Xi Van Fleet is an American that immigrated from China as a University student more than three decades ago. Xi experienced the impact of Mao’s Cultural Revolution as a child growing up in China. When she was able to forge a life of freedom in the US, she thought she had once and for all escaped the troubles of tyranny. Unfortunately, she sees changes in American culture and society which cause her concern. She, and other immigrants from China or other countries with oppressive governments, are sounding alarms about where Western countries are headed. Their experiences and sensitivities to government encroachment over the lives of citizens are worth heeding. Mao’s America is Xi’s effort to share her experiences in both China and America to help us see where we should be concerned.

Pandemic lockdowns manifest many of these trends to average citizens. We saw how quickly our “rights” evaporated into thin air in service of the public good as defined by those in charged.

At the root of both Mao’s Cultural revolution (and all communist efforts) are tactics of Marxism which according to Xi include: division, indoctrination, deception, coercion, cancelation, subversion, and violence.

Mao’s Cultural Revolution or Maoism

The world of average citizens is turned upside down. Those that have operated for decades or generations on an understanding of what the rules of society are wake up one morning to see things have changed and they, the responsible ones, are now considered villains.

The population is broken down into two groups, those that are oppressed which only those claiming power can help and everyone else, the enemy, because they are deemed oppressors. In China, it was economic class that determined who was oppressor and oppressed. Mao wanted the masses, the workers, on his side and targeted landowners and producers as oppressors that must be taken down.

The country’s past was recast as a bad one that needed immediate and drastic change. Anything representing the past becomes a target of ridicule and fair game for being destroyed. The past is bad. Names of places, things, and even people are changed from the old to the new to signal commitment to the cause and condemnation of the past.

You either were a mouthpiece for Mao or weren’t allowed to speak. Dissenters were removed forcibly. Dissenters were re-educated. Public shaming is done to those that aren’t onside to not just silence them but to scare others into complying. Families were broken apart by encouraging children to report on parental behavior not aligned with the cause. Children “shared” their “education” with parents encouraging parents to get onside with the new way of doing things.

Education became indoctrination. Taught what to think, not how to think. Eliminate free thought and replace it with absolute obedience to authority. Textbooks were replaced with government mandated ideology. Any remaining academic subject was infused with ideology. Government controlled teacher education and the schools. Indoctrinate the teachers who then indoctrinated the students. Education about creating politically compliant masses (reflexive automatons) and not independent thinkers with intellectual ability (productive citizens).

Struggle sessions as synonymous with cancel culture. Conformity of thought and only one school of thought permissible, that dictated by the state. Those that conformed were rewarded, recognized, celebrated. Those that didn’t were ostracized and punished. Books banned, libraries closed, learning limited, and choices curtailed. Careers dictated, for example.

Parallel with indoctrination through education was the power of propaganda. There was no such thing as independent news. All information was state controlled. Media was simply the mouthpiece of Mao. So, too, this was the case with entertainment. Everything was distributed in service of Mao’s message. No other perspective was permissible to be presented. Citizens only heard one view, over and over, and over. Xi writes, “If you can orchestrate the words people use and how they use them, you can control their speech and therefore their thoughts.”

Religion(s) were attacked. No independent or spiritual thought was permissible. It was Mao’s philosophy and approach or nothing.

Political enemies were eliminated. One perspective only presented over and over and over.

The objective of Mao’s revolution is the same as any which is to gain power. Once power gained, then all is done in service of maintaining a monopoly on that power. It’s not to serve some greater good or to improve the lives of anyone other than those of the ruling class. The lives of the privileged few are improved while the masses are mired in misery. Millions of lives were lost under Mao’s disastrous “leadership.” The Chinese economy was destroyed and progress stalled.

Xi writes, “The parallels between the America of today and the China of the mid-1960s haunt me.” She asks of America, “How could a country, so beloved for its defense of individual rights, property rights, the Constitution, and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, allow such a deadly ideology to plant its seeds here?” Xi writes, “It is imperative that Americans today understand history, as we are currently making the same mistakes as those before us.”

American parallels. (The Long March, Frankfurt School of Economics, Herbert Marcuse, etc.) Emergence of “Critical Theory” coming from academia in the 1960s. The thrust was to be “critical” of every aspect of Western societies from religion to individual rights and freedoms, to capitalism, etc. The past wasn’t to be improved upon, it was to be torn down and replaced from scratch just like Mao sought in China.

Prioritize the oppressor/oppressed narrative but do so less about economic class and more on identity differences like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. In the US, this split is basically non-whites against whites. Race becomes what class was to Marx and Mao. A difference is that in the US the identity groups labeled as virtuous victims are the minority whereas Mao chose the oppressed as the majority of citizens.

The us versus them mentality is promoted. We’re not in this together as a nation of citizens but a warring faction of groups within a country. The oppressed are offered the virtue of victimhood. There are victims and villains. The victims are celebrated and told that they are being kept down by others. It is, therefore, their duty to fight back. Suffering is highlighted and the suggested response is anger at a particular group. Then the anger is fostered into hatred. Now the us versus them dynamic becomes a righteous assault of the aggrieved against the “villains.”

Xi writes, “Mao had his revolutionaries, known as the Red Guards, tailor-made for him from his government schools. The American progressives have theirs from the same place: government schools. They are the social justice warriors, the American Red Guards.” In the US, the social justice warriors include not just student activists but those in BLM and Antifa. They protest all over the place and become more and more brazen as witnessed during the George Floyd riots. Rule breaking is permissible as the ends justify the means.

When the cause is supreme, any means necessary becomes the mantra. Violence and lawlessness are ideas for which there’s belief. Individual rights are seen as selfish and part of the problem. The foundation of what built America is eroded. The justice system, too, becomes a weapon to wield in the battle. Opponents are a nuisance and must be shut down or eliminated in any possible way. If we can’t censor or shut them up, they are prosecuted. The window of what’s tolerable for ideas and opinions to discuss narrows to only what’s deemed acceptable by the establishment. Xi writes, “In today’s woke world, free speech is allowed as long you as you are aligned with the woke-sters. Otherwise, it is hate speech and needs to be banned.”

Xi suggests the good news is that the powers that be seem to have pushed too far, too fast and many in the population that were ignoring things are now becoming aware of what’s going on. They don’t like what they see and resistance is arriving. This offers hope. Average parents are waking up and getting involved in school conversations. Alternate forms of media are mushrooming up ringing alarm bells and informing greater numbers of the populace as to what’s going on. Traditional media has eroded its trust and viewership/readership has dropped precipitously. Some politicians and other dissidents are standing up and being heard. All is not lost. We need to all join the battle to push back against the creep of Marxist ideologies into Western societies.

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Mao's America: A Survivor’s Warning