Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of the communist rule of ex-Chinese leader Mao Zedong, claimed that critical race theory is “the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.”
Remember when Hollywood activist Jane Fonda chortled that the coronavirus was “God’s gift to the left”?
That was back in October 2020, at the height of lockdowns and school closures, when the country was reeling from the violent BLM-Antifa riots over the summer.
It was no time for celebration, but clearly Hanoi Jane knew something that most Americans didn’t pick up at the time.
A new book out this week explains what leftist Fonda seemed to know back then, perhaps from her papered-over days as a Communist collaborator during the Vietnam War.
While we were sleeping, in 2020, America went through a cultural revolution that was instantly recognizable to escapees from totalitarianism like Xi Van Fleet, who had lived through the terrors of Mao’s China as a schoolgirl.
Her book, “Mao’s America,” is a five-alarm warning of the menace in our midst.
She is alarmed that most Americans do not see clearly what she does, that “the root of today’s ‘woke revolution,’ not to mention its ultimate goal, is Marxism followed by Communism.”
2021 woke-up call
You might remember Van Fleet as the plucky Virginia mom who burst onto the national stage in 2021 with a 60-second speech to the Loudon County School Board, warning that critical race theory and similar woke ideology being shoved down kids’ throats echoed Mao’s murderous Cultural Revolution in the China of her youth.
Her kids were grown by then and she was shy, but she felt a duty to warn the adopted country she loved about the menace it was facing.
“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 10 years, and covered most of Van Fleet’s school years.
“In my memory, it also appeared to happen overnight, just like it did here 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.”