Surviving Communism, part five, the last of the panel conversations. Jenny Beth Martin asked six survivors of communism why they chose America, what it sounded like from inside their countries when President Reagan called their system illegitimate, what the world loses if America falls, and what they would tell a 22-year-old who likes what the democratic socialists are saying.

Guests

Sasha Gong is the former director of Voice of America's China service, a former political prisoner in China, and a Harvard PhD.

Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev is a Soviet physicist and Moscow Helsinki Group dissident who was exiled in 1980 and was part of President Ronald Reagan's briefings before his Gorbachev summits.

Agnes Gibboney is the founder of Angel Families of America. Her family fled Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956, and she arrived in the United States stateless.

Ovidiu Frusina is a mechanical engineer who grew up in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania.

Manuela Callini grew up under Romanian communism and is now a grassroots activist in Arizona.

Captain Onofre Gutierrez is a retired airline pilot who was born in Managua, Nicaragua, and lived through the Sandinista takeover.

Key topics

• A democratic socialist admits it on a New York Times podcast: anti-capitalist, a world beyond capitalism

• Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, heard from inside the countries he was talking about

• Yarim-Agaev's four reasons Reagan won: he named totalitarianism the enemy, understood ideology, called the regime illegitimate, and backed the dissidents

• What George H.W. Bush did not finish: no Nuremberg for communism, and a KGB officer as president of Russia

• Lech Walesa's lunch with Bush, and the Chicken Kiev speech

• Gong arrived from China in 1987; Reagan's speech was the first English speech she understood completely

• Radio Free Europe and Voice of America in Ceausescu's Romania

• Reagan's cheap-oil plan against a Soviet budget spending 20 to 25 percent on the military

• Frusina to the democratic socialist: then why do it here?

• Interrogated for listening to enemy radio; years later she ran Voice of America's China service

• Yarim-Agaev: America must not abandon its leadership of the free world

• Gibboney, stateless until 1983: if the United States becomes a socialist country, the world is finished

• Frusina, Gutierrez, and Callini on why America is worth choosing

• Six answers for a 22-year-old sold on socialism: think, learn what you would lose, show me where it worked, you will be equally poor, there is no such thing as free housing

• The series continues: share your own story at Jenny.Beth@TeaPartyPatriots.org

Timestamps

00:00 — Cold open: six survivors who chose America after seeing the alternative

00:31 — The last panel conversation, not the last of the Surviving Communism series

02:43 — The six survivors, from China, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania, and Nicaragua

03:18 — A democratic socialist on a New York Times podcast: anti-capitalist, a world beyond capitalism

03:58 — Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate: tear down this wall

05:15 — Yarim-Agaev was part of Reagan's briefings before Reykjavik and Moscow

06:48 — Why Reagan won: he named the enemy, understood ideology, and backed the dissidents

08:38 — What George H.W. Bush did not finish: no Nuremberg for communism, a KGB officer for president

10:49 — Walesa's lunch with Bush, the Chicken Kiev speech, and Gong's first English speech

13:08 — Inside Ceausescu's Romania: Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Reagan's oil plan

16:54 — Frusina to the democratic socialist: then why do it here?

17:21 — What happens to the rest of the world if America topples?

18:18 — Gong: interrogated for listening to Voice of America; years later she ran its China service

19:32 — Yarim-Agaev: America must not abandon its leadership of the free world

22:28 — Gibboney: stateless until 1983; if the United States goes socialist, the world is finished

23:58 — Frusina: born again at 23

25:41 — Gutierrez: we lost everything in Nicaragua and started over; only in this country

27:02 — Callini: the people make the government, not the government the people

28:09 — The last question: what would you say to a 22-year-old sold on socialism?

35:13 — Closing: the series continues; share your story; vote for liberty; iwillsaveamerica.com

Links mentioned

jennybethshow.com

teapartypatriots.org

iwillsaveamerica.com

Jenny.Beth@TeaPartyPatriots.org

Surviving Communism, part four. Jenny Beth Martin reads the Democratic Socialists of America's plan for public ownership of the largest corporations, publicly owned housing, and a new constitution to six survivors of communism, and they describe what it took to deliver those promises where they grew up.

Guests

Sasha Gong is the former China director at Voice of America, a former political prisoner in China, and a Harvard PhD.

Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev is a Soviet physicist and Moscow Helsinki Group dissident who was exiled in 1980 and later briefed President Ronald Reagan.

Agnes Gibboney is the founder of Angel Families of America. Her family fled Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956.

Ovidiu Frusina is a mechanical engineer who grew up in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania.

Manuela Callini grew up under Romanian communism and is now a grassroots activist in Arizona.

Captain Onofre Gutierrez was born in Managua, Nicaragua, and lived through the Sandinista takeover.

Key topics

• No debt and no mortgage, Romanian style: nothing to borrow, nothing to own, the state as landlord

• Two hours of electricity a day and driving days assigned by license plate

• Soviet communal apartments: one kitchen and one toilet shared by three families

• Why semi-educated intellectuals believe a central plan can replace a market

• Public ownership of the largest corporations: who gets taken first, and who runs it after

• A Romanian family stripped of centuries of land overnight, and one pair of rubber boots for nine children

• The COVID lockdowns as a preview of rule by experts

• China's cashless state: a frozen bank account for reposting a dissident

• The confiscated orchard, the confiscated steel plant, and the Swiss buying Romanian tractors for scrap

• A new constitution: Stalin already wrote one

• If the socialists win here, is America somehow different?

• The biggest lie: you will own the factories

• Nothing is free: a Hungarian refugee answers her grandson on Mamdani, and advice for parents

Timestamps

00:00 — Cold open: the Democratic Socialists of America program, in their own words

00:38 — Jenny Beth Martin introduces the six survivors

01:29 — No debt, no mortgage: seven people in 500 square feet in Ceausescu's Romania

07:05 — Two hours of electricity a day and driving by license plate

08:42 — Soviet communal apartments: three families, one kitchen

09:52 — Why the semi-educated believe in a plan that cannot work

15:17 — Public ownership of the largest corporations: who they come for first

16:07 — Overnight they took everything: Callini's mother and the rubber boots

18:25 — The COVID lockdowns were the preview

20:21 — One pig for the party: Gibboney's family by Lake Balaton

21:21 — China's cashless control: a bank account frozen for a repost

23:26 — Life, liberty, and property, and rule by expertise

26:22 — Who runs Amazon the day after? The orchard, the steel plant, and the Swiss tractors

32:54 — A new constitution: Stalin already wrote one

34:41 — If the socialists win, is America somehow different?

38:52 — Nobody is lining up to move to Cuba

42:50 — The biggest lie: you will own the factories

47:20 — Her 14-year-old grandson said Mamdani has good ideas

49:33 — Parents, log in to your kids' social media

51:50 — Part five preview and close

Links mentioned

jennybethshow.com

teapartypatriots.org

iwillsaveamerica.com

Guest

Sasha Gong was born in Beijing in 1956 and raised in Canton, the daughter of two college professors. She was sent to the countryside at nine, to a candy factory at 16, and to a communist jail at 20 for her part in an underground dissident group. Released in 1978, she placed first in her province on the college entrance exam, studied history at Peking University, and earned a PhD in sociology from Harvard. She taught at UCLA, worked for Radio Free Asia and the AFL-CIO, and directed the China branch of Voice of America. This is her second solo interview on The Jenny Beth Show; she also appeared on the Surviving Communism panels.

Key topics

• Growing up inside Mao's Cultural Revolution: labor camps, the Red Guard, and executions at the village market

• How a dictatorship separates "true" from "truth," and why the left in America does the same

• The banned Solzhenitsyn novel and the footnote that connected every misery to the system

• Hand-copying Hayek's Road to Serfdom in 1975 and reading Marx to find the evidence against him

• Eleven months in jail at 20, and the interrogators' first question: did you listen to Voice of America?

• Xi Jinping's father, fresh from a communist jail himself, frees her group; she asks for college

• First in her province, Peking University, Harvard, Tiananmen, and barred from China in 1991

• Why she left UCLA in 1998: the most unfree environment she had ever seen

• Socialism in America as the worst combination of smart people and stupid people

• False hope is no hope; think with logic; what liberty actually means

Timestamps

00:18 — Welcome: a survivor of communism who prefers to think of herself as thriving

01:04 — Born in 1956 Beijing, raised in Canton; railway-worker ancestors; a grandfather jailed 20 years as a "culture spy"

06:27 — Sent to the countryside at nine; the Red Guard sign hung on her great-aunt; street fighting with weapons meant for Vietnam

10:39 — Parents in a labor camp; the meat soup she carried to her father, and the slap

13:07 — "Let kids be kids": why she will not call her childhood miserable

18:02 — True versus truth: how a dictatorship separates the two

19:22 — Memorizing every book she could get, because she would not have it later

20:39 — One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: the footnote that connected every misery to the system

25:21 — Why no one criticized Stalin or Mao: the parades, the red cross through a name, the student with his tongue cut

28:57 — "Capitalist" meant people with money; hand-copying Hayek's Road to Serfdom in 1975

31:24 — The factory at 16, the wall poster on socialist democracy, and the youngest member of a dissident group

35:17 — Reading Marx, Adam Smith, and Stalin's own textbook to find the evidence against it

38:11 — "Before I get to Harvard, I have to get to jail first": eleven months, seven guards

40:15 — The interrogators' first question: did you listen to enemy radio? Voice of America

41:07 — What Voice of America was: 55 to 60 languages into countries with zero information

44:30 — Jazz, Russian music, Shostakovich, and the Director of the China branch

46:52 — A hunger strike for books; Marx and Engels's footnotes as a history course

49:18 — 1977: tutoring a guard for the college exam; the head of her interrogation team jailed

51:14 — Xi Jinping's father, fresh from 16 years in a communist jail, frees the group: "I want to go to college"

54:31 — First in her province; Peking University; Harvard and a PhD in a field China had banned

57:38 — Tiananmen protests from America; detained in Canton and barred from China in 1991

01:00:33 — Leaving UCLA in 1998: "the most unfree environment I have ever seen"

01:02:02 — The Gold Mountain: what her grandmother told her about America

01:05:44 — Third day in America: a bicycle ride down a highway to Lexington

01:07:27 — The rise of socialism in America: the worst combination of smart people and stupid people

01:09:49 — "The problem is they're lazy": intellectual laziness and physical laziness

01:11:19 — "False hope is no hope"; think with logic; schools that teach students not to think

01:13:55 — Charlie Kirk, arguing with yourself, and a generation that does not appreciate freedom

01:16:15 — Why she voted for the First Amendment

01:17:24 — What liberty means: do what you want and take responsibility for it

01:19:30 — Closing

Links mentioned

jennybethshow.com

teapartypatriots.org