Chapter 33: America’s Anti-Communist Lessons (Part 10)

First: Establish an Ideological Affairs Department

Ideological struggle is a battle for hearts and minds. It is a life-and-death confrontation in the realm of thought and spirit. The Communist Party has always been adept at deception, propaganda, and incitement in order to win popular support. Lin Biao once openly stated within the Communist Party: “Without telling lies, great things cannot be accomplished.”

By contrast, over the past century the free world—led by the United States—has been most inept at ideological struggle, allowing communist fallacies to spread across the globe. To this day, the Chinese Communist Party’s evil propaganda still often holds the upper hand. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has stated that “China is effectively arguing that the China model is better than the American model.” The United States has come to realize that it must correct this weakness. America must persistently and loudly defend its own values, “and be prepared to defend them, and impose costs on China for its actions in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and potentially Taiwan.”

Mao Zedong said that the Communist Party relies on two things: the gun barrel and the pen barrel—violence plus propaganda and deception. From the day it was founded, the CCP has maintained a massive propaganda apparatus, investing enormous human and financial resources. In Beijing alone, the propaganda system employs at least tens of thousands of people. By comparison, the United States has only a small Voice of America operation. The asymmetry is glaring.

To defeat communism, the United States must respond in kind—using the opponent’s methods against them. It must establish an ideological combat department equivalent to the CCP’s propaganda system, with human and financial investment at least one quarter the size of the CCP’s propaganda apparatus. Only then can the contest be evenly matched. With the voices of truth and justice, such an effort can overwhelm the CCP’s evil propaganda and deception.

If communist lies are allowed to continue spreading unchecked, repeated endlessly until lies are accepted as truth, deceived populations will come to believe them. The free world will lose hearts and minds and ultimately fail. In the 1960s, President Richard Nixon once warned: “If we lose the ideological war, all the weapons, treaties, trade, foreign aid, and cultural relations will be meaningless.” Unfortunately, he later failed to act on this insight and was defeated by Mao Zedong.

Ideological struggle must proceed on several fronts.

First, exposure. Massive human and material resources must be devoted to comprehensively exposing the crimes of communism—from Marx, Lenin, and Stalin to Mao Zedong. Their historical crimes must be laid bare, their myths dismantled, and their true faces exposed to people around the world. The CCP’s carefully fabricated legends must be shattered so the public can understand the truth.

Second, debunking contemporary lies. Falsehoods and deceptive propaganda must be punctured so they lose their market. The CCP has recruited vast numbers of online propagandists who generate enormous volumes of disinformation every day. Many of these rumors spread into Chinese-American communities through WeChat. For example, lies circulate claiming that over one million people have died in the United States from the pandemic, that bodies cannot be processed, and that they are turned into human hamburgers and hot dogs for Americans to eat—claiming that Americans have a tradition of cannibalism. The CCP excels at crafting half-truths and grotesque fabrications to mislead the public. The United States must invest substantial manpower to analyze and refute such lies one by one, allowing truth and facts to reclaim the hearts and minds of the people.

Third, promote the voices of freedom and democracy, so truth and justice dominate public opinion. Some Chinese Americans have been deeply influenced by CCP propaganda. Confused individuals even use Mao Zedong Thought to attack U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Some elderly Chinese immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades—now in their seventies or eighties—regard themselves as “fourth-class citizens” and openly support China’s rise to surpass the United States as the world’s number one power.

In ideological struggle, special attention must also be paid to certain “professors” and scholars who live in the United States yet work as propagandists for the CCP. China has a group of “American citizens” who are anti-American militants: “anti-Americanism is their job; living in America is their lifestyle.” They own property in the United States and enjoy American freedom and democracy, yet when they return to China’s lecture halls—as senior fellows at China research institutes or adjunct professors at economics schools—they viciously attack America’s constitutional democratic system and continuously publish anti-American rhetoric. They willingly serve as foot soldiers of CCP totalitarianism.

Fourth, cleanse the internet and prevent communist lies from poisoning public discourse. The CCP infiltrates Chinese-American communities through WeChat, pushing ideological toxins to brainwash users. All WeChat users are subject to CCP surveillance. Apple, fearing power and chasing profit, has yielded to CCP pressure. As a result, Chinese people living in the United States remain under CCP monitoring. Anti-communist content is not allowed on WeChat, and Chinese Americans find themselves without freedom of speech—ironically, in free America.

In addition to establishing an official ideological struggle department and fully committing to the fight against communism, the U.S. government must also support grassroots anti-communist efforts. It should fund honest, anti-communist independent media, forming a vast popular movement against communism. Through multiple channels, the United States should also support the Chinese people’s struggle against communism and for freedom, creating a coordinated internal-external pressure that accelerates the end of communism.

The struggle between the free world and communist evil is an immense undertaking. Communism has wreaked havoc for over a hundred years. Today, only one massive malignant tumor remains—the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP’s poisoning of the Chinese people has penetrated deep into their bones and marrow and has reached a terminal stage. Mainland Chinese intellectuals lament “collective blindness” and “collective moral collapse,” illustrating how profound the damage has been.

Even if the CCP is eventually forced to abandon totalitarianism and transition to constitutional democracy, a long period of detoxification will still be required to eliminate the historical residue of communist poisoning. After a century of communist harm, if 70 percent of this poison can be removed within ten to twenty years following transition, that alone would constitute a great victory.