RICHMOND —
Virginia, known — among other nicknames — as the birthplace of a nation, has a long history steeped in the pursuit of liberty. Now, with the results of recent elections, Virginia is in the hands of Democrats for the first time since 1993. In fact, Democrats now control both houses of the state legislature, the majority of Virginia’s seats in the U.S. Congress, and both seats in the U.S. Senate. This switch from Red to Blue is the result of years of work on the part of pro-Chinese communists and well-connected “fellow travelers.”
In fact, the co-executive director of a group with pro-Chinese Communist connections openly claimed credit for flipping Virginia, stating that the plan for socializing Virginia was “put in motion years ago.” That co-executive director is Tram Nguyen and her organization is New Virginia Majority (NVM). Nguyen’s boast took the form of a November 6 op-ed piece for the New York Times.
Nguyen writes that her organization has spent the past 12 years to “reach voters of all colors, women, low-income workers and young people where they are, which has made it possible for us to develop a robust base of support along Virginia’s so-called Urban Crescent, from Northern Virginia to Hampton Roads.” She goes on to say, “Long before Election Day, we registered more than 300,000 voters, knocked on more than 2.5 million doors, and organized within communities of color to help win significant policy changes like Medicaid expansion, which covered nearly 400,000 people.”
So, NVM targeted minority neighborhoods (which are statistically lower-income neighborhoods) with a pitch for voter registration and an increased voter turnout tied to the promise of more money and benefits from the public till. The result was exactly what they hoped for. Those newly-minted, low-information voters turned out en masse and placed Virginia squarely in the clutches of the Democrats.
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The something-for-nothing promises of organizations such as NVM are nothing new. Neither are the consequences that befall those who buy into those promises and vote accordingly.
Alexander Fraser Tytler — also known as Lord Woodhouselee (15 October 1747-5 January 1813) — was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer, and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh. Based on his studies of the histories of democracies, he wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.
The 20th-century trend of democracies collapsing under mounting debt, only to become dictatorships, has proven the wisdom of his observations. Staying close to its Chinese communist roots, NVM is setting America up for jumping out of the frying pan of democracy and into the fire of a tyrannical dictatorship. Nguyen plainly states that her objective in writing about NVM’s successful strategy in Virginia is to “make the case that this type of year-round organizing can pave the way for victory nationally.”
To refer to NVM as having pro-Chinese communist connections is no exaggeration. As Trevor Loudon revealed in a recent article on the group’s activities leading to the Virginia upset, NVM’s pedigree includes pure-bred Maoist elements. Loudon explains that “NVM is a front for Liberation Road, known until April this year as Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), the United States’ most influential Maoist organization.”
Loudon goes on to write:
NVM is led by longtime FRSO/Liberation Road cadre Jon Liss of Alexandria. Several FRSO cadres have served in NVM over the years, as have many activists from two NVM satellite groups, LeftRoots and the Virginia Student Power Network.
FRSO/Liberation Road comes out of the militantly pro-China American Maoist student movement of the 1970s. While it’s more discreet about its Chinese loyalties these days, several of its leading supporters maintain close ties to the People’s Republic.
So, Jon Liss — the other co-executive director of NVM, along with Nguyen — is a long-time member of FRSO/Liberation Road. NVM, then, could be seen either as a sister organization to FRSO/Liberation Road or as a satelite organization. Either way, they are clearly ideological twins.
Loudon then lists some of the “leading supporters” as well as their communist credentials. That list includes the likes of Fred Engst, “a longtime FRSO supporter” who was born in China to parents who moved there in the 1940’s “to be part of the Communist Revolution.” Engst left China for the United States in the 1970’s for his education, but returned to China in 2007. He now teaches at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
Another NVM supporter is Alex Tom, whom Loudon explains is “a leader of LeftRoots and the pro-Beijing San Francisco-based Chinese Progressive Association.” According to Tom’s 2013 LeftForum speaker’s bio, he formed the China Education and Exposure Program in 2012 to “build a deeper analysis of China for US progressives and leftists and to build relationships with the grassroots movement in China.”
And Steve McClure, another NVM supporter, was — in the 1970’s — “active in the pro-Mao Revolutionary Student Brigade.” His ties to FRSO and NVM — along with his background of Engineering Information in Surveying, Mapping, and Remote Sensing at Wuhan University in China where he is a research associate with the State Key Laboratory in that field — have served the communist cause well.
His blog shows that he worked with NVM from his position in China “to make a series of maps to inform planning for precinct walks in Virginia State house districts.” Those are the maps NVM used to choose the neighborhoods where they knocked on more than 2.5 million doors and registered nearly 300,000 voters with promises of bigger and better government handouts.
Roughly 20,000 of those newly-minted, low-information voters were also felons who had their voting rights restored as a result of NVM’s work with former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. Beginning in 2016, McAuliffe announced that he would illegally restore the voting rights of more than 200,000 convicted felons. By the time the dust settled and the smoke cleared, it took him until January of 2018 to put nearly 173,000 convicted felons back on the voting rolls.
Nguyen boasted of that “success,” writing:
The former governor, Terry McAuliffe, restored the voting rights of more than 173,000 Virginians during his term, more than any other governor in Virginia’s history. In 2016, of the nearly 20,000 men and women who registered to vote for the first time as a result of the restoration of their rights, a whopping 79 percent voted. They were a key voting bloc in Virginia, the only Southern state that Hillary Clinton won.
How many more of those convicted felons were registered to vote as a result of NVM’s efforts since 2016 is not known. But it is a safe bet that they were “a key voting bloc in” flipping Virginia to the Democrats. As Loudon points out in his article, “NVM worked closely with McAuliffe to win ex-felon voting rights. The organization actually gave the governor an award at its annual dinner for his sterling work.”
Given the time and effort Loudon put into his exposé of the connections between pro-Chinese communists and the flipping of Virginia, The New American reached out to him. In an exclusive interview, he told The New American that FRSO/Liberation Road is quiet about its pro-Chinese communist identity, but nothing in its philosophy has changed.
For instance, in her op-ed piece, Nguyen consistently refers to Democrats in the third person (they, not we). Loudon said this is because of an alliance called the Left Inside/Outside Project, which is a pet project of the communist People’s World. Loudon explained that it is a coalition of the Communist Party USA, Liberation Road, Democratic Socialists of America, and other communist/socialist groups. Loudon said, “They are working explicitly to move politics to the Left, especially in the South, by working both inside and outside the Democratic Party.”
Loudon said that with some communists and socialists “working inside the party, running as Democrats, and others working outside the party, like Nguyen, putting pressure on the Democrats and helping them,” they are succeeding in moving Democrats further and further left.
Loudon points out that part of the rebranding of FRSO to Liberation Road was to make their communist/Maoist roots less obvious as they seek to build inroads into the South. But the Liberation Road website is unambiguous about that goal; The South must fall again and completely. Loudon told The New American, “Liberation Road call the South the New Confederacy. To destroy ‘white’ capitalism, you’ve got to destroy the Republican party, conservative, Christian base in the south — which is why they’ve targeted Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Kentucky. And they’ve just won one in Kentucky, the governor’s race there.”
Loudon points out that a favorite tactic of these groups is the “Marxist idea” of “energizing the black vote” to “overthrow white oppression” and “white capitalism.”
It is clear that Liberty Road, NVM, and other communist and pro-communist groups are applying the principle of creating an informed and active electorate — only in reverse. By registering those people who desire a cradle-to-grave nanny state to vote and making sure they show up to vote for largesse, they almost guarantee a transition of the United States from a republic to a democracy to a communist dictatorship. By fomenting the false idea of “racist white America,” they make their task easier, since disgruntled people who’ve been led to believe that all of their woes are the fault of “white capitalists” are far more likely to vote for the Left.
As for the prospects for truly patriotic Americans restoring the Republic, Loudon states that the path forward will be difficult. Given that communists and socialists have simply used a correct principle in reverse, patriots may be tempted to think that if they simply apply that same principle — go knock on doors, register voters, and get them to vote — they can restore the Republic and live happily ever after.
Loudon told The New American, “We have to make the case for freedom, we have to go out and intelligently engage people and try and get them to get more understanding of the country’s history and the benefits of freedom and the consequences of losing it. It’s an intelligent debate we have to have and we have to have it.” But, “They go out and tell people, ‘You vote our way and we’ll give you more benefits.’ One’s a lot easier to sell — one takes a lot less work.”
So, patriots have their work cut out for them. Organized, well-thought-out action — such as that provided by this magazine’s parent organization, The John Birch Society, is what is needed if the Republic is to survive. Loudon also believes that legal action is needed and is warranted. “I think there’s a case that we’ve got to stop them doing what they’re doing by investigating for foreign connections,” he said, adding, “Because I believe they are working in the interest of foreign powers. I believe firmly that what they are doing is illegal.”
Image: Oleksii Liskonih via iStock / Getty Images Plus
C. Mitchell Shaw is a freelance writer and public speaker who addresses a range of topics related to liberty and the U.S. Constitution. A strong privacy advocate, he was a privacy nerd before it was cool.
