Following Mao’s death, the Chinese Communist Party loosened its grip on the Chinese people politically and economically to save its ruling status. Accidentally sitting on a portrait of Mao is no longer a crime. However, as China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, rolls back decades of economic reform and tries to reimpose Mao’s socialist ideal onto China, acts that disparage CCP leaders and historical figures are once again criminalized. Several Hong Kong booksellers who sold books about CCP leaders’ private lives and corruption were abducted and served jail time in mainland China. Recently, Beijing amended its criminal law to make any smear of China’s revolutionary martyrs and heroes a punishable crime.
The CCP isn’t the only totalitarian regime that shields its public figures from mockery. In 2016, North Korea executed a vice premier by firing squad. He was condemned to death for showing “disrespect” to “dear leader” Kim Jong-Un by falling asleep at a meeting presided over by Kim.
Why do totalitarian regimes try so desperately to protect their leaders from real or perceived public mockery? Because they are afraid that any unpunished slander will remove the ruling class’s “we-know-best” mystique and weaken its claim to power. Their legitimacy to rule will be questioned or even challenged.
When I immigrated to the United States, I was initially shocked to see how openly Americans, especially those who host late-night TV shows, publicly make fun of their political leaders and suffer no consequence. Rather than serving jail time, the hosts of these shows are wildly popular and financially successful. I learned to appreciate such mockery as a healthy sign of a free society.
Political leaders in a free society are not entitled to dictate what people should say and how private citizens should think and act. They are representatives elected by the people to serve. Citizens in a free society rightfully treat their political leaders as equals who happen to have different societal roles and who are fallible like the rest of us. Subjecting political leaders to public mockery is one of many ways citizens can channel dissatisfaction, almost like an instant job performance review of those in power. Public ridicule also reminds political leaders that they are not above the people they govern, and that their hold on power has limits.
This is why the woke Left’s meltdown over the “Let’s go Brandon” slogan is misguided. The phrase became popular in early October after an interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown went viral. NBC’s Kelli Stavast, who conducted the interview, mistook NASCAR fans’ chants of “F–k Joe Biden” for a cheer of “Let’s go, Brandon!” Since then, the phrase has become a popular rallying cry on the Right because, according to Teresa Mull of the Spectator, it “encapsulates several things: mockery of the dishonest propaganda machine that calls itself the media. Defiance of cancel culture and the bullying mentality of the woke word police. And a bit of old-fashioned American fun in the face of our uber-serious snowflake society.”
After a Southwest pilot reportedly signed off the PA system with “Let’s go, Brandon,” the Left’s hysteria over the phrase reached a new height. Liberal Twitter users demanded that Southwest fire the pilot and compared the phrase’s users to ISIS terrorists and Nazis. Mull warned that we shouldn’t be surprised if our Big Tech overlords ban the phrase “Let’s go Brandon” from all of their platforms.
From canceling the livelihood of people of different political views to imposing critical race theory in our education system, the speed and the magnitude of the American Left’s campaign to turn the United States into an illiberal society are stunning. For immigrants like me who once lived under a totalitarian regime, today’s America, captured by the woke Left, is beginning to look like the oppressive societies we left behind.
Fortunately, in last week’s elections, American voters said no to this descent into illiberalism. They rejected proposals to defund police from Minneapolis to New York City, elected Winsome Sears as the first African-American woman to win a statewide election in Virginia and sent candidates who oppose critical race theory to local school boards across the nation. May this election mark the beginning of our return to a free society, so we can again laugh at power and powerful people openly and consequence-free.
Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer and speaker. Helen is the author of Backlash: How China’s Aggression Has Backfired and Confucius Never Said. Follow her on Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks and visit her website: www.helenraleighspeaks.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
