In 2020, America went through a cultural revolution instantly recognizable to escapees from totalitarianism like Xi Van Fleet, who had lived through the terrors of Mao’s China as a schoolgirl, The New York Post reported.
Her new book, “Mao’s America,” is a grave and urgent warning that “the root of today’s ‘woke revolution,’ not to mention its ultimate goal, is Marxism followed by Communism.”
Mrs. Van Fleet is one of the Virginia moms who spoke to the Loudon County School Board in 2021 to warn them that critical race theory and other woke ideology forced on children is what she experienced during Mao’s murderous cultural revolution in China when she was a child.
“Chinese by birth, American by choice, survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, defender of liberty” is how she describes herself, having emigrated to America in 1996.
China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao Zedong, the Communist dictator who ruled from 1949 to 1976, lasted ten years and covered most of Van Fleet’s school years.
“In my memory, it also appeared to happen overnight, just like in America in 2020 … Overnight, we were told the country we lived in was rotten to the core and needed to be dismantled.
“Instead of looking for racists, we were ordered to look for ‘counterrevolutionaries’ …
“People turned against each other in search of enemies and in defense of Mao. Friends turned against friends, neighbors against neighbors, co-workers against co-workers, and family members turned against each other. As children, we were taught to report on family members, including our parents.”
“Cancel culture ensued, and on its path, anything that was not pure Maoist — including our Chinese heritage — was destroyed. Mobs toppled statues. Books and art were burned.”
When America tore itself apart in 2020, she knew it wasn’t spontaneous but deliberate.
She saw the lawless mobs after a black criminal died while under the white cop’s knee.
With mounting horror, she saw the lawless mobs set free to menace the populace. She recognized them as the homegrown version of Mao’s Red Guards, with the subsequent ongoing breakdown of law and order as the deliberate outcome.
“The summer of 2020 will forever be remembered as the summer of unrest and violence,” she writes.
“It runs parallel to the Red Guards’ Red Terror in August and September of 1966. Americans are now told to accept a new reality where the police have become villains and criminals have become victims who are allowed to roam freely in our cities and communities, terrorizing the citizens.”
Approving shoplifting and the after-effects of the pandemic were meant to destabilize law-abiding citizens and keep them in a perpetual state of confusion and fear.
“It is all about power,” she writes.
“It is about gaining power by first destabilizing a society through cultural subversion and upheaval.”
She saw children turn on parents, Thanksgiving family gatherings riven by division and discord, the public ritual denunciations of conservatives, the toppling of statues, the denigration of our history and of religion and the nuclear family, the absurd lies and gaslighting by our leaders accepted as holy writ, and above all, a very un-American censorship which crushed dissent.
“But wait,” she said to herself.
“I have seen all of this before …
“I know what it is that is happening here because I’ve seen this on both fronts: far-left progressive forces, using weapons such as CRT, wokeism, BLM, and cancel culture to root out conservatives and any resistance to their radical agenda.”
Van Fleet was also reading WeChat, a Chinese version of Facebook. He was struck by “how many Chinese people in China were laughing at what was going on in the US, calling it the ‘American cultural revolution.’ ”
The Chinese knew better than most Americans what was happening in our country, and they reveled in it.
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