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Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Hollywood’s ‘Willful Ignorance’ Towards Communist Crimes Was Decades in the Making | Elizabeth Spalding
00:46:41
In this wide-ranging conversation, host Jack Fowler sits down with Dr. Elizabeth Spalding to confront the forgotten truths of communism’s deadly legacy. From Hollywood’s willful blindness to the rise of socialism at home, Spalding explains why communism and socialism share the same DNA—and why freedom still needs defending.
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- [00:00]
Jack
Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Except there's no Victor Davis Hansen here, but you know that. Fair listeners and viewers, Victor is recuperating. And four times a week now, Elizabeth, and I'll let you know who Elizabeth is in a second. We are keeping this podcast going by interviewing five questions to someone who's really important. Deal with that. Elizabeth has important things to say. And I have with me today, recording on Thursday, January 22nd, Elizabeth Spalding, Dr. Elizabeth Spalding. And here I'm going to read her bio. And she's the chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial foundation and she's the founding director of the Victims of Communism Museum. She's also a senior fellow at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, which Victor likes. You know, he teaches there sometimes. The great Pete Peterson. Right. And you're a visiting fellow at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College. By the way, Victor also has taught at Hillsdale College. I think you're the perfect guest to have on Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Elizabeth, I think the victims of communism have not gotten their justice in this world. And I've got five questions to ask you about that. And I'm going to get started with that when we return from these important messages.
- [01:27]
Narrator/Announcer
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [01:57]
Jack
We are back. Camera one is beckoning. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Elizabeth, thanks so much for joining. Joining me, joining us, our many viewers and listeners and great fans of Victor. Now I'm a little, I'm a little. I don't have the papers. You know what? The printer didn't work. But I have questions for you. Okay, so here goes number one, finally, five questions. Here's number one, folks. The Victims of Communism Museum was a long time coming. It opened in 2022 and there was a John the Baptist of sorts. That was the Victims of Communism memorial statue, which was dedicated in 2007 here in D.C. i drove past it on the way to the studios. By the way, we are at the Daily Signal studios in Washington, and that's the happy home of this podcast. And my old boss, right Bill Buckley, did give the dedication speech that day. That was the last public speech Bill ever gave. He passed away a few months later. Well, all these things happened long after Congress voted in the early 90s to establish the Victims of Communism Foundation. So there was a driving force for this museum, memorial, et cetera. I think you know who the driving force is. I think some of the thoughts of this driving force might have actually happened in this building. So, Elizabeth Spalding, tell us about how this important institution came about, who's to blame for it, to admit that it is important and tell us why it's important. And if you want to talk about any of the highlights of the process from the introduction of the legislation in the early 90s and the opening of the museum doors, tell us about it.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you, Jack. To answer your question about why, as too few people know, more than 100 million people have been killed by this most destructive ideology that mankind has ever seen, Communism. And that's just starting from 1917 with the Bolshevik coup and going up to the present. It's still happening today. It's not over. And more than 1.5 billion people are currently forced to live under communism. And if you add in looking at populations over the years in between 1917 and now, it's another billion people or so at least, that have been forced to live under communism. So that's many, many victims of all different types, whether the person was killed directly by a gunshot or sent to the Gulag or didn't lead the life that they would have led in our kind of free state society and everything else. So the genesis for this, though, goes back to my family, to the Edwards family. And we were sitting around at family brunch after Sunday mass. It was Chadwick's on Wisconsin Avenue. Okay. And so we were talking about how people were forgetting and that communism was still a problem. And this was in between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. And so that's really the beginnings of it. And my family, I'm a third generation anti communist. Both my folks were super anti communist. And I get it mostly on the paternal line, who are your folks? My folks are Lee and Ann Edwards. And so we all really are the driving force behind this. And my dad, in particular, the late Lee Edwards, he had already been involved in so many anti communist causes around D.C. including captive nations with his dear friend Lev Dobriansky, among others. And so there was this natural idea, let's just start an organization. And it was my late mom, Ann Edwards, who said, you know, there should be some kind of Memorial and a museum. And then the idea took off from there. You already mentioned the legislation that gets you to 1993, and it was bipartisan, unanimous.
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Jack
Can you tell who introduced the legislation? Do you remember?
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
I forget. I should know.
- [06:23]
Jack
But that's okay.
- [06:23]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
That's all right.
- [06:25]
Jack
It was very.
- [06:26]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
It was bipartisan. And so I know that on the Democratic side, Lantoch was one of the people, and on the Republican side, Jesse Helms and others were very important. But it was not just, you know, one congressman, one senator. It was, it really was bipartisan. And so it brought together everybody because they said, oh, yes, we should be anti communist and this should be remembered in the same way that we remember and teach about the Holocaust. And then there were plenty of people who also pointed out that communism wasn't over. And I think that's something that we have to understand that this is something that is both historic and still living. And so it took years and years to raise the money, work with the National Park Service and go through everything else that is required to get a memorial built. And that took us to 2007 and the dedication where Bill was, and also that President George W. Bush was there to dedicate the memorial for the country and on behalf of all of the victims. So President Bill Clinton signed us into law. And then we have President George W. Bush. And then we wanted the museum, kept trying to raise money. We started educational programming, including curricula. We, in the late 90s, started our Truman Reagan Medal of Freedom Award every year. And we kept going, kept going, kept going, and it took a long time. It's really a labor of family love. And then we get to, you know, this decade where we were able to open this small museum, but very powerful in 2022. And that became, in some part, my Covid project.
- [08:14]
Jack
Yeah, well, I, I'm going to ask a corollary to the first question. So I'm keeping the five rules. You said the Truman Reagan Medal, and I should have mentioned before you've written a book on, it's titled the First Cold Warrior, Harry Truman Containment and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism. But I'm not saying maybe some of our listeners might be unaware of the anti Communist party credentials of Harry Truman. I mean, you've got a medal in his name. Tell us about his role.
- [08:55]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Well, it's important in and of itself. And it's also important to understand that the way that the United States conducted itself in the Cold War would have been different if Franklin Roosevelt had lived longer or if George Wallace. I'm Sorry. Henry Wallace. Henry Wallace, his vice president before Truman became the vice presidential nominee in 1944. If Henry Wallace had still been there as vice president at that time in his career, he wanted convergence between democracy and communism, so it would have all been different. But instead you get the man from Missouri who has this really gut instinct, I'm anti all totalitarianism, including communism. And he's the one that brings all of these disparate minds together in his administration to form that grand strategy of containment and to push back against communism and its spread. And he sees even in his first months, While World War II is going on, hey, this is going to be a problem. I wish I could have peace. I know everybody wants peace, but there's something here that is not World War II, but coming out of World War II that we're going to have to be very concerned about and engaged in. And then you have everything develop from there.
- [10:11]
Jack
Yeah. George Meaney was another non traditional, from the perspective of conservative Republicans hero. Oh, I can't remember his name. He was the one of the last heads of the. In the early 80s, another AFL CIO leader, Lane Kirkland.
- [10:28]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yeah. Yes. So this is something that maybe people now, you know, viewers and listeners forget. There was this period where it wasn't, as everybody all agreed all the time, holding hands, singing Kumbaya. That's not correct. But there was a bipartisan consensus that you didn't want totalitarianism and you didn't want this form of communism. And that actually brought together a lot of people because both conservatives and liberals, a lot of the time they were anti communist for the same reasons, but sometimes they brought some other reasons to it. But they could all unite that they were for freedom.
- [11:06]
Jack
Yeah. Well, we have bills to pay here, but we do it happily. Do you know why? I want to tell you what happened. I talked about this on a previous podcast. I recorded, well, several. Well, if you were. If we were recording this and I was in my home and people were watching, they would see that behind me in my office, not in my kitchen, but my office is a co. Pure water machine. And I love my water. And last night, Elizabeth, I ate too much food. What I do when I get home, I ran right to my machine. Sixteen ounces of delicious water. Get rid of all that. Well, the Chinese food is pretty good. But let me say something here. Everyone jumps into the new year and it is the new year. The show, I think, is going up on the, I don't know, the 25th or thereabouts, 26 of January. So we're still in the new year. Everyone jumps into the new year, buying new supplements, trying new diet soda or workouts, but they completely ignore the most important thing. You know what that thing is? It's water. Delicious. Even mild hydration impacts energy, focus, metabolism. And when you think about all the garbage that's in our water, you're starting behind the curve before you even begin. Now, let me tell you about Covpure, okay? Covpure changes that immediately. Their clear water technology is certified to remove up to 99 of contaminants. 99.9. Pretty much anything that isn't water. PFAS, microplastics, pharmaceutical residue, fluoride, all of it gets removed. It's the purest water you can get. I've got two big reasons I love cold pure. The taste. Now, Connecticut, where I live, the water has a taste. It's not a good taste. You don't want your water to have a taste. You want your water to be fresh, refreshing, clear, clean. And that's what I get with CO Pure. Okay, that's one. What do I do with that? Everything. Now I drink it, give it to water the plants with it. If I cook, we cook with it. You know, it's. It's the best. So it's also beautiful. Also, I. Like I said, I have in my office, not in the kitchen counter. You can put wherever you want. Call to action, folks. Now, Cove Pure makes it so easy to get pure water with the push of a button this year, make a New Year's resolution that sticks. Improve your health with clean water. Right now you can get $200 off for a limited time when you use the link covepure.com VDH VDH stands for Victor Davis Hansen. That's covepure.com, C-O-V-E-P-U-R-E.com V D H to start this new year, right? And we thank the good people of of Covpure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And as goofy as I am with this, I love this machine. Get it, folks. Okay, second question before we go to the break again. Lots of people listen to the show, watch this show. Many of them come to Washington. Most Americans come to Washington, right? And when they come to Washington, what do they do? Many of them go to museums. This museum is not next to the aerospace. Where is it? And when they go, what are they going to see? What are they going to experience?
- [14:24]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Very good. Yes. Our museum is on McPherson Square, right near the Metro. It's 915th Street. And so it's a couple of blocks from the White House. And so when people are coming to visit Washington, D.C. they can easily fit the museum on their itinerary. It's what we call our schoolhouse. I've also called it our jewel box museum because it is not the size of a Smithsonian, but it has everything on this sober topic that you need in order to understand the victims of communism. Which does also mean then that in terms of what you see and learn when you come to the museum, you're learning about communism. Not everything about communism, but about communism, to understand why victims were created from the get go. So we have permanent galleries that are there that tell the story from the time of the Communist Manifesto up to pretty much the present day. And in those you would see, just like at any other museum, panels and videos and films, and we have some interactives so that people can play games. I mean, everything's very sober. It's that one is like a day in the life of a regular person in a communist regime. And you get to make the choices which are never good choices of that. So that's very compelling. So we have those permanent galleries. We also have a unique art collection. It's the only one of its kind. It's a Gulag art collection by the painter Nikolai Gettman, who was Ukrainian and under Stalin, he was sent to the Gulag for really no good reason. He was part of a little group saying something that wasn't completely positive about Stalin.
- [16:11]
Jack
Sounds like Solzhenitsyn.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yes, yes, yes. It's been called the visual analog to the Gulag archipelago. This collection, it is 50 paintings. So when I say it's unique, there's nothing else like this where you can get an entire understanding of what it was like to be in the Gulag. And that includes landscapes as well as the hard stuff. And so the. The way he painted, how he was formed as a painter, as an artist before he went to the Gulag, all of that comes out in this very unique collection. And you have to see it to believe it. People can bring their earbuds and do an audio tour of the paintings. And the. I will tell one little thing about Gatman the painter. He had to paint in secret at least half of the canvases because after he served his term in the Gulag and was let out, he was still an internal exile. And so he hid even from his wife, that when he was behind the closed door of the studio that he was working on, the pictures that showed the death and destruction Of. Of the Gulag. And he would put up on the easel a landscape whenever anybody knocked on the door. So you really have to see the juxtaposition that's shown in this kind of collection.
- [17:35]
Jack
Samasdat art.
- [17:37]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yes, yes. And then he didn't want it. As he was getting older, he was concerned after the collapse of the Soviet Union and what was going on and Russia in the 90s, and he was Ukrainian. He was concerned that the collection might not be kept, that it could be even ruined and even destroyed. So he got it smuggled, essentially, to the United States. And so it went to another nonprofit before it came to voc. And we're so grateful to have it, and we're grateful to that other nonprofit that when it couldn't take care of it, so send it along to us. And then we also have visiting exhibits. We have other things going on at the museum building, including events. And various people can look at the calendar to find out what's going on. But we have extraordinary visiting exhibits, temporary exhibits in combination with partners. So the current visiting exhibit, and I encourage people to come while it's still up into February, is on Operation Pedro Pan. And many people don't know about that particular period, but it's. But it's excellent. And we've seen a number of people who call themselves either. They still call themselves Pedro Ponters, like second and third generation, if somebody from their family came over.
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Jack
These are Cuban exiles.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
That's right. That's right. It's the largest unaccompanied migration to anywhere to the United States, though it was during the early 1960s. And these were young people, minors, that the parents in Cuba didn't want their children to become communist. And so they took a leap of faith because the Catholic Church in Florida, in Miami, there was a monsignor who said, okay, we'll make sure they're in good foster homes until we hope you're reunited with them. Wow. So it's really an extraordinary story. Our next temporary exhibit will be an America 250 theme, in part because we're going to talk about what we should be grateful for that communism doesn't permit. And there will be artifacts and all sorts of things in that. And then later in the year, we'll have an exhibit, a temporary exhibit on the Hungarian Revolution, 1956, because since the year ends in six, we're coming up on another major anniversary of that. So we get. You know, we've had all sorts of different exhibits, but it means people should come back for events and visiting exhibits, even if they've already been to visit the main part of the museum.
- [20:28]
Jack
The website's terrific, too. What's the address?
- [20:31]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
So it's victimsofcommunism.org very active.
- [20:36]
Jack
Tons of stuff there, too. I have three more questions to ask you. Question three comes right after these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor's recuperating folks, appreciates the prayers. Keep them coming. Two steps forward, one step back. That's the way it is, but it's still moving ahead, moving forward. I'm here with Dr. Elizabeth Spalding. Sorry, didn't call you a doctor at the outset. Elizabeth, you forgive me? A third generation anti communist is terrific. Now, I'm projecting here, but you have to deal with it. Here's the question. Question number three. There could be an entire classic movie network dedicated to films that take on and denigrate the Nazis. And they should be denigrated, of course. But our culture cannot seem to find the time or the attention or the money to produce films, shows, miniseries and books that dress down the ideology that, as you just said, killed over 100 million people since the Reds took over Russia in 1917, never mind the billions of people who it's tormented, didn't kill, but tormented still. Torment is this willful blindness culturally, and if it is, what drives the willfulness? And then I have a side question as an old movie buff, which is what I am. I'm old. I'm a movie buff who watches and loves Turner Classic Movies. If there's anyone involved in a film they're showing that was on the Hollywood blacklist, TCM goes into martyr dialogue mode. Oh, Dalton Trumbo, the great patron saint of has the museum ever dressed in the hushed up role that the Communist Party did indeed play in Hollywood in the 1930s and the 1940s. And I'm sure, well, after very good questions.
- [22:35]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
So to answer that last one first, we haven't done something directly on that, although we did a webinar at one point on some good films and I know we want to do something on that. We're going to be engaged in a, an anti communist film festival in the fall. So that's it.
- [22:52]
Jack
Oh, wow.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Stay tuned for, for more on that. And I do think on this subject that Alan Riskin's book is still just about the best thing, maybe even the only real thing on this particular topic that you're bringing up. So people who haven't read that, I highly recommend it. And then on the question about whether this is Willful or not, it's in part willful. So some of it's ignorance. Just people don't know. Right. And so things don't happen and then it doesn't get into film. Some of it is because of the politics that prevail in Hollywood and even more so these days. So I think that's it. And then some of it's what happened in our intellectual culture that includes the universities, but then also affects Hollywood and that's something of decades length now. And I do think all of that means that even though we know that the most successful films are family oriented films that have more upbeat messages and so you don't get some of these great stirring stories that you could have. I mean some of the content could be fairly miserable, very hard. But there are also ennobling stories about, about fighting communism and about being, you know, for the right things, being for freedom that just don't end up. And some of that, some of that is willful because I think that Hollywood, I mean various things, but I think that Hollywood never had their come to Jesus moment where they said, okay, we were anti Nazi, but we weren't equally anti communist. Which means that what Ronald Reagan noticed in the 1940s when he was just coming up in leadership, he was head of the union. Yes, just coming up of SAG of the Screen Actors Guild. It is still relevant and accurate what he noted. And so we want to look for more and more. We want to encourage people who want to go into film to find these stories. And I would say that one that is, I don't know if it's a joint American something else production, but Angelina Jolie, because of her family background, including in adoption, she is the director of the movie version of a young adult book called First They Killed My Father, which is based on the killing Fields, but based on the genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. And it is an excellent film. It really is an excellent film. And she tells the story and it's brilliant acting and there should be 25 movies like that. So there is one like that, but there are so few, especially on the American side.
- [25:58]
Jack
I have to plead ignorance on many things, but on this particular movie, when did it did.
- [26:03]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
It's within the last, I don't know, five, seven years.
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Jack
So.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Okay. Fairly recent. Usually it's on Netflix.
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Jack
Okay. But kind of off the radar screen.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yes. It didn't get the play that it should have. I believe it was first in theaters.
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Jack
Yeah.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
And. And it's. It's excellent. It's excellent. It's really, it's really. It's a hard movie to watch, but it's a very good film.
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Jack
I didn't want to. I should. None of us should ever be absolutist in our claims, and I'm not. But because there are some. I'll ask you about this later, but you mentioned the Killing Fields. I mean, boy, oh boy, is there an anti communist movie. That's. Yes, that's it. And a very popular movie, but just a great deficiency I still will claim. Well, I have two more questions to ask you, Elizabeth. So. Well, this may be related to what we just talked about. Culture. Some of the victims of communism did not perish in the Gulag or the Laogai camps, or the Killing Fields, or the starved out Ukrainian villages. Some who survived gave powerful witness to the evil they experienced. You just talked about the painter. Many of our listeners and viewers are voracious readers. And I'd like you to. To ask you what two or three books would you recommend they read and why? And you cannot mention the Gulag because we just had Dan Mahoney on an episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His own Words, talking about the importance of the Gulag and about the cinema. You have this film festival coming up. I'm happy to give you some suggestions, but are there movies, maybe some that have been made abroad? I can't remember the name of that East German movie that came out about 20 years ago.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
The Lives of Others.
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Jack
The Lives of Others.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
And it is. It's coming up on its anniversary, its 20th anniversary this year.
- [28:00]
Jack
Okay.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
And next year, probably for distribution by the time you do the worldwide distribution. But yes. 20 years. 20 years.
- [28:07]
Jack
Any more movies and two or three books that you would recommend?
- [28:10]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yes. So maybe on movies first, since we just talked about Lives of Others, that I thought would have opened up a door. Right. And it didn't. It opened up a small window, but not a door.
- [28:23]
Jack
Tell us what it's about briefly.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
That's the. That's East Germany. And the main character is a Stasi officer. And so he starts to realize how horrible communism is from the inside. And so there's love and despair in it. I won't spoil it. It really is quite an experience to watch. And for viewers and listeners who have younger children, it's not appropriate for a younger audience. And you'll decide when you would show it to a teenager, let's say, you know, at some point, because it has some mature themes in it. But it's brilliant. It's brilliant. And that was largely German production. It might have had some other partners, but German. And that's actually then been the case that a lot of the best films, especially in the last five to seven years, let's say, have not been American productions. It could be that First They Killed My Father, which I already mentioned, is largely American, but I imagine Jolie worked with lots of other people on this. And then I think Mr. Jones is one of the best movies of the last five to seven years. And that one was like, I think, British, Ukrainian. And that's about the holodomor and about the incredible journalist Gareth Jones. And so it's the real story about the Holodomorphic that Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge and a couple of others reported on accurately and were laughed at, scoffed, shouted down, otherwise rejected. And then, as some of the listeners and viewers here will know, Walter Durante of the New York Times was praised up, down and around for explaining that there was no famine going on and eventually had a Pulitzer. And, you know, anyway, this is just. So. It's a brilliant film and I recommend it. I also recommend the. Let's see. So we have lives of others. Mr. Jones, we already said first they Killed My Father. There's an older film called the Inner Circle that's about Stalin's projectionist. And for people who haven't seen a lot of films, that one's really worth watching. And I believe it was the first film that was recorded or that was shot in the Kremlin after, or as the Soviet Union was changing. So that one's really good.
- [30:58]
Jack
Before you get to books, you must have seen the Death of Stalin.
- [31:03]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
I did. I like the Death of Stalin. It's a satire, but I think it's brilliant. I think it's brilliant. And then one more film before we go to books. If you're very interested in World War II and you're interested in somebody who fought both Nazis and Communists, I think Pilecki's report is very good. And that's a Polish production. Again, they may have had partners, so it's in Polish with subtitles, but the person who plays Witold Pilecki, who went in to the concentration camps, went into Auschwitz, got out the first reports so that everybody could know what was going on, and then was actually not in Poland when the Communists were solidifying control and said, no, I can't stay safe, and went back in to fight the Communists and then was arrested, arrested and was tortured and killed and show trial, the whole bit. So that's a brilliant film, too. So I would say those for.
- [32:03]
Jack
That's a great Recommendation.
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Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Scoot.
- [32:04]
Jack
What about books?
- [32:05]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yeah, books. Books. So not to. You know, Dan's correct. And one day in the Life of Ivan Dazinovich should be part of the reading. If somebody's reading Solzhenitsyn anyway and looking at Gulag Archipelago. But for me, it's hard to pick only several. But I would say certainly people should read by Walter Ciszek, who is a Jesuit priest with God in Russia and he leadeth me. And I'm gonna count it as one book, even though it's two books, because it's one author, it's the same author. Either or both of those should be read. Should be read by anybody, not just people who are interested in communism. And he is an American from Pennsylvania, a Jesuit who's a missionary, who is, you know, accused and found guilty of being a spy, which he's not spy for the Vatican. And for over 20 years, he endures Lubianca, the gulag, and internal exile. And so he. I mean, I don't want to, you know, no spoiler alerts other than it should change somebody, just like Gulag changes somebody by reading it. Reading Cisik's books will change a person. So I would say that then for China, I'd say to read Life and Death in Shanghai by Nian Cheng. And this is written by. Oh, it's so beautifully written. This was a Chinese woman, well educated, who in her 50s, endures over six years of solitary confinement during the Cultural Revolution. And she refuses to sign the confession. She just keeps saying, you know, they want her to confess. And she says, well, I will tell you this because it's accurate. I will tell you this. I will tell you that. And she uses her brain to respond over and over again. And the book is beautifully written, reads like a novel, even though it's a memoir, right? And she. She really has so much to share in it, and she doesn't pull her punches. So you do get a lot of the descriptions of what that kind of imprisonment does to the body, not just to the mind and the soul. And then the last one I would recommend to Go around the World is Against All Hope by Armando Valladares. And he endured over 20 years in Castro's Gulag. And that is, again, a beautifully written memoir. Reads like a novel, all three of these. So Chiswick and Chang and Viadaras, they love poetry. They composed things in their heads kind of like Solzhenitsyn did, too. So part of that, I imagine what Jimmy Lai is doing, all the things he must be composing in his head to get through what he's enduring right now. And so Valladares does that, too. And finally his case draws more and more international attention. He is freed largely through European efforts. He ends up coming to the United States like Nanchang as well. And he has made an ambassador, one of the ambassadors at some level to I think, a UN organization by President Reagan in the 1980s, just a few years after he is released. So it's one of these great American stories, too. And he's going to be the subject of one of our new Witness Project videos at voc because we have these extraordinary Witness Project videos. We didn't get Nian Cheng before she she died probably in the aughts. But Vaiadaras is, you know, late 80s. He's still alive. And so we're going to have that mini documentary, I'm sure, sometime soon.
- [35:55]
Jack
Terrific. I'm glad you said Witness because you're about the victims of communism, but we would recommend anyone read Witness. It's one of the great books ever read.
- [36:04]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
People don't have time for the whole book. At least read the foreword.
- [36:09]
Jack
Yeah. Amen. We're going to take a break in a second. I just have to recommend Movie festival Man on a Tightrope by Kazan, about the Czech circus trying to escape into free Germany after World War II is a terrific, terrific movie. Frederick March and Gloria Graham, Adolph Manjou, terrific movie. Well, we have one more question of the five, and we're going to ask that final question after these final important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And thanks so much, Elizabeth Spaulding, for joining us. This episode is up on. Jeez, I should have my calendar with me, but I think it's the 25th or 26th of January. We're talking on the 22nd. Final question, Elizabeth. Communism continues to create victims by virtue of citizenship. Should you have had the misfortune have been born in Cuba or North Korea or by special targeting such as the Uyghurs of communist China? Those who thought Marx, as you mentioned this before, thought Marx was defeated when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. They were wrong. There's still a billion people plus living under communism in the world today in 2026. What concerns you most about this persistent and malicious ideology and maybe even as it applies to America, where democrat socialism is gaining traction? Do you think there's much DNA shared between communism and socialism? So that's kind of like two questions, but you can answer.
- [37:47]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
But you've kept your five.
- [37:48]
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- [37:59]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
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- [38:04]
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- [38:20]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Thank you. Well, we do have to remember that according to its own theory, according to the ideology, socialism is a less developed part of full communism. So they are very much sharing DNA. And then you can have arguments about whether this happens through evolution or revolution. Right? But we know that in terms of the more than 1.5 billion people still forced to live under communism, it's always been under by, brought about by revolution. Right? And so violence and terror and everything else are included, and the tools become part of what communism is known by, not just the promises of the ideology. Right. And you have this all working together. So I am very concerned that in 2026 we still have communism around the world, which we do. We'll see what happens with Venezuela. But although people voted for socialism initially in Venezuela, then it wasn't what the promises were, weren't kept, and then they didn't want it after a while. So now we'll see what happens. But we have these socialists, you know, what's going on in Nicaragua, things like that. So we have to keep an eye on that, and that should be part of how we look out at the world. You mentioned about some concerns here at home, and I share them. And I do think some of this has to do with ignorance. I think that lack of understanding of politics and history. A lot of people conflated the end of the Cold War with the end of communism, including a lot of scholars, and they didn't realize that we still have communism to deal with. And then the academy is very much still something that is dealing with the economic, cultural, political understandings of kind of the offshoots of Marxism, the descendants of Marxism. If you see everything going back to the roots in the trunk of the tree of Marx, we've got different limbs and branches, and we're dealing with some of them here in the United States. And we could talk for hours about what this really looks like here. But I'm concerned now that, especially looking at some things in politics too, that people are conflating just like they did the original conflation. They're now conflating things like collective and community. And they don't Understand, you don't want the collective because that's. That's what gets you into socialism and ultimately communism. Instead, you want community and the united. I mean, we're in America 250, right? We're going to be in America 250 for years here. And community is part of what it is to be American.
- [41:17]
Jack
Tocqueville.
- [41:18]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yeah, Right. So those are the kinds of things now where I think we almost get into this Orwellian use of language in a bad way.
- [41:28]
Jack
And.
- [41:29]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
And people are bringing elements of the pernicious ideology and adapting it, because Marxism is very adaptable. You can figure out if Gramsci hadn't come up with what he contributed, if the Frankfurt School hadn't come up with what they contributed, I think some of this stuff would have still gotten into higher education and brought us critical theory and everything else that we're dealing with now. And then you look at the practical politics and what happens, and New York is an obvious example right now.
- [42:00]
Jack
Adaptability, Marxism and some branch, some form of Muslim Islam.
- [42:07]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
I mean, what. Yeah, no, isms are not good. The ideology of ism and communism, socialism are part of that. And I think that that's something that we need to keep educating about. This is something where I'm in the classes that I teach in the classroom or when I'm just out giving a talk one time to a group, whether it's people who lived through things or people who are just coming up, whether they're high schoolers or college students or young professionals. I'm just trying to get them to understand the terms so that then they know. Do you really know what you would be picking if you say that you want collective this or you want government ownership of that, or you think it's going to be free? I mean, free, free. We have to use the air quotes for free. And I was doing some research recently on Reagan and Thatcher together, and Margaret Thatcher, she does these marvelous dissections in the 1970s of public doesn't mean what you think it means. And how we had to take back the word public because she said that should mean that we own it. And that's what we have to start doing. We have to be very clear. And that does require us then to be able to have conversations with people that don't agree with us. No, you're right.
- [43:31]
Jack
When they take over words like peace, remember the peace mix? It didn't mean what they meant. No, what we meant.
- [43:37]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Freedom.
- [43:38]
Jack
Yeah, yeah. Well, the democratic people's republic. Right, Right.
- [43:43]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
Yeah, right.
- [43:44]
Jack
Well, I can't speak for Victor Davis Hansen, but I bet he wish he was here talking to you.
- [43:52]
Dr. Elizabeth Spalding
I wish he was here, too, but it's been a pleasure to be with you, Jack.
- [43:55]
Jack
Well, Elizabeth, you're a very generous soul, but I want to thank you for doing this and joining me. And again, I think the work you've done and your family has done is is truly important and will remain important. And to recommend again to folks who are listening to this or watching, if you're in D.C. come visit the museum. And even if you're not in D.C. go to the victimsofcommunism.org website. And there's a lot to learn there. So thank you, Dr. Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, for joining me. Thanks, folks, for watching and listening. And we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. Bye. Bye.