America faces its own “year zero” and cultural revolution if protesters gain the upper hand in seizing cities and toppling statues, according to conservative leaders meeting to highlight the threat posed by China.
Administration officials, senators, and advisers to President Trump gathered at the Trump International Hotel on Monday against a backdrop of violent protests across the country and deep tensions between the United States and China.
Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon said it was time for an “awakening” of the American people while a string of speakers put China’s Communist Party at the center of economic, national security, and cultural threats.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who last week published a white paper on overhauling the relationship, said: “The same Marxist philosophy used by the Chinese Communist Party is filling the streets of Portland, Chicago, and even a few blocks away from right where we are right now here in Washington, D.C.”
“Now, these rioters claim they’re fighting for criminal justice reform, but consider the tactics, you can trace all of it — destruction of cultural symbols to the devaluing of the nuclear family and the complete rejection of history — to Marx.”
The event was organized by Liberty University’s Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty. Attendees read like a who’s who of China hawks in Trump world.
Bannon broadcast his War Room podcast from the hotel’s chandeliered ballroom in the morning; speakers included White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro as well as Michael Pillsbury, whose book The Hundred Year Marathon, has been cited as a key influence on administration thinking.
It all comes as Trump steps up attacks on Beijing, and insiders believe the issue can provide his struggling campaign with the “glue” to bind together his messaging on jobs, the economy, immigration, culture wars, and COVID-19.
Bannon said many people remained unaware of the way generations of American leaders had helped China get the investment and intellectual property it needed as it grew into the world’s second-biggest economy.
“We need an awakening of the American people about what the facts are,” he said. “When you get the facts out as an action center, people are going to naturally come to your side.”
Speaker after speaker blamed China for failing to stop the spread of the then-emerging coronavirus at the start of the year.
Dave Brat, the former Virginia representative who organized the event, said it meant the Chinese Communist Party was responsible for high unemployment, school closures, and the extensive disruption to civic life, including fallout such as mass protests around the country.
“We’ve got just the beginnings of a cultural revolution going on here,” he said.
China’s Cultural Revolution saw Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party, purge remnants of capitalist and traditional society from the country. Museums were ransacked, statues of Buddha were torn down, and many aspects of cultural life were reworked with Maoist ideology at the center.
The conference, which continues on Tuesday, could not have come at a more turbulent time in U.S.-China relations.
Accusations of intellectual property theft, national security questions, tensions over Hong Kong, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and the status of Taiwan dominate the relationship after decades in which the aim of American policy was to compartmentalize such questions to allow trade and economic development to promote cooperation.
The latest symptom of deterioration came on Monday. Chinese authorities took over the former American consulate in Chengdu in retaliation for Washington’s order that the Chinese consulate in Houston close.
Rep. Brian Babin of Texas, one of a number of Freedom Caucus members present, said the coronavirus had at least begun to alert the American people to the threat emanating from China.
“If there’s anything that comes out of this pandemic, it’s the fact that we looked behind the curtain, and we have seen the barefaced adversary that wants to take us down and wants to supplant us as the No. 1 nation on the face of this earth,” he said.
