parade of those people who were denounced and eventually become violence.

Speaker 1 So it was young people aiming their rage at the behest in the direction of the central government of Mao

Speaker 1 against not foreigners who threaten China, but against Chinese, against your own people.

Speaker 2 Yes. And it is difficult even for me to understand, and it took me a long time to understand what that cultural revolution was about.

Speaker 2 It is a revolution that Mao launched against CCP, against his own party, against his own government.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 Because he thought he was loosened influence. He thought he was no longer had absolute power.
So it's really a power struggle. And this time he did not use the armies.
He did not have to.

Speaker 2 He had tens of millions of young people that he have indoctrinated in the government school for the past 17 years. They're ready to go.
Just give them a call, say,

Speaker 2 you are now

Speaker 2 mobilized to defend the, to defend Mao and to defend communism. And that's

Speaker 2 how they got the kids all involved. And

Speaker 2 very familiar to Americans now, they dismantled the criminal justice system.

Speaker 2 No police.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 Just like a defunct police. So the Red Guards could do anything.
through no consequences. And eventually, they start to kill.

Speaker 2 Kill their teachers, kill their principals and they kill millions of people

Speaker 2 did I mean the normal people who are watching this your family I assume did anybody say anything about it nobody can say anything just like here why because Mao openly supported them and Mao had

Speaker 2 eight

Speaker 2 rallies to meet the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square eight times to declare that he was their red commander-in-chief. And those are his little red guards.

Speaker 1 So there's no dissent at all, at all, and things just get progressively crazier and crazier and crazier. Did people think that this was going to stop?

Speaker 2 No one knows. And I remember that in the first, and it started, it was somewhat peaceful because all they did was destroy

Speaker 2 the past. In Mao's words, it's the four olds.
Old ideas, old culture, old custom, and old habits. Get rid of them all.
That include destroy all the statues.

Speaker 2 The statues mostly in Buddhist statues, Christian statues, everything has to come down. And everything that is old has to be destroyed.

Speaker 2 So when they finish with the public spaces, they went to people's homes. An eyewitness, the Red Guards went to people's homes, took everything they thought was old.
Old is bad.

Speaker 2 Old is something that needs to be get rid of, including furniture, people's old photos,

Speaker 2 everything.

Speaker 2 Because the goal is to get rid of the past so we can replace it with the pure Maoism.

Speaker 1 I remember reading about the Cultural Revolution years ago, reading a biography of Mao, and was so struck by how much Mao hated the Chinese, hated the country, hated the history, hated the culture, and yet he was in charge of the country.

Speaker 1 And I thought that's very strange.

Speaker 2 So we were taught that Mao was our savior. Yes.
And we have songs saying that he was our savior. He made it possible for us to have a better life.
Why?

Speaker 2 Because he removed these three big mountains that had been suppressing Chinese people. There are the foreign imperialism, the old feudalism, and the bourgeois or capitalism.
He removed them all.

Speaker 2 That's why we could have such happy life. So no, no, no.
We never taught that

Speaker 2 he hate us. No, he did.
But we were taught we should be so grateful. And he was our not only savior during the Cultural Revolution.
He really became our God.

Speaker 1 Was there a, do you remember the moment that the Red Guard went from carrying slogans and yelling yelling at people, humiliating them, to the point where they went to killing people?

Speaker 1 Did that seem, were you shocked by that?

Speaker 2 Were people shocked by that? Actually, it started about the same time because they only, in the very beginning, it only started on campuses.

Speaker 2 And killing started as early as August of 1966, a few months after the Cultural Revolution. The first killing took place in a very prestigious middle school for girls.

Speaker 2 They, a bunch of girls, young girls, as young as 12, as old as 16, they beat, tortured, and killed their principal. That was in August 1966.
And I was elementary school student.

Speaker 2 So in my school, I did not say killing, but I did say attacks by the kids. And one of the things I remember so vividly is a teacher.

Speaker 2 She is a pretty teacher and she usually will dress kind of nicely and that's considered bourgeois. So the kids followed her, called her names, eventually they surrounded her and spit on her.

Speaker 2 So after a while she was covered with spit from head to toe and that was considered

Speaker 2 mild because she was not hurt physically. The The same time we heard killing happened in middle school, especially in universities.
But the police were told to stay away from campuses.

Speaker 2 And if the Red Guards hit them, they are not allowed to hit back,

Speaker 2 just like here.

Speaker 1 So what happened to you as you got older during this period?

Speaker 2 So the violence of the

Speaker 2 Red Guard movement

Speaker 2 lasted until 1969.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 By then, all the power was taken down by the Red Guard

Speaker 2 for Mao. So basically all the institutions all paralyzed.
There's no one in charge.

Speaker 2 So they thought, okay, now it's time for us to get some power. And then they start to fight each other for power.
And that's when it's getting really, really violent.

Speaker 2 It become almost like a civil war.

Speaker 2 They raided the military places and got real weapon. Before it was just sticks and stones and rocks, and now it's a real weapon.
And they started to kill each other.

Speaker 1 The different Red Guard factions.

Speaker 2 Factions, because they thought now it's time for

Speaker 2 us to get power. And then exactly, it's the faction.
It got so bad that tanks were deployed in cities where there's a lot of defense factory and that's not that far from where I live.

Speaker 2 And it was not safe by then for us to go to the street. One day, a straight bullet landed under our window when we have dinner.
So it was, and

Speaker 2 it was so bad that one day, I described in my book that we were outside and we heard this really awful Chinese funeral music. And then words came back that they have a corp parade.

Speaker 2 So one faction of the Red Guards tried to gain public sympathy. So they had the people that were killed by the other faction on the parade.
That is the time that Mao got rid of them.

Speaker 1 So they, basically, they were his creation. He gave them all this power

Speaker 1 to consolidate his own.

Speaker 1 But once they became a threat to him, he did what?

Speaker 2 He suppressed them.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Sent military to suppress them. So they,

Speaker 2 we don't know the number, the real number, but he killed tens of thousands of Red Guards. And then eventually he got them together, the leaders, and said, you disappointed me.
And then

Speaker 2 just like that, the whole movement was dismantled. And they all sent to the countryside.
Many of them sent to the virgin land like a gulags

Speaker 2 to be re-educated through physical labor. And that's how you become real communists.
You can't just do

Speaker 2 what you did in the city. You have to be really

Speaker 2 go through hard labor to become a real communist.

Speaker 2 And off they go. And

Speaker 2 from 1969,

Speaker 2 from that time on, all

Speaker 2 city kids from high school were sent to the countryside. And when I graduated from high school in 1975, I was too sent to the countryside and doing the physical labor that was very primitive.

Speaker 2 And I stayed there for three years after Mao died and after Deng Xiaoping reopened universities. That's how I could go to college to study.

Speaker 1 What did you do in the countryside?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 that is not a farm. So a lot of people think about countryside, they think about farm.
No.

Speaker 1 Yeah, countryside here is a good thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, no, no. It's a commune.

Speaker 2 Every rural area was arranged or organized as commune. Commune is collective farming.
So in the commune, there are a lot of production teams. And so it's all run by the CCP.

Speaker 2 So what I did is every day we would gather in the meeting place of the production team and the leader would tell us what to do. So we do their work and we get a point

Speaker 2 and then in the harvest time you use the point to get some produce,

Speaker 2 grain or potato or whatever. To get food.
To get food, yeah.

Speaker 2 So I not only experienced and witnessed the whole cultural revolution, I also get three years working in the fields and get to know how peasants live.

Speaker 2 Those peasants put Mao in power.

Speaker 2 He mobilized the whole peasantry and promised them free land. They put them in power.

Speaker 2 After the revolution succeeded in 1949, the peasants, the same people that put them into power, found them in the very bottom of the society.

Speaker 2 And they were the ones that could not leave their land because of the...

Speaker 2 It's called a hukou. It's like a household registration system.
So they could not, they become serfs. They just really live the life of the poorest.

Speaker 2 And so, and I kind of, in a way, I'm glad I get a chance to be with them and to know that this is communism. This is socialism.

Speaker 2 Supposedly to liberate them from the oppression of the oppressors, and they end up

Speaker 2 way more worse off than before. And during the famine in

Speaker 2 1959 to 1962, up to 50 of them starved to death, the peasants.

Speaker 1 50 million.

Speaker 2 50 million.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable.

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Speaker 1 You're there three years.

Speaker 1 So you're there from 75 to 78.

Speaker 1 And then eight years later, you're in the United States. How did you get here and why did you come here?

Speaker 2 So I was so lucky lucky that I was able to go to college at the age of 19 which is still not because I was sent to the countryside when I was only 16.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 after I got my degree I was given a job.

Speaker 2 You don't just get a job. You were given a job.
So I was given a job to teach in a teacher's college and in the early 80s more and more Americans

Speaker 2 come to China to volunteer to teach during the summer. So there I met

Speaker 2 a wonderful lady. Her name is Pat Naive.

Speaker 2 We become friends

Speaker 2 and she wanted to help me to come to America. And so

Speaker 2 true to her words, she did help me. She got assistantship for me and she sponsored me.
So in 1986,

Speaker 2 I never dreamed that would happen to me. And I got my visa and I was on my way to America.

Speaker 1 Amazing.

Speaker 2 Amazing.

Speaker 1 And you went to Kentucky.

Speaker 2 Kentucky. Western Kentucky University.

Speaker 1 So you lived here, you married an American, you lived in this country, it sounds happily from, let's just say, 86 to 2020.

Speaker 1 George Floyd gets killed. And all of a sudden, In a day, the country changes.

Speaker 1 What did you notice about those early days, late May, early June 2020? And what did it make you think as you watched it?

Speaker 2 It's a long time coming because I start to notice things earlier, even as early as 1990s. And I remember in a class that I took, and it's about special education, when the

Speaker 2 the Act of American Disability...

Speaker 1 The ADA, Americans with Disabilities, 1990, 91.

Speaker 2 Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 2 And the teacher was telling us, you know, now, you know, that they are protected. And

Speaker 2 as teachers,

Speaker 2 that we should, I just took the class, but there are others that were special ed teachers, that we should be very, very respectful. And we should never say blind.
We should say people with vision.

Speaker 2 impaired vision, something like that. I don't even remember.
And I was so impressed. I said the Americans are the nicest people.
They try, you know, to be nice and not

Speaker 2 hurt people's feelings. And now we know, right? During the process, and we were taught

Speaker 2 you can't say vision impaired. Now it's

Speaker 2 something different. And now you know what? What's the correct way to call those people? Blind.
Blind. Yeah, according to Stanford.
Now that is the correct way.

Speaker 2 So that just reminds me of the cultural revolution, that there is only one correct way of thinking, of talking, and if you don't do it, you'll get into trouble. So I just noticed that.

Speaker 1 So when the language started changing and people announced that, you know, from here on out we're calling X, Y,

Speaker 1 we're calling, I don't know, Peking, Beijing, or the Orient, Asia, or whatever, the blind, visually impaired, that reminded you of

Speaker 1 the Cultural Revolution.

Speaker 2 A little bit. I'm just saying, if you ask me what I noticed, that was something I noticed.
Because I noticed later, and you can't say that.

Speaker 2 There's so many things you can't say, or you have to say it differently. And who tell you? The authority tell you.
That's the correct way of saying things.

Speaker 2 And that's the correct way of basically thinking. Okay.
But still, I did not lose my sleep over those things. And until later.
And

Speaker 2 in my book, I did say Trent Lot. probably is the thing, the person that came to my mind that I can really pin down the moment I really say, this is kind of really like cultural revolution.

Speaker 2 I don't even know the story, whatever. He was called a racist because he said something.
I said, that really sounds like cultural revolution. You say something and your life is over.

Speaker 1 Trent Lott was a Republican senator from Mississippi who went to the funeral of the longest serving Republican senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond. and praised him at his funeral.

Speaker 1 And for that, he was...

Speaker 2 Forced to resign, right? Yeah. And

Speaker 2 that really made an impression on me. I think that's just like cultural revolution.

Speaker 2 But things get from bad to worse. And it was way before 2020 that I noticed things is really, really going wrong.
Because in the workplace, I was

Speaker 2 invited to be a member of DNI. Back then, it's DNI.

Speaker 2 diversity and inclusion council and I noticed every member is has identity there. And I just realized this is not really about

Speaker 2 making people work together, help people work together. It's more like

Speaker 2 political identity.

Speaker 2 But things, you know, got so much bad in the 2020. When I saw the Antifa and the BMM burning our cities, I said, this is no longer some kind of troubling sign here or there.

Speaker 2 This is a full-blowing Marxist revolution. This is exactly what I noticed or what I witnessed during the Cultural Revolution.
So I said, I've got to do something.

Speaker 2 I have to get involved one way or the other. And that's the end of 2020.
I got involved with the Loudoun Republican, Loudoun County Republican Committee.

Speaker 2 And after that, and we get emails, you know, ask us to go to school board. And I was never, never involved politically to go and give give a public speech.
It was just intimidating to me.

Speaker 2 But I got so much support from the members saying, I said, I don't even have children in school at that time. They said, it doesn't matter.
We're all

Speaker 2 taxpayers. And then you should

Speaker 2 go there and voice your opinion. So I said, okay, okay.

Speaker 5 I've been very alarmed about what's going on in our school. You are now teaching, training our children to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history.

Speaker 5 Growing up in Mouth China, all this seemed very familiar. The communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people.
The only difference is they use class instead of race.

Speaker 2 And back then, you know, you have to wear a mask. I said, thank God, I have to wear a mask and that cover, you know, hide myself.
So I went there and I did that. And I have no clue.

Speaker 2 I have no clue what happened after that.

Speaker 1 Well, I have to say, one of the features, just as a foreigner reading about it, of the cultural revolution that's that's always struck with me, is the mass hysteria,

Speaker 1 rational people becoming irrational,

Speaker 1 people going crazy, getting caught up in this frenzy and really believing things that are absurd. I want to show you a piece of tape

Speaker 1 from the United States. This is after George Floyd's drug overdose death.

Speaker 1 And this is a table of affluent white ladies who have paid money to be told they're racist. And I just want to get your view of this.
Watch this.

Speaker 6 Actually, Margaret, you didn't say yours. What? Your racist thing.

Speaker 6 Thing that you've done.

Speaker 2 Thought about or done.

Speaker 6 You have something inside of you that's not quite like that's racist. So you must have, you must have examples in your own life.

Speaker 7 I also work in environmental engineering. I have absolutely no people of color or minimal people of color, possibly the exclusion being slightly Hispanic.

Speaker 9 Saira doesn't like her attitudes.

Speaker 6 I can say a racist thing you've done because it just happened when you just talked to me the way you just did. This is how white women talk to us all the time.
These are microaggressions.

Speaker 7 When I say the exact same thing to my white girlfriend, who says the same exact thing.

Speaker 6 I don't care if you talk to everybody like that.

Speaker 6 The way you just spoke to me was straight up white supremacy. You actually just answered with racism.

Speaker 9 White supremacy is said to be hidden in innocuous phrases and banal behavior.

Speaker 9 The smallest things could be considered racist. It's enough that a person from a minority group feels insulted.

Speaker 6 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Sounding terribly white.

Speaker 8 I don't know that I was all that racist to start with, but

Speaker 8 I also

Speaker 8 would be more

Speaker 2 aware or hyper-aware of my

Speaker 8 thoughts or reactions to circumstances that would be racist.

Speaker 1 So here we have privileged white ladies being barked at by even more privileged non-white ladies about their sins, and the white ladies are loving it. Like, what is that?

Speaker 2 That's a struggle session. And that's something that everyone have to go through.

Speaker 2 During the Cultural Revolution, in the very beginning, that was those in power that was taken down by the Red Guards. They were struggled against in the so-called struggle session.
That was brutal.

Speaker 2 Some of them were killed right there in a public trial. But everyone have to go through the gentler form of struggle session, and that's called criticism and self-criticism.

Speaker 2 So as kids, we will have that kind of struggle session every week.

Speaker 2 And we will sit together and after referring some of the mouse quotes and we will criticize self, usually start with yourself, and you would say, and I did this and that, not quite up to the requirement by mouse mouse instruction.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I still have this bourgeois influence in me. And then everyone will join and say, yes, you're right.
You did this and this that day. You say this is this that day.
And then we go around.

Speaker 2 So we struggle against others and we against ourselves. So to get rid of every little incorrect thoughts.
from our mind. That's what it is.

Speaker 1 So China is, I mean, overwhelmingly Han Chinese. So you're not going to have racial lines in a country that's got one race.

Speaker 1 But if you take the race stuff out, white supremacy,

Speaker 2 it's identical, right? Identity politics. That's exactly what it is.
In China, it started with class.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 And they divide the whole population into two classes. red class and the black class and you can figure out pretty much what it means.
Red, the correct class, and black is the incorrect class.

Speaker 2 Those are the property owners, landlords, or people with bourgeois worldview. They're all black class.
So they are the enemy of the state.

Speaker 2 We all look alike, right? But that's how China was divided by Mao. And I'm talking about identity.
It's not something, you know, you say, okay, I'm black class.

Speaker 2 No, you are black class, and that is your identity, and that is required in every government document. Just like here, race, you have to figure out, you have to fill out

Speaker 2 what your race is. There, you have to fill out what your class is.

Speaker 2 And then you pass it down to your children and your children's children, and you will forever be the enemy of the state. And here,

Speaker 2 we still have class. You know, Bernie Sanders still talk about 1% versus 99%.

Speaker 2 But race is the most potent way to divide America. And that's just exactly the same thing that happened in China.

Speaker 1 Maybe another similarity is that the people who are screaming about privilege

Speaker 1 themselves have the most privilege. Right? I mean, so the people leading the struggle sections were obviously more privileged than the people being interrogated, correct?

Speaker 2 It's in the revolution. Most of the revolution, you can see who started.
It's usually the elite. Yes.
Mao was from a rich family. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 All his comrades are from a rich family. Only people from rich family had the time to entertain how to start a revolution.
Exactly same. And then they turned the people against the other elite.

Speaker 2 And that is always the case because they want people to fight against each other and that's how they control them.

Speaker 1 So as you're starting to notice these things, do you tell your husband who's American, your children who are born here, your friends who are American, do you say, wow, this looks like what I grew up with?

Speaker 1 Did you tell anybody that?

Speaker 2 That is a mistake that I've made. That for a long, long time, I never really talk much about my past.
Yes. Because I want to forget it myself.
It's unpleasant, it's awful.

Speaker 2 And no, I haven't shared a lot of the stories with my family and with my colleagues. A lot of them say, oh, she had such an interesting story because it's awful things that you want to forget.

Speaker 2 And that is the mistake that I made. And that is the mistake the conservatives made.
They never really

Speaker 2 fight for the schools to teach the horror of communism.

Speaker 2 People don't know. People have no idea.
And when I went to that school board and gave that speech,

Speaker 2 I think a lot of them have probably the first time heard such a thing as cultural revolution. Yes.

Speaker 2 That's why, that's I say, when we, people like me who live through communism, we saw through it right away. The Americans have no clue.

Speaker 2 That's why they don't realize what was happening here in 2020 and what's happening now is communist takeover. I mean, there's no doubt about it.
It is communist takeover.

Speaker 1 When you say that to Americans, how do they respond?

Speaker 2 I think think more and more started to see it. But many told me they never, they don't know anything about cultural revolution.
They know very little about communism.

Speaker 2 They thought communism was defeated. Berning Wall was torn down.
It's over.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think that's the mistake the conservative made.

Speaker 1 Tell us about your speech at the Loudoun event.

Speaker 2 It's only one minute. And so the only thing I can say is that what's happening in our school and how you push the CRT just to me is just the repeat of the cultural revolution.

Speaker 5 During the cultural revolution, I witnessed students and teachers again turn against each other. We changed school names to be politically correct.

Speaker 5 We were taught to denounce our heritage. The red guards destroy anything that is not communist, oaths, statues, books, and anything else.

Speaker 5 We are also encouraged to report on each other, just like the student equity ambassador program and the bias reporting system.

Speaker 5 This is indeed the American version of the Chinese communist, the Chinese cultural revolution. The critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism.
It should have no place in our schools.

Speaker 1 What kind of response did you get?

Speaker 2 Well, people appraed and my minute was over and I was just, you know, I really, I just left the meeting and because I took time off my work. I have to go back and make up the time.

Speaker 2 So I thought everyone knew it. Cultural revolution.
Who doesn't?

Speaker 2 Well, then I got a call in later and people want to interview. And I realized, my God, people just don't know.
Americans do not know.

Speaker 1 And why don't you think, why don't they know?

Speaker 2 I think it's on purpose. That is

Speaker 2 absolutely, to me, I'm convinced it's on purpose. They do not want to teach communism

Speaker 2 and they do not teach the horror or the history of communism because those are in control they are Marxists they want to use the same tactics to gain power that's why

Speaker 2 it's not taught it's not taught at all and as later from my Twitter follower and I see comments like in school we learned slavery and everyone knows slavery everyone knows Nazi Germany, but we never taught communism.

Speaker 2 And that's why people don't know what's going on today.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because that history has been withheld from them. Yes.

Speaker 1 Do you notice similarities

Speaker 1 between

Speaker 1 Mao's attempt to destroy Chinese culture, history, language, and our government's attempt to hide our history and change our history, lie about our history to the the population.

Speaker 2 That's exactly the same thing. History is so important and as we know that whoever control the present control the past and whoever controls the past control the future.
That's what

Speaker 2 CCP did when they took over China in 1949. They totally took over the educational system, they remade the curriculum, but what they really put their energy and the focus on is to rewrite history.

Speaker 2 So the history that I learned, and even today I have to get rid of all this misinformation that I received as a schoolgirl and later in college, all

Speaker 2 fictional. Absolutely fictional.

Speaker 2 But that's how they control you. And you believe, just as I said earlier, you believe that communists, the CCP is our savior.
Maui is our savior to

Speaker 2 save us, to liberate us. Now we heard that word too, right? To liberate us from the oppression of those, you know, impressionism, imperialism,

Speaker 2 feudalism, and capitalism. And you believe it.
And people ask me, did you question?

Speaker 2 I said, how could I question?

Speaker 2 I was told one thing, I have no access to other information. I could not think.

Speaker 2 Thinking, I think,

Speaker 2 requires you know something, you have information, you have different sources of information, and hopefully you can

Speaker 2 go through them and come up with your own conclusion. That's critical thinking, right? When you have only one information, you can't think.
I can only think one way. That's Mao's way.

Speaker 2 That's the correct way. And I have been like that for a long time.
Some people will say that they see through things during the culture of not me. I'm totally into it.

Speaker 2 I'm totally accept everything I was told. No matter how absurd it was, I accept it.
Because party can't be wrong. Mao can't be wrong.

Speaker 1 You've seen the whole cycle. I mean, you're born 10 years after the communist revolution, and

Speaker 1 you watched the whole cycle of it.

Speaker 1 So, given that, where do you think things are going in this country right now?

Speaker 1 Where are we in that progression?

Speaker 2 People ask me that a lot. You know, it is really, really decades in the making in America after the

Speaker 2 60s when the Marxists took over our universities. They have been creating generations, not just one generation, generations of Marxists or people who absolutely

Speaker 2 follow those ideologies. Now they are in our institutions, in every institutions, including educational system,

Speaker 2 corporations,

Speaker 2 government, and even our military. It is everywhere.
So I always say that the infiltration of communism is complete in this country. And so it is, it is really, really, we're in a dire situation.

Speaker 2 So what do we do?

Speaker 2 Well, we have to start from educating people. and to wake people up by telling them history, by telling them that what's going on here is nothing new.

Speaker 2 It happened before, not that long ago, it happened to me 50 years ago.

Speaker 2 The witness, the survivors are still here trying to tell American people this is communist revolution and the goal is to destroy this country and the goal is for the globalists, I always say globalists, to take power.

Speaker 1 Can it be stopped?

Speaker 2 It has to be stopped. So we have to wake people up, get involved, and sometimes I feel so,

Speaker 2 just feel like there's no hope, but many times I do feel like there's a great hope.

Speaker 2 I have been invited to talk to so many people around the country, and I met people who have parents who never involved politically, just like me, but they are involved now. They're fighting.

Speaker 2 They are fighting in the trenches. And so I say there's a hope.
There's a great hope. And we can't just fight because we kind of figure we might win.
To me, we have to fight because we believe in it.

Speaker 2 And what I believe in is America. And so there's no choice but to fight.

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Speaker 1 People who grew up in this country,

Speaker 1 most I know, assume

Speaker 1 that it can never get too out of control here. Yes, there's a revolution going on.
We're living through it right now.

Speaker 1 But because it's America, that revolution will never entail the killing of a lot of people. All revolutions end up killing a lot of people, but ours won't somehow.
What do you think?

Speaker 2 Just looking out on the streets and the campus today, look those people

Speaker 2 who have no empathy because their empathy is guided by the ideology. That ideology is Marxist ideology about oppressors and oppressed.

Speaker 2 The worldview is looking everything in terms of who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. And that is absolutely communist worldview.

Speaker 2 And for those who are oppressed, anything they do to the oppressed or the oppressor is justified. That includes murder,

Speaker 2 kidnap, and raping. This is all justified just like the Cultural Revolution.

Speaker 2 And that's what's happening in today's America. Those are the absolute result of decades of indoctrination.

Speaker 1 So people with no empathy will kill.

Speaker 2 Will kill. And today they're just out there accepting, justifying, and celebrating violence.
It's only a short step away from committing violence.

Speaker 2 Those kids in China that killed their principal, their teachers, they're not monsters. They're not.
They were, actually, most of them were from very prestigious universities and

Speaker 2 high schools.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, the parallels are unbelievable.

Speaker 2 Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 So the Chinese Harvard was more radical than the Chinese HVAC repair. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 absolutely. The cultural revolution started in Tsinghua and Beijing University, the top of the top.
And those

Speaker 2 Red Guards that committed murders were the best of the best, supposedly. And then they killed.
And there's

Speaker 2 one short step that we'll see this happen if we don't stop it.

Speaker 1 When you say that, do people take you seriously, do you think, in this country? Do they believe you?

Speaker 2 I think the people who listen to me, yes, they believe me. And that's why I think I play a very, very important role.

Speaker 2 Because I'm telling people not something I just learned from books or just I did some research. It is from my lived

Speaker 2 experience using the left terminology. I lived through it.
I saw it. And absolutely, this can happen here.
And this will if we don't stop it.

Speaker 1 So, but our system was supposed to, we were taught growing up that our system would never allow something like this to happen because it's a democracy and the people are in charge and you can vote them out if you don't like them.

Speaker 2 I know, I know. What do you think of that? I love what John Adams said.
Our system, our constitution is made for moral and religious people and it won't work for any other.

Speaker 2 And the constitution is still there. The rule of law is still there.
But the people have changed. And that is what's happening today.

Speaker 2 We are dealing with Marxist and communists who control our institution. And so they can use this democratic process and carry out their agenda and destroy everything on the path.

Speaker 1 So the process itself is irrelevant. It depends on the intent of the people.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and people have changed. The people have really changed.

Speaker 1 Why do you think that? Why do you think they've changed?

Speaker 2 Indoctrination. Decades.
And just think about it. From the 60s, it's several decades.

Speaker 2 That's the power of indoctrination. That's why I always tell people the only way for us to win the war is to get our school back, get our university back, and of course media.

Speaker 2 Because those are the institutions that

Speaker 2 are shaping people's mind.

Speaker 2 And they are all in the hands of Marxists.

Speaker 1 What motivates Marxists?

Speaker 2 Power.

Speaker 2 Power. When you think that way, everything is easier to see.
I did not know why Mao would just launch this revolution that destroyed everything, destroy people's lives, my life, and every power.

Speaker 2 Power.

Speaker 2 He wanted to launch the cultural revolution because he wanted to have absolute power. And he did.
In the process, he became not just the supreme leader, he become our God.

Speaker 1 In China today,

Speaker 1 are

Speaker 1 average people aware that the cultural revolution happened? Are they upset about it? Do they talk about it?

Speaker 2 That is a great question. I think it's so important for people to understand.
People in power, they want to control history and they want to erase inconvenient history. Yes.

Speaker 2 And that's exactly what happened in China. Young people were not taught cultural revolution.
And when they talk about it, they were told that was the anti-corruption campaign. That's it.

Speaker 2 And the young people, many of them, never heard about the Tian Minh massacre because it was not in the

Speaker 2 history book,

Speaker 2 not taught, forgotten. All the history of the atrocities by the CCP were not taught.
to the new generation.

Speaker 1 Is it, I mean,

Speaker 1 it's not very reassuring that the political party that killed tens of billions of people is still in power.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. Because they control the history.
Yeah. You don't know.
And young people don't know, and old people dare not to talk about it. And that's happening here.

Speaker 2 We don't know history. People who know,

Speaker 2 a lot of them don't want to talk about it.

Speaker 1 My last question to you.

Speaker 1 You survived all of this, this first revolution. What advice would you give to Americans for how to respond to our revolution right now happening in this country?

Speaker 2 I would say you understand what's going on. Only when you understand what's going on, you can fight back.
Otherwise, you can't fight something you don't understand.

Speaker 2 And it's not some kind of crazy kind of Democrats.

Speaker 2 They just do some crazy things. No.

Speaker 2 This is absolutely a full-blown communist revolution. And the goal is very simple.
It's just one, destroy this country so some people can have total control of power.

Speaker 1 So it has nothing to do with improving anybody's life? No.

Speaker 2 And if

Speaker 2 you want to save this country and save it for your children and your children's children, you have to get involved. You have to fight back.
As your life depends on it.

Speaker 1 With that, Shijin Van Fleet, thank you very much. Thank you.
And congratulations on this book. Thank you.
Horrifying as it is.

Speaker 10 It is.

Speaker 4 Thank you. Thank Thank you.