Xi Van Fleet: 'The whole purpose of re-education is to get rid of the so-called bourgeois thought'

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"I tell you, Twitter is free, but it is an amazing, fascinating and valuable tool now more than ever. Now, since it is being turned into a free speech platform by Elon Musk," says Ezra.

Ezra begins to show an interesting exchange from a few days ago. It starts with when our Canadian professor and public intellectual, Jordan Peterson, tweeted this:

A court in Canada is going to rule on the @CPOntario decision to sentence me to mandatory "re-education" on June 21 for my reprehensible political views. The process is called judicial review.

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) June 16, 2023

Elon Musk replied to this tweet, saying:

“Re-education” is such an interesting term. Where have I heard that before? 🤔

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 17, 2023

Responding to Elon's tweet, Ezra adds that "someone who knows and someone who lived through it is our guest today. Her name is Xi Van Fleet."

Xi said in her tweet, responding to Elon:

I not only heard about this term more than 50 yrs ago, I also lived through it!!

Mao coined this term. With his order millions of urban youths/Red Guards were sent to the countryside to receive their RE-EDUCATION from poor peasants to be true Communists.

I not only heard about this term more than 50 yrs ago, I also lived through it!!

Mao coined this term. With his order millions of urban youths/Red Guards were sent to the countryside to receive their RE-EDUCATION from poor peasants to be true Communists.

This is the only photo… https://t.co/Q5R27NH2zU pic.twitter.com/o2I5E2xrlM

— Xi Van Fleet (@XVanFleet) June 17, 2023

Xi Van Fleet is a survivor of Maoism and the author of the forthcoming book Mao's America: A Survivor's Warning. She joins Ezra to weigh in on an interesting lesson from history, and talks about what re-education meant 50 years ago.

Xi says:

In order to understand the re-education, I have to introduce another term. And I think this term will make into American lexicon. It's called 'thought reform.'

The whole purpose of re-education is to get rid of the so-called bourgeois thought, the thoughts that is not pure communist. So how do you get rid of those thoughts? You do it by physical labor. So we're supposed to work with the peasants, live with the peasants. But most of all, we have to think as the peasants do.

And what does that mean? That means give up any critical thinking skills. Get rid of it. That's not good. You'll need to follow the party line and be just like the peasants, follow the party.

And that is what they are re-education is for. So today, the the bourgeois is really the conservative ideologies. The American founding principles, those are the bourgeois thoughts that need to be corrected through re-education camps.

Ezra asks Xi, "Well, why were you chosen? How old were you? What did you do to make you singled out?"

"It's millions," says Xi. "It's all the urban youth that graduated from high school, and we're all sent to the countryside. First of all, there's no job. So it's basically a way to get rid of this youth and to put them into the countryside and work with the peasants. I was 16 when I went to the countryside."

This is only an excerpt of last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show. To watch the full episode, become a subscriber to RebelNews+.