House Republicans joined survivors of communist regimes to share firsthand accounts of oppression and warn against the rise of communism in America.
WASHINGTON— House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) hosted “A Warning to America: Stories from Survivors of Communism,” a roundtable discussion featuring Members of Congress and survivors of communist regimes who shared firsthand accounts of life under communism.
Participants warned against the growing influence of communist ideology, discussed the human cost of communist regimes, the importance of preserving America’s founding principles, and why the lessons of history must not be forgotten.
Chairwoman McClain said: “Today isn’t about political theory or academic debate. It’s about real people who lived under communism, suffered under communism, and found the courage to escape it… America is being told a dangerous lie. We are told communism has never really been tried. Communism has been tried. It has failed every single time. And it has left behind poverty, repression, bloodshed, and broken nations.”
Watch her full remarks here:
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said: “My mother fled communist Cuba, and they stole my grandfather’s gas station, a small business, they stole his home. My mother came to the United States and never saw her father again. That’s the reality, it’s that they steal from people, they steal from you, and that’s redistribution of wealth… This idea that the socialists are trying to sell it as an affordability, and that it’s going to make life more affordable and accessible is just ludicrous, because it’s the exact opposite that happens.”
Watch her full remarks here:
Rep. Victoria Spartz said: “I grew up and was born in USSR… If you think about Marxist ideology, it’s very dangerous. They use propaganda and promise equality, but it ends with political elites on top. That’s what socialism is. And then everyone else is equally poor. … So for me to see people openly in the United States of America promote Marxist propaganda, that is dangerous.”
Watch her full remarks here:
Rep. Carlos Gimenez said: “I was actually lived under communism for almost seven years; my family fled Cuba seeking freedom. They left everything behind… I’ve heard leaders reject the communist label before. I’ve heard leaders promise that the government only wants to help working people before. I’ve heard promises of greater equality, more benefits, better future. These promises sound very familiar, especially to me, and to anyone who escaped Castro’s Cuba… Instead came censorship, political prisoners, confiscated property, one-party rule, and the destruction of a free press and economy.”
Watch his full remarks here:
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar said: “I’m the daughter of political refugees. The problem we have in this country is that people do not have a point of reference, because the abundance and the beauty of the American system, not only on the economic side, but on the political side, the freedoms, blinds those who do not understand or believe that there is another world called socialism. … The problem is that the democratic socialists, the Marxists, or the communists know how to use the democratic institutions. They infiltrate them little by little, and then they destroy them.”
Watch her full remarks here:
Jose Daniel Ferrer, survivor of communist Cuba, said: “The best evidence that the communists that try to get to power in democratic nations are scam artists is that Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Mamdani always deny being communists. And when they achieve what they want, they claim that they were communists from birth… I spent more than 12 years in the regime’s prison. I know what is physical and psychological torture. Nobody told me that. I lived it and I suffered it in my own skin.”
Watch his full remarks here:
Daniel Di Martino, survivor of communist Venezuela, said: “My parents had a gas station and a great life. We had an apartment. We had a car. I went to school. And then suddenly things began changing. Suddenly there was no milk in the grocery store. Then there was no meat. Then we had to line up in the grocery store… The common denominator is that they destroy free enterprise. You cannot start a business, you cannot feed your family, therefore you die and you flee. It’s that simple.”
Watch his full remarks here:
Mike Gonzales, survivor of communist Cuba, said: “Why did communists try to control the schools and didn’t like church? Because they tried to control the message. Communists hate the culture of the country they take over. … Somebody told them that our society is rotten. Somebody told them that we live in a country that is structurally oppressive. … And what do you do when you believe that things are structurally oppressive or systemically racist? You have no other choice but to change the structures of the system.”
Watch his full remarks here:
Pastor Ezra Jin, survivor of the Chinese Communist Party, said: “We’re extremely grateful for President Trump to have raised my case and asked for me directly to Xi Jinping when he was in China. In less than a day, I was sent from inside the Chinese prison to being in America watching fireworks at Independence Day, eating with my family that I hadn’t seen in eight years. But I have eight colleagues and pastors from Zion Church who are still inside prison today.”
Watch his full remarks here:
Karina Lipsman, survivor of the communist USSR, said: “We talk about it today and we talk about how ungrateful sometimes we can be because we are afforded these freedoms on a regular basis. We forget what we take for granted, what so many people around the world pray for every single day… If we don’t have anywhere to go, we’re done. America is the greatest country in the world. People don’t flee from America, they flee to America.”
Watch her full remarks here: