National Security Adviser O’Brien Insults China’s President Xi as ‘Heir to Stalin’

June 25, 2020 (EIRNS)—In a speech today, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien gave a blood-curdling speech at the Arizona Commerce Conference Center in which he compared Chinese President Xi Jinping to Joseph Stalin. The speech is one of four that are planned, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr, and FBI Director Christopher Wray giving the follow-ups in the near future. Inside China, these are viewed as part of the Trump re-election bid, making the theme “China, China, China,” as the Republican Congressional Committee advised weeks ago.

Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger is said to have had a role in the speech, but O’Brien also refers to John Garnaut, an Australian journalist formerly with the Sydney Morning Herald, who has come to play a role in the Australian government. “The Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization. The party chairman Xi Jinping sees himself as Josef Stalin’s successor. The Chinese Communist party is the last ruling party that never split with Stalin, with the partial exception of North Korea.” There is thus a direct line from Stalin, to Mao, to Xi.

Then he went through the crimes of Stalin, followed by the CCP’s supposed “camps” in Xinjiang, its suppression of the press, and its total monitoring of the population. “But this is not just the concern of the Chinese people, but also of you,” he said. Because the CCP, he claimed, is also monitoring your calls, looking at your Facebook pages, and keeping track of your goings-on, essentially listing what is done as a matter of course by the U.S. National Security Agency, but putting instead a “Chinese” hand to it. He also alleged that the CCP is intent upon instituting control over the whole world, and “Americans should be concerned,” because “Xi Jinping’s ambitions for ideological control are not limited to his own people. The CCP’s stated goal is to create community of common destiny for mankind.”

The ostensibly mild-mannered O’Brien is a real piece of work. Raised a Catholic, he converted to Mormonism in his 20s, and spent time at an all-white university in South Africa during apartheid. His only public writing at that time was an article condemning the alleged depredations of the anti-apartheid movement.