“Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning” – Book Review

Written by Xi Van Fleet. New York: Center Street, Hatchet Book Group, October 31, 2023, 275 pages, $27.

Who is Xi Van Fleet (“Xi” is pronounced “she”) and why did she write this book? Rachel Campos Duffy of Fox News answered both questions as she wrote:

No one is doing more than Xi Van Fleet to sound the alarm on how history is repeating itself in today’s America. As a survivor of Mao’s cultural revolution, Xi explains the dangerous parallels between her experiences and the Marxist Woke ideology sweeping across America. Xi’s inspiring story should be required reading for anyone trying to make sense of the un-American things that are so rapidly transforming our country. Information is power. Understanding the historical roots of the cultural revolution we are living through is the first step in the fight to restore freedom and save America.[1]    

Xi herself said: 

Suddenly, many Americans, focused on working hard, raising their families, and minding their own business, awakened to the realization that they hardly recognized their own country anymore. Overnight it seemed new realities were being forced upon them, challenging everything they believed to be true. From the progressives came the demand that one must comply with their cause to remake America by denouncing all its institutions, all its traditional values, and its very foundation. To do otherwise incurs being ostracized on social media, in schools, in workplaces, and even within families. To do otherwise one is now simply to be labeled a racist. To do otherwise, one may lose their livelihood.

Many awoke only to find that they have become oppressors for being born white. Others found that they must now consider themselves hopelessly oppressed and incapable simply because they were born nonwhite.[2]

And in his foreword to Xi’s book, James Lindsay wrote:

March 2023

It was dark and I was looking out the window of yet another jet. I was flying home from yet another trip, and we had maybe fifteen minutes until we’d touch down. I pushed the button on the side of my phone and turned off its light and looked out the window. Streetlights, storefronts and porch lights, and headlamps blinked back up at me from a few thousand feet below. I was looking at the country I love, my home, and I thought to myself: This can’t happen here.

Like on most flights, I had been reading. In this case, I was reading: Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China by Robert Jay Lifton. In that book, published in the early 1960s, Lifton explored the psychological impacts of “thought reform” in the CCP-run brainwashing prisons in Mao Zedong’s China; as with reading any close-up case study of any totalitarian project as it collides with the individual human, it was harrowing. This can’t happen here.

But then it hit me, hard, as I looked down at the white, orange, blue, and yellow lights below me, dotting the nighttime landscape of Anywhere, USA. This is already happening here. It was instantaneous recognition followed by immediate grief and panic. This is already happening here. This is diversity, equity, and inclusion training at work. This is social-emotional learning at school. This is already happening here.

In the summer of 2021, Xi Van Fleet went to her local school board meeting in Loudoun County, VA simply to explain why CRT (Critical Race Theory) should not be promoted in schools. Having survived Mao’s brutal cultural revolution as a child, she had seen it before.

Xi defines CRT as being “a Marxist ideology built on lies and a false narrative. It preaches a dogma that is driven forward by Marxist-driven organizations and forces such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and cancel culture, working together to transform America into a Marxist state.” “Critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our schools.”[3]

She had no idea her 60 second speech would catapult her overnight into the public limelight.

That 60-second speech resonated with people hungry for accurate information about the Marxist takeover of our educational system. The following morning, Xi received a call from Fox News asking if she would be a guest on an afternoon show, which she accepted. The next morning, the Sean Hannity Show called for her to be on his afternoon program.  Since that time, it has been one appearance after another. People urgently want to know what is happening right now in America.      

Most of the book describes how Xi was indoctrinated during the Chinese cultural revolution and compares that to what is happening in America today. Here are some examples of the similarities described by Xi:

• The Communist Manifesto explicitly calls for “the abolition of religion, all morality and eternal truth.” If any person or anything were to be worshipped, it had to be Marxist ideology and/or the Communist Party.[4] In the United States, the cultural Marxism of today—the philosophy behind the troubling changes we see taking place here—also calls for the abolition of religion, all morality, and eternal truth. (Christianity, then and now, is seen as the biggest obstacle to Marxism. As a result, the most severe persecution in the Chinese cultural revolution was levied against Christian leaders and the Christian church.)[5]

• The cultural revolution in China divided everyone into two classes—those who owned property (the black class, the oppressors), and the red class (the oppressed, those who were poor and did not own property). Based on this division of everyone into these two classes, the leaders of the Chinese cultural revolution, looking at the world through the lens of this Marxist construct, then engaged in: ‘Turning suffering first into anger and then into hatred.” From “suffering” into “anger,” the peasant masses naturally had completed an important transformation from mere complaining to revenge, and from speaking to action. This was the work of the Marxist team’s job, to coach the peasants to “discover” the roots of their suffering, make them angry, and then turn their anger into hatred, then eventually into violence.[6]    

Those who owned property or wealth were routinely persecuted, put in jail, beaten, and even killed just because they owned wealth of some kind.  

Could this kind of thinking—dividing the world into an oppressor class versus an oppressed class—take place in our country? Every one of us should realize that it not only could take place here, but it has taken place here. All of us should be aware of the children who come home from school lamenting the fact that they are white. And be aware of the medical school applicants who are denied admission to a school simply because they are white or oriental.

The recent terrorist attacks against the Israeli people demonstrates where this kind of thinking takes us. The fact is, it allows groups like Black Lives Matter and individuals such as Ivy League professors and many others to justify these murderous assaults by saying, in effect, that such terrorism is justified, because those attacked are members of the wrong group, an oppressor group that need to be punished and subdued. To the cultural Marxists, being a sinner means being born into the wrong group—as was also the case in Mao’s cultural revolution. For this reason, killing members of such groups, even killing babies, is justified.[7]

• Abolishing Free Speech: Xi stated the assault on this basic right very succinctly. She said:

In other words, the “free speech” according to Zhou, allowed people to criticize anyone except those who were in charge and directing the cultural revolution! Does it ring a bell? In today’s woke world, free speech is allowed as long as it is aligned with the woke-sters. Otherwise, it is hate speech and needs to be banned.[8]

Assuming that demonstrations are a form of speech, the prosecution and imprisonment of the many innocent attendees at the J-6 rally are a powerful statement that the only speech now allowed in this country is what the executive branch of the federal government chooses to allow. Cross that line and you can be sentenced to 20 or more years in jail. The Marxists are clearly in control of most or all of the agencies of the federal government. (The right to participate in demonstrations is an integral part of the First Amendment to our U.S. Constitution.) Free speech is under constant attack in America, much like its being outlawed in Communist China. On the positive side, Elon Musk has said that the reason he bought Twitter is so people could hear the truth about what is going on. He also said that you can’t have a civilized society without freedom of speech.

• Destroying the nuclear family: Marxists have always understood that strong families are a major threat to totalitarian rule. For that reason, they have always done what they can to weaken the family. In the Chinese cultural revolution, they made the case that families need to become bigger. And what did that mean? It meant that the government would now govern the family. Political leaders in America have quickly followed Mao’s lead. Hillary Clinton chimed in saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Joe Biden followed suit saying: “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child,” and the “nation’s children are all our children.” Such statements were properly interpreted to mean that government should take the place of parents.[9]

Joe Biden also said:

“School Children Don’t Belong to Parents when they’re in the classroom,” and “They’re all our children. And the reason you’re the teachers of the year is because you recognize that. They’re not somebody else’s children. They’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.”[10]  

Even USA Today was critical of Biden’s statements and gave this headline to the article quoted above: “Biden was wrong about your kids; they don’t belong to the government.”

Former Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe clarified that he is on the same Marxist page when he said: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”[11]

Comments like these are what we would expect from cultural Marxists. The influence of cultural Marxism in our country is clearly substantial.

Numerous government policies have weakened the American family. As a result, in 1980 18.4% of births in the United States were out of wedlock. By 2021 that number had more than doubled to 40%. One of the primary reasons for this increase is single parenthood, as Xi Van Fleet points out, is that federal welfare policies penalize married couples. Along with single parenthood comes poor academic performance, drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, suicide, adult incarceration, and the list goes on—all calculated to weaken our country.

The anti-family design of Obamacare is another huge factor. The marriage penalty in Obamacare was exposed before it was enacted into law. This marriage penalty is so severe that many middle-income couples are required to pay as much as $5,000 more each year for health insurance if they are married. The law was structured so that 83% of the insurance subsidies go to single people and only 17% go to those who are married.[12]  The prestigious Heritage Foundation verified these numbers.[13] The Washington establishment could have removed this marriage penalty from the law, but they were not interested. And one of the laws of human nature is that whatever we penalize, we get less of. This is why the highway patrol writes traffic tickets. Obviously, the many Marxists who have infiltrated Washington know what they are doing. 

We now return to the thesis that Xi Van Fleet puts forward—Is America undergoing a cultural revolution that looks shockingly similar to the cultural revolution in Communist China? A revolution which led to the purging of millions of its own people? Is she correct about that? There is no doubt that she is. Xi provides convincing evidence in support of her thesis that the cultural revolution taking place in America is essentially the same as that which took place in Communist China some 60 years ago. This same conclusion was stated by the Heritage Foundation’s recent report. Heritage said: “Unless Marxist thought is defeated again, today’s cultural Marxists will achieve what the Soviet Union never could: the subjugation of the United States to a totalitarian, soul-destroying ideology.”[14]  

We must come to grips with the fact that what Heritage and Xi are saying is true.

As Xi Van Fleet states: “This book intends to alarm you, enrage you, pull you off of the couch, push you into action, and inspire you to join the fight for the survival of America.”[15] Once again, she is spot-on.

Author: Allen Quist is a former 3-term Minnesota state legislator and retired professor of Political Science, Logic, and Christian Apologetics at Bethany Lutheran College (Mankato, Minnesota). He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, MN), a Master of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota, Mankato, and a post-graduate Divinity degree from Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary (Mankato, Minnesota). He is author of ten books, including FedEd: The New Federal Curriculum and How It’s Enforced (2002) and America’s Schools: The Battleground for Freedom (2005). 

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[1] Xi Van Fleet, Mao’s America: A Survivor, Warning, Center Street, New York, October 30, 2023, back cover. 

[2] Ibid, pp. 1,2.

[3] Ibid, p. 8.

[4] Ibid pp. 210,211.

[5] Ibid, pp. 216,217.

[6] Ibid, p. 180

[7] See Christopher Rufo, “Intersectionality Devolves,” City Journal, October 31, 2023.

[8] Xi Van Fleet Op. cit. p. 126

[9][9] USA Today, April 27, 2023.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid. 

[12] Allen Quist, Press Release: Marriage Penalty in health care bill (archive.org), 2009

[13] “The New Federal Wedding Tax: How Obamacare Would Dramatically Penalize Marriage,” The Heritage Foundation, 2010.

[14] “How Cultural Marxism Threatens the United States—and How Americans can fight it,” The Heritage Foundation, November 14, 2022.

[15] Amazon.com, A note from the author.