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Dealing with the Chinese Dictatorship

By William P. Hoar

Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, by Peter Schweizer, New York, N.Y., Harper (an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers), 2022, 341 pages, hardcover.

You have probably heard a version of this sad song before. In fact, author Peter Schweizer, president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute and a former fellow at the Hoover Institution, has written other bestsellers with similar refrains, albeit directed at different targets. His previous works include Architects of Ruin, Clinton Cash, Secret Empires, and Profiles of Corruption.

As we write, this book has been number one on the New York Times bestseller list for the past several weeks, as well as sitting atop Amazon and Barnes & Noble lists since being published in late January. It kicks off with Lenin’s infamous prediction that capitalists “will work on the preparation of their own suicide.” That has often been rendered as a forecast that capitalists will sell communists “the rope with which to hang them.”

As you might imagine, there are not a lot of giggles in this book. There are facts, particulars, and specifics — pointing at those who are helping the dictatorship in Beijing while lining their own pockets at the expense of U.S. interests and freedom in general.

Without extraneous commentary or sensational language, Schweizer has compiled an impressive litany of disheartening (but crucial) facts covering many years. It includes — to start at the top — considerable evidence that the current occupant of the Oval Office has made “excuses for Beijing while his family secured multiple deals with Beijing worth tens of millions of dollars. This, through the courtesy of individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence.” And Schweizer goes into detail about how the Biden family scored this lucre in multiple deals, despite (or because of) working with characters with ties to Beijing’s intelligence apparatus.

As we say, this is not a new tale.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” as Mark Twain is reputed to have said. Whether he did utter those words is less important than the observation itself. For, if you examine the past, one may well be struck with déjà vu. Reading Schweizer’s book brings to mind, for example, Antony Sutton’s scholarly volumes on Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development — a theme popularized in his 1973 book National Suicide. Those works documented how the free world’s technology helped create the military wherewithal that threatened the non-communist world. Later, Sutton wrote about how certain New York financiers were linked to the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Hitler.

When it came to China, celebrated Western reporters and prominent academics were eager to lionize the communists during the civil war — the Reds were supposedly going to save the Chinese from the alleged corruption of Chiang Kai-shek — thus helping to put the country into the hands of mass-murderer Mao Tse-tung.

Will a resurrection of the Red Guards be next? Probably not under that name, but an updated adaptation of Mao’s Little Red Book does seem to be a possibility. Indeed, the Times of London has just taken note of how China’s schools must now teach the thoughts of Chairman Xi, reporting, “Chinese schools have been ordered to appoint political commissars to ensure that all children receive instruction on President Xi’s ideology and definition of the ‘rule of law.’”

Names Not Omitted to Protect the Guilty

The author of Red-Handed piles up his indictments and backs them with concrete proofs; he also gives credit to the contributions of his research team.

There is considerable evidence. We learn of a Chinese global energy company linked to a Chinese intelligence operation that sent almost $6 million to Joe Biden’s son Hunter; of more than a score of former U.S. senators and representatives (both Democrats and Republicans) who, after leaving office, have lobbied for Chinese military- or intelligence-linked firms; and how the spouse of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was part owner of a Chinese firm that allegedly sold computers with spyware chips to the U.S. military.

That’s a small taste. All lend credence to the utilization of a strategy formerly proposed by Mao: yang wei Zhong yong, or “make the foreign serve China.” As the author notes: “More than sixty years later, the strategy has only become more aggressive. Beijing offers deals, inducements, praise, and access to seduce foreign elites into serving their interests.”

Schweizer explains in this book (a point he also makes in personal publicity remarks) that in the espionage world, practitioners — especially the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — “use the term ‘elite capture’ to describe successful efforts to essentially buy off members of a country’s leadership. Opportunities to get wealthy are a key motivator.”

The documentation is very thorough. Studying the book — with about 80 pages of source material and more than 1,000 endnotes — it occurred to this reviewer that the meticulous citations would give the proper authorities a leg up for, say, an official investigation. Lo and behold, shortly after the book appeared, several Republican congressmen urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the dealings of Biden family members with the CCP.

Many others get the spotlight turned on them. The book also has the goods on the “Bush and Trudeau Dynasties” (the name of one chapter), along with culpable activities of current and former congressional leaders; former ambassadors, intelligence and security officials; prominent universities; wealthy industrial bigwigs; and leading lights out of Silicon Valley.

Sellouts from Washington, Wall Street, and Elsewhere

Just spending some time in Washington power circles may lead to a comfortable sinecure down the road, especially if you are willing to look the other way about your unsavory partners. Multiple former members of Congress, for example, have aligned themselves with a Chinese company that has a low public profile (though it is better known among military and defense cognoscenti). Per the author:

Hikvision is a surveillance company in China, largely owned by a government-controlled defense conglomerate called the China Electronic Technology Group. Hikvision has a particularly odious reputation because its surveillance cameras have been installed by the Chinese government to monitor Uighurs being held in prison camps. But that has not deterred several former politicians from signing up to lobby on their behalf.

Yes, their names are there.

Then you have Machiavellian individuals such as billionaire Bill Gates.

Author Schweizer, while promoting his book, recently told Fox Nation that Gates is among others who have a “weird admiration for what they call the efficiency of the Chinese dictatorship. And I laugh because, of course, dictatorships are efficient because they don’t have to worry about civil rights. They don’t have to worry about property rights. They can do whatever they want.”

In Red-Handed, he goes deeper into the dodgy actions of one of the world’s richest men, writing that the Microsoft co-founder is also an investor “in a Chinese electric vehicle company with the uplifting name Build Your Dreams (BYD).” While that might sound innocuous enough, take a glance under the figurative hood. BYD, as the author points out, also has deep ties to, and cooperates with, the Chinese military. According to a study sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, BYD grants military enterprises access to its technologies and research data. In 2018, for example, BYD announced that it would conduct “strategic cooperation” with the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology — a PLA entity — which is the “largest research and production base of missile weapons and launch vehicles in China.” At the same time, BYD works with military institutions to shape its products. For good measure, the company’s founder and CEO is a Communist Party official.

Gates must be aware that BYD is involved in creating advanced guidance systems for Chinese missiles, as Schweizer says.

A careful examination of this book might help a reader better understand what is behind today’s news and financial activities. Consider the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, and its CEO, Larry Fink — a prominent advocate of “social responsibility” in investing. Well, not all investing. Those standards, as is made clear in Red-Handed, don’t apply in Communist China.

And the abuses heaped on Hong Kongers or Uighurs apparently don’t matter if you believe that other Chinese may be doing better financially. The author quotes Fink’s remarks from the Australian Financial Review, in which he praised the leadership of Xi Jinping for improving the quality of life for many Chinese. “In theory,” Fink said dismissively, “some elements of society may have less rights, but on the other hand I would say the majority of society in China have done very well.”

That brings to memory the New York Times’ Red apologist (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Walter Duranty; he liked to quote Stalin’s alleged comments when the Soviet dictator’s atrocities became better known, to wit: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

Do you support social good? Fink does — though not for everybody. The financier has used, as Schweizer puts it, “BlackRock’s muscle to help the Communist Party consolidate control over companies.” Fink’s alleged passion, recall, is “climate change,” notwithstanding the fact that more than half of the coal power in the world is currently generated in China.

Fink’s public face in the free world is different. As The Wall Street Journal put it in mid-February, BlackRock and other asset managers are trying to “impose their policy agenda on corporate America” rather than to pursue higher returns. “Two years ago,” said the editors, “Fink wrote a letter to CEOs threatening to vote against corporate managers if they didn’t follow environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures prescribed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. That Michael Bloomberg-backed outfit wants companies to report minutia from how much plastic they used to sales from sugary beverages.”

To close that loop, jump back to Red-Handed, where we are reminded that multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg has asserted that the tyrannical Xi, the top guy in Communist China, is “not a dictator.” Tell that to the man in the street. Or concentration camp.

Peter Schweizer proves otherwise in spades, even while exposing the duplicity of Beijing’s numerous apologists and protectors.

The communist leaders in China, we find, are willing to tolerate “big help with a little badmouth.” That dictum is referenced several times by the author, who explains, “As long as these elites deliver on key policies and actions that benefit the regime, some criticism is acceptable.” Some defenders (and partners) in the West may not even go that far. Schweizer jogs our memory in his book:

When Joe Biden hit the campaign trail for the presidency, after his family had received $31 million from Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen, he continued to dismiss the challenges posed by China. “China’s going to eat our lunch? C’mon man,” he told a campaign rally in Iowa. He added, “They are not bad folks, folks.”

Perhaps Joe missed his intelligence briefings. He does appear to think more of tolerance (of certain types) than he does of truth. For an antidote, don’t miss Red-Handed.

Benedict Biden

Benedict Biden: Water Carrier for the New World Order, by Arthur R. Thompson, Appleton, Wisconsin: The John Birch Society, 2021, 145 pages, paperback. (To order, see back cover.)

The Biden administration is a difficult-to-understand phenomenon. Joe Biden himself seems a bit like a mash-up of someone’s creepy uncle and their out-to-lunch, geriatric, demented grandfather. But the liberal media portray him as reasonable and in control. Clearing away many of the cobwebs that impede an understanding of the man behind the administration is Benedict Biden: Water Carrier for the New World Order, by Arthur Thompson, former CEO of The John Birch Society, this magazine’s parent organization.

In 145 pages, Thompson drills down into the real Joe Biden, showing that the mainstream media portrayal of the life-long politician as a left-of-center moderate is far off the mark. In 13 chapters, Thompson addresses Biden’s background, his worldview, and his plans to take America forward as part of the New World Order fully under the control of the internationalists who sit at the helm of the United Nations.

Benedict Biden unpacks the origins of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, showing that, while most Americans are under the misguided belief — created and propagated by mainstream media — that the plan is the brainchild of Biden himself, it was actually borrowed from the UN plan of the same name. As Thompson writes:

Build Back Better is a campaign slogan of the United Nations that came about in 2015 at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction. Since then, it has been used in a wide variety of UN initiatives, including socialist political campaigns in foreign countries.

In other words, it is not an original idea of Biden’s; it is a campaign of the United Nations. Though it started out referring to “building back” after a disaster, it also has been used in environmental initiatives.

Thompson goes on to explain that Biden is using that same play under the pretense of “building back” from COVID; but even that idea was borrowed from the United Nations. Thompson points to “the UN’s website concerning the environment (unenvironment.org),” which contains “a page titled ‘Building Back Better: Why we must think of the next generation.’” That page states that after the pandemic “attitudes may shift most … on the environment,” and that the “youth of the world are way ahead of their elders when it comes to protecting the planet.”

Thompson likewise unpacks Biden’s views on immigration, gun control, local police, and other important policy topics — showing Biden to be what the title of the book calls him: a water carrier for the New World Order.

As stated above, the Biden administration is a difficult-to-understand phenomenon. That is so — at least in part — because (as Thompson points out) “Too many people believe that President Biden is a bumbling fool, a man who has lost his faculties.” It is truly confusing to try to figure out how a man who can’t string six words together into a coherent sentence after the sun goes down can remain in the Oval Office and control the most powerful single position in American politics. But, as Thompson explains, to understand the phenomenon of the administration, one needs to see a clear picture of the man. One needs also to have a clear picture of the agenda that Biden, his supporters, and even many of his “opponents” are following. And to do that, one needs to see the wider canvas. As Thompson writes:

While it is true that his age is showing, and he has lost the physical attributes he once had, his political actions are deliberate. His entire political life demonstrates this to be true. What he wanted as a young man, he is now accomplishing as president.

We intend to show in this volume what Biden’s political aims are and have been for decades — and the consequences of achieving those aims.

The record is clear and unmistakable when it comes to Biden. One interesting aspect of his involvement in politics is that no one who has ever run against him has used the evidence at hand to defeat him — by exposing what has been his agenda all along. The information is easy enough to find, but rarely has it been brought forward.

The mass media have never exposed his weaknesses, and later in his life even protected him and his family from exposure. Even when the evidence was before the public, the media and Biden’s opponents covered up the significance of his agenda.

In clear and concise language, Thompson shows how the Biden administration is a tool in the hands of the one-world crowd. After addressing Biden’s nomination of Saule Omarova — whose Marxist-communist instruction at Moscow State University under a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship helped shape her economic views — for comptroller of the currency, Thompson writes of “a more dangerous group subtly filling slots in the Biden administration, from top to bottom — members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

Regular readers of this magazine are likely familiar with the global-government goals of the CFR. Thompson takes the time to unpack those goals in the book, writing:

It is not only what these members believe in, it is that they follow an agenda designed to bring to fruition a one-world government — regardless of any administration’s stated beliefs.

Basically, the CFR was created to convince the American people to become part of a one-world government, the New World Order (their words, not ours). You will recall that we pointed out that Marx and Engels used this term before they penned The Communist Manifesto.

Benedict Biden is an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand book that keeps the author’s promise “to show in this volume what Biden’s political aims are and have been for decades — and the consequences of achieving those aims.” Written both for the well-informed and the novice, this book exposes the Biden administration as an important subsidiary of a larger conspiracy for global control. Those already familiar with the globalist agenda of the CFR and other such groups will gain a better understanding of how the Biden administration fits into that agenda. The novice will likewise see how the administration fits into that agenda, but will also find in the book a primer on the greater agenda for global control.

Perhaps, though, the greatest value of Benedict Biden is in its call to action. As Thompson writes, “Being informed first requires an understanding of the principles of liberty and knowing who the enemy is. The next step is involvement; it is of no use to know what is going on if you are not willing to do anything about it.”

This call to action is clear and to the point:

A few dedicated people working together in a community can achieve great things and make things happen. This is what the Left has been doing for decades, while the average Joe has not been paying attention. However, Joe is now noticing and doesn’t like the job the Left has been doing.

An informed individual knows that he has to do something. He has to take some responsibility in his community. But what? And how? He could work alone, but usually doesn’t know how to do so. He would be far more effective working with others in a concerted program to get things done. A little work here, a little there, in concert with the work of others, can really make a difference.

As regular readers of The New American know, that call to action is best answered by joining The John Birch Society. After all, if — as Thompson’s book shows — the enemies of freedom are organized and diligent in their concerted efforts to create a one-world government, then lovers of liberty must likewise be organized and diligent in keeping the Spirit of ’76 alive. And The John Birch Society has been organized and working on that goal since 1958.

The Mass Exodus From Indoctrination to Freedom

Since the COVID-19 lockdowns began in early 2020, parents have been made aware of what their children were really learning in both public and private schools. Zoom classes were especially effective in exposing teachers telling students of the growing problem of white supremacy, and that schools were built on stolen land. Educators have even gone so far as to abandon the advice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — to judge people on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin — in favor of the “anti-racist” views of propagandist Ibram X. Kendi.

Yet despite the best efforts of teachers unions, school boards, and classroom instructors to turn children into leftist activists separated by race, parents are waking up. Despite fears about homeschooling, many moms and dads feel they have no choice but to pull their kids out of the public schools.

The great news is that, to date, more than three million American children have been liberated from state-sanctioned schools seeking to indoctrinate rather than educate, and the number of households educating at home is steadily increasing as the massive exodus from the public-school system into homeschooling continues to gain momentum.

Offering a uniquely personal and in-depth look at the rise of the homeschooling movement, married filmmakers Garritt Hampton (Interstellar, Furious 7, The Twilight Saga: New Moon) and Yvette Hampton (Schoolhouse Rocked podcast) have released an illuminating and authoritative new documentary titled Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution.

This hopeful, eye-opening film begins with the Hamptons selling their California home, along with most of their possessions, as they prepare to travel across the country with their two young daughters, Brooklyn and Lacey.

What starts out as a plan to be on the road for a year ultimately turns into a remarkable, three-year journey that introduces the family to hundreds of homeschooling parents, as well as some of the most prominent voices advocating for this growing alternative form of education.

The film’s producer, Yvette Hampton, sits down with luminaries such as actress and homeschool mom Sam Sorbo (TV series Hercules), professor and author Dr. Carol Swain (Black Eye for America: How Critical Race Theory Is Burning Down the House), and U.S. congressional candidate and homeschool mom Heidi St. John (founder, Firmly Planted Family Homeschool Resource Center), among many others.

Inspiring and encouraging, the film urges parents to “get off the bench and onto the battlefield” and to take their children back. As St. John remarks in an interview with Yvette, “Our children have been held hostage by a school system that is telling them that their parents are not the authority in their lives, and parents have not known what to do with it.”

“Your children are your responsibility,” advises St. John, “and the very hearts and minds of the children hang in the balance. It is time for parents to take back what the public school has stolen from us, which is the education of our children, and realize that we have already been equipped, and we can do it!”

On the Road

In late 2016, when the documentary opens, the Hamptons had packed up an RV with whatever possessions they hadn’t sold and were heading south toward Georgia, which was to serve as a home base for the Christmas holiday. Along the way, they recorded the stunning desert canyons of Arizona, the rocky hillsides of New Mexico, and the vast, rugged prairies of Texas, allowing viewers an arm-chair tour of the expansive American Southwest. Later, they crisscrossed back west and up to towns surrounded by forests of evergreen trees in Washington State.

In an interview with The New American, director Garritt Hampton, now happily settled with his wife and children in Oklahoma, said leaving California was hardest on their 11-year-old daughter, Brooklyn, who missed her school and her friends. But, noting the resilience and adaptability of children, Garritt said his daughters did wonderfully, and that their family grew immensely closer to the Lord and to one another during their travels.

The family attended dozens of homeschool conventions and visited the homes of families who have bravely pulled their kids out of government-run institutions. During this part of the journey, Yvette met a number of parents who expressed real fears in performing the dual role of educator and parent. Their feelings mirrored hers when she and Garritt first decided to teach their girls at home rather than send them to school.

“We said we would never do this homeschool thing but only because we didn’t really understand it,” says Yvette at the beginning of the film. “We had all the reasons why not to homeschool: Our children would be socially awkward; they won’t be well-educated. We were not trained as educators and we could not give them everything they needed.”

Having conquered those anxieties, Yvette and Garritt set out to dispel these common homeschooling myths in their documentary. This goal, without a doubt, was achieved.

Prepared for Battle

Viewers may be surprised to learn that not until 1993 did homeschooling become legal in all 50 states. The filmmakers devote an entire segment to those pioneering homeschool families who faced extreme hardship and pushback from the government and from other families who believed education at home was detrimental to children.

In the film, trailblazer and advocate Zan Tyler describes losing all her friends after having made the decision to homeschool. “They were vicious,” Tyler says. “This was 1984, and when I say we knew nobody when we started [homeschooling], we knew nobody when we started.”

Michael Smith, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), who started homeschooling in California in 1981, said that he didn’t have any idea that the government would vehemently oppose the idea of homeschooling. “I found out pretty quickly that homeschooling in California was not legal for our family because the California Department of Education was of the opinion that you had to be a certified teacher,” said Smith in an interview.

“Homeschool moms are America’s greatest heroes,” exclaims Smith. And we can’t forget the dads, such as Garritt, who remain the pillar of the home.

“We had to fight,” declared Robert Bortins, CEO of Classical Conversations, recalling his initial homeschool experience. “We knew people who were being threatened with jail time, fines, maybe having their children taken away from them when they were just trying to give their children a great education.”

But now we live in 2022, and while parents are well aware of the damaging impacts of education focused on Critical Race Theory and gender studies as well as all day mask-wearing, they still possess a wealth of phobias about removing their children from these schools and making the leap to homeschooling.

However, there is hope. During the 2020-2021 school year, homeschooling numbers in the United States doubled, with black households seeing the highest rate of increase, from 3.3 percent in the spring (April 23-May 5) to 16.1 percent in the fall (September 30-October 12), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Finding Solutions

As today’s younger generation moves up through the public-school system, parents who have chosen to enter the battlefield have recognized, as Dr. Carol Swain observes in the film, “that the quality of education has steadily deteriorated in America.” Dr. Swain further asserts, “there is a plan to steal our children,” to turn them away from the firm foundations rooted in family and American values.

In one scene, news headlines from past decades flash across the screen: “Schools continue to perform miserably,” and “education spending slated for $1.2 billion boost.”

In an interview with Yvette, Andrew Pudewa, founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing, states, “if money could have fixed public education it would have done so long ago. If the newest iteration of standards could have changed public education it would have done so long ago.” For Pudewa, “real life started when school ended…. No one is able to turn the great Titanic of institutional education. It is going along its path and it is essentially unturnable and unchangeable.”

Until the system is taken apart and rebuilt, the schools will operate as they were intended to operate, and parents won’t know what is taking place in the schools on a daily basis. They shouldn’t wait to pull their kids out, believing that the schools are going to change anytime soon.

“Your kids belong to you,” St. John reminds us in a moving closing scene. “They don’t belong to the school; they don’t belong to the state. They belong to you. It’s time for parents to step up to the plate and get off the bench and onto the battlefield. It’s time to bring our children home.”

Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart or for parents who choose to work alone in this battle to train their children; it takes a committed mother and father working as a team. With confidence that the Lord is leading their efforts, homeschooling parents can find the school years the most important in their children’s development and growth into adulthood. David says in Psalm 1:3, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord; he is like a tree, firmly planted by streams of water who yields its fruit in due season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.”

Schoolhouse Rocked is now available for streaming, to purchase, or to rent.

Published with Permission of thenewamerican.com