Jenny Beth Martin put the iconic photographs of communism on the screen, Tank Man at Tiananmen Square, the toppled Stalin statue in Budapest, the Romanian flag with the emblem cut out, an exiled bishop in Nicaragua, a Soviet food line, and the Berlin Wall going up, and asked seven people who lived in those countries to say what we are looking at. This is part two of the Surviving Communism panel, recorded in Atlanta, and it ends with the number the host says to take away: a hidden tax rate of 92 percent in a country that told its people they paid 13. Then the panel turns to the present: the Chinese Communist Party's reach into American newspapers, universities, and social media.
Guests: Sasha Gong, former China director at Voice of America, former political prisoner in China, and Harvard PhD; Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev, Soviet physicist and Moscow Helsinki Group dissident, exiled in 1980; Agnes Gibboney, whose family fled Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956; Ovidiu Frusina, born in Bucharest under Nicolae Ceausescu and a university student during the 1989 revolution; Manuela Colini, who grew up under Romanian communism; Captain Onofre Gutierrez, born in Managua, Nicaragua; Janice Trey, chairman of the board of The Epoch Times, born in a forced labor camp during China's Cultural Revolution; and Torsten Trey, who grew up in West Germany and joins the panel for the Berlin Wall.
Today's topics:
• Tank Man, June 4, 1989: Janice Trey's friend worked an ambulance crew that night. Her cousins in China still do not know it happened; the People's Daily told them the students were the aggressors.
• Budapest 1956: Sasha Gong filmed the Stalin statue coming down. Agnes Gibboney's family was among roughly 200,000 Hungarians who left after the Soviet invasion.
• The Romanian flag with the hole in it: Manuela Colini and Ovidiu Frusina on Timisoara, the rally that turned into booing, Ceausescu's helicopter, a trial of under an hour, and an execution on Christmas Day.
• Ceausescu's Securitate could monitor 80 percent of the population, with informers in workplaces, schools, and families. Sasha Gong: her own mother informed on her.
• Nicaragua now: Captain Onofre Gutierrez on the exiled Catholic bishop, and how the Sandinista regime has become the Ortega family regime, where you cannot criticize the system.
• The Soviet food line and the number to take away: a nominal tax of 13 percent, a real rate of 92 percent hidden in wages set by the state, the only employer. A 1,000-ruble job paid 100 or 120.
• Why it fell: with 92 percent already taken, there was nothing left to match Reagan's buildup. Communism carries its own time bomb, and the Politburo chose Gorbachev to save the system, not end it.
• China today: Yarim-Agaev sees Brezhnev-style stagnation under Xi Jinping and calls for a Reagan-style peaceful offensive. Janice Trey says 466 million people have withdrawn from the Chinese Communist Party and its youth organizations.
• Infiltration: paid Chinese inserts in American newspapers, CCP-funded lawsuits, and Confucius Institutes that teach songs praising communism.
• Sasha Gong on Chinese influence online: fake accounts and subscriptions used as payment. Jenny Beth Martin's rule for any anonymous account: who is behind it, where are its followers from, and who benefits outside America.
• The Berlin Wall, August 1961: Torsten Trey on Conrad Schumann's leap over the barbed wire, the 30-year experiment that left East Germany decades behind, and the Bundestag testimony on how Beijing pays influencers to criticize China for a year and then change their tune.
• Next in the series: the panel reads the Democratic Socialists of America program. Share the Surviving Communism episodes with family and friends, then vote for liberty and against communism. To help get out the vote: iwillsaveamerica.com
The Jenny Beth Show airs live Monday through Friday at 1:00 PM ET. Hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party movement and Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. Subscribe for daily analysis of politics, policy, and the fight for constitutionally limited government. teapartypatriots.org
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