www.theepochtimes.com Open in urlscan Pro
151.139.128.11  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

GET https://www.theepochtimes.com/search/

<form action="https://www.theepochtimes.com/search/" class="search_form" method="get">
  <label for="searchtext">Search Text</label>
  <input id="searchtext" itemprop="query-input" type="text" name="q"><input id="searchtype" type="hidden" name="t" value="ai">
  <a class="search_icon" href="javascript:void(0);">SEARCH</a>
</form>

Text Content

MENU ABOUT US MAKE A DONATION

SEARCH
SHARE 72
CLOSE
Help Center subscribe newsletter Newsstands Epoch Shop Gift
 * TOP NEWS
 * SPECIAL SERIES
 * SPECIAL COVERAGE
 * LATEST ARTICLES

 * US
   * US News
   * US Features
   * Politics
   * Crime and Incidents
   * New York
   * San Francisco
   * Los Angeles
 * Opinion
   * Thinking About China
   * Viewpoints
   * Unbridled Evil: The Corrupt Reign of Jiang Zemin in China
   * The Reader’s Turn

 * China
   * US-China Relations
   * Chinese Regime
   * Business & Economy
   * Chinese Culture
   * China Human Rights
   * Social Issues
   * Organ Harvesting in China
 * World
   * Africa
   * Americas
   * Asia & Pacific
   * Canada
   * Europe
   * UK
   * Australia
   * International
   * Middle East
 * Business & Markets
   * Companies
   * Economy
   * Markets
   * Real Estate
   * Gold and Commodities

 * ARTS & CULTURE
   * Fine Arts & Craftsmanship
   * Performing Arts
   * Books
   * Traditional Culture
   * Shen Yun Special Coverage
   * Film & TV
 * Science
   * News
   * Space
   * Environment
 * Tech
   * Tech News
   * Tech Products & Reviews
   * Social Media
 * Sports
 * Video
   * American Thought Leaders
   * China Insider
   * Crossroads

 * Bright
   * Lifestyle
   * Inspired
   * Family & Education
   * Personal Finance
   * American Essence
 * Entertainment
   * Film & TV
   * Entertainment News
 * Health
   * Experts
   * Health Conditions
   * Wellness
 * Special Topics
   * Battlefields

Search Text SEARCH

American Thought Leaders


BLM CO-FOUNDER’S TIES TO PRO-COMMUNIST CHINA GROUP: MIKE GONZALEZ

Video Player is loading.
Play Video
Play
Mute

Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 42:05
Loaded: 0.00%


00:00
Stream Type LIVE
Seek to live, currently behind liveLIVE
Remaining Time -42:05
 
1x
Playback Rate

Chapters
 * Chapters

Descriptions
 * descriptions off, selected

Captions
 * captions settings, opens captions settings dialog
 * captions off, selected

Audio Track
 * default, selected

Fullscreen
Settings
Seek back 10 seconds

Seek forward 10 seconds

 * Speed
   
   Normal
 * Quality
   
   Auto

Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.

TextColorWhiteBlackRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanTransparencyOpaqueSemi-TransparentBackgroundColorBlackWhiteRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanTransparencyOpaqueSemi-TransparentTransparentWindowColorBlackWhiteRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanTransparencyTransparentSemi-TransparentOpaque
Font Size50%75%100%125%150%175%200%300%400%Text Edge
StyleNoneRaisedDepressedUniformDropshadowFont FamilyProportional
Sans-SerifMonospace Sans-SerifProportional SerifMonospace SerifCasualScriptSmall
Caps
Reset restore all settings to the default valuesDone
Close Modal Dialog

End of dialog window.

CLICK TO UNMUTE
By Jan Jekielek
Jan Jekielek
Senior Editor
Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times and host of the show,
"American Thought Leaders." Jan’s career has spanned academia, media, and
international human rights work. In 2009 he joined The Epoch Times full time and
has served in a variety of roles, including as website chief editor. He is the
producer of the award-winning Holocaust documentary film "Finding Manny."
View profile
September 26, 2020Updated: October 2, 2020
biggersmaller
Print

The Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, has long sought to subvert America. While a
number of the groups involved in recent riots have ideological ties to Beijing,
what are the deeper connections?

Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez discovered that the Black
Futures Lab, closely linked to the Black Lives Matter Global Movement, is being
funded by an openly pro-CCP group, the Chinese Progressive Association.

In this episode, Gonzalez reveals exactly what he found, why recent fact-checks
of his work have proven inaccurate, and why he believes identity politics is
undermining the very foundations of America.

This is American Thought Leaders 🇺🇸, and I’m Jan Jekielek.



Jan Jekielek: Michael Gonzalez, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought
Leaders.

Michael Gonzalez: Jan, the pleasure is all mine.

Jan Jekielek: You’ve written a very, very interesting book, just out recently:
“The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the
Free”—a topic we’ve covered quite a bit on American Thought Leaders, broadly
speaking.

Before we go there, I want to talk to you about this recent article that you’ve
written, finding connection between the Black Lives Matters founder and
pro-Chinese Communist Party groups in America. This is pretty fascinating
because there have been people alleging these kinds of connections. There’s some
ideological overlap, but this is the first time a kind of financial connection
was discovered.

Mr. Gonzalez: Yes, the overlap is ideological, definitely. One has to realize
that this founder, Alicia Garza, sits atop a worldwide revolutionary network.
It’s really a holding company for revolutionary sales. One of the main ones,
which she founded, is the Black Lives Matter Global Network.



Now, I have to make clear that nobody is against the sentiment of “black lives
matter.” In fact, I think all Americans adhere, at any rate should adhere, to
the fact that black lives, of course, do indeed matter. We’re talking about the
organizations.

Alicia Garza is one of the founders of these organizations. In 2018, she founded
yet another one, called the Black Futures Lab. The Black Futures Lab, if you go
to the donate button, says that the money you give will go to the Chinese
Progressive Association [CPA] of San Francisco.

The Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco is an organization that has
pushed the Beijing line in San Francisco, that has taken some actions that would
benefit the People’s Republic of China, but the main thing is that many of its
leaders are members of LeftRoots.



LeftRoots is an organization of the hard Left, in which a lot of people—the
Chinese Association, the Chinese Progressive Association of Boston, and its
leaders—are also members of LeftRoots. I think that’s where the ideological
overlap is with Alicia Garza and the Black Lives Matter organization because
Alicia Garza is a Marxist, has said that she needs to smash capitalism, has said
this several times.

I just viewed a video this morning of the two other founders, Opal Tometi and
Patrisse Cullors, chanting, “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” which is
obviously straight out of “The Communist Manifesto.” So I think the overlap, the
Venn diagram overlap between the Black Lives Matters organizations, Alicia
Garza, in groups like CPA San Francisco is this.

Mr. Jekielek: It’s very interesting. So you actually found that there’s a
financial connection between the CPA and this new organization that Alicia Garza
found.

Mr. Gonzalez: Yes, so the Blacks Futures Lab is a fiscally sponsored project of
the San Francisco CPA. I think that a lot of the Black Lives Matters
organizations are fiscally sponsored projects of one thing or another because
that gives them a degree of flexibility in how opaque they can be in how they
spend their money. That’s what the critics have said.

For example, the Black Lives Matter Global Network used to be a fiscally
sponsored project of Thousand Currents. Thousand Currents is another funder of
the hard Left. It emerged in July—because of research that was done by people
here in Washington—that the vice chairman of the board of Thousand Currents is
Susan Rosenberg, who used to be a member of the Weather Underground, which the
FBI identified as a domestic terrorist organization.

She spent time in prison. Susan Rosenberg’s sentence was commuted by Bill
Clinton on his last day in office, and here she is sitting on the board of
Thousand Currents. So after this emerges, Black Lives Matter Global Network,
which is very media-savvy, became a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides
Center, which is also a funder of the hard Left, but at least it doesn’t have
Susan Rosenberg on its board.



Mr. Jekielek: So Michael, you mentioned a couple of different organizations. You
mentioned a San Francisco CPA and a Boston CPA, obviously, different
organizations, what actually ties these groups to the Chinese Communist Party?

Mr. Gonzalez: Well, there were both created by I Wor Kuen. I Wor Kuen was a
hard-Marxist, militant organization in the 1960s, which created the San
Francisco CPA in 1972. Then some of the IWK people created the CPA in Boston in
1977. They’re separately registered and separately run. Its members are
connected through organizations such as LeftRoots, which is a Marxist
organization.

The CPA in Boston has done events with the Chinese Consulate in New York, but
the events have taken place in Boston, and the CPA in San Francisco has taken
steps to defend the People’s Republic of China. For example, they were part of
an organization in 1977 that urged the Department of Justice not to investigate
Chinese spying in America, this spying by China. And they used the specious
pretext that this was racial profiling.

I must say that in this particular instance, [they] combined with a group that
was for affirmative action, which shows that they’re not really working in the
interests of Chinese-Americans. Chinese-Americans are one of the groups that is
worst affected by racial profiling in university admissions. In fact,
Chinese-American parents are very activated all across the country, in fact,
trying to fight racial preferences.

Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned to me when we were speaking offline that you had
three lines of evidence that show the connection.

Mr. Gonzalez: I have [what] I just mentioned. Now then there was the fact that
Alex Tom was part of an excursion organization trying to bring people in China
and the United States together. I looked at it, and it looked like he was trying
to find leftist Americans, trying to put them together with the most leftist
elements within the People’s Republic of China.



And then there was the third instance in which the CPA San Francisco joined a
letter to the Biden campaign, saying we want you to beat President Trump in the
election, but we urge you not to engage in any China-bashing. And if you engage
in any China-bashing, this is going to cost you at the polls. The letter
actually said that. I have no idea why an organization such as this would go to
bat for the People’s Republic of China, telling a candidate not to engage in
criticism of China.

Mr. Jekielek: That’s really, really interesting. There’s been a fact-check of
sorts that was published recently about your article, which as it became
popular, as it gained some traction on social media, [exposed] that there is
this connection. What is your response to that?

Mr. Gonzalez: The New York Times is very eager to hide the Marxist roots of the
Black Lives Matters organizations and its founders. What I said is, look, it’s
no surprise. The New York Times covered for communists in the Soviet Union in
the 1930s when they denied the genocide in Ukraine. The New York Times also
covered for communists in Cuba when Herbert Matthews went down there and
described the rebels as democrats who were not Marxists in the least.

The New York Times is now engaging in the same practice here in the United
States by trying to describe Black Lives Matter as a movement that is not
Marxist at all.

This is parsing issues here because, obviously, the people who turn out to
demonstrate, people who are outraged by the manner in which George Floyd died,
are not Marxist. They’re just outraged by the death of a fellow American. So
they go out and demonstrate, … but the way they’ve been manipulated by these
organizations is the issue here.

These organizations, as I’ve said in The New York Times, cannot deny this as
much as [they want] to. Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors especially are
Marxists. They say that themselves. Patrisse Cullors, for example, trained at
the Labor Community Strategy Center, which was founded by Eric Mann, another
former member of the Weather Underground. He calls that center a center for
revolutionaries, a center where he trains revolutionaries. She trained there for
many years.



Alicia Garza also has said many times that capitalism has to be smashed because
capitalism is racist, which is the opposite of the truth, obviously. Capitalism
is just a fancy word for “I bought something, I have bought this cup with the
sweat of my brow, and you want to buy it; we both agree on a price and both walk
away happy.”

In other words, [capitalism is] another word for freedom, right? It’s actually a
Marxist word for freedom. It’s color-blind. It’s the least racist thing at all.
It lifts up all people.

But yet Alicia Garcia says this, and as I said earlier, I believe there’s a
video of Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors chanting, “We have nothing to lose but
our chains,” which is out of Karl Marx.

Also, all three of them praise JoAnne Chesimard, who now goes by the name of
Assata Shakur, who is number one on the FBI wanted list, who is a fugitive for
having killed a cop, who fled prison and has been given asylum in communist
Cuba—wanted by the U.S. They praise her all the time, all three of them.

Jan Jekielek: Given what you’ve told me already about the connection between the
CPA and BLM, what is The New York Times trying to say here?

Mr. Gonzalez: The New York Times is trying to obfuscate the fact that the CPA in
San Francisco, which has taken pro-China stands, is the fiscal sponsor of a BLM
organization because there’s an ideological overlap.



LeftRoots is not just left of center; LeftRoots is a very hard lefty
organization that groups people around the world who want world revolution. When
you publish in LeftRoots, when you meet at LeftRoots, when you speak of
LeftRoots, you’re a bona fide charter member of the hard Left.

Mr. Jekielek: In this article [about] fact-checking the fact-checker, you
actually cite our columnist Trevor Loudon, who I think describes the CPAs as
Maoist organizations. Can you speak to that? What does that mean?

Mr. Gonzalez: I mean from the beginning, that’s one of the main things. So the
CPA was founded by I Wor Kuen in 1972. We have to remember 1972 was the height
of the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution lasted in China between 1966
and 1976; 1972 was more or less a halfway point.

This organization was founded to support the PRC in the United States,
especially in San Francisco, obviously in San Francisco and its very large
Chinatown, to convince the American public to switch recognition of China from
Taiwan to the communist People’s Republic of China. They were inspired by the
revolution.

Again, at the height of the craziness of the Cultural Revolution, they found
inspiration in this. It’s coincidental, or perhaps not, that many people are
comparing what we’re seeing in our streets today to the Red Guards of that time
of the Cultural Revolution. They’re saying that we’re going through the same
type of cultural revolution, and we’re seeing this, for example, with the
struggle sessions that are being held in Maoist Cultural Revolution terms.

We now we have the same things in the anti-racism trainings, which are nothing
but struggle sessions, in which people must confess their sins. People must be
made to atone for things they haven’t done, for sins they haven’t committed—the
idea of collective sin or the sins of one’s ancestors, carrying the sins of
one’s ancestors.



Anybody who understands anything about religion understands that you do not
commit the sins of your grandfather. You do not carry them with you.

But I’m very happy to note along those lines that President Trump has banned the
struggle sessions at least from the federal work force although I heard the
State Department persists in going ahead with one of the struggle sessions.

We’ll see whether the administration is able to stop them. I think that they
should be gone. Especially corporate America has embraced these things in a rush
to show good intentions, as have other elements of our society. These are things
that are straight out of the Maoists’ playbook.

Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned this idea that the sin is actually tied to identity
in this construct, basically the color of your skin you’re born with, what
gender you are. Let’s jump to your book now because your book actually speaks
directly to these things. It’s not surprising that you’re writing on this topic.
Tell me about your book.

Mr. Gonzalez: I call it “The Plot to Change America” as a title, “How Identity
Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free,” because that is the tool that is
used to change America, right?

Identity politics is a tool. Identity politics divides the country into groups
that are based on either race or ethnicity, or sex, or sexual orientation, or
gender identity, or even disability status, anything that confers a claim of
victimhood.



Then you can use this victimhood to demand attention, respect, dignity, but
reward, compensatory justice, restitution, all these things. This does two
things. First, it puts victimhood on a hamster wheel, where the hamster never
tires. The hamster keeps running because if you derive everything that is
good—respect and attention, rewards—from your degree of victimhood, you don’t
want to do anything to solve your victimhood.

Number two, though, and that’s the important thing to the people who want to
change America. This is the number two thing: The important thing is these
grievances become a catalyst to change society because the promises hold that
the victimhood will end when these collectives change the country.

They say the country is structurally racist, institutionally racist,
systemically racist, and therefore all the structures, all the institutions in
the system—the system being a word for the way everything works—have to be
changed.

So it’s not a coincidence that all these people despise capitalism, despise
freedom. They despise all of, most of our natural rights. The right to, free
speech is connected to how much money you have. Now that they did the right to
property, they especially dislike that one, you know. The right to freedom of
conscience is another one they go against.

So what they want to do is take us from a country that is based on natural
rights—the rights of legitimacy from natural rights and the belief that
governments are instituted among men to protect their natural rights—into one
where the collectivities replace the individual as the agents of social change,
as the agent of everything.

What they want to do is take us into central planning, central planning being
where the government really decides everything for us. If you don’t have your
own property, if you don’t have your individual agency, the government becomes
the one that orders society.



That’s really at the end of what they want: to take us to a model that is
completely un-American in the sense that nothing that the founders conceived
allows for such a thing.

Mr. Jekielek: So individual agency has no place in this.

Mr. Gonzalez: No individual agency. In fact, they are very specific about this.
Robin Diangelo, who’s one of these who wrote “White Fragility,” one of these
anti-racism training [texts]—her book is on the bestseller list—but all of them
emphasize it from the beginning.

By the way, this is a feature of the system that they say, yes, the individual
can improve his lot. They accept this. The individual through hard work, in the
application of his faculties, will improve his lot, can change his status, can
go from working class to middle class, can even become rich.

But that is not what they want. They don’t want the individual to become better,
to improve his lot in life. What they want is to change society through
collective action.

Mr. Jekielek: Run that by me again.



Mr. Gonzalez: So they say, specifically, in seven different ways, but I’ll give
you a version of this: It doesn’t matter if the individual can improve his lot
in life through hard work. They accept that that is the case.

Mr. Jekielek: Okay, but they don’t care.

Mr. Gonzalez: They don’t want this because that is the individual joining the
system they dislike. I explained this in my book thoroughly and in many of the
chapters. When the individual improves his lot—Antonio Gramsci wrote about this
as the theory of cultural hegemony.

Gramsci came to understand that even though Marx and Engels had promised that
the working class would be revolting everywhere and overthrowing the
bourgeoisie, this never came to happen because the worker had accepted the
cultural givens of his oppressor, had accepted religion, had accepted the
economic system and accepted the family structure, had accepted religion.

The workers had accepted all these things. They had false consciousness, in the
words of the communists, so they had to go through consciousness-raising
struggle sessions.

Again, struggle sessions: This is what we see. It’s about changing your
consciousness. It’s about replacing all these ideas that you have accepted. When
the individual joins the system and improves his status and improves his family
status, is no longer poor, becomes middle class or even wealthy, the individual
has then joined the system.



All these people, from Gramsci to Marcuse, to Angela Davis, to Robin Diangelo,
to [inaudible], to Patrisse Cullors, they all say that they accept the
individual can do this, but they don’t want this. They don’t want the individual
joining the system. They want the individual to join the collective to overthrow
the system.

Mr. Jekielek: I think you mentioned earlier that a lot of the people who are
participating, who have participated in the Black Lives Matter protests are not
people who understand what they’re actually getting behind with this.

Mr. Gonzalez: I would imagine that. I don’t know because many, many young people
today say they actually don’t mind Marxism. I don’t know if they understand what
Marxism really means. I think they think it’s Denmark or Sweden, which it’s not.
These are capitalist countries, filled with billionaires.

I would imagine that the vast majority of the people joining the protests are
just outraged, as I said, by the video they saw, by the idea that this could
happen to an American. They didn’t like what they saw, and rightly so, rightly
so, right? That was it. That was a very harrowing video. Anybody would be
outraged by it. I don’t think they understand what these organizations and their
leaders say they want to do.

Mr. Jekielek: What you described earlier, accepting the existence of agency but
basically denying it and saying, we can’t have any part of that—that’s very
counterintuitive, and it’s an abstract concept.

Mr. Gonzalez: They don’t want to deny agency. They want to transfer agency from
the individual to the group. So you stop being an individual, and your relevance
is as a member of a group, as a Hispanic, or as an African-American, or as an
Asian-American.



Let’s not forget, by the way, and [I] devoted several chapters to this in my
book, that Hispanics and Asian-Americans had two categories that were created by
these activists. They came into being, and these activists really intimidated
the bureaucracy in the ‘70s.

[As] I described in my book “The Plot to Change America,” they intimidated the
bureaucracy into creating, officializing, these categories, putting them so they
finally get the big win: OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, issues
Directive number 15.

The old government offices will then have to categorize people as either
Hispanic or Asian-Americans, and you create what is known in the industry as the
ethno-racial pentagon: whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and Native
Americans. Then they put them on the census in 1980.

But let’s think about who Asians are. Asians are people as varied as Americans,
with ancestors in China or India or Sri Lanka or the Philippines or Korea or
Japan or Indonesia—people with very different backgrounds, very different
histories, very different everything, very different cultural habits, very
different cultural indicators.

The same thing for Hispanics: You have people who are Mexican or Cuban or
Argentine or Dominican, people who can be of African descent, people who can be
of European descent, people who can be of Native American descent or a mix
thereof, according to the country, the society they come from, and with very
different cultural givens.

So these categories are artificial to begin with. Never mind the sexual
categories, the 57 that … the city of New York recognizes, apparently. No, I
think New York [has] 37. So membership in these victimhood categories has the
agency now, rather than the individual acting on his own, as an individual, a
member of his family, a member of his community, and an American.



Mr. Jekielek: How is it that this very theoretical idea actually came into the
mainstream?

Mr. Gonzalez: Antonio Gramsci, the founder of Italy’s Communist Party, is thrown
into prison by Mussolini in the 1920s, as a prosecutor says, to stop his brain
from working.

That’s a really awful idea. We know from the example of St. Paul and many other
people that you do a lot of hard thinking and good writing in prison. So Gramsci
comes up with this idea of cultural hegemony. The worker buys, so we have to
change the consciousness of the worker.

Then the next step is the Frankfurt School. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
write a book in 1937, which comes up with the idea of critical theory.

Critical theory becomes the tool by which you effect the change in the cultural
hegemony with the counter hegemony because critical theory is nothing but an
unremitting attack on all the norms and traditions of the West, everything from
the family, everything that Gramsci had discovered the worker had adhered to.

Then critical theory criticizes all this. They pretend that they criticize
everything, that they also criticize communism, but as Martin Jay, who wrote a
very sympathetic history of the Frankfurt School, as he himself notes in his
book, no, they don’t really criticize the Soviet Union, even though it’s at the
height of the purges, at the height of the genocide and the famines. They
criticize, really, only the West.



Then people like Herbert Marcuse, who is a critic, who’s also of the Frankfurt
School, comes to the United States. He noticed that he’s despairing also [of]
the American worker, right? The American worker is a boob who just likes his
hi-fi, likes his split-level home, and his refrigerator, and is never going to
revolt.

But then he notices the riots that are happening in the ’60s. Many hundreds of
riots took place between ’65 and ’71, and he says, ah, it’s with these
identities, with people of other colors, that we’re going to have the agents of
change. He then introduces this idea, so these will be the new agents of change.

Then you have the other activists that are very influenced by these writings,
demanding the creation of categories. Now you may say, well, who reads Gramsci
these days? Well, critical theory is taught at all levels at the university
today. It has different versions: critical race theory, critical legal theory;
ethnic studies are part of this.

Angela Davis has called black studies, African studies, the intellectual arm of
the revolution, and she knows what she’s talking about. She knows that this is
how you change minds. Let me just do some genealogy here, by the way. Angela
Davis was directly taught by Marcuse. Marcuse was a professor. Marcuse was
taught by Martin Heidegger.

Martin Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party in Germany, and his major
subject was Nietzsche. He was a friend of Nietzsche’s sister. In fact,
Nietzsche’s sister makes him the curator of the Nietzsche archives in the 1930s.

Nietzsche is the one who invents this idea that there is no truth, there are
only narratives, that what is good is what the master class lights in front as
beautiful, and what is bad is what the master class finds ugly and bad, and they
impose this on the lower class, whom they have a right to rule.



So this is a direct line from Nietzsche to Heidegger to Marcuse to Angela Davis.
And who do Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi and Alicia Garza claim as one of the
most important mentors—Angela Davis. You should see how effusively Alicia Garza
thanks Angela Davis, in a video, for the work that she has done to influence her
thinking.

Angela Davis spent time in prison for her association with the killing of a cop.
She was let out on a technicality in the early ’70s. She toured Havana, where
she was lionized. She was given the Lenin Peace Prize by East Germany, the most
repressive regime behind the Iron Curtain.

So when I say they’re Marxists, I’m not making any of this up. If Angela Davis
goes to universities today, where she fills auditoriums, and she tells the
students, I’m a communist and I have always been a communist, they rise up and
clap.

Mr. Jekielek: So basically, you’re saying that what was once class struggle is
now turned into race and many other categories of struggle.

Mr. Gonzalez: Class struggle has been left behind because it didn’t work. You
can change your class. The individual can change his class. That was the
problem. Well, you cannot change your race, your country of origin—and get ready
for this—your sex. You cannot; these are immutable traits. So you put the locus
of this in these immutable characteristics.

But then another important thing happens. Marcuse is mentor also to Rudi
Dutschke, who’s a German revolutionary, and he’s the one that comes up with the
idea of the “long march through the institutions,” which Marcuse blesses and
says this is the right thing to do.



The long march is obviously a reference to Mao and Mao’s Long March with
communist partisans in the ’30s. They did end up defeating the nationalists in
1949, as you know.

But what Rudi Dutschke says is that we’re going to have a long march through the
institutions that is peaceful. We’re going to take over the institutions, the
commanding heights of the cultural institutions, and therefore influence
society.

The Left today is in charge of the academy. The Left today is in charge of the
media, and the Left today is in charge of the entertainment business, with few
notable exceptions—obviously, present company excluded. The Left has done a
wonderful job of marching through the institutions.

Mr. Jekielek: I think the last chapter in your book talks about why all this
matters.

Mr. Gonzalez: That’s the penultimate chapter. It matters because, first of all,
this is not just alien to the American system. It is the antithesis of the
American system. The American system, as I said, the founders of the country and
the framers of the Constitution in 1787, base their ideas on people like William
Blackstone, whom they quote, on John Locke, whom they quote, or Montesquieu,
whom they quote, and their ideas of natural rights that we have gone over—a few
of them.

These are rights that are discoverable by us through our faculty of reason, that
we can find in nature, that we know we have these rights, that when we think
about them, that we’re born with them. In fact, Jefferson says in the
Declaration that it’s God himself that has endowed us with these rights.



You don’t have to be a Christian or a believer. You can just say they’re in
nature, they precede government, they’re pre-political, and they base everything
on that. They have from Montesquieu the tension, the division of power among the
different branches. In the half from Blackstone, the idea that the law either
ratifies or violates natural law, that man’s law can either ratify or violate
what is natural law, what is actually true.

So identity politics, Marxism, and all these theories that are disclosed in my
book are the antithesis of this. They believe, they view with Kant, that man has
rights that are given to him by the government. The government is the originator
of rights. We speak of the Enlightenment as if it had been something that
happened in the 18th century that was monolithic. You have several
enlightenments.

America is based more on Anglo-Scottish ideas and Anglo-Scottish thinkers
although they borrowed from Montesquieu, obviously, and what this is based on is
more of the continental enlightenment, Kant and Diderot, thinkers who were
either ambivalent about God or really, really hated God, hated religion. And
then it goes through Hegelian dialectics, Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and all
that. It is a very continental thing.

Even though they may not know it, they’re also following dead white men. These
are all European ideas.

Mr. Jekielek: Fascinating. Your final chapter is actually “Now What?” if I
recall correctly.

Mr. Gonzalez: It’s solutions. I’ll be frank with you. I see my main job—and with
my book—is exposing all of this, right? I expose what is happening. I say, look
what has happened. The vast, overwhelming majority of Americans do not know this
has happened.



And then I say, you know what kind of a problem this is? Is this a problem of a
factory poisoning a river? Well, the first thing you need to do is shut off the
factory, shut off the pipes. They’re spewing these toxins into the river. And
then after that, you go and you clean up the algae, you clean up the water.

The factory in this case is government. Government was forced to create these
categories. Government, through the courts, created the racial preferences of
affirmative action in everything from university admissions, to government
contracting, to hiring, and so forth. We need to get rid of all these things
that create and then encourage group creation if we’re going to get rid of
groups in group-thinking.

Mr. Jekielek: When you say to get rid of groups, what do you mean exactly?

Mr. Gonzalez: Getting rid of the categories, the categories of identity
politics. Sorry, I should have said categories. And by the way, this was
completely what the civil rights movement demanded and was fought for, which was
to have color-blind government.

Amazingly enough, [in] Kennedy’s executive order 10925, in 1961, the first
mention of affirmative action, he instructs federal contractors to make
decisions without regard to race, national origin, or sex.

And then within a few years, through alchemy by his successor, LBJ, it turns
into making decisions that are based on race, national origin, or sex. So this
is a complete reversal of Kennedy’s original idea in what the civil rights
movement was about.



Mr. Jekielek: Today, we have a lot of people who are concerned, and concerned
probably because they’re just learning about all this, for example, the
president calling out critical theory in the federal government.

Critical theory is something that I think most Americans just haven’t been
familiar with, myself included, until somewhat recently, in recent years. So the
question is, what now? So we have to shut off the spigot?

Mr. Gonzalez: Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: But what can the typical person who has become concerned about
this do?

Mr. Gonzalez: The typical person ought to know that even though he or she is not
interested in critical theory, critical theory is interested in her. Critical
theory has completely taken over all of the universities, is taught at different
levels, and through many different ways. The anti-racism training, the struggle
sessions that workers are forced into doing is a result of critical theory.

Everything that we see happening today is the direct result of critical theory.
If you have a son or granddaughter in a university, they’re studying critical
theory. The chances are great that they are. In fact, from now on, to graduate
from the California State University system, you have to have taken a course in
ethnic studies. Ethnic studies are a form of critical theory.



So everybody who goes through the California state system will have had to study
critical theory. The individual should speak up. The individual should say, “No,
I don’t want my children to be taught this”— just gaining understanding of this,
rather than everybody wanting to show their good intentions, everybody wanting
to be a good person.

What Americans need to understand is that virtue-signaling is not the thing they
should aim for. Virtue-practicing is practicing real virtues. We have the moral
virtues that we practice—hard work, delayed gratification. All these things are
really what is important, not virtue-signaling. That will not get you anything.
That will not make you a better person. That will not make a better system. That
will not give you a better society.

Mr. Jekielek: Before we finish up, you actually lived in Hong Kong for a number
of years. You were the editor for The Wall Street Journal there.

Mr. Gonzalez: I was the editor of the editorial page.

Mr. Jekielek: Right.

Mr. Gonzalez: The Wall Street Journal in Asia. Yes, I’m horrified by what has
happened to this great city. I lived there four different times under two
different British governors, Wilson and Patten, and then under the two
Beijing-appointed rulers, CH Tung, and Danny Chang. I didn’t think it would
happen this quickly, that the communist government would start going back on its
promise of one country, two systems that it would destroy.



So Hong Kong is a wonderful city. Hong Kong has a very high standard of living,
higher than most American cities. Hong Kong is a free place where natural rights
were respected. So the idea that anybody is going to tamper with this goose that
laid the golden eggs for 150 years is horrifying.

And I guess this will drive home the point to anybody who had any doubts that
you cannot trust the Chinese Communist Party. And the Chinese Communist Party is
obviously in charge of mainland China, suppresses the rights of 1.2 billion
Chinese, and is very busy now trying to suppress the rights of 7 million
Hongkongers.

Mr. Jekielek: So is this what prompted you to research these possible
connections between pro-CCP organizations and BLM?

Mr. Gonzalez: No, not really. I understand the nature of communism. I was a
foreign correspondent for 15 years, living mostly in Asia and Europe. I have
done some reporting in Latin America as well. I am very concerned about what is
happening to our country, especially in the year 2020. And I want to make sure
that everybody understands what is really at stake here, what is being done, by
whom, and why.

Mr. Jekielek: So in one sentence, what is at stake?

Mr. Gonzalez: At stake is our freedom, our liberty. Are we going to continue
living as Americans with the greatest prosperity and the greatest liberty ever
known to man? Or are we going to trade this in and act passively and allow it to
happen?



Mr. Jekielek: Michael Gonzales, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Gonzalez: The pleasure is all mine. Thank you very much.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

American Thought Leaders is an Epoch Times show available on YouTube, Facebook,
and The Epoch Times website. It airs on Verizon Fios TV and Frontier Fios on NTD
America (Channel 158).



1228Epoch Share
Friends Read Free Copy Facebook Tweet
72 Comments
Popular News


 * BLM CO-FOUNDER’S TIES TO PRO-COMMUNIST CHINA GROUP: MIKE GONZALEZ

 * 1
   
   
   BODYCAM SHOWS NEW ANGLES OF JAN. 6 BEATING OF VICTORIA WHITE BY POLICE

 * 2
   
   
   'THEY ARE LYING': TUCKER CARLSON REVEALS NEW DETAILS FROM EXCLUSIVE JAN. 6
   VIDEO FOOTAGE

 * 3
   
   
   ARIZONA SUPREME COURT AGREES TO 'EXPEDITE' KARI LAKE LAWSUIT

 * 4
   
   
   NEW WHO CHIEF SCIENTIST MADE CRUCIAL CHANGE TO PAPER CLAIMING COVID-19 DIDN'T
   COME FROM LAB

 * 5
   
   
   PREPARED FOR THE WORST, SURVIVAL SHELTER COMPANIES WAIT FOR COLLAPSE OF
   SOCIETY

HEALTH
 * 1
   
   
   ASTHMA DRUG SHORTAGE COULD GET WORSE AFTER MAJOR SUPPLIER GOES OUT OF
   BUSINESS

 * 2
   
   
   YOU MAY NOT NEED STATINS, EVEN WITH ELEVATED 'BAD' CHOLESTEROL

 * 3
   
   
   PREMIERING 3/7 AT 7:30PM ET: DR. HARVEY RISCH: FAKE STUDIES, CHERRY-PICKED
   DATA, AND BIG PHARMA’S STRANGLEHOLD ON MEDICINE

 * 4
   
   
   HEAL YOUR GUT MICROBIOME WITH THE GAPS DIET

 * 5
   
   
   FDA NOTICE: EYE DROPS RECALLED OVER CONTAMINATION THAT COULD 'RESULT IN
   BLINDNESS'

EPOCH TV
 * 1
   
   
   PREMIERING 3/7 AT 7:30PM ET: DR. HARVEY RISCH: FAKE STUDIES, CHERRY-PICKED
   DATA, AND BIG PHARMA’S STRANGLEHOLD ON MEDICINE

 * 2
   
   
   REFRESHING OUR SKINCARE ROUTINE: WHAT WE ARE ACTUALLY USING

 * 3
   
   
   YOUR HEALTH: A SACRED MATTER | DOCUMENTARY


72 Comments

Policies and Regulations
LOGIN TO COMMENT
FINISH YOUR LOGIN TO COMMENT
VERIFY YOUR ACCOUNT TO COMMENT

SHARE SHOW COMMENTS
Featured Channels

From Around the Web
Biden Could Soon Push for This Huge Social Security Change
retire.ly
4 Americans Missing, Feared Kidnapped in Matamoros, Mexico
ntd.com
Actor Cody Longo Dies at 34
newser.com
There’s new information about who’s really in charge of Joe Biden
americanthinker.com
How Big Is Joe Biden’s Social Security Check? Take a Look
retire.ly
Doctor found dead near waterfall days after she was reported missing
cbsnews.com
World’s Known-Lithium Reserves Increase 40% After Colossal Discovery
goodnewsnetwork.org
Pence Wants to Make the Most Dramatic Change to Social Security Ever
retire.ly
Tulsi Gabbard: Today’s Democrats ‘Don’t Believe in Freedom’
ntd.com
Popular News
 * 1
   
   
   BODYCAM SHOWS NEW ANGLES OF JAN. 6 BEATING OF VICTORIA WHITE BY POLICE

 * 2
   
   
   'THEY ARE LYING': TUCKER CARLSON REVEALS NEW DETAILS FROM EXCLUSIVE JAN. 6
   VIDEO FOOTAGE

 * 3
   
   
   ARIZONA SUPREME COURT AGREES TO 'EXPEDITE' KARI LAKE LAWSUIT

 * 4
   
   
   NEW WHO CHIEF SCIENTIST MADE CRUCIAL CHANGE TO PAPER CLAIMING COVID-19 DIDN'T
   COME FROM LAB

 * 5
   
   
   PREPARED FOR THE WORST, SURVIVAL SHELTER COMPANIES WAIT FOR COLLAPSE OF
   SOCIETY

Share this with everyone!

Copy link
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Friends read free
1228
Email Share
72
Comment

Copyright © 2000 - 2023 The Epoch Times Association Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Back Top
We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your
experience. This includes personalizing content and advertising. By continuing
to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms
of Use. More informationI accept×