We’ve all heard before that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but the left takes a much more nuanced view. As far as they are concerned, those that rewrite history are able to rewrite the future. That is why conservatives have been thrust into a battle to preserve the objective truth of what happened yesterday. At first glance, preserving our history might seem like an easy task. Yet, even eyewitness accounts can be silenced by powerfully vocal voices on the left.
Xi Van Fleet calls herself “an immigrant from China with 200 borrowed dollars in my pocket when I arrived more than 30 years ago.” No one could be more qualified to comment on American exceptionalism than her. When pseudo-historian Nikole Hannah-Jones took to Twitter to explain why black history “is the greatest rebuke to the narrative of American exceptionalism,” Xi Van Fleet called out her faulty logic. This courageous survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution proclaimed, “Natural rights is unique to the American founding. Because of it we were able to abolish slavery, Jim Crow, anti-Chinese laws … to allow individuals to succeed. What is not unique to America is slavery, which still exists today. People fighting for human rights in China are jailed by CCP.”
The best response Hannah-Jones could muster was to mention the fact that slavery existed at the time of the Founding and to make a plug for her Hulu series. That’s not the kind of response I would hope for from someone who bills herself as an eminent historian. Yet, Nikole Hannah-Jones believes that her exposure in the news and her academic credentials give her the ability to discredit actual eyewitness accounts of history.
If you truly want to learn about the history of communism and socialism, do not turn to the ivory towers of academia. Instead, listen to those that have actually lived under these flawed systems and escaped, such as Xi Van Fleet. Those that have experienced communism firsthand are almost always the loudest voices against it. Do not let the left rewrite history in order to shape our future. Acknowledge communism and socialism for what they are: totalitarian systems where individual rights are sacrificed to the state.
