By Lt. Colonel Eric Vogel, USAF ret, USAFA ’73
In the late 1960s, artist Andy Warhol predicted that, eventually, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame.
Xi Van Fleet’s first minute of renown occurred on June 8, 2021 at a public school board hearing in Loudon County, Virginia. In her statement to the board, Xi described the status of Loudon County schools as
“the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Critical race theory has its roots in Cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our schools.”
Fortunately, her fame has not been limited to just 15 minutes. Following her brief statement in Virginia, Xi was invited to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and a Heritage Action Sentinels Conference, both in 2021.
She also spoke before Moms for America and the Independent Women’s Forum. Moreover, she participated in a number of interviews with leading conservatives and engaged in a Twitter (X) war of words with Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project.
As an added benefit for readers concerned with the deterioration of our country’s culture and society–and at the urging of Newt Gingrich–she documented her journey in Mao’s America: a Survivor’s Warning.
Two key strengths combine to make Mao’s America an excellent read– among the best of recently published analyses of our county’s descent into Cultural Marxism.
First, her credibility is strong: she grew up in Communist China and lived through the disastrous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Second, her description of our own American Cultural Revolution as a Maoist revolution, not just a Marxist revolution, is enlightening.
Xi was born in 1960 to Chinese Communist Party bureaucrats. Always a good student, with a healthy outlook on life, her somewhat peaceful existence changed drastically from 1966-1976 during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Among other atrocities, his Little Red Book replaced her beloved novels. Intellectual growth was now offensive. “Oppression was [her] normal” as the Red guards, reeducation programs, and self-criticism raged.
Fortunately, when the Cultural Revolution ended, she was able to attend college and eventually receive permission to study English in the United States.
She was on her way to higher degrees, an American husband, American citizenship and a great appreciation for true freedom.
While in graduate school in the 1990s, Xi grew troubled with growing attacks on our basic American freedoms. An emphasis on political correctness was in full swing.
She grew even more apprehensive when her son was taught the requisite woke ideals in school.
Then, in 2012, as a member of her employer’s Diversity and Inclusion committee, she saw the corruption of that group; her employer was using the committee to push DEI and CRT. This was part of a countrywide trend, all leading to a “culture of conformity and fear…across the nation.”
Tired of it all, Xi ignored the Chinese proverb the bird who sticks its head out first gets shot, joined the Loudon County Republican Committee, and became an activist.
The second major strength of this book is Xi’s superb explanation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and her comparison of it to the one unfolding in today’s America.
She finds the similarities “stunning.” Both rely on “division, indoctrination, deception, coercion, [and] cancelation…”
Both revolutions aim to replace tradition with ideology, manipulate youth, destroy family and religion, instill fear and obtain total control and power.
The plan for both is to end in the same manner, with “loss of freedom and totalitarian rule.”
Xi experienced all of the above repressive measures while growing up in China and, to her dismay, began living them again in the United States.
In 1966, the CCP had banned police from suppressing “student movements”; Mao needed to use young people to foment his Cultural Revolution. Xi sees this action playing out in the “defund the police” movement.
She refers to the 1969 takeover of Cornell University as the day “American Red Guards were born,” and identifies them today in BLM and Antifa activists, as well as in student radicals.
At the very beginning of her book, Xi describes 2020 as the year of a “perfect storm“. With the death of George Floyd and the COVID pandemic–brought to us courtesy of China–the American Cultural Revolution, already present, exploded.
Just like the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution it “appeared to happen overnight.”
Perhaps, with the results of last November’s Presidential election, the tide has turned against the American Cultural Revolution.
However, as Xi warns us, “It is all about power.” Those with a goal of a totalitarian regime never give up.
For an excellent example of the American Cultural Revolution echoing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, see Forrest L. Marion’s “VMI’s Struggle Sessions Have Roots in Mao’s Cultural Revolution” on the STARRS website.
Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning by Xi Van Fleet
BOOK DESCRIPTION: An inspiring survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China makes a passionate case that history is eerily repeating itself as the Woke Revolution spreads across America.
Xi Van Fleet lived through the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a schoolgirl. Forced to the countryside with other young Chinese for re-education after high school, she later escaped communism and found freedom and new a life in America. But more than 30 years later, Xi disturbingly sees signs of the same Cultural Marxism that ravaged her birth country of China threatening to destroy the America she now calls home.
This is her dire warning to the United States.
Xi compellingly tells the story of two Cultural Revolutions: one driven by Mao during her childhood and the one unfolding in today’s America from the progressive left. With captivating personal stories and extensive historic research, Xi reveals the stunning similarities of these two revolutions. This fascinating book shows readers that both revolutions:
- Use Marxist tactics of division, indoctrination, deception, coercion, cancelation, subversion and violence.
- Aim to destroy the foundation of the traditional culture to replace it with Marxist ideologies.
- Weaponize youth, using them as their means to an end.
- Share the same goal of achieving absolute power at the expense of the people.
- Lead to the same ending: loss of freedom and totalitarian rule.
Readers will be captivated by the riveting personal story of a Chinese immigrant to the United States who overcame fear and reluctance to get involved in the movement to save America. Her political activism begins with a school board speech in 2021 against Critical Race Theory in Loudoun County, Virginia that unexpectedly goes viral and ignites national media attention. Xi now devotes her life to educating the American public on the shocking parallels between these two revolutions.
Because only when Americans understand what is really happening will they rise up and resist the communist takeover of America.
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