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Virginia Goes Blue: Pro-China Communists Claim Credit
[Epoch Times] It’s official. The once deep-red Commonwealth of Virginia is now a blue state. As a result of the Nov. 5 election, Democrats now hold all three of the statewide constitutional offices, both U.S. Senate seats, the majority of its Congress members, and both chambers of the State House.Laura Ingraham of Fox News says it’s because of "changing demographics." That’s only partially true. Virginia went blue because a handful of well-organized pro-Chinese communists made it happen. The group in question, New Virginia Majority (NVM), has exploited Virginia’s changing population and "liberal bleed out" from the Washington area to flip not just Northern Virginia but also districts across the state. Based in Alexandria and Richmond, NVM has sent hundreds of paid workers and volunteers out across the commonwealth to register and send to the polls hundreds of thousands of new voters‐all under the nose of the Virginia Republican Party. MAOIST GROUPS NVM is led by longtime FRSO/Liberation Road cadre Jon Liss of Alexandria. Several FRSO cadres have served in NVM over the years, as have many activists from two NVM satellite groups, LeftRoots and the Virginia Student Power Network. FRSO/Liberation Road comes out of the militantly pro-China American Maoist student movement of the 1970s. While it’s more discreet about its Chinese loyalties these days, several of its leading supporters maintain close ties to the People’s Republic. Fred Engst is a longtime FRSO supporter. Born to U.S. communist parents and raised in China, Engst was educated in the United States, where he became immersed in Maoist politics. He returned to China in 2007 and is now teaching at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. Alex Tom, a leader of LeftRoots and the pro-Beijing San Francisco-based Chinese Progressive Association, in 2012 formed the China Education and Exposure Program to “build a deeper analysis of China for US progressives and leftists and to build relationships with the grassroots movement in China,” according to his 2013 LeftForum speaker’s bio. John Marienthal, a San Jose-based FRSO member, has been a leader of the pro-Beijing U.S.–China Peoples Friendship Association for more than 40 years and has taught in several Chinese educational establishments since the 1980s. Steve McClure is a former Washington resident who, in the 1970s, was active in the pro-Mao Revolutionary Student Brigade. He has close ties to FRSO and NVM. Since 2010, he has worked with the Geography Department of Wuhan University in China, and he is a research associate with the State Key Laboratory of Engineering Information in Surveying, Mapping, and Remote Sensing at the university. Posted by: Besoeker 2019-11-24 |
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