Chinese immigrant, a witness to Mao's political purge, warning about indoctrination in public schools

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

A Chinese immigrant who witnessed Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution warned against the indoctrination of children in K-12 schools with neo-Marxist ideologies such as critical race theory and The New York Times' 1619 Project.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Lily Tang Williams, who is currently running as a Republican candidate for Congress in New Hampshire's second district, discussed the lessons she learned as a witness to communist brutality and shared a warning to Americans on the importance of fighting for liberty.

"[Mao believed that] young people's mind is a blank piece of paper. You can draw the most beautiful pictures or whatever he wants to draw or whatever he wants them to believe. Those are the… warning signs. That's why, you know, we have to absolutely support that parental rights and support school choice," she said. "Parents start[ed] to wake up to say 'what's going on in our schools?' which is good thing. I'm still positive, and I'm still optimistic about our country."

Lily Tang Williams is a Republican running for Congress in New Hampshire. (Lily Tang Williams/Getty )

Tang Williams was born in China's western Sichuan province on the cusp of Mao's deadly terror campaign - the Cultural Revolution. She currently lives in fear that the communist country she meticulously planned to escape from is unfurling before her eyes in the U.S.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution was a political purge and persecution of millions of suspected anti-revolutionaries orchestrated by Mao, who was the chairman of the People's Republic of China from 1949-1976. The violent movement vehemently opposed the "Four Olds:" Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits and featured the destruction of cultural artifacts.

A large statue of Mao Zedong, erected during the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1969, waves from Zhongshan Square in Shenyang, May 2002. (REDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

Tang Williams drew a parallel between the Chinese revolution that was based on class and what she believes is a neo-Marxist Cultural Revolution that is based on identity groups molded together into a coalition on an oppression matrix.

"Identity politics is the hallmark of Maoism," Tang Williams said. Critical race theory and The New York Times' 1619 Project, which hold that America is systemically racist, are all part of this revolution, the New Hampshire congressional candidate said.

"Mao used standard Marxist terms like oppressor versus oppressed," she said. "He actually divided all Chinese citizens - because we're [of the] same race and have [the] same skin color - into Five Black Classes versus the Five Red Classes."

The Five Black Categories of oppressors included right-wingers, rich farmers, landlords, counter-revolutionaries and bad influencers. On the other side were the Red Categories who were the poor, working-class, Revolutionary guards and active members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Children were one of the most effective tools Mao exploited to fuel his revolution. They became indoctrinated to a point where they betrayed their parents to the communist state in order to move upwards in class, she said.

Members of red guards, holding The Little Red Book, cheering Mao Zedong during a meeting to celebrate the Cultural Revolution in 1966 (Apic/Getty Images)

"Tragedy is where young people were brainwashed to say, I want to be Red Class, I'm going to denounce my family and to turn them over to Red Guards, to the authorities, change last name and draw the line between me and my parents."

Her family witnessed people being tortured by the Red Guards, a student-led paramilitary social movement orchestrated by Mao.

"My grandparents were [Black Class because they were] landlords, and then some of them even sees our families got tortured to death on the street by the Red Guards. So there are so many sad stories of all that. And [it was] because they were indoctrinated. [The children] truly believe[d] they were doing the right thing. They were just teenagers, you know?"

The fact that parents are being kept in the dark and blocked from influencing their children's learning is a power struggle she recalls from China.

"[The left] want to destroy nuclear families," Tang Williams, said. "That's why they want to keep their kids close to [the government] and get them to feel like 'my parents don't understand me.' [Then they] take the children away from their parents, so they can… rely on the state... Typical Communist tactic."

Red China guards junior grade inside school red tie for "red" communist. (Getty Images)

The first crack in the indoctrination Tang Williams vehemently believed in was forged when Mao died at age 82 after several heart attacks. All her life she had been told Chairman Mao was a god. "How could a god die?" she asked.

It took 20 years over the course of her journey in America to rid herself of all the communist propaganda.

Her family members who live in China are still lost to the indoctrination, she said, and continue to ask her to observe a moment of silence for Mao's December 26 birthday.


Lily Tang Williams was raised in China's western Sichuan province during Chairman Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. (Lily Tang Williams/Getty Images)

"They have no idea how many people he starved to death because of his policies. He's a sociopath, a mass killer. But people don't know. They're still missing him," she said. "I call that like an enslaved people with their consent because they lack access to truth and [have a] lack of choices. And so it's all about controlling the media and propaganda."

Seventy elder party members from Bejing arrive to commemorate the 121st Aniversary Of Chairman Mao's Birthday on December 2014, in Shaoshan, Hunan province of China. (Getty Images)

Mao's Great Leap Forward, an economic policy, led to the deaths of up to 45 million people. Adhering to communist ideals, the state seized control of production. Private farmland was confiscated and food distribution was placed under the purview of the government. As a result, the Chinese people died from starvation, forced labor, suicide and torture.

A law professor at George Mason University, Ilya Somin, wrote in The Washington Post that Mao was probably responsible for the largest mass murder of all time. He postulated that the reason the atrocity is not spoken about in academia is the tendency among elites to "downplay crimes committed by communist regimes."

Somin adds that Western intellectuals are "reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it was" because they are "fearful - perhaps - that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association."

Tang Williams said that one of the things she hopes to do on the House floor if she wins is debate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on socialism.

"When millennials talk about concepts like democratic socialism, we're not talking about these kinds of 'Red Scare' boogeyman," AOC said in an interview. "We're talking about countries and systems that already exist that have already been proven to be successful in the modern world."

"I'm so ready to debate her from the U.S. Congress floor… How many people… are [the progressives] willing to see die of starvation, be murdered and killed in order to have [an accurate] conclusion [about socialism]?" she said.

Similarly, the K-12 education system is not teaching American schoolchildren the full facts about what happened under communist dictatorships at the peril of a "repeat of the human tragedy that happened throughout all the 100 years of communism," the congressional candidate said.

"I hope parents start to exercise parental rights and control in America. Our children belong to parents. They do not belong to government. So parents absolutely have decision[s]… about what they're taught in school and what age-appropriate curriculum they should be allowed."

Free speech, the Second Amendment, and parental rights - "everything is under attack," she said. "It's upside down. Well, that's part of the Cultural Revolution. Redefine social norms, change your birth, control the narratives and purge their political enemies. [These are] very similar tactics I have seen before in China."