We’ve heard the warning from a Venezuelan actress. We’ve heard it from Cuban émigrés. And now we’re hearing it from a Virginia mother who lived under mass-murderer Mao Tse-tung’s Marxist despotism:
The United States is following a well-worn path to tyranny.
“When I was in China, I spent my entire school years in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so I’m very, very familiar with the communist tactics of how to divide people, how they canceled the Chinese traditional culture and destroyed our heritage,” Xi Van Fleet told Fox News.
“All this is happening here in America,” she then stated.
Van Fleet joined other parents in making waves and news this summer when she addressed the Loudoun County School Board over the district’s embrace of divisive, anti-white Critical Race Theory. Yet the nationwide parental pushback against it and the sexual devolutionary propaganda permeating modern “education” has angered school boards that want their indoctrination to proceed unfettered.
The National School Boards Association (NSBA) consequently complained to the federal government and, just the week before last, “Attorney General Merrick Garland took another step towards tyranny, announcing the creation of a task force to determine how ‘federal enforcement tools’ can be used to prosecute criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” wrote BPR, providing some background. “He said harassment and violence against school employees had increased.”
In reality, Garland’s claim is a gross exaggeration at best; the parents in question have generally been passionate but not violent (unlike the Left with its 600-plus 2020-‘21 riots). Yet his unprecedented move has had its desired effect. As Fox reports, “Harry Jackson, a Fairfax County, Virginia, parent and president of the Thomas Jefferson High School Parent Teacher Student Association, said parents in his community were scared after the announcement.”
But Van Fleet remains undeterred. “‘They call(ed) them racists for a long time, but that did not work,’ Van Fleet said, referring to the parents who have spoken out about critical race theory,” Fox also related. “So, they have to upgrade to domestic terrorists.”
“I do have a question: What’s [the] next step?” she also told the outlet. “Is the Tiananmen Square crackdown the next, or the parents who one day risked their lives just to speak out for the children? That’s why I’m here.” (video below).
A bit of good news is that “more and more school districts across the U.S. have denounced the NSBA’s move and even declared that they were not consulted in the writing of the letter to President Biden,” reports Christianity Daily.
Perhaps this lends a bit of credence to Van Fleet’s hope. “I have to say, this will backfire,” she further stated. “If intimidation works, America has fallen a long time ago.”
She’s correct, of course. Yet while she and others are also right about the parallels between our time and China’s Cultural Revolution, a mistake often made now is to frame most of the problems plaguing us as “communist” in nature.
Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I’ll be the first to say communism is evil. Yet none of us would say evil is communism. That’s the point.
Question: Was manipulation and character assassination (e.g., calling people damning names), cultural destruction, and the divide-and-conquer strategy at all employed as tactics prior to The Communist Manifesto’s publication (1848) and the earlier birth of socialism? Of course — and what were they called back then?
Answer: evil.
There are problems with mainly labeling these demonic tactics “communist”:
- It’s not as fundamental a characterization. It’s giving relatively modern error-makers credit (i.e., blame) for something originated before man himself. It’s a bit like calling scorched-earth policy a Russian strategy because Tsar Alexander I used it against Napoleon in 1812.
- It’s not as powerful. In our relativistic age, we instinctively shy away from absolutist terms such as “evil” (but we love psychology-oriented proclamations such as “That’s dysfunctional!”). We shouldn’t, however. And here’s a point to ponder for Christians (and others): If Jesus were currently walking amongst us and describing the wickedly dishonest behavior in question, what term would He likely choose? “Communist” or “evil”?
- It risks alienating those who’ll roll their eyes at what sounds to them like conspiracy talk. Consider, too, that communism and socialism have, tragically, again gained much popularity in recent times. What lies hidden at their hearts, evil, is not nearly held in as high esteem in its explicit form. (Most people want to believe they’re doing good.)
Of course, it is necessary to sometimes draw historical parallels and warn of past mistakes in the hope we won’t repeat them. The point, however, is that communism is a guise. Why speak about the mask more than what lies behind it?
Realize also that the type of people who’d rule in a totalitarian America generally couldn’t care less about Marxist “principles.” They want what tyrants always crave: power — and often money.
If we want to reverse our civilizational decline, we must seize control of and shape our social codes, which the Left now wields to great effect and which, in their totality, we call “wokeness.” Tell someone, “You’re acting like a communist,” and he’s liable to brush you off with a chuckle; tell him, “If you do that, it makes you a bad person,” and it’s more profound.
Seizing this social control partially involves getting back to fundamentals, talk of right and wrong, good and bad, holiness and evil. The real issue with the Left isn’t that it’s not the Right, but that it’s not right. It’s evil.
Call the demon by name.
