Xi Van Fleet - Mao's America: A Survivor’s Warning

Hearts of Oak Podcast

Show Notes and Transcript

Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution, joins Hearts of Oak to share her harrowing experiences in China and discusses her book "Mao's America," which draws parallels between the Cultural Revolution and the current woke movement in America.
Fresh from a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, which has amassed a whopping 5M+ views on X/Twitter, Xi recounts to us the chaos and fear of the Cultural Revolution, comparing the Red Guards in China to modern movements like BLM and Antifa, exposing the manipulation of youth for political gain.
She warns against the destructive nature of cancel culture and emphasizes the importance of preserving American values.
Xi reflects on her journey to America and addresses the impact of communist regimes on families and personal freedoms and stresses the need to resist authoritarian control for the sake of freedom and democracy.

Xi Van Fleet describes herself as “Chinese by birth; American by choice, survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, defender of liberty.” She was born in China, lived through the Cultural Revolution, and was sent to work in the countryside at the age of 16. After Mao’s death she was able to go to college to study English and has lived in the United States since 1986. In 2021, she delivered a school board speech in Loudoun County, Virginia against Critical Race Theory that went viral and ignited national conservative media attention. She now devotes her time and energies full time to warning about the parallels between Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China and what’s unfolding in America today.

Connect with Xi...
X/Twitter x.com/XVanFleet

*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.

Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on X twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin

(Hearts of Oak)

And I'm delighted to have Xi Van Fleet with us today. Xi, thank you so much for joining us today.

(Xi van Fleet)

Well, thank you so much for finding me all the way from the UK.

This is amazing.

I will thank Karen Siegemund.

I know you were speaking at an AFA conference recently, and Karen was singing your praises.

And when we talked last week or a week before, she had mentioned you.

So, it's wonderful to have you.

I've been having the pleasure of listening to your book.

But obviously, before we get into that, people can find you at your Twitter handle, @XVanFleet.

And that is what they will find if they head over.

Your book is Mao's America.

It is available everywhere in the UK.

I know I listened to it as a audio book.

You can get as a hardback also.

Childhood in China

And I found it fascinating and riveting.

But maybe we can jump in.

It's you describe it as a an aspiring survivor of Mao's cultural revolution in china, and you do in it make a a passionate case that history is repeating itself as the woke revolution spreads across America and you lived through the cultural revolution; you fled, you left China and you've spent many, many years in America.

I think in Virginia where I've been many times in the last two years actually all over Virginia.

I know Virginia more than any other state in the US but, maybe I can ask you first; tell us about growing up in China.

Our audience, 50% U.S., 50% U.K. Few of them will have any idea of what that was like.

But maybe what are some of your childhood memories of growing up in China?

Well, the first thing I can say is that before the Cultural Revolution, my memory was – I just don't have much memory because one thing, it was not –, not a lot going on.

So, in a way, I call it eventless, but it's not.

It's not eventless.

But for a child like me, it's relatively calm.

So to me, my memory kind of started in the cultural revolution.

And to me, it's overnight.

And I was not even seven.

And people question, how can you remember?

Yes, you remember when your whole world was turned upside down.

And it's just almost overnight and class was canceled.

One day I went to the classroom and I saw the writing on the blackboard by the teacher that there's no class for three days.

And that three days lasted for two years and for some others, as long as four years.

And it's absolute chaos.

Why school was closed?

Because no one was running the school.

All the teachers and administrators were ousted by who?

By the kids.

Kids.

So, for me, it's elementary school.

And I witnessed some violence, but it's not lethal, of course.

But that's not the case in middle school and in universities.

And we heard stories, even though I was too little to go to those places and witness the violence.

But many, many people died.

The teachers, professors, and school administrators in the hands of the Red Guards.

And as I mentioned in my book, the first killing happened in the middle school for girls in Beijing.

Just girls, young girls, 12 to 16, somehow was able to just turn around and regard their principals as enemies.

And they would hate their principal so much that they want to kill her, and they did.

And meanwhile, it's chaos.

It's absolute chaos everywhere.

So since there's no class, so we just went to the street.

And every day we witnessed some kind of a struggle session.

I think this term has come into the English vocabulary, struggle session.

It's public trial of the presumed enemy of the state.

And it can be anyone.

So, one day, and I was with my friend looking at all this parade of the enemies and found out, and I noticed that's her father, our neighbour.

And that really brought close to me that anyone, anyone can be the enemy.

And I was just really praying my father wouldn't make any mistakes so that he would be paraded like that.

And then destruction, destruction everywhere.

everywhere, and that lasted.

That's pretty much my memory of the 10 years of Cultural Revolution, and because it lasted until Mao's death in 1976.

I graduated from high school in 1975, and what to do after you graduate?

Everyone had to go to the countryside because the Cultural revolution has destroyed all the economy; everything.

There's no job.

And for the young people, there's only one way out, go to the countryside, and of course, Mao said, "you go to the countryside and get re-educated by the peasants to be a better communist."

And again, the word re-education now made into the English vocabulary.

Tell us about that.

That term re-education is a term that in the West we don't really understand, but is a powerful concept, I guess, by the government.

Tell us what re-education meant in China, as you saw it.

Actually, this word, they have a different, but there are different words for the same concept.

It started with thought reform.

Thought reform is something that everyone, everyone had to go through after the communists took over China.

So, because we all had bad thoughts, bad education, bad ideas put in our head, and that's not good.

It's not allowed.

So, we all have to go through this process called thought reform.

Or you can say indoctrination, brainwash, whatever.

And so during the Cultural Revolution, they had a new term for it.

It's re-education.

Sounds better.

And so what you do?

You get your re-education through physical labor.

Go to the countryside.

And the culture revolution, that was 66 to 76, 1966 to 1976.

So, that was your whole time in high school growing up.

That's all.

But then before, it wasn't that this suddenly comes in and everything changes.

The Great Leap Forward was before that.

And the amount of people that died, tens of millions, that's a number so difficult for anyone who's never experienced that to understand.

But I've seen figures of 40, 50 million.

It's huge.

It's huge.

Yeah.

And I'm glad you mentioned it.

Why Mao want to launch this cultural revolution?

I did not know.

Many people did not know.

We just went through it.

We suffered.

And we did not know why.

I had no idea until way after I came here, when I was able to read different sources of materials.

And then I said, my God.

It took, you know, I went through this whole disaster, this catastrophe, and suffered so much, everyone, and now I know why.

Let me go back to the Great Leap Forward that you mentioned, and that was in the late 50s and early 60s that Mao launched this movement called Great Leap Forward.

What he wanted to do, he wanted to modernize China.

And, okay, modernize not to raise the living standard for the people.

No, he wanted to do one thing, one thing only.

He wanted to produce steel.

And he wanted to produce steel so that, and the plan was that in 15 years, in 10 years, we'll surpass the production in the UK, and 15 years, surpass the United States.

Why steal?

Why not something else?

Of course, steel is going to be useful for his weapon, for whatever, for his power.

So, everyone has to do that.

Everyone, school kids, urban dwellers, peasants, everyone has to do one thing.

The whole country mobilized to do one thing, to make steel.

And how do you make steel?

Yo u make a homemade furnace, backyard, and you get doorknobs and kitchen utensils, whatever, and throw it into the furnace and come out junk, of course.

So, that lasted like two years and a total failure.

Not just that, all the crops failed because no one was working in the fields.

So up to 50, we don't know the number.

We would never know the number because the numbers will never be released unless, you know, CCP is out of power.

Up to 50 million people starved to death.

So, for a dictatorship, that's still a big deal.

It is a big deal.

You know, so Mao was forced to take a back seat.

And so let someone else, which was the president of China, Liu Shaoqi, took over and to recover from that disaster, focused on economy.

That was 1962.

And as a dictator, Mao was not going to take it.

He wanted his power, not just power.

He still had power.

He wanted absolute power.

And that was his reason to launch the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution was for one reason alone, get power back from his political, he considered them political enemy.

So it's all about power.

And that is exactly what happened in the West, of course, including UK.

Some people want power.

They want not just power, but absolute and permanent power.

And that's why it's so similar.

And what do they do?

You know, they use the young people.

They use the youth, the indoctrinated youth.

And in China, it's Red Guards.

In the West, it's BLMers, Antifa, Social Justice Warriors.

I don't know.

Okay, you may have some other names.

It's all the same, all the same.

Now, they are pro-Hamas activists.

They're all the same.

They're just like the Red Guards.

They came from the same source, government schools, from the same indoctrination, Marxist-Communist indoctrination.

You mentioned the Red Guards, and if people have read the book and understand, I think your book is a great eye-opener into the background of Communist China that most people have no idea about.

But you have a whole chapter talking about the Red Guards and the rallies you went to, and that was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Were the Red Guards, I know you're very young at this stage, but were they part of the Great Leap Forward, what had happened before, or did they just come around the Cultural Revolution and were Mao's kind of personal guards or personal army?

Yeah, no, they were too young for the, most of them were too young for the Great Leap Forward.

And maybe some college students still participated as a little kid.

But, those are the kids that went through t he indoctrination.

By then, in 1966, Mao had control of the education system for 17 years.

That's enough to produce a whole generation of brainwashed, indoctrinated youth who knew nothing, nothing, but Mao was their great leader.

Not only great leader, Mao was their real father, Mao was their god and their only purpose of life is follow Mao's instruction and do whatever Mao asked them to do.

And what Mao wanted them to do?

Mao wants them to take the power off the hands of those CCP bureaucrats.

That's what it is.

So, And as young people, as students, whenever you think people in power, you think about your teacher first, because the teacher was the one in the classroom tell you what to do every day.

And then the school administrations.

So, that's what they started with.

They started to take power from those in the universities or schools, and then they go to the larger society and everyone.

This is really hard to understand, but that's the fact that the Cultural Revolution was a revolution against the CCP, against the CCP government, against the CCP's institutions, because Mao wanted his power from the hands of those he no longer trusted.

And the Red Guards were just used as political pawns.

Just like today, those things, students think they are doing something that for some great cause.

They don't know history.

They have no clue.

If they knew anything of the Cultural Revolution, they would say, 'oh, maybe this is history repeating.'

It is history repeating for people who know, for people who lived through it.

Well, yeah, and another concept used in the book, which people understand today, and you've applied it back then, is cancel culture, and that's in Chapter 7.

And you talk about in China, I'll talk about there and then we'll take it up to the present and what we see, but you talk about destroying the four olds.

Tell us about that.

Yes.

And so people think cancel culture is something new.

It's not.

In China, it has a different name.

It's called smashing the four olds.

Old ideas, old tradition, old custom, and old habits.

It is really the Chinese civilization, Chinese traditional culture.

So, everything that is not communist has to be destroyed.

Everything.

And again, for the kids, what you go first, you go something obvious.

You go after the statues.

Yeah, what statues?

And in China, there are not as many statues in the public places as in the West.

They are mostly in temples and churches.

They went into the temples and mostly Buddhist temples, Confucian temples with statues destroyed them and church destroyed them.

And so when I saw what's going on in the West, I just hope they knew a little bit of history, that this has been done before and then change names.

And so, because any traditional names is considered for old then has to be destroyed.

And names of streets, institutions, even personal names.

I'm sure that happened in UK, Okay, but that happened everywhere in the United States, in Virginia.

Because in Virginia, a lot of schools were named after the founding fathers who are Virginians and just have to change them.

And we did the same thing in China.

The names of streets are changing into anti-imperial street, revolutionary street, whatever.

And I saw that, absolutely.

And then people really have problem figuring out where to meet because the name keep changing.

It's just very, very confusing chaos.

And then people also ask me, you know, anyone to stop them?

Well...?

Defund the police.

Here we call it defund the police.

There it's called smashing the criminal justice systems.

All the law enforcement was dismantled.

There's no one to stop the Red Guards.

And who can stop it?

Because, Mao declared he was the red commander-in-chief for his little red guards.

No one dared to stop them.

And that's, again, that's what's happening here.

Yeah, that's exactly what's happening here.

The Democratic Party in the United States, the Democratic Party is behind, behind the BMM, behind the Antifa, they're behind all the student movement.

That's why, you know, and then the conservatives, we back the blue. But the blue, it actually will have orders not to do anything, just like China.

They I want to pick up on some other concepts of the book, but you start the book talking about that experience of speaking in Loudoun County at those school board meetings.

What prompted you to do that?

Because to speak publicly is quite a thing for someone who hasn't spoken, and the vast majority of people have not.

But, I enjoy doing videos of people.

I don't necessarily enjoy speaking publicly.

And that is a very different thing.

So, what led you and persuaded you that you had to speak publicly?

Yeah, thank you.

That's a good question.

And I now, I speak everywhere and I'm speaking to you now, but I never dreamed that is something I dare to do.

I was as quiet as a mouse, like typical Asian immigrant.

I just mind my own business.

And also when I came here in 1986, I had this idea that I left communism behind me and I come to this greatest country on earth and a country, the freedom will be guaranteed. There's nothing to worry.

And I never really pay much attention to politics.

Until you start to see science here and there. And then probably my earliest memory would be the, political correctness, that we were told that we have to say certain things, certain ways, and they keep changing the rule.

So, and I just feel like that's just kind of like cultural revolution.

But still, I did not really lose my sleep over those things, and but it's become more and more and not just you know in the media but my workplace in my child school and in my immediate environment I saw this kind of thing that remind me of cultural revolution still I did not do anything never thought I would do anything until 2020, until 2020.

And when I saw the cities being burned and the state of violence, the riots, the absolute slogan that is nothing short of communist slogans.

I just could not sit back anymore.

And so I, I decided to get involved, but only, you know, small steps.

I got involved with local conservative organizations and then went to the school board.

And even for the school board, I thought, well, you know, it's local.

It's local, you know, it's my county's school board.

And I was so thankful I had to have, they required to wear the mask.

I said, thank goodness.

So no one knew what I really looked like.

And it was very nerve-wracking, but i finished that I said okay i did my duty.

I have no idea that it went viral.

I thought why it went viral, everybody knew everybody knew this is like cultural revolution, well, well, well, well, what a surprise that I found out that people have no idea and most of the people in that room in the school board meeting in Rome, probably the first time they heard about the Cultural Revolution.

And then, of course, Fox News called, and then people want to know more, and I still feel like, you know, even though I was invited to talk and an interview here and there, I just don't think it's enough, and I went to one meeting, it's a conservative meeting, and I was talking about the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards, 4-0s, and I noticed people down there, you know, the audience, they look like, what?

I said, no, no, no.

It is not something that people just can learn in a short meeting here or there, so that's the time I said, I have to do more.

And never ever, just like I never dreamed of speak publicly, I never dreamed of writing a book.

But I feel like I got to, got to, I have to.

And so in 2022, spring of 2022, I quit my job.

I just decided this is what I'm called to do.

And I spent a whole year and had that book down.

And it must, I mean, to go from living in the US for many years, just getting on with your own business, your own life, family, all of that, to speaking at this and then ending up on a show like with Tucker.

That is a, probably if you look back, you'd think, would you have made the same decision?

Because, we don't know where our actions lead.

We don't know.

But you end up where you are, and it must be a pleasant surprise, obviously.

Well, the only thing I can say is it's God's will.

I really, if I were told before I went to the school board that I will be asked to speak on live TV on Fox, I would say, no, no way.

I would quit right there.

You know, this is not... But this also is a very humbling experience.

And I really realized it's just really nothing about me. It is all about the country, not just the United States, about the West.

And so...

God's will.

I have no idea.

I have made so many times, oh, I made a flop myself, many, many times.

I don't care.

I don't care at this point.

It's not about me.

It's not about me.

It's about my message.

If I can get the message out, I'll do anything.

Can I go in back, because you mentioned You mention in your book, I think, a conversation with your father, and he said something or a discussion that made you realize that he didn't necessarily accept everything.

And I'm wondering for you growing up in that environment under Mao, what made you begin to question?

What made you begin to ask?

Because you're not supposed to ask questions.

You're supposed to accept everything.

You obviously were someone who may be asked, what was that like and what kind of questions did you have?

I did not ask.

There are people that are smarter than I am or they're just more politically sensitive than I was.

I was just the last one to realize anything.

But I did have one experience because people ask me, what did your parents tell you during the Cultural Revolution, with all the chaos going on?

Nothing, nothing, because the culture is that anyone can be a snitcher, that it can be your family and it can be your spouse, can be your children, can be your parents, just anyone.

And parents, smart parents don't talk to their kids.

So, we never talk, discuss anything serious.

It's about just daily routine.

So I never really know.

Even today, my father passed away 20 some years ago.

I really wish I had asked him some questions.

Never.

So, I did not know where he stand.

But one day I was doing exactly what I was indoctrinated to do.

I was watching everyone else as potential counter revolutionaries.

So, in my diary, I recorded there's someone making some remarks, and I think it's anti-party, it's anti-socialism, it's kind of bad.

And so my father was a professional writer.

He worked in the propaganda department.

It's called propaganda department.

Yeah, he wrote articles for the party and for speeches, you know, whatever.

So, he would encourage me to write diary and he would go over and correct to improve my writing.

And then when he saw that, he was kicked out very serious.

And he said, do you plan to report this person?

I thought he would praise me for doing the right thing to record, you know, someone saying something not politically correct.

And that's the only conversation I kind of realized he did not approve what was going on.

But, we never had deeper discussion.

That is how bad it is.

I just feel like there's so much is lost because there's no real communication between my father and the three of us, my siblings.

Because it's just not safe.

It's not safe to talk about serious stuff with your kids.

Chapter 8 talks about family.

And I know from talking to my wife, who grew up in Bulgaria, and those who live behind the Iron Curtain, the mistrust, I guess, and they've learned that up to 10% of family members were working for the government.

Turning Families Against Each Other

You talk about that, about how the Mao regime, I guess, turned families against each other.

Were you aware of that?

Is that something you look back and understand now?

What was that like at the time?

Yeah.

That's what we were taught all our lives from kindergarten, that we have enemy everywhere.

The enemy always will take any opportunity to overthrow our government and take us back to capitalism.

And capitalism is where everyone suffers.

And so we're trained to look out for signs, for remarks, for behavior, for gestures, and, you know, that we're supposed to report.

That includes everybody. That includes your parents, your siblings, your relatives.

And, yes, and it's normal.

It's normal.

It's considered politically correct.

So, yes, we look out for anything that is not.

Really proved by the party.

And that is, I'm just so heartbroken when I see the same thing happening here.

At my former workplace, we had this DNI, back then it was called the Diversity and Inclusion Council.

And we were told, and I was included, recruited to be a member because I have identity, you know, I am a minority.

So, it's say, see something, say something.

And see what?

See racist comment.

So, if you hear any co-workers have racist comment, you're supposed to report to the council.

And this is exactly the same thing.

I'm sure in your case, it's exactly the same, that you're encouraged and that become a culture.

And that's a communist culture.

That's Marxist culture because communism, Marxism depend on the mistrust of the people to control them.

Absolutely.

And yeah, so Bulgaria, yeah.

Any communist country.

When I post something, I always hear people from all former or still communist country.

You know, say, yeah, this happened in Romania.

Yes, this happened in Cuba.

Yes, it happened in all communist countries.

And there's so many parts you talk about.

I get the land reform was partially destroying and taking away the right, personal right to own property.

You talk about the destruction of the family, and that was supposed to be the

Destruction of Culture and Religion community and not the nuclear family.

Then you go and talk about destruction of religion.

And there are so many parts of kind of what makes a culture, what unites people, makes them a people.

And it seems so at every turn that Mao was seeking to remove those building blocks, I guess, of society.

Yes.

Well, that's not something that they hide.

That's what they say in the Communist Manifesto.

They want to destroy the private ownership, and then they want to destroy family, and they want to destroy religion.

I think it is still there's so many people today in the West believe that Marxist is an economic theory.

It's not.

It's a religion.

It is a religion.

Above all, they want to destroy Christianity, the foundation of the Western civilization.

And only when they destroy religion can they destroy the rest.

And that's what we see today.

What was it like coming to America?

Because you grew up and you come to America and you see a church on every street corner, I guess, in many cities, in many towns.

Obviously, China, very different.

That is not accepted.

So, what was that like coming over and seeing this kind of something new that

Discovering Churches in America

you hadn't maybe come across before?

Yeah, it was amazing.

And I went to the first town I went to is a small town in Kentucky.

And it's every block, every other block, there's a church.

I was thinking, OK, you know, if you have a church, you have one central church.

And then everybody go that.

That's my way of thinking, because everything is centralized, everything.

Why are there so many?

You know, and it's just amazed me.

But later, especially during the writing of the book, I realized that was like China before.

Every other block, you will have a temple and different kind of temple.

You may have a Buddhist temple.

You may have a Confucius temple or Taoist temple.

And you have a church.

That was normal in most societies.

And that's what I, when I travel around the world, that's what I saw.

So, you know, if I go to a Muslim country, a mosque, I saw, what's it called?

In Islam, it's a mosque.

Yes, it's a mosque.

Yeah, and everywhere.

That was China.

Every civilization has to build on some kind of faith that people share.

And so I missed it because why?

They destroyed all of it, absolutely destroyed it.

And as in the remaining temples in my city, they were turned into parks.

And so I went then and thinking this is just a park.

It's for relaxing and it's for, you know, just entertainment.

And those statues, they were just superstitions and it's just backward thinking in old days.

So, that is how they destroyed the people's faith, not just religion.

In the countryside, all those temples are all gone, gone, gone.

But it still took me a long time to really, really understand why Christianity is so important to the findings of America.

And I have to say, I went through the process that you call a simulation, because I wanted so much, to understand.

I wanted so much to be American.

So, I took the time and I took the effort to understand it, to read the books.

Especially in Virginia, as you said, you love Virginia.

I feel so attached to Virginia because the history, America started in Virginia.

And I just tried to visit all those places of the founding fathers and understand what makes this country so unique need that.

I want to do anything to come here.

And that's something that the left has destroyed.

They destroyed assimilation and replaced it with multiculturalism.

Same in UK.

What is multiculturalism?

Basically, say every culture is the same.

It doesn't matter.

And if it's a communist culture, it's just as good as American culture or the Western civilization.

And so, I I think that a lot of the newer immigrants were encouraged not to know anything about the American tradition, the American values, and stick to their own, which obviously they choose to abandon to come to this country.

I think that they have been very, very successful.

Not only the new immigrants know nothing or don't want to know anything about the Western civilization and the young people that born, grew up in the West know nothing about their heritage.

And the only thing they know is indoctrination, Marxism, communism.

That's why they're so successful.

No, exactly.

Just a curious question.

You came to the States in 86, and you talk in your book about trying to do that and managing, and everyone was so delighted for you because it is the American dream.

Wherever you go in the world, America is America.

But what led you to actually applying and wanting to come to America?

Well, also I described in my book because it is, no matter what kind of indoctrination that CCP put on the Chinese people, once you know a little bit of information from the outside source, you know America is great.

Everyone wanted to go to America back then.

But before that, I did not know.

I thought America was hellish.

It is the worst capitalist country in the world where the proletarians all suffer and only few people, rich people, they thrive.

The rest all suffer.

You would never want to go to America because you go there to suffer.

But once we get the information formation.

And once the, after the Cultural Revolution, they started to open up, we know it's the best country in the world.

So, it's a matter of whether you could go rather than where you choose to go.

And I was lucky because I was, I was working in a college teaching English and met some American teachers who came to teach during the summer and made a friend with someone one from Kentucky and that lady helped me to come to America.

It's not to choose.

It's like you're dying.

Yeah.

It's only a matter of whether you could or not.

So I was just so fortunate.

And I just never, now I'm thinking about it, I think this is just God's will that I came all the way here to do what?

To fight against communism.

10 years later.

Because you speaking out obviously has given confidence to others, individuals always.

Whenever they're concerned about something and they see someone stand up and speak truth, that emboldens them, that encourages them.

What has been the response to you?

America has so many groups speaking up about what is happening in schools.

I mean, Mums for Liberty is a phenomenal organization.

Many others across the country.

And that's exciting to see.

But, what was that like for you after you spoke up?

You must have got not only the media attention, but the thanks, I guess, from parents thanking you for speaking up.

What was that like?

It's overwhelming.

It's overwhelming.

I was a little bit concerned about the Chinese community, because a lot of Chinese were still very loyal to, they think, to China, but it's not.

China and the CCP are two different things.

They think they are loyal to China, but they're really loyal to CCP.

But, I got so many great feedbacks and support from the patriotic community in in the Chinese community.

So, it's just amazing.

And also the same time, because I've been to so many, I was invited by so many organizations and I met so many people and I found that there's so many people just like me, never got involved politically and especially so many parents.

And when people ask me, do you think it's too late?

Do you think we'll have a hope?

I said, we do.

The fact that I got involved and that the fact I met so many, so many parents, so many patriots got involved for the first time in their lives is that so many people really are waking up.

They understand that their freedom and the future of their country is in peril and they want to do something.

And that's the hope.

I think it was James Lindsay who wrote the foreword or the intro, and I've had him on many times and met him last year.

I love that kind of connection between his fantastic mind in understanding what is happening and you experiencing this in China and that coming together.

And to me, I saw that as a perfect mix, a perfect connection complementing each other.

I am amazed that I met so many people.

I have been following him, listening to him on YouTube, and I met most of the people that I used to just look and admire from afar.

And I met them.

And James Lindsay I met quite early on and we've become friends.

And he is just amazing, amazing.

Tell me the just final thing.

Chapter 10 was the title making of the new man and in it one little part stuck out with me that you talked about having to write a confessional letter I can't remember if it was you or a family member but I remember I think it was Jordan Peterson talking about having to do that and you realize these concepts that were there in the communist regime.

Actually well, Canada is quite communist in many ways under Trudeau, but those same ways of dealing with I guess the public if they fall out of line to get them back into line to correct them that re-education.

I guess it's exactly the same ways that are being used in the west and I thought that was a I was able to make that parallel as soon as I read heard that confession there I I thought that's just what Jordan Peterson has had to do.

Exactly.

That is required of everyone who has to go through the struggle session.

And also I mentioned in my book, struggle session was part of our lives and still going on today in China.

Struggle sessions have different levels.

There are some that are very brutal, like the one that in the Netflix original opening scene, three-body problem, that really shook, shocked a lot of the Americans for the first time.

Wow, that is struggle session, yeah.

Also, there are milder version of struggle session that everyone have to go through as a kid.

I have to do that in the classroom that we have this thing called political study.

It's every week we have to sit and read.

First of all, we have to read a mouse quotation.

And then we will go around and everyone will say, according to that instruction, I did not do it quite well.

Well, you know, I had a bad thought the other day, which was not up to the requirement of Mao's instruction, and I did this, and then the other kids say, yes, I saw you did this and that, and you said this and that.

So, go around and around.

Yes, absolutely.

It's confession.

Let me just remind the viewers as we finish, Mao's America available everywhere. Make sure and follow Xi Van Fleet on her Twitter page.

Thank you so much, Xi, for coming on.

It's a privilege talking to you, sharing your background experiences, right up to speaking truth today in America.

So, thank you for coming on and sharing those thoughts and giving us those insights from your book.

My thoughts are real thoughts.

But, in the culture of those are bad thoughts that need to be given rid of.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.