We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and if you'd like
to support our work, you can go on over the Federalist dot com and
sign up for the Federalist Community as well. Today we are joined by a
very special guest, see Van Fleet, who is out with a fascinating new
book called Mao's America, A Survivor's Warning. The cover of this book is
incredible, See Van Fleet. Welcome to Federalist Radio Hour. Thank you so
much for having me. Absolutely now, people should go out and buy the
book because it tells your personal story. For a little bit of a preview
of your personal story, though, could you tell us a little bit about
your background, your childhood, and how you ended up coming to America.
Yeah, it's a long story. I tried to make it as short as
possible. And I was born into the Communist China and when I was in
my first grade, the actually I had one semester of kind of a normal
education. Then cultural evolution started and my memory, it just almost like overnight
and everything turned upside down, which is exactly what happened to the country.
Everything turned upside down and school closed and for two years there was no school.
And so I really feel for the American kids who lost two years during
the COVID. I lost two years, and mild cut twelve years of public
education into ten because he did not be leaving education. What's the use of
it, you know, he wants to just inductionriate us and then there's no
need to learn anything. So my education was ten years and two years was
taken away from it, and so that's really my years of being a schoolgirl.
And it's the culture Revolution. When I graduated from high school, that
was nineteen seventy five. And there's nothing for us because the revolution destroyed the
whole country. There's no economy, no jobs, no nothing, and young
people. But consider problem. If you have too many young people doing nothing
in the city, you know, I'm going to create in this a bit
in work, cause problems. And so we were got rid of we were
sent to the countryside to be re educated by the peasants, the young people,
and I was only sixteen. So I was sent to the countryside,
and so I have to kill American. When you think about the countryside,
don't picture countryside as American countryside, beautiful, you know nature. Now,
that was primitive countryside. And people ask me how primitive. I said,
well, pretty much stone age and you basically were punished to do a hard
physical labor with the peasants, and supposedly through labor we're going to learn,
we're going to be a better communist. So I was there for three years
and after that more died, thank God. And then don't you, being
the successor, realized the only way to revive communists Chinese Communist Party was to
really open up and bring in capital. So one of the first things he
did is a reopened university. Is because universities were pretty much closed, and
so I was able to take examination and go to college when I was nineteen.
And after that I was given a job teaching in a college that trains
middle school high school teachers. And there in the early nineteen eighties, Americans
started coming in and the church organized a lot of those volunteer to come to
teach English during the summertime, and there I met a friend, an American
lady, and she helped me to get assistantship, and so in nineteen eighty
six I was able to come to America. Yeah, okay, so nineteen
eighty six and a lot of I think what you were describing, imagine was
playing out over the course of the nineteen seventies. You imagine. You mentioned
Mao's death, which I think was nineteen seventy six, And yes, so
I was actually listened to a podcast over the summer and the cultural and realized
how little history of the Cultural Revolution of Mao is taught in the United States.
I learned so much just on the sort of service level podcast that we
don't know about. I mean, it's such modern history. We're talking about
the nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties. I'm still a survivor. I'm still here.
Really, exactly, what do you think it is that Americans don't understand
or are there any particular parts of the Cultural Revolution you think Americans just don't
know about when it comes to the Cultural Revolution? Okay, I think the
Americans do not know much about communism period, and that that is by design
because our institutions higher education and increasingly now public education system has been controlled by
Maxist Marxists since the sixties. Actually, if you read my book, you're
really it's really kind of astonishing to see that while the China had our Culture
Revolution nineteen sixty six to nineteen seventy six, America was having its own culture
revolution, and with a different name, counterculture. It is the same kind
of Marxist revolution. And so after the sixty sixties and the early seventies,
counter revolution, after the Vietnam War, died down. And so those protesters,
those rioters, those radicals, they did not just disappear and just gave
up. Now, they took over the universities. They become the tenured professors.
And I talked about that in my book. So they had been country
owning the institution. And because they they train teachers, and the teachers go
to teach in public schools. So they train the generations of Marxists. And
they do not want to teach UH, the horror of communism. They don't
want to teach the evil of Marxism. That's why. And so it's by
design. So when I went to the London UH school board and UH and
give that, you know, less than a minute speech, and I compare
CRT with cultural revolution. Many people there in the meeting probably the first time
heard about cultural revolution. So in our education system we talk about slavery.
There's no kid or very few and know nothing about slavery. They know that.
Not only that they know slavery, they are taught that America is found
in our slavery according to Zin project, Howard Zin, and according to sixteen
nineteen that is the problem. Okay. And they know Nazi Germany, so
they know whoever is bad Nazi, Nazi Nazi. Yet they know nothing about
communism and that is by design. And the liberals or the progresses where the
progressives we're doing it. The conservatives were slip, so now we're doing catch
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the days of the Cultural Revolution, a lot of people picture, well we're
seeing it more. It seems like out of China, but these giant portraits
of Mao around every corner, and a country totally scrubbed of religion, what
sort of what did it look like, what did it feel like in China
at the time. You're talking about religion, right, religion culture in general?
Arts, yeah, bloody, yeah, yeah, I have to summarize
that in this way. Communism, Yeah, sure, it is an economics
system and its goal is to abolish private property, but more so that its
goal is to abolish abolish private thinking, meaning independent thinking, meaning critical thinking.
They want to abolish thinking. And that's what happened to people like you
know, to kids like me, and that happened to generations and given today
even today, brainwash is a tool that they depend on in order to control
the population. So I think this is just uh, get that out of
your mind. That it's all about redistribution of wealth. That is only a
minor part of it. The real part is control. And what can you
control a person? The best is control the mind. And so during the
cultural revolution, it's not that we are our thoughts are controlled by the government
that if we don't do the right things that come to me. Now it
comes to the point we control ourselves. We self censored. We do the
government job because we were indoctrinated and the brainwash of the coreerst and threatened,
intimidated or whatever. We control ourselves, so we become the perfect slaves for
them to rule over. And that is the real truth about communism. And
you mentioned earlier the American professors, and this is a huge part of your
book. It was a huge part of that viral moment you alluded to when
you went in front of the London County Board. The parallels between what you
saw, what you survived during the cultural revolution in China and the cultural revolution
that America is in the midst of at this moment. The professors in particular
have played a huge role here and Chris Rufo's new book does a good job
of so. He does a great job of outlining how many of these professors
that were sympathetic to MAO, if not right and not if not outright devoted
to MAO U ended up getting tenured and totally being in charge of students education
for decades. And they are in that position where they're sympathetic to MAO here
in the West because I think they are alwaists maoists, right, and they
are. We see this actually sometimes right now with support for for instance,
Hamas we're talking in the middle of this war, Why is it or what
would you say? Because they think that true communism has never been tried,
and that if it was tried, it would be utopic, it would be
a utopian it would be amazing. You lived through this in China. What
would you say to them? Yeah, I really, I'm glad you brought
it up about the pro Hamas demonstrations, and I just yesterday I think I
saw a map of where those demonstrations take place on campuses. It's pretty much
co two East and the West coast. The universities are of course, most
of them are elite, like Harvard Columbia. Okay, so what do I
say? This is the result of the inductrination and people say, what do
you mean? What do I mean? As Marxism is really rooted in divisions,
because if you control people, you really have to divide them, and
that's how you control. And how do they divide people. They divide people
by two groups, oppressors and oppressed. And that is absolutely anything they do
so that you always have a group of people who are deemed as the bad
one. They are pressors, and then the oppressed are the good one,
the victims, And that is a the essence of Marxism. Once you're indoctrinated
with that, you don't need any thinking. Why do you need to think?
If you're an individual, you have to make a judge value judgment on
issues or whatever. You are the one to make that decision, and that
based on your value system. But if you're indoctrinated, you just it's black
and white or not even black white thinking. It's just no thinking. All
you need to do is to deem one per one party oppressor, another party
oppressed, and then you support they are oppressed, and anything you do or
anything whoever does to the oppressor is justified, and that include killing, raping,
torturing, and kidnapping. That's how that's how we see that it's the
same people who support b men, it's the same people who support the radical
gender ideology, and it's the same people who support hamas because they operate on
the same system. But I thought that's kind of funny because we know how
they divide people is uh uh. They build this intersectionality right and and depend
on where you because everyone has more than one identity, so it depends on
how many times the intersect in the in the metrics and uh and then determined,
UH, are you're more oppressed or you're more oppressor? But I thought
it's kind of interesting. Just a few days ago there is a clash between
black UH Israelis and UH the Palestinians. I think this is going to throw
the UH those UH radical act vision UH. I think through them off.
How do they determine who is oppressor who is oppressed? I think they're going
to have that. I call that intersectionality misfunction. It's it's it's hard.
I don't know who is more oppressed, because that's how you determine who is
right and who is wrong. So that is the sad reality of the indoctrinated
generation. And it's not just one person, it's a generation. And the
look at the in Columbia, a hundred professors signed letters to support the Students
Organization who support a mass that's America. There's no right around. Everything depends
on the the doctrine, oppressor, and the press. That is what we
live, what I live through in China, and that's what makes their Chinese
Red Guards go after their teachers, go after their neighbors, go after even
their parents, because their parents, their teachers, their neighbors somehow ended up
in the wrong category of being the oppressor. And so I tell people today
we see I think in many ways, this is an opportunity for Americans to
see that what kind of monster we have created? And now they're on the
streets, and whenever they're on the streets, they're disruptive. But I said,
okay, today they are accepting violence, they're justifying violence, they are
celebrating violence. And that's just only short it away from commuting it. And
the Chinese Red Guards did it. They killed millions of people in the name
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Thirteen. A lot of people like to use the term cultural Marxism, and
in some ways now understood that before anybody that you know you can you can,
you have to in order to sort of create the economic utopia, you
have to sort of bulldoze the culture and so on. Those points about race
and gender and religion that you mentioned earlier. Why is that so central here
in America when we're looking at the cultural revolution and it's sort of the ways
that it may reflect Maoism and what you saw growing up. Why are those
radical tenets, you know, saying that boys can be girls and girls can
be boys. Why are those essential From the perspective of the communists. Yeah,
there are two types of communist revolution and then the classic one. When
people think about communist revolution, to think about violence, to think about armed
insurrection, and that's happened in Russia, happened in China, Pilba, North
Korea, Vietnam. Right, that is people had in mind when they think
about Marxist revolution. Yes, that's still it's still something that's being adapted.
And but to overthrow a country like America, I mean, anyone has any
you know, brain would think that would be difficult to have an armed insurrection
against the government, overthrow that way, and so the best way is not
the violence, but it is subversion through culture, through taking over the institution.
And that's where we are today. We did not hear a shot,
right, but our institution has been infiltrated. We did not hear a cannon
ball, but now our culture has been changed, fundamentally changed. It's because
they did not launch a violent Marxist revolution against America, but a culture,
a Marxist culture revolution, just like a lot of Maudi doing the culture revolution.
When did you first start noticing this in the United States? I know
you came over in the eighties, the Reagan era, when the Cold War
was about to end and the momentum was on the side of the West,
and you know, you're talking about the Loud and County stuff, which is
very, very recent and I think was surprising to so many people. But
when did you first start to say, here in the United States, there's
a cultural revolution afoot. Well, that took me a while, but I
did notice a lot of signs. And the first was the political correctness.
And so we were told that we should not see this, we should not
see this word, but instead we should see the other world. We should
not challenge this issue. This issue is untouchable and we can't even discuss it
and so and we know it, we all experienced it. But really the
turning point is twenty twenty, when it's no longer kind of a subtle here
there. It is a full blowing Marxist revolution to me, because the chaos
is always part of Marxist revolution. And the Red Guard did not just dismantle
the statues or changed the names of streets or institutions or their own names.
And they eventually got violent. And in the beginning it's kind of like here,
it's a looting and rioting, but even actually it becomes killing. Millions
of people died, and we are not there yet. By the way,
are very very close to what happened, uh in America. In China.
Yeah, that's a chilling warning, that's for sure. I'm wondering how technology.
So just for example, as we're talking today, Rand Paul, Senator
Rand Paul was grilling Alejandro Majorcus and FBI Director Christopher Ray on how they were
meeting with social media companies and engaging in efforts to perhaps encroach on constitutionally protected
free speech with the powers of the government. And that's in China. Right
now where Shoot and Pitting is very interested in sort of resurrecting the icon now
as an icon that is, it's a high tech dystopia. How essential this
is technology to communists or or how when you look at how technology has changed,
does that make you wonder what it would have been like if the cultural
Revolution of the sixties, seventies and eighties was done in a high tech society.
Oh yeah, terrifying. That would be terrifying. And in culture Revolution
everything was low tech, so low tech that I think it's a blessing.
Otherwise the revolution might become more violent and more people might die. I might
have died. Okay. So it was so low tech. Okay, So
there's no social media. And so what they did they did this called big
character poster. So you want to attack your teacher, you want to attack
your principles, you write on a big piece of paper, very big,
I mean huge and big letters, and you wrote them and you put on
a wall so everyone can come over and read it. That's the social media
back then. And so it's during the cultural evolution, And how did they
mobilize all these young people? You know, you can use radio, but
it's not that effective so what about it. It's very low tech. He
invited all these young people come to Beijing. He had we met with the
Red Guards and Camen Square eight times each time, millions of them all over
China. And I described that in my book. So travel was extremely expensive.
People just pretty much leave within the walking distance of where they live.
So he made it free for the Red Guards to travel to Beijing or anywhere
during a cultural evolution. That's how he motive mobilized the Red Guards. And
so it's all a high low tech and expensive too. Today, if you
want to be a totalitarian, you would love the technology, especially AI,
and that's what chp has. He can control every one, everyone's every move
with It's just a button, right, So if you identified because you said
something, you post something on social media, you're flat. Once you're flat,
the digital currency can be turned off. So you can't even buy food.
They don't have the rescue. You just can't survive in today's Chin.
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now. I think a lot of people see the direction of the country and
feel like it can't be stopped. That were the snowball has rolled too far
down the hill. But I want to ask you, you know what we
can do? And I want to ask that specifically in the context of this
question of sort of there's the left would really like to put government in control
of everything of our family lives of you know, if someone's a mom or
a dad, that unit, they want to make that a public affair rather
than a private affair. And so even in people's own family lives or people's
everyday lives, maybe they're not involved in politics, Like what can we do
as a society people who love America, we love freedom, to ensure that
the snowball stops rolling down the hill here. You know, there's a Again,
we're talking about decades of the progressive work and we just started to fight
back. But one of the things, and I talked about in my book
as well, is the reason that America becomes what it is today is the
Christianity has been under attack and the churches has been under attack. So many
young people left their faith and they have no moral campus. That's why they
can just use this simplified, no thinking involved doctrine to determine what's right,
what's wrong, oppressor versus oppressed. So I think the first thing is really
really read our churches and rebuild our families. I think I'll put church first
because without faith and the family is very hard to survive. But also in
their families, family and church, I mean yeah, family and religion are
the goals for the Marxist to destroy, and it is clearly decleared in Communist
manifesto. They want to abolish private property, abolish religion, and abolished family
and for good reason. That's how you destroy a society. So it's all
hard work. It's not something we built overnight, but that's where we should
spend our time and energy on. And then of course, education, we
have to take back our school. We have to stop the indoctrination, and
we have to deprogramming. Using the Hillary Clinton's word, we have to deprogram
those kids who have been programmed with this Marxist ideologist. So there's a lot
of work. I would say church, family, and school probably the most
important area that we should spend our energy and time on. Well, this
has been an incredibly helpful conversation. The book people should absolutely go and buy
it. It is out today. It's called called Maus America, a Survivor's
Warning. You've been listening to she Van Fleet, who's the author of that
book, and it's someone who's working you absolutely must follow she Thank you so
much for joining us. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. Absolutely,
you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily
Dashinski, culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the friend. You
got me right, well, you