After coming to America, I remember being baffled when I first saw the blindfolded Lady Justice. I wondered, why was she blindfolded? I eventually learned that blindfolding symbolizes equality before the law for every American citizen. In determining guilt, the law shall be blind to the identities of the accused, whether ethno-racial, social or political.
That was not the judicial system I grew up with in Mao’s China. We were taught that the CCP’s system was two-tiered. The system was referred to either as a “Proletarian Dictatorship” or the “People’s Democratic Dictatorship”.
In his 1949 writing “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship”, Mao explained how the two-tiered system was supposed to “deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.”
“The people” are proletarians and revolutionaries. The “reactionaries” are the anti-revolutionaries. That was very clear to everyone. What was not clear was what were the qualifications for being an anti-revolutionary and who defined those qualifications? Well, that was not our concern, we were told. The Party alone made that determination, depending on who was in power and the political climate.
Throughout the CCP’s reign, especially during the Cultural Revolution, tens of millions found themselves accused of being counter-revolutionaries and received punishments such as exile, imprisonment or death.
Take Lu Hongen, a conductor of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. He was publicly tried and executed during the Cultural Revolution. The accusation? In a regular, mandated political study session with his orchestra, Lu contradicted Mao’s doctrine that artists should get their inspiration from the proletariat by saying that the proletariat was not Beethoven’s inspiration for the symphonies.
In the 1957 Anti-Rightists Campaign, Zhang Kejin was accused of being a counterrevolutionary and sentence to seven years. Zhang was only 12 years old! His crime? Drawing a cartoon for a right-winger to criticize a party leader.
Both Lu and Zhang were just ordinary people. The CCP ruling class must have been safe. Right? Wrong!
Even being a member of the CCP’s core leadership was not a guarantee of protection from the iron fist of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese President Liu Shaoqui was labeled a counterrevolutionary for criticizing Mao’s Great Leap Forward, which led to massive famine. He was jailed and died of deliberate medical negligence.
A more recent case was Liu Yazhou, former political commissar of the National Defense University of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and a member of the CCP elite club as the son-in-law of the former President Li Xiannian. In March 2023, Liu was accused and found guilty of corruption, advocating the Western democratic system with the intention to subvert the Chinese Communist Party, and challenging the absolute leadership of the Party over the military — among other crimes. His punishment, reportedly a death sentence, was suspended for two years.
The People’s Democratic Dictatorship has always operated unabashedly on NKVD head Lavrentiy Beria’s principle of “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” It is a system that allows those in power to suppress any dissent. No one is safe. And no one knows when it will be their turn.
One may say that is understandable because China is ruled by a Communist Party. But it can’t happen in America. After all, America is a country founded on the principle of rule of law and everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.
Many Americans seem to have unshakable faith in our judicial system. We have our Constitution that was designed to protect our rights and we have a justice system that presumes innocence. It has worked, for the most part, for over 200 years. Nothing can go wrong — or so they believe.
What people fail to understand is that the Constitution alone can’t protect us. The USSR had a constitution and does China. But they are just pieces of paper. What makes our laws work is the American people, who abide by the Constitution and laws. As John Adam famously said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
If our politicians and judges no longer uphold the Constitution, and if citizens are convinced that justice and fairness of the law no longer apply to the people they politically disagree with, any law can be weaponized against political enemies, just like Mao’s People’s Democratic Dictatorship did.
And that’s exactly where America is today. I say this because I’ve witnessed the abuse of power and law in both Communist China and increasingly communistic America. The similarities are eerie and alarming.
Today, too many Americans willfully ignore the most blatant and inconvenient reality — that the American justice system has also become two tiered: one for the enemy of the regime and one for the ally of the regime. While the federal prison is filled with Jan6ers, other rioters who attacked the White House and government facilities, who burned down churches and cities, and who looted and terrorized communities, have been not only free but also celebrated as heroes. Joe Biden called MAGA Republicans extremists and his Department of Justice has labeled concerned parents who show up in school board meetings domestic terrorists.
Now, the party in power has indicted former President Trump, a Republican front runner for the 2024 election, not once, not twice, but four times. Not just Trump himself, but also his lawyers and advisors.
Many expressed their delight and satisfaction in seeing Trump’s mugshots. They can’t wait to see Trump being handcuffed, put behind bars, and rotting in a Georgia prison. They believe all these indictments and subsequent prosecutions are not only justifiable but also necessary to save “our democracy”. Even though this is unprecedented in American history, it’s justifiable because it’s Trump, right? They don’t seem interested in finding out the truth of Biden’s alleged bribery by foreign governments and Hillary Clinton’s Trump-Russia collusion hoax. They don’t believe all these pose any threat to “our democracy”, because these guys are on their side and they are confident that they are part of the winning team.
They are cheering and celebrating their own demise. History has shown us that totalitarianism has zero tolerance for any dissent. There is no left or right, everything is a potential threat. One day, leftists celebrating today may become tomorrow’s dissenters, targeted for whatever reason at the whim of those in power. It is not the law but those in power who define a dissenter — or a “reactionary” using CCP’s term.
Public ignorance is a necessity for any totalitarian regime to gain and hold power. That’s why the regime does not want the American people to learn real history, especially the history of communism and Communist China.
Americans have the choice of avoiding the prospect of living under tyranny by learning lessons from history, or finding out the hard way. But by then it might be too late.
Xi Van Fleet grew up in Mao’s China and spent her entire school years in the turmoil of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In 1986 she came to America as a student to pursue her graduate studies. She holds master degrees in English and Library Science. She became involved in politics after realizing the Chinese Cultural Revolution was taking place in America. Her up-coming book “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning” will be available in October 2023.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.