A survivor of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution is bringing her message to Minnesota.
Xi Van Fleet is the author of “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning” and will be teaching a live online conference called “Mapping a Woke Free Future” sponsored by the Child Protection League on Saturday, Jan. 25 alongside Joy Pullman, executive editor of The Federalist.
Van Fleet spoke to Liz Collin ahead of the conference on a recent podcast.
“I know it sounds really, really interesting, but I have to give you bad news. We’re not going to have a woke-free world. And the reason is simple. As long as we have people who want to be taken care of by the government, as long as we have people who want to be victim, because victim give them power, and as long as we have people, the so-called intellectuals, who feel like they know a better way of living and they’re going to show the rest of us how to live, we’re going to have woke. Woke, in another word, is cultural Marxism. I’m very familiar with it because I was born in China, lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Cultural Revolution is the word we have here in America,” she said.
Van Fleet first made a name for herself speaking out against critical race theory at a Virginia school board meeting in 2021.
“I was born into the slavery of communism. I was born knowing nothing about freedom. And I was born into a world that I thought my life and my fate is totally in the hands of the party. And I thought that was just normal. And so when I was in my first grade, that’s when the Cultural Revolution started. It lasted for 10 years. By the time I graduated from high school, that’s all I know, was Cultural Revolution. When 2020 hit us, a lot of people were just bewildered and just wondered what was going on in our country. But everything looked so familiar to me because I lived it once before.
“What we are experiencing in America is America’s cultural revolution. Everything is very, very similar. They are not the same, but you can see they are from the same source. They are from the same Marxist playbook,” she added.
She also reflected on her feelings about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz whose connections to China became part of national news coverage after he was picked as Kamala Harris’s running mate.
“I think he did us a favor to really, to see someone and who absolutely is a true believer of Marxism, socialism made it into the presidential ticket. There are a lot of people who are pro-CCP China. A lot of them just turn a blind eye to totalitarianism in China because they want the money. They want to go there and make a fortune,” she said.
“But Walz is different. He’s a true believer. He really, really liked the system. And he made all those trips while taking the students there to learn what? To learn a better system. That’s what he told his students. In China, he said, everyone had the same, and that’s socialism. No, in China, everyone did not have the same. We never had the rights we take for granted, the right to free speech, to the same kind of legal justice. We know it’s always, always controlled by the party. And now today, after all this so-called economic reform, who got rich? Those in power. And that is what happened. That’s not the ‘same.’ Really, he is a Marxist and a socialist. And to me, it’s even more dangerous,” she said.
Van Fleet says the best way to fight back against wokeness is education.
“Only when we know the past can we understand the present and can we stop the history from repeating. And too many Americans do not know. And it’s not that they don’t know, they’re not taught. And why they’re not taught, that’s the good question. They are not taught because they, whoever controls the educational system, do not want them to know,” Van Fleet said.
You can register now for the online conference for Saturday, Jan. 25.
Liz Collin
Liz Collin has been a truth-teller for 20 years as a multi-Emmy-Award-winning reporter and anchor. Liz is a Worthington, Minnesota native who lives in the suburbs with her husband, son and loyal lab.
