Ezra Levant highlights Elon Musk’s takedown of the BBC, exposing its alleged bias and moderation failures, while defending his opposition to compelled speech laws. He accuses Justin Trudeau’s brother Alexandre of being a "Chinese government asset," citing a $100K 2016 donation to their foundation and his book praising China’s economic model. Shi Van Fleet, a Chinese Cultural Revolution survivor, warns of parallels between Maoist indoctrination and North America’s push for critical race theory via TikTok, calling it a threat to societal stability. Meanwhile, she praises crowdfunded legal support for Chris Scott, contrasting it with government lawyers’ suppression tactics. The episode underscores how foreign influence and ideological extremism risk repeating history’s darkest chapters under new guises. [Automatically generated summary]
Boy, I got a couple of great things I want to show you today.
First, you've probably seen some clips of it on social media.
Elon Musk versus a BBC reporter.
What a bloodbath.
Just incredible.
I'll take you through three different video clips and explain why I think it's just incredible and so encouraging.
And Elon Musk, he's not just one of the world's richest men.
I think he's one of the world's smartest men.
I really do.
But then I want to talk to you about Alexandra Trudeau.
And I have some proof, some evidence from his own mouth that he is a Chinese government asset.
In fact, I'll prove it that he is personally in the pay of the Chinese Communist Party.
You're probably thinking, Ezra, that's not true.
Well, stay with me and I'll show it to you.
I'd like you to see it with your own eyes.
I dug up an old video of him from seven years ago.
It's in French.
We have a translation of it, but I want you to see it.
And to see it, you need to be a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus, which is the video version of the podcast.
Go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
You get my show every weeknight, Sheila Gun Reed's show and other special goodies behind the paywall.
Rebelnewsplus.com, $8 a month.
I'd love it if you supported us because that's how we pay our bills here.
We don't get any money from Trudeau.
You know that.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, Elon Musk destroys the BBC and Justin Trudeau destroys another charity.
It's April 14th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hey, I want to talk to you about the latest scandal involving Justin Trudeau, his brother Alexandra, and of course, big cash from the Communist Party of China.
But first, I just can't resist.
I have to show you this exchange between Elon Musk and a BBC presenter.
Elon Musk vs. BBC00:07:37
That's the British Broadcasting Corporation.
It's not even important what the name of the BBC reporter is.
I mean, he's what video gamers call an NPC, a non-player character.
That's just some unimportant, interchangeable part of the backdrop, a cameo, really.
It really is unimportant who he is because they're all this guy.
But just watch this deliciousness.
I'm going to show you four minutes, but I've never seen it done better.
Take a look.
I mean, I would only just add that, you know, we have spoken to people who have been sacked that used to be in content moderation.
And we've spoken to people very recently who were involved in moderation.
And they just say, there's not enough people to police this stuff, particularly around hate speech in the company.
Is that a problem?
What a hate speech show you're talking about.
I mean, you use Twitter.
Right.
Do you see a rise in hate speech?
I mean, just a personal anecdote.
Like, what do you do?
I don't.
Personally, my, for you, I would see I get more of that kind of content, yeah, personally.
But I'm not going to talk to the rest of, for the rest of Twitter.
You see more hate speech personally.
I would say I would see more hateful content in that, in that.
Content you don't like or hateful.
What do you mean to describe a hateful thing?
Yeah, I mean, you know, just content that will solicit a reaction, something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of things.
So you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned.
No, I don't.
Is that what you're saying?
I'm not saying anything.
I'm saying.
I'm just curious.
I'm trying to understand what you mean by hateful content.
And I'm asking for specific examples.
And you just said that if something is slightly sexist, that's hateful content.
Does that mean that it should be banned?
Well, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more, I'd say it's got slightly more.
That's why I'm asking for examples.
Can you name one example?
I honestly don't need it.
Honestly, I don't know.
You can't name a single example.
I'll tell you why, because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it.
A lot of people are quite similar.
I only have to.
Hold on a second.
You said you've seen more hateful content, but you can't name a single example, not even one.
I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks.
Well, then how did you see the hateful content?
Because I've been using Twitter since you've taken it over for the last six months.
Okay, so then you must have at some point seen that you pull you hateful content.
And I'm asking for one example.
Right.
You can't give a single one.
And I'm saying I've.
Then I say so that you don't know what you're talking about.
Really?
Yes, because you can't give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet.
And yet you claimed that the hateful content was high.
Well, that's false.
No, what I claimed.
You just lied.
No, what I claim was there are many organizations that say that that kind of information is on the rise.
Now, whether it has or not, I mean, right, and literally someone like the Strategic Dialogue Institute in the UK, they will say that.
Look, people will say all sorts of nonsense.
I'm literally asking for a single example, and you can't name one.
Right, and as I already said, I don't use that feed.
But let's say that I don't think this is getting anywhere.
You literally said you experienced more hateful content and then couldn't name a single example.
Right, and as I said, I haven't actually looked at that feed.
Then how would you know if it's hateful content?
Because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago.
I can't give you an exact example.
Let's move on.
We only have a certain amount of time.
COVID misinformation.
You've changed the COVID misinformation.
Has BBC changed this COVID misinformation?
The BBC does not set the rules on Twitter, so I'm asking you.
No, I'm talking about the BBC's misinformation about COVID.
I'm just asking you about you changed the labels, the COVID misinformation labels.
There used to be a policy, and then disappeared.
Why do that?
COVID is no longer an issue.
Does the BBC hold itself at all responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccinations and not reporting on that at all?
And what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change its editorial policy?
Are you aware of that?
This is not an interview about the BBC.
Oh, you thought it wasn't.
I see now why you've done Twitter spaces.
I am not a representative of the BBC's editorial policy.
I want to make that clear.
Let's talk about something else.
We talked about you too.
All right, let's talk about something else.
You weren't expecting that.
Let's talk about something else.
The guy was lying.
Oh, I've seen hate speech.
Really?
Can you give an example?
No, I haven't looked at it in a while.
Well, you just said you saw it.
No, no, no.
Someone else said it.
What an absolute liar.
There were some other interesting things there, too.
The NPC, BBC reporter, was delighted by the fact that Twitter's not doing well, but actually it sounds like it's getting on track again.
Like it might even be cash flow positive soon.
Take a listen to this.
How is it going?
Is Twitter in profit now?
No, Twitter is rough.
I'd say we're roughly break-even at this point.
And I think you've said before you see a world where you could be in profit.
Is there a timeline on that, do you think?
I mean, depending on how things go, if current trends continue, I think we could be profitable.
To be more precise, we could be cash flow positive this quarter if things keep going well.
This quarter, as soon as that?
Possibly, yeah.
Wow.
It's quite something to be lectured to by the BBC, which costs, I think it's £3 billion a year to British taxpayers.
It'd be like someone at the CBC asking a private businessman about their finances.
Yeah, not all of us get free government money, mate.
And this is one of the parts I like the best about the exchange.
You know, on Twitter there's sometimes a blue check mark.
They call it a verification badge, which is you are who you say you are.
And you can understand why that would be necessary for a celebrity or even a political figure so that there couldn't be impersonators.
If you have the blue check mark, you are who you say you are.
I have a blue check mark and many others at Rebel News do.
But it's not just for verification, it's for validation because it was taken away from people as a punishment.
How is taking away their verification a punishment?
If they are who they are, don't you want the world to know?
But Twitter would use the blue check mark as a sign of status, not verification of your ID to prove you're not faking it, but that they like you.
And it became very political.
And of course, people loved their coveted blue check marks.
I heard stories of people paid bribes to get them.
But why shouldn't ordinary people be able to verify their identity?
And why did you have to be some woke leftist?
Well, Elon Musk absolutely delighted from the fact that there's a lot of pouting going on from blue check marks who no longer feel special because perhaps their blue check mark wasn't earned or other people could simply buy them now.
Take a look at this exchange.
If we're talking about the media, let's talk about verification labels.
Verification Labels Controversy00:03:01
You obviously want to create another revenue stream that's subscription-based.
Is verification the way to do that?
Because we have a kind of a situation at the moment where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge, whereas anyone who's going to pay whatever few bucks a month can.
Can that be right?
Is that what you've envisaged when you bought Twitter?
I must confess to some delight in removing the verified badge from the New York Times.
That was great.
Anyway, they're still alive and well.
So they're doing fine.
But on a serious note, it could flame disinformation again if you have verified accounts that are from anyone who can pay money.
They simply go up to potentially the top of feeds.
They get more action on Twitter.
And traditional media that may not pay for verification doesn't.
Do you see how that could potentially be a driver of misinformation?
Well, I mean, I think the media is a driver of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are.
I mean, that's a different question.
Yeah.
But you are sort of saying, like, who knows best?
The average citizen or, you know, someone who is a journalist.
And I think in a lot of cases, it is the average citizen that knows more than the journalist.
In fact, I mean, very often when I see an article about something that I know a lot about, and I read the article, it's like they get a lot wrong.
And, you know, sort of the best interpretation is there is someone who doesn't really understand what's going on in industry, has only a few facts to play with, has to come up with an article.
It's going to be, you know, it's not going to hit the bullseye.
So then, like, generally, this is what I'll explain to this to other people.
If you read an article about something that you know about, how accurate is that article?
Now, imagine that that is how essentially all articles are.
They're an approximation of what's going on, but not an exact situation.
So if somebody is actually, let's say, in the fray or like an expert in the field and was actually there and then writes about their experience of being actually there, I think that actually, that's, in a lot of cases, going to be better than a journalist because a journalist wasn't there.
I think he's exactly right.
I mean, I know in my life, when I have first-hand experience of something and then it's in the news, I always notice errors.
Sometimes they're small and accidental.
Sometimes they're large.
Elon Musk is the center of so much news that he surely every day encounters stories where he was at the center of the thing that was reported.
And he says almost every time they get it wrong, he says that ordinary people know better.
Now, I don't think he means a random ordinary person, but I think he means if you crowdsource your information, you're going to find a better expert.
Trudeau Foundation Controversy00:15:45
I don't know if you remember when Dan Rather falsely broadcast that George W. Bush, some documents involving George W. Bush, and he showed them.
And it was an ordinary viewer who said, hey, I know a lot about typefaces and fonts and typography.
And that alleged document was made with WordPerfect, not a typewriter 40 years ago.
And that's what I mean by crowdsourcing intelligence.
And I think that's what Elon Musk means also.
Jay, I love the exchange.
You can watch the whole thing online if you want.
I think it was the best thing I've seen on British TV since the slaughter of Kathy Newman versus Dr. Jordan Peterson on Channel 4.
It was an extended interview.
I still remember it like it was yesterday.
I want to show you a highlight reel.
There's a little bit of editorial license, an artistic license taken in this editorial reel, but you might remember the exchange.
Kathy Newman was flummoxed again and again by George.
Actually, there's so many different clips.
I'll just show you one of them.
He would say something very reasonable, and then she, wanting to debate a straw man, would say, so you mean to say, and then describe it in the most bizarre way possible.
And this went on, it was just golden TV.
Anyway, here's just a quick clip to remind you about what that was.
Let me move on to another debate that's been very controversial for you.
And this is, you got in trouble for refusing to call trans men and women by their preferred personal pronouns.
No, it's not actually true.
I got in trouble because I said I would not follow the compelled speech dictates of the federal and provincial government.
I actually never got in trouble for not calling anyone anything.
That didn't happen.
You wouldn't follow the change of law, which was designed to be discrimination.
No, no.
That's what they said it was designed to do.
Okay.
You cited freedom of speech in that.
Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a trans person's right not to be offended?
Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.
I mean, look at the conversation we're having right now.
You know, like you're certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth.
Why should you have the right to do that?
It's been rather uncomfortable.
Well, I'm very glad I put you on the spot.
Well, I get right.
You get my point.
It's like you're doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell's going on.
And that is what you should do.
But you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me.
And that's fine.
I think more power to you as far as I'm concerned.
So you haven't sat there and I'm just trying.
I'll just try to work that out.
I mean.
Ha, gotcha.
You have got me.
You have got me.
I'm trying to work that through my head.
Yeah, yeah.
It took a while.
It took a while.
It did.
It did.
Yeah.
It took a while.
You have voluntarily come into the studio and agreed to be questioned.
A trans person in your class has come to your class and said they want to be called.
That's never happened.
And I would call them she.
So you would.
So you've kind of changed your channel.
No, no, no, I said that right from the beginning.
What I said at the beginning was that I was not going to cede the linguistic territory to radical leftists, regardless of whether or not it was put in law.
That's what I said.
And then the people who came after me said, oh, you must be transphobic and you'd mistreat a student in your class.
It's like, I never mistreated a student in my class.
I'm not transphobic.
And that isn't what I said.
Yeah, Jordan Peterson's a pretty smart cookie.
Elon Musk is the world's richest man by many calculations.
I think he's probably one of the world's smartest men also.
So don't go tangling with Elon Musk too.
I mean, seriously, do your homework first before you take a run at him, especially if you're saying, I saw hateful tweets.
You better be able to define them.
Oh, something that was slightly sexist.
That's just crazy.
Okay, thanks for letting me talk to you about Elon Musk.
I think he's a very interesting person.
No person is perfect.
And as the good book says, put not your trust in princes.
But I think he has done more good for freedom of speech in the last five years than anyone else in the world.
And I think he's done so rather selflessly.
Of course, he does intend to make money out of it.
And good for him.
All right, back to Canada.
I want to start by showing you this article from a couple of days ago in the Globe and Mail.
Headline, Trudeau Foundation to review donation from benefactors in China.
Oh, really?
So they're going to review their own review, which they already reviewed and said they're just fine.
Let me read, though.
Because this is after the entire board quit.
The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation is planning an outside review of a controversial Beijing-linked donation after concerns were raised internally about possible wrongdoing.
Oh, whoa, hang on.
I thought that Gerald Botts and Justin Trudeau said this was all false accusations from conservative MPs.
Let me keep reading.
Conversations with four key people associated with the Trudeau Foundation show an organization bitterly divided over how to handle the 2016 gift, which the Globe and Mail reported in late February came from the government of China as part of an influence operation to curry favor with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Globe is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to discuss internal foundation matters.
Huh, that's so curious because the Liberals said it was outsiders smearing the Trudeau Foundation.
I mean, that's what Trudeau himself said, right?
Mr. Trudeau, Catherine Ellsworth with Global News here.
This is in regards to a Trudeau Foundation question.
The entire board and the CEO of the foundation resigned this morning.
They cited the recent politicization of their work.
Are you concerned about the long-term stability of the organization and that the fallout from allegations of foreign interference is extending beyond your government?
As you well know, the Trudeau Foundation is a foundation with which I have absolutely no intersection.
It was established to promote knowledge and academic research into the humanities following the death of my father and has had an extraordinary impact on academic institutions and on brilliant Canadians.
It is a shame to see the level of toxicity and political polarization that is going on in our country these days.
But I am certain that the Trudeau Foundation will be able to continue to ensure that research into the social studies and humanities at the highest levels across Canadian academic institutions continues for many years to come.
He says it's toxic accusations.
I love that word.
It's always gaslighting.
It's always projecting.
It's always accusing your opponents of what you yourself did when it comes to Trudeau.
You know, Alan Rock, the old liberal cabinet minister, he bizarrely got into it too.
What's he doing here?
Take a look.
I'm sad and frankly, I'm angry at the nature of the attacks being made against the foundation these days.
I was going to ask you because you seem to come to it with a lot of emotion.
I can tell you're attached to the concept.
So what has been going through your mind as you're kind of reading these details emerge and then also the reaction to it?
Well, I guess I respond on two levels.
First of all, there's Pierre Polyev.
I think we're learning more about him than we are about the Trudeau Foundation as a result of the nature of these attacks.
The attacks are ignorant, irresponsible, highly partisan, and typical of Polyev and the way he does business.
It's sad to see politics descend to this level.
I mean, I spent 10 years over there.
I'm no babe in the woods when it comes to politics.
But I know a smarmy glib snake oil salesman when I see one, and it's Pierre Polyev.
Nothing positive to offer, no vision for the country, just being critical.
His real target here, Vashi, is Justin Trudeau.
The Trudeau Foundation is collateral damage, and it's important damage.
I can tell you, as someone who was the president of one of Canada's biggest universities for eight years, the Trudeau Foundation is a hugely important landmark in Canadian academics, in Canadian, the intellectual life of this country.
Do you know that there are hundreds of young Canadians who've benefited from the scholarships, the fellowships, the mentorships?
I don't think Polyev knows what the foundation does.
And if he did, he should be ashamed of himself.
I've met students who applied for scholarships.
I've been a reference for them.
These are kids who, many of whom came from nothing, who have massive student debts, but who want the scholarship because it opens up the world to them, gives them a chance to continue their studies as part of an intellectual network across Canada and around the world.
It's an invaluable resource for this country.
And one more thing, if I may.
It's hardly partisan.
I mentioned the all-party support in the House when we introduced the bill.
Its board of directors over the years has included Bill Davis, Peter Laheed, Roy Romano, hardly liberal stalwarts.
Why would he suddenly weigh in on this?
Is he worried that something will come to light?
I bet he's been involved in that kind of stuff.
Why else would he come forward like that?
Out of the blue, so long in obscurity.
I bet there's a lot of liberals worried.
I told you the other day about the structural weirdness of the Trudeau Foundation.
It's a charity that was given, well, I think it was $125 million in advance.
Like a lifetime's worth of revenue in advance.
Who does that?
I've never heard of that in my life.
Who pays an organization a lifetime's worth of cash before they've done anything?
You don't pay 10 years of rent in advance.
What if there's a problem along the way?
What if you want to move?
You don't subscribe to a newspaper for 10 years in advance.
You pay monthly or yearly.
Who gives nine figures in advance?
And then, this is the craziest part, hardwires the organization, the corporation, so that the family and its heirs and successors are the directors, literally hardwired to favor a particular family by name in perpetuity.
Does he think he's some lord or something?
Gee, I wonder why this turned into a money laundering slush fund for the Trudeau's.
They were copying we charity.
Remember the Kielbergers?
And Kielberger and Trudeau were friends.
I wonder who corrupted whom.
And just like that we charity that was fun, you know, it was a fund for the benefit of Craig Kielberger and his family, same with the money laundering operation here.
Let me quote a little bit more from the Globe Story.
The agreement with the two Chinese businessmen who initially took credit for the donation was signed by Alexandre Trudeau, brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a foundation board member at the time.
The other signatories were then University of Montreal rector Guy Breton and then school dean Jean-François Gaudreau Debien, university spokesperson Genevieve O'Meara said.
So Alexandre Trudeau took care of the donation.
That's odd.
For him to be right in the middle of the money, but just for this Chinese money.
It's a bit odd, isn't it?
Because Trudeau said there was no family connection.
Didn't he say that?
No connection.
He said that.
He always lies, doesn't he?
Remember when the Globe and Mail, the same reporters actually broke the news that Jody Wilson Raybold was fired as justice minister for not going along with some Montreal corruption.
Remember Trudeau's first response to that?
Did you or anyone in your office pressure the former Attorney General to abandon the prosecution of SNC Levlin?
The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false.
Neither the current nor the previous Attorney General was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.
Yeah, he's a liar.
It's just a lie.
I think the Globe and Mail reporters are on to him now.
But let me show you a few things that I happen to know about Alexandre Trudeau.
I mean, why would he accept the check?
That's something that an administrator or a development officer would do.
Is that something an accountant would do for staff to do?
Why did Alexandre Trudeau do it?
Well, here's some clues.
Remember I mentioned that Alexandre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's brother, was his policy advisor during Trudeau's leadership run.
So he was whispering in Trudeau's ear the whole time.
Well, he literally had the dictatorship of China publish his book.
In fact, they were the ones who suggested, suggested that he write a book about China.
I wonder how much they paid him.
He look at this interview on CPAC.
It's in French, but we're going to air the original translation.
Listen to how the book came about.
Alexandre Trudeau did not plan to write a book about China.
He was told to write a book about China by the dictatorship of China that published it.
Take a look.
The book now, Being a Barbarian in China, in the new China.
So why the book and why that title?
Well, the book itself.
It was sort of an organic phenomenon.
The Chinese wanted to write a book on my father's visit to China, and they asked me to write, this was in 1960, and they asked me to write the preface, and the Canadian edition was published in Vancouver.
They published it, so they asked me to write a longer preface.
And I said, fine, but I would like to go back to China and get into things, rediscover the country.
And when I went there, I found I had so many things to say that they said, well, we can't put that in a preface.
So we'll put it in a section.
And actually, we'd like you to write a full book on it.
Well, that was the pretext, but the idea is that China, for someone like me who was involved in geopolitics for quite a long time, just can't avoid China, which plays now a very important role.
Did you know that?
That China itself pushed Trudeau to write this propaganda book?
The year this happened was 2016, the same year as the big cash gift that Alexandre himself signed for.
What other money changed hands?
How much did he get paid for this book?
And he wasn't just happy to write for them, a book that, let's be honest, few people would have read.
But then he went on a propaganda tour for the Chinese government.
Here's Ottawa magazine at the time.
I'm still an outsider there, a barbarian.
But what China has given me is a perspective on the West from China.
It's much easier to understand the West.
I now look at our own freedoms with a little more circumspection and consider some of the irresponsible nature of some of the freedoms we enjoy.
I think China has a lot to say, especially old China.
Hey guys, did you know that it's irresponsible to be free?
That's what the Communist Party of China has taught him.
And this propaganda was given by Alexandra to Justin Trudeau right before Justin Trudeau's state visit to China.
Let me read the story.
It was published by Yahoo.
He read it a week before he left for China, and he told me it helped him get up to speed in what to think and feel about China.
So that $200,000 gift of the Trudeau Foundation was to literally place their asset, Alexandra, right inside the inner circle.
Struggle of Youth Indoctrination00:16:11
Trudeau's family.
It was so gross.
People started to notice.
This is from the Montrealer Online.
Is Sasha Trudeau, that's Alexandra's nickname, perhaps, just maybe, an apologist for the Communist Party of China?
He openly discusses the question in the book.
He doesn't believe China could have come so far so quickly without the unity and organizational power the CPC has provided.
The Chinese story, especially the recent one over the last 30 to 40 years, is perhaps the greatest success story in human history in terms of the amount of wealth created.
Did you know that?
Yeah.
So we've had a lot of news about Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden being in the pay of Chinese dictators and Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.
That's big news.
But don't you think it's bigger news here in Canada at least that Justin Trudeau's own brother Alexander was and probably still is a Chinese asset?
I'm not sure which is more scandalous, that or the fact that a nine-figure slush fund has been used at his family's own corrupt piggy bank.
Stay with us for more.
I want to tell you about someone I discovered on Twitter, one of the most interesting and thought-provoking commentators there is.
Her name is Shi Van Fleet, and she's an immigrant to the United States from the People's Republic of China.
And one of the reasons I like to follow her is because she draws comparisons between Mao's cultural revolution some 50-odd years ago and the woke cultural revolution in North America today.
I followed her on Twitter and finally we reached out and said, hey, can we talk to you on our show?
And she said yes.
And she joins us now via Skype from Logan County, Virginia.
What a pleasure to meet Shi Van Fleet.
Thank you for taking the time to meet with us today.
Thank you for finding me on Twitter.
Well, that's the amazing thing about it.
You can make all sorts of allies.
Now, you were just telling me before we turned the cameras on that you got involved politically in America over the schooling issue.
You're in Virginia and there was a bit of a parents' rebellion in that state.
And I think it's one of the reasons why that state now has a Republican governor because the battleground was the classroom.
Could you tell us just for a minute about that?
Why did you get involved and what did you learn from the great battle over schools in Virginia?
Yes, I was involved because I could not sit aside no longer.
It was 2020 when I finally said, enough is enough.
This is cultural revolution that I experienced when I was a schoolgirl in China.
So I decided to get involved.
So I joined the local Loudoun County Republic committee and then Republican Women's Club.
And that's when I got started and we went to school board and where I delivered a one-minute speech and went viral.
That's how I started.
Well, I think one of the interesting things about the lockdowns, and we had terrible lockdowns here in Canada, and schools were shut down for so long, I think the parents saw what was going on in the classroom because the computer was on by Zoom.
And so a lot of parents who really weren't that familiar with what was going on from, you know, 9 to 3.30 every day at school suddenly saw, oh my gosh, is this what you learn all the time?
Was that what happened to you or did you get involved in another way?
Because I think a lot of people were startled to see what was actually being taught in class.
What was your story?
That's really what started all of us, the parents.
And there is a video and it's a Zoom class video of a teacher asking a young black student and presented a photo of a black girl and a white girl asked him to describe the photo and he said, well, two girls.
And then the teacher pushed him.
And finally, the teacher said, you're not being honest.
It's a black girl and a white girl.
And this student was so smart.
He recorded it and then gave it to the Republican Women's Club leader.
And then it went viral.
And it's an example of how teachers push critical race theory to their students.
That's very interesting.
Good for him for holding the line.
Now, I didn't know that about your past, but that's a very exciting way to get and very meaningful way to get involved in public life.
I mean, there's nothing more important than our kids in our schools.
But one of the things I find fascinating is that you are drawing comparisons between the cultural revolution in China and the extreme revisionism.
We were talking about this on the show the other day, the four olds that were banned, old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits.
They would smash anything old, Chinese history.
They would smash the church.
They would smash any other source of authority.
I follow you on Twitter and I find it fascinating to see you juxtapose that ideological cult, that Maoist cult, with what's going on in North America today.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
First of all, let me ask you, did you experience that cultural revolution when you were a young person in China?
Maybe you can start off by telling us a bit about that and then the comparison.
I absolutely experienced the entire cultural revolution.
When it started, I was in my second semester of my first grade.
And my entire school years was in the Cultural Revolution.
And after that, after I graduated from high school, and Mao sent all of us, urban youth, to the countryside to continue our education.
It's called re-education by the peasants.
So I worked in the fields for three years before Mao died.
After that, I was able to go to college.
So I absolutely had my youth taken, my childhood, and my youth taken away by Mao.
Well, I saw everything.
Let's start with the younger grades.
I presume that before the Cultural Revolution, you would have learned the same things that kids, I suppose, learn elsewhere, you know, how to read and write and Chinese history and I suppose normal things that a kid in grade one in China would do.
What were you taught once the Cultural Revolution came in?
Were you still taught spelling, or I guess it's not spelling, to draw the Chinese characters?
Were you still taught calligraphy and history, or was it all politics?
What did you learn in grade one, two, three when you were a kid in China?
It is important to understand that before the Cultural Revolution, there were many, many cultural revolutions.
Ever since 1949, when the Communist Party took over China, the school turned into an indoctrination meal.
But it was still relatively reasonable.
So I remember my first semester in school, it was just normal with learning, even though there's a lot of socialist and communist narratives, but still kind of normal mass reading and writing.
And I remember some just harmless, beautiful lines from my Chinese textbook, such as the little creek, the water was running in the little creek, voila, voila, just, you know, just description of the sound.
And after the cultural revolution, that's too bourgeois.
That is not political enough.
So everything was abandoned.
All our textbooks were destroyed.
And so for about a year or so, we have no textbooks.
Only thing we had is Mao's Little Red book.
That's all we did.
In the class, we read it, we recited, we even sent songs because all those quotations were set into music.
And that's all we did.
And reading it, and then we have a mini-plus struggle session.
I don't know if people realize what it is.
A struggle session is basically the little kids sit together and we will do criticism and self-criticism according to what we learned from the Mouse Little Red book.
And we'll say something like, you know, according to Mao's instruction, I did not do well this way, that way.
And other kids said, yes, you're right.
You did not do this, we write, and that way, right.
So that's kind of like a mini struggle session.
But in reality, the adult world, that was brutal.
That was a red guard getting those people on stage, condemning them, and sometimes torture, sometimes just kill them right on the spot.
Oh, my God.
Now, of course, when you're a very young child, I suppose the criticism of you and the self-criticism, it would most likely be trivial things.
I don't know, maybe they asked you about the wealth of your family or something.
Maybe you were being criticized for that.
But I am somewhat familiar with the struggle sessions that were for adults and where people had to self-denounce and wear signs, shaming themselves in dunce hats.
I saw the book, and I have it, and I've done a show on it before called Red Color News Soldier by a Chinese communist soldier who was an official photographer.
And he took thousands of pictures in Heilong James of the Cultural Revolution.
And just shocking images.
They would have show trials.
And if you didn't denounce yourself, I remember there was just one haunting picture of they stuffed a glove in one guy's mouth because he wanted to protest his innocence.
They wanted to shut him up at his own trial.
And did you see any of that kind of a thing?
Okay.
I just want to add to what you said.
There was another picture of Red Guard put the hay, the grass, the hay, in someone's mouth while denouncing this guy.
No, I've seen that.
I've seen different things.
I've seen the struggle session for the governor of my province.
So even a powerful governor would tumble before the Red Guards.
And the Red Guards were the youth wing, right?
Yeah.
That is really what cultural revolution is about.
It's Mao using the youth, the Red Guard, to get down, to take down his political enemies, which is pretty much the entire communist bureaucracy.
Wow.
So no one was immune.
In fact, the more powerful you were, the more at risk you were because you were a political rival.
And so instead of having other political rivals in their 30, 40, 50, 60s, or 70s, he would go to the youth because they would just recite these things by rote.
It really would be a cult-like, you know, there would be trances, there would be things they would just repeat.
So it was sort of flipping the world on its head, wasn't it?
The children were the dictators in the Red Guard.
Is that an accurate thing to say?
That's exactly what happened then.
And that's exactly what's happening here in America and in Canada.
They used the young people.
They indoctrinated those young people.
And Mao really, it's getting rid of his enemy.
He could not use a better tool than the young people.
He gave them full power.
He did not defunct, but he just really smashed, what the word is smashed, the critical, no, the criminal justice system.
So the police were all sent to the countryside and exiled.
And the Red Guards were given full power to do whatever, including killing.
So at first, it was like a verbial abuse, kind of like what's going on today in America, but quickly it turned into violence.
And that's where we see it now.
It's no longer just a shouting.
It started, we started to say intimidation and the violence.
That's absolutely the repeat.
That is terrifying.
Now, I see you've written an essay on Foxnews.com.
The headline is, I survived Mao's regime.
Now China is using TikTok to poison our kids.
And one of the criticisms I've heard of the TikTok app is that it's actually spyware, that it captures everything about the user, your location, your contacts, it records your gestures, your eye movement.
It's a total awareness, not just the camera, everything.
And then that, of course, all goes through China, where under Chinese law, they must make it available to the security services.
So I always thought of it as a spyware problem.
But you make a related but different argument that it's not just the information they're collecting on the user.
It's what they're pumping out to North American kids.
And you compare TikTok in America with TikTok or Dou Yin, if I'm saying it right, in China.
In China, there's a limit of 40 minutes a day for people under a certain age.
It's educational, it's positive, it's healthy.
Whereas in North America, it's pushing trans extremism, pushing woke, it's hypersexual.
It really, one is designed to uplift kids and teach them.
The other is designed to basically be a race for the bottom.
Is that the thesis of your essay in Fox News?
That's exactly.
People have to understand it is the tool of the CCP to indoctrinate and basically manipulate and influence the American kids.
And what they do is to really push this toxic content to the kids and make them addicted to it.
So basically make them really no longer productive.
And why they're not doing that in China?
Because Xi Jinping, he needs highly trained citizens for him to build his empire.
So in China, they control everything and they always control what kids can see and not see.
So they're doing the same thing, but they're not doing the same thing to the American kids.
That's exactly why.
And, you know, I always say, you can blame CCP.
CCP is what it is.
And we know it is a communist regime.
The problem is the failure of the politicians here.
And it's not just politicians.
Democrats, they absolutely love that tool.
TikTok is pushing the exact same ideology that they've been pushing to the kids in school.
Mao's America: A Survivor's Warning00:03:39
Wow.
Well, one of the, you know, there's a saying there's nothing new under the sun.
There's a saying history repeats itself.
And I think there's some truth to both of those sayings.
And if you lived through the cultural revolution and if you saw young people get weaponized against the four olds, against adults, and moving from vocal denunciations, verbal denunciations, to actual violence, what should Americans and Canadians expect to see next?
What will it look like if we, God forbid, take the next step in the template of the Cultural Revolution in China?
What would it look like over here?
Well, that is the thing.
When people don't know history, they don't know.
All you need to do is check out what happened in China.
And at the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 20 million people lost their lives.
The economy was in ruins.
The Chinese civilization totally destroyed.
And the family divided, people divided at each other's throat.
And someone got absolute power and in the process become a god.
Okay, we don't have a Mao here in the West, but we have a group of people who are really just like Mao.
And that's what they aimed at.
That's what they are going to lead us to.
Well, it's a pleasure to meet you.
Even though you say terrifying things, we have to hear it.
We can't look away.
It's interesting to get to know you a little bit.
I'll continue to follow you.
And I find it fascinating the images that you choose.
Is there an organization or a website or a project that you are involved with that you would encourage people to follow?
I follow you on Twitter, and we'll have your Twitter handle underneath this video for other folks.
Is there something you would recommend to our viewers who want to learn more about your projects?
Yeah, I'm fighting by myself, even though I'm fighting with a lot of people who love this country and who love our freedom.
So far, my platform is Twitter.
So it's X-Ben Fleet.
Also, my book is coming up in October.
And the book is titled Mao's America, a survivor's warning.
And hopefully people will get that book.
And I listed all the parallels between this true cultural revolution and tell people what happened in China and warning them, the same thing will happen here if we don't stop it.
That's incredible.
Mao's America, a survivor's warning.
Well, when that book comes out, you must come back on the show.
She Van Fleet, what a pleasure to meet you.
Thank you for taking the time with us.
And I'll continue to follow you on Twitter and to follow your battles, both the global cultural battle and also if you get involved with more school-oriented battles, it sounds like that really activated you.
And I think that's to the benefit of all Americans.
You're such a passionate advocate, and you do have a desperate warning for the rest of us.
Thank you for joining us today.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I have it.
She Van Fleet from Logan County, Virginia.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, Joe Boudreau writes in again.
Great to hear from you again, Joe.
Pro Bono Publico00:05:30
That was an interesting interview in Red Deer about Chris Scott and the Whistle Stop Cafe.
I met Chris several times this year.
We had a rally in support for him in February.
Chris is a people person and waits on you personally in his restaurant in apron.
He's genuine.
I don't think any of these lawyers are genuine, including the crowdfunded ones you talk to.
They follow the dollar and only do what money pays them to do.
You're in street clothing without a tie like us, but talking to these people in $1,000 suits with $100 ties because we crowdfunded their fees.
They are not genuine.
They're just making a dollar off crowdfunding.
Please stop portraying them as legal heroes.
They are not.
They're just money grubbers.
Show us a free lawyer willing to do pro bono work.
Okay, well, you say a lot of things there.
First of all, after I went to the trial, it ended a little earlier than was expected.
So I had time before my flight home to drive out to Mirror Alberta about 45 minutes.
And it is a great restaurant.
The burger was great.
Fries were great.
I had some blueberry pie also.
And it's a whole family operation.
I met his brother-in-law who was working in the kitchen.
His daughters with the cashier, his son.
It was great.
It's sort of like a museum, a living museum of freedom.
There's so many artifacts on the wall, so many freedom-oriented artifacts.
In fact, I snapped a few pictures.
And when you drive up, there's this huge Alberta flag at the top of a crane.
It was really quite an experience.
Mirror Alberta is sort of off the beaten track, so you're probably not going to go there unless you go there on purpose, but I enjoyed it.
So you're right about Chris, but let me address your points about the lawyers.
The five government lawyers were there because they were paid by the government to stop Chris Scott by any means necessary.
And their chief means is by outlawing, lawyering him.
The two lawyers on Chris's side were crowdfunded, and they were wearing suits.
I have no idea how fancy their suits were.
The thing is, in court, you're expected to wear a suit.
There are some courts where they still wear a black gown.
So really, you could be wearing something casual underneath, although I think generally they have suit pants.
There's a whole outfit.
So dressing in a suit and tie is standard operating procedure in a court.
And if you did not have a tie, the judge might mention it.
And even though the judge doesn't mention it, the judge is going to see it and saying, does this guy not respect me?
Does this guy not respect the court?
So if there was a lawyer who was not dressed respectably, and I say a suit and tie is the standard issue, I think that would be a problem.
I think that wearing a normal suit, even a good-looking suit, means that people don't think about your suit.
They think about what you're saying.
I would not want a lawyer in court in a serious way to be dressed casually.
So I'm going to disagree with you on how they looked.
Your point about having a pro bono lawyer, over the course of my life, I have had several offers of pro bono lawyers, and some of them have worked out well.
But you cannot ask any person to work on a file.
In the case of Chris Scott, is it three years now or is it two years?
with many court appearances, including working in different hours of the day when he was seized and jailed and going through hundreds of documents and running around, you know, going to different cities.
You cannot ask anyone, lawyer or not, to work hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours for free.
I've never heard, I mean, I suppose there are some lawyers who do that much work pro bono, but typically pro bono, which is Latin for free, or for the good, literally, pro bono publico, for the good of the public.
I remember when I was in law school, we did pro bono work, and I did some pro bono work when I was at a law firm, but typically it's small matters.
You run a small trial, you represent someone who's poor in criminal court.
There is no such thing as a lawyer who's going to spend a thousand hours on something for free.
Sorry, would you do that?
I mean, Joe, I don't know you personally, so I don't know if you're retired, if you're independently wealthy, but I just simply don't think there's any person out there who's going to work a thousand hours on the case for free.
And then there's out-of-pocket expenses.
It's not just the lawyers, it's the paralegals, et cetera.
And if you were to find a lawyer who would do that for free, okay, are they any good?
If so, why do they have a thousand free hours?
There's nothing more expensive than a cheap lawyer.
I say that in that if there's a lawyer who says, hey, I'll do it for half price.
Okay, why are you saying that?
Are you so short of work?
Are you any good?
We need to have good lawyers because we need to win.
That's something I've discovered over the course of my life.
When I had no money, I would take any lawyer, I suppose.
And I remember I once hired an awful lawyer and he lost.
And frankly, I would have been better with no lawyer than with a bad lawyer.
So I'm going to disagree with you on that.
And I disagree with you only because I've had so much experience in crowdfunding lawyers.
And my experience tells me the good, you've got to pay for a good lawyer.
You get what you pay for.
And if you know a lawyer who's willing to work 1,000 hours for free, then you found a unicorn.
Anyways, thanks for your letter.
And I'm glad you watched.
That's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.