Op-Ed by Neenah Payne
Disclaimer: Activist Post does not endorse any specific candidate in the U.S. presidential election. Our only goal is to present a diversity of opinions about the ideologies behind political systems.
Note: This article includes a report from a Chinese practitioner of Falun Gong. The article is not an endorsement of Falun Gong, but simply supports the freedom to practice one’s beliefs.
Many Americans who are disillusioned with capitalism — which the Occupy Wall Street movement accused of serving just the 1% — are increasingly being attracted to socialism now. Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, ran for the US presidency in 2016 and is running again now. After his wins in the Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada primaries, Sanders is considered the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is the U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. AOC is among the first female members of the Democratic Socialists of America in Congress.
This article focuses on two authors who issue grave warnings against socialism. The first is Ron Paul, a well-known American politician; and the other is a Jennifer Zeng, a Chinese author who fled China after five years of torture in a labor camp for her beliefs.
Dr. Paul is an American author, physician, and retired politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Texas’s 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, and for Texas’s 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013. He ran for president three times — as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 and as a candidate in the Republican primaries of 2008 and 2012.
Dr. Paul is the author of the 2009 book End The Fed. When he ran for the presidency in 2012, he presented his Plan To Restore America. Wikipedia says:
Paul is a critic of the federal government’s fiscal policies, especially the existence of the Federal Reserve and the tax policy, as well as the military–industrial complex, and the War on Drugs. He has also been a vocal critic of mass surveillance policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance programs.
In the Republican primaries in 2012, Dr. Paul was consistently rated as the winner of the debates by about 90% of the viewers. However, the Republican Party would not allow him to be the party’s nominee in the presidential election which it later lost to Barack Obama.
Destruction of The Middle Class Since 1971
In the 2020 video “Ron Paul on Ending The Fed — Interview With James Corbett,” Paul points out that America may now be headed toward the kind of collapse that the Soviet Union went through in 1991. The US may have to call its troops home because there is no more money to pay for them.
Paul says that the ultimate limitation of restraint on the monetary system came in 1971. He is referring to Nixon’s decision to take the US off the gold standard to pay for the Vietnam War. It was decided that the dollar would be backed by oil – with every country having to use the dollar to buy oil. However, the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) now sometimes use other currencies to buy oil – forecasting the end of the “petrodollar”.
Paul explains that the 1971 shift led to the destruction of the middle class, more money for the wealthy, more wars, growing deficits, loss of liberty, and bigger government. Paul warns that the loss of the middle class provides fodder for socialists. He points out that socialism is popular now, but would never have happened 25 years ago. While debt is growing exponentially, the GDP is almost flat. He says that there has to be a new monetary system now – including cryptocurrencies and precious metals. However, take heed of this warning: A Digital “Fedcoin” May Be Coming … And It Would Be Terrifying.
Corbett discusses his documentary Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve and points out that the monetary issue was the central one from the founding of the country through the 19th century. It was the issue around which entire political campaigns were waged. However, after the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, monetary policy was no longer a political issue. Both parties agreed to go along with the Federal Reserve system.
However, Corbett points out that when Paul ran for the presidency in 2008, his message was reaching millions of Americans with rooms full of people chanting “End the Fed, end the Fed!” That was a philosophically revolutionary moment. The interview concludes with a discussion of The Ron Paul Liberty Report which began in 2008 and is now streamed every day to over 200,000 subscribers.
Chinese Labor Camp Survivor Warns Americans About Socialism
Jennifer Zeng is the author of the 2005 book Witnessing History: One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong. Amazon says:
On May 23, 2000, the Chinese government sentenced Jennifer Zeng to reeducation through forced labor. Her fellow inmates were drug addicts, prostitutes, and traffickers in pornography. Jennifer’s only crime was her belief in the three tenets of Falun Gong: Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
Struggling with a life-threatening illness and a need to understand her place in the world, Jennifer had immersed herself in many Western and Eastern philosophies before finally finding the answers she was seeking in Falun Gong. A few short years later, her newfound faith saw her blacklisted and imprisoned in a purpose-built labor camp. Jennifer was forced to squat for hours in the blistering sun, endure hours of physical and verbal abuse, and knit garments until her hands bled to feed the booming Chinese economy.
Amazon adds:
During this time, Jennifer saw many fellow Falun Gong practitioners tortured. Some died, many more remain in the camps today. This is the powerful and moving story of how a bright, successful young scientist and happily married mother survived detention and torture, only to be forced to flee her family and homeland to seek asylum in Australia. A raw and compelling memoir, one which provides a fascinating glimpse into everyday life in China, Witnessing History also exposes a bureaucracy still struggling to disentangle itself from the constraints of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
In the video “Camp Survivor Details Government Organ Harvesting”, Jennifer warns Americans about falling for socialism. She says socialists promise heaven on Earth, but always end up giving you a one-way ticket to hell! Speaking in front of the U.S. Capitol, Jennifer details how she and her family were captured and tortured by the Chinese Communist Party. Jennifer was held in a Chinese prison and tortured for practicing Falun Gong — similar to Tai Chi — with thousands of others in public parks. She was put in prison four times and assigned to a labor camp.
Jennifer explains that the Chinese government collects and maintains a database of blood samples and tissue types of prisoners for harvesting human organs and selling them worldwide in a very lucrative international organ transplant business. She says that over a million prisoners may have been killed by now for their organs! It’s an “organ by demand” scheme! While there have long been reports about these horrors, Jennifer is able to provide insider confirmation.
Organ Harvesting In China
The 2019 article China is harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners, expert panel finds also contains a videeo. The article reports:
China is murdering members of the Falun Gong spiritual group and harvesting their organs for transplant, a panel of lawyers and experts said on Monday as they invited further investigations into a potential genocide. Members said they had heard clear evidence forced organ harvesting had taken place over at least 20 years in a final judgement from the China Tribunal, an independent panel set up by a campaign group to examine the issue.
Dr. Charles Els explains in the video that in Canada, it takes 3-5 years to find an eligible donor for a kidney transplant. In China, you can get a kidney in a few days. So, the question is where the organs come from. It points to the fact that China is the only country that has co-opted its prison system, legal system, and hospital system to harvest organs from non-consenting adults to fuel a very lucrative organ transplant tourism business.
Dr. Els says that Falun Gong practitioners are the primary targets of involuntary organ transplants. He says one reason organs from these individuals are highly prized is that they don’t smoke, don’t consume alcohol, are physically healthy, and tend to be young. The individuals are executed in such a way as to keep the body alive so surgeons can harvest the organs in the freshest state!
The video discusses the documentary Human Harvest which looks at forced organ harvesting in China and is designed to bring more international attention to this issue and to bring more pressure on China to stop these murders for profit. It shows that what China is doing is comparable to what the Nazis did in World War II. The group “Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting” put on an event where the documentary was shown. When Jennifer Zeng spoke to the tribunal, she said, “I hope more countries will pass laws to forbid their citizens from going to China to do organ transplants. And I do hope the international world will figure out a way to stop the killing in China right now.”
No One in China Believes in Communism Now, According to Zeng
In the video “I Interview Jennifer Zeng who talks about her torture in a Chinese labor camp” seen below, Jennifer explains that every day, Falun Gong practitioners exercised in the parks for two hours before work. Later, because more people were practicing Falun Gong than were in the Communist Party, the government became afraid that it was a growing and powerful social movement that could overthrow it. So, it began to crack down. She explains that when the Falun Gong learned in 1999 that the government planned to crack down, 10,000 practitioners went to the government to petition but were arrested and detained in a sports stadium. There was a large-scale mass arrest, especially in Beijing.
Jennifer explains that Communism has a history of persecuting different types of people every 10 years. When the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1949, it first killed at least hundreds of thousands of landlords. The Party killed all the landlords in the country — saying they were “bad people”. The Party took over their land and gave it to the poor people. Then, several years later, the Party moved to the cities and killed many small business owners. Next, in the “Anti-Righteous Campaign”, the Party killed at least a half million so-called “intellectuals” or jailed them for 20 years. During the Cultural Revolution, at least seven million people were killed! In the Great Leap Forward, at least 30-40 million people starved to death. More recently was the Tiananmen Massacre.
Jennifer points out that the Party has systematically destroyed the traditional religions, the traditional culture, and the traditional values which have been in China for thousands of years. The Party killed people who refused to adopt the beliefs of the Communist Party. She points out that the Communist Party gained power through violence and deceit and was never elected by the people. So, the Party has a fundamental fear about its legitimacy. For that reason, it periodically targets five percent of the population to maintain a level of fear. She says that it was not strange that Falun Gong was targeted. It was just its turn. The difference is that this group has its own strong belief system and so is not willing to just transform or give up.
Jennifer explains that no one in China believes in communism any more. Now, the party wants people to focus on material interests and to focus on the acquisition of money. People like that are easy for the Party to control. People who value money can be more easily corrupted. So, the Party was threatened by the fact that the Falun Gong were pursuing spiritual values rather than material ones. The Party knew that since the Falun Gong practitioners don’t believe in money, they can’t be controlled — and the Party had to get rid of them.
Falun Gong Practitioners Put in Labor Camps
The Party launched a huge propaganda campaign against the Falun Gong in newspapers, TV, radio, etc. The Party targeted whomever they thought were leaders inside Falun Gong. Everyone understood that anyone who continued practicing Falun Gong could lose their job or end up in jail.
Initially, the Party thought that if it put Falun Gong practitioners in jail for 10-30 days that would scare them into giving up. However, people who had practiced Falun Gong for many years believed in its values of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. So, many practitioners were not willing to give up. The Communist Party considered the Falun Gong an “evil cult” and fed the public many terrible lies about Falun Gong to make people think that practitioners are crazy. Since all the media in China is controlled by the government, it’s easy for the Party to control the minds of most people. The government has spent billions of dollars to set up a “firewall” to block free access to the internet. So, most people in China believe whatever the government wants them to believe.
Jennifer explained that sometimes police wanted to identify members of the public who were Falun Gong practitioners. So, for example, on a train, they would ask someone to curse, to say dirty words because that would not be a problem for most Chinese. So, if the person refused, they would assume the person was a Falun Gong practitioner! That was one of the many methods the police used to try to stop people from going to Beijing to support the Falun Gong practitioners.
So, the Party escalated the persecution by putting Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps. Some people were sentenced for 10 years. The Party even killed some practitioners to harvest their organs! That has now become an industrialized practice in China which has made huge amount of money. Millions of people may have been killed in the last 17 years.
Jennifer explained that before she began practicing Falun Gong, she suffered from Hepatitis C and was in very, very poor health. Practicing Falun Gong cured her Hepatitis C. Because Jennifer feels that Falun Gong saved her life and gave her a second chance, she would not give it up.
Jennifer said that the first time she was arrested, she heard a knock on her door at 2 o’clock in the morning and the police took her away without any explanation. After a week, the police showed her a letter she had emailed her mother to explain why Falun Gong is good and she didn’t want to give it up. Jennifer explained that the “Internet Police” had intercepted that letter! There were no lawyers, no trial, no defense, and no sentence. It was just a decision to put her in a labor camp which is worse than a jail because there are no regulations.
The police made it clear that they were sentenced to the labor camps for the purpose of “reforming” them, to get them to give up their beliefs. If they didn’t, endless torture started. If the police were not able to reform the Falun Gong practitioners, they would lose their jobs. So, they forced real criminals to torture Falun Gong practitioners. If the criminals refused to participate in the torture, their sentences would be lengthened. If they agreed to engage in the torture, they could be released early.
It was a form of brainwashing which was designed to convince the practitioners that Falun Gong is evil. Practitioners were required to denounce Falun Gong publicly. In addition, practitioners were required to help the police torture other Falun Gong practitioners! People who refused to “reform” were killed.
The Courage To Believe
Jennifer explained that, to her, the physical persecution was nothing because she still knew in her mind, heart, and spirit who she was. However, the police wanted to destroy practitioners’ moral values and spirit – the very essence of what makes a person human. They want to turn a human being into a non-human being. Jennifer says that people who are killed physically can die with dignity. However, the goal of the police is to take away people’s dignity. In her opinion, that is the most evil part of the persecution.
However, the government realizes that people who have practiced Falun Gong know that it is good. So, even if they are arrested, they will later continue practicing Falun Gong. For that reason, there is a policy that if the police release a practitioner and that person goes back to Falun Gong within three years, those police would be fined up to half a year’s salary! So, if the police release practitioners without really “reforming” them, the police put themselves in danger! For that reason, the police would prefer to torture practitioners to death!
If the police could not “reform” a practitioner through the use of violence, they resorted to sleep deprivation. Until a practitioner “reformed”, no sleep would be allowed. Jennifer said when she was in the labor camp, the longest period she was aware of was 15 days and nights without sleep. That drove many people insane and broke many people down. They became like a walking corpse. They were still physically alive, but mentally and spiritually, they knew nothing. They were just crazy.
Later, the police used practitioners as “organ banks” and killed them to harvest their organs for sale internationally. That way, the police did not have to worry about the people still believing in Falun Gone and they could also make huge amounts of money. When Jennifer was transferred from the detention center to the labor camp, she was first taken to a clinic where she was given a medical checkup. After she had been in the labor camp for a month, she and others were taken to a huge hospital where they were given a more thorough physical checkup, including an X-ray. Also, everyone in the labor camps was given a blood test. However, they were never told the results or the purpose of the tests.
Jennifer realized only years later after she was released that the tests were to allow for organ matches with potential recipients. If anyone from anywhere needed an organ, the police could search that huge database and find a match and then kill that person on demand to harvest his/her organs for sale. That’s why the police can promise on their website that they can find a match for anyone within two weeks! So, sometimes a heart transplant can be pre-scheduled. Because Jennifer used to have Hepatitis C, she was an unsuitable donor. That may have helped save her life.
A Book To Warn The World
Jennifer was shocked in the beginning. However, after six months in the labor camp, she decided that she would write a book. She felt it was her responsibility to record the events and to give the world a first-hand account of what’s happening in the labor camps. For the next six months, the commitment to write the book caused a conflict that nearly killed her. On one hand, Jennifer wanted to be released so she could write the book. However, to get released, she would have to betray her conscience and give up her beliefs. To do that was worse than the physical torture she experienced.
Jennifer has been reluctant to talk about how she got out of the camp. She hopes that no other human being will ever have to suffer what she suffered. To get out, Jennifer had to violate her conscience. That left her feeling ashamed of herself to such an extent that she no longer wanted to write the book and she cried for at least 20 days. Jennifer says that the abuse continues to affect many practitioners after they are released. So, the police succeed in continuing to harm people.
Later, Jennifer realized that if she didn’t talk about the situation, the world would never know how evil this persecution really is. When she was released in 2002, Jennifer fled to Australia. After witnessing so much inhumanity in the labor camp, she felt an obligation to write a book to tell the world what is going on. She points out that after World War II, the world vowed never to let what happened to the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps occur again. However, it is happening again in a disguised way on a very, very large scale now in China.
When Jennifer escaped to Australia, she was able to publish her book in Chinese and English. As far as Jennifer is aware, her book is the only one written by a Falun Gong practitioner who has been in a labor camp. It is very important for humanity to understand what’s happening. Her hope is that this kind of persecution will never happen to another human being.
Zeng Urges Americans to Reject Socialism Now!
Jennifer says she escaped communism in China, but now fears it has followed her to America in the form of growing interest in socialism. She Survived China’s Forced Labor Camp. Now She’s Urging Americans to Reject Socialism contains an audio in which Jennifer urges Americans to reject socialism now.
The site says:
Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism.
The site explains:
Marx saw inevitable stages of history: feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and communism. Socialism is the stage before the final stage. Socialism is characterized by the common ownership of the means of production. Communism is when the state withers away because there’s no more dominant class, no more private property. You don’t need a state because there’s no more economic exploitation, and so that’s a great fantasy, but it’s never happened anywhere.
Jennifer’s very moving and powerful documentary is called Free China: The Courage to Believe. It is available as a DVD and on Amazon Prime Video. The film is being released in China for free and can break through China’s Great Internet Firewall. The documentary shows that if China does not become free, it will impact freedoms around the world.
The film explains that the government initially supported Falun Gong because practitioners are law-abiding and healthy. It turned against the practice not just because Falun Gong began to outnumber members of the Communist Party, but because the military was also joining. The documentary explains that since the Party runs on corruption, it can’t function if the military follows the spiritual practices of Falun Gong. So, the Party had to reverse itself and suppress Falun Gong.
However, the Party could have just forbidden the military to join Falun Gong. So, perhaps another reason the Party has detained so many practitioners is for the gruesome “Human Harvest”.
Jennifer’s blog is at: https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/
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