WEBVTT - Exposing China's Murderous Organ Harvesting Industry 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:11.040 From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:14.800 where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:19.680 nurtured and honored. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour, 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.520 bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:25.000 across the country. 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.480 People called hospitals and said, hey, I'm looking for organs. 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.240 Can I get them in two weeks? Absolutely. Can I 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:34.200 get Falun Gong organs? Absolutely. Those those are the ones 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:35.720 we have. Those are the best. 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:39.240 This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:44.120 Free Hillsdale Hour. Part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:47.560 That was Jan Yaklich. He's the author of Killed to 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:51.680 Order China's Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:55.520 America's Biggest Adversary. We'll talk about the evidence with Jan 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:59.490 on today's program. Also later on, Kelli Scott Franklin from 0:00:59.490 --> 0:01:03.250 Hillsdale's English Department joins us to go in depth into 0:01:03.250 --> 0:01:07.290 another poem from Emily Dickinson. First, pleased to be joined 0:01:07.290 --> 0:01:10.009 right now by Jan Yaklich. He is the author of 0:01:10.010 --> 0:01:14.170 the book Kill to Order China's Organ Harvesting Industry and 0:01:14.170 --> 0:01:18.250 the True Nature of America's Biggest Adversary. He's also senior 0:01:18.250 --> 0:01:22.050 editor at The Epoch Times, host of American thought leaders 0:01:22.050 --> 0:01:24.170 as well. Jan, thanks so much for joining us. 0:01:24.450 --> 0:01:25.970 Scott. I'm thrilled to be here. 0:01:26.569 --> 0:01:31.250 This is a book that you could perhaps find in 0:01:31.290 --> 0:01:33.770 some sort of science fiction. You think it's not real, 0:01:33.770 --> 0:01:37.450 you think it can't be happening. And yet the data 0:01:37.450 --> 0:01:42.970 and information is is strong. This is about systemic forced 0:01:43.010 --> 0:01:48.770 organ harvesting in China. Why is this happening and how 0:01:48.770 --> 0:01:50.210 do we know it's happening? 0:01:50.490 --> 0:01:55.810 Excellent questions. Let me explain to you one example of 0:01:55.810 --> 0:01:59.630 what we discovered back in 2026. And I think that 0:01:59.630 --> 0:02:02.750 will kind of open up the the road, if you will, 0:02:02.790 --> 0:02:07.310 to answer both of your questions. Okay. So there was 0:02:07.310 --> 0:02:11.630 a Israeli transplant surgeon, actually, former head of the Israeli 0:02:11.630 --> 0:02:14.870 Transplant Association named Yaakov Levy. And he had to pay. 0:02:14.910 --> 0:02:17.270 He was a heart transplant surgeon. And he had a 0:02:17.270 --> 0:02:21.230 patient who one day had a really bad condition. And 0:02:21.230 --> 0:02:23.830 his patient told him, look, I'm tired of waiting. I 0:02:23.830 --> 0:02:27.750 might not make it. They've scheduled it for me in 0:02:27.750 --> 0:02:32.590 China in two weeks, and I'm going. And Jacob, he 0:02:32.590 --> 0:02:35.870 couldn't believe this. Right. And I'll explain to you in 0:02:35.870 --> 0:02:39.310 a moment, if it's not obvious why there's all these 0:02:39.310 --> 0:02:40.989 red flags going off in his head. 0:02:41.310 --> 0:02:41.790 Mhm. 0:02:41.910 --> 0:02:43.950 He just couldn't believe that this was possible. But the 0:02:43.950 --> 0:02:45.910 guy went and got it done and came back with 0:02:45.910 --> 0:02:48.990 his new heart. And that was one of the whistleblowers 0:02:48.990 --> 0:02:54.190 back in 2020, pardon me, 2006. That kind of I 0:02:54.389 --> 0:02:56.440 kind of say I was hit over the head by 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.399 the evidence, if you will, because I had heard rumors 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.480 that we knew that actually, that the Chinese Communist Party 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:06.080 surgeons had killed people for organs before. But the idea 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:08.200 that it was happening at a large scale in the 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:11.800 sort of systematic, industrialized way was not something that I 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:16.400 conceived or wanted to believe, if you will. Okay. So 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:18.440 that that's a starting point. 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.440 Can you juxtapose or contrast the way things work in 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:26.680 an ethical society and ethical system with the way that 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:27.919 things work in China? 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:32.160 Absolutely. So here in the US, if you let's say 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.840 I need a new heart. Someone has to have a 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:38.280 catastrophic accident. And that accident is a very specific kind 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:42.360 of accident. Because if the person loses all circulation, it's 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:46.360 that catastrophic. Those organs degrade very quickly. You can't transplant 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.160 from a heart from a person like that. So it 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:50.960 has to be a very specific kind of accident. But 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:53.570 on the flip side, you also don't want to transplant 0:03:53.570 --> 0:03:55.930 for someone who has a chance of making it right. 0:03:55.970 --> 0:03:58.650 And there's an ethics team that has to make that call. 0:03:58.650 --> 0:04:01.170 It's a tough call to make. And then on top 0:04:01.170 --> 0:04:05.370 of that, you also need to match for blood type 0:04:05.370 --> 0:04:07.810 and tissue type. And the reason for that is that 0:04:07.810 --> 0:04:11.369 our bodies reject foreign objects, including organs. So we try 0:04:11.370 --> 0:04:14.730 to approximate organs that are as close to us to 0:04:14.770 --> 0:04:18.450 maximize the likelihood that the organ will keep including, you know, 0:04:18.490 --> 0:04:21.250 of course, this is including the anti-rejection drugs and everything else. 0:04:21.450 --> 0:04:25.529 And size also matters. Size is something. That's my point here, 0:04:25.529 --> 0:04:29.409 is that it's very rare actually, to get the right 0:04:29.410 --> 0:04:32.810 heart for a person. And so this catastrophic accident happens, 0:04:32.810 --> 0:04:36.050 this donor appears, and there's this field of people that 0:04:36.050 --> 0:04:39.410 are waiting for that heart, and there's an algorithm that 0:04:39.410 --> 0:04:41.969 decides who gets the top of the line, right? Based 0:04:41.970 --> 0:04:45.290 on availability, based on how long they've been waiting there 0:04:45.290 --> 0:04:48.489 need all that kind of stuff. That's a normal system. Okay. 0:04:48.529 --> 0:04:51.170 And the Chinese system under the Communist Party is the 0:04:51.260 --> 0:04:54.980 exact reverse. And let me explain why. There's a little 0:04:55.020 --> 0:04:57.500 bit of a background. And this is something actually that 0:04:57.500 --> 0:05:00.700 I know has been discussed at Hillsdale to some extent. 0:05:00.700 --> 0:05:04.460 So I'm very happy, happy to say that in Communist China, 0:05:04.460 --> 0:05:07.820 they have this long history of creating class enemies, what 0:05:07.820 --> 0:05:11.380 they call black classes. And so the first one was, 0:05:11.500 --> 0:05:16.500 let's call them landowners, okay, the revolution happens. It's 1949. 0:05:16.500 --> 0:05:19.580 The Communist Party says, hey, we don't do private property. 0:05:19.620 --> 0:05:22.100 We're going to take that land. Okay. Except that there's 0:05:22.100 --> 0:05:24.220 all these people that have worked hard for their land 0:05:24.220 --> 0:05:26.540 or inherited it, and they have friends and they're not 0:05:26.540 --> 0:05:30.900 going to go easily, right? Obviously. So what they did 0:05:30.900 --> 0:05:33.220 was they they figured out a way. And this is 0:05:33.220 --> 0:05:37.620 every totalitarian system seems to do this very effectively. They 0:05:37.660 --> 0:05:43.460 seize the means of dissemination of information, i.e. the media 0:05:43.460 --> 0:05:46.099 and so forth. And then they use that to push 0:05:46.140 --> 0:05:49.920 mass dehumanizing propaganda into the system about the group. So 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:55.119 for example, um, you know, for the landowners. Landowning is evil. 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:59.440 These landowners themselves are evil. They're contemptible. You should fear them. 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:03.200 They're dangerous. Actually, they took that land from you. You 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:05.520 should get it back. You know you deserve it. So 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.200 we're going to help. ET cetera, et cetera. ET cetera. 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:10.279 And that conditions what that does is when it's done 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:14.479 en masse, you know, again and again it conditions our minds. 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.560 And some people are more susceptible, some are less to this, 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.920 to basically bad things being done to this group of people. Okay. 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.160 Now there is kind of a way out usually, and 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:27.400 the way out is if the landowner says, Great Communist Party, 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:29.880 thank you for emancipating me from the land. Thank you. 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:33.080 I thought land ownership was reasonable. Now I know I'm wrong. 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.360 And anyway, if they do this, become contrite, you know, 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:39.040 basically subjugate themselves to the will of the party. They 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.520 might live otherwise. You know, a lot of a lot 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:43.279 of people were killed. And actually there has been many, 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:45.880 many of these class enemies, black classes that have been 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.810 created by the regime over the years. Part of the 0:06:48.810 --> 0:06:51.290 reason is also to show the rest of the population 0:06:51.290 --> 0:06:53.890 what will happen if you go against the regime. It's 0:06:53.890 --> 0:06:56.730 like an education tool or something. So so this is 0:06:56.730 --> 0:07:00.890 an important piece of this puzzle because in 1999 the 0:07:00.930 --> 0:07:03.890 a group became black classed, if you will, and that 0:07:03.890 --> 0:07:07.369 was Falun Gong practitioners. And Falun Gong is a very 0:07:07.370 --> 0:07:10.210 unusual system. It's a you can think of it like 0:07:10.250 --> 0:07:13.650 a slow motion exercise system, like a Chinese yoga, but 0:07:13.650 --> 0:07:18.570 also with very deep moral principles, truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. 0:07:18.570 --> 0:07:21.650 People that did this and it took it very seriously. 0:07:21.650 --> 0:07:23.650 And it's not like a typical what you would think 0:07:23.650 --> 0:07:26.210 of as an organization. So there's a lot of teachings, 0:07:26.690 --> 0:07:29.850 but what there aren't is a lot of rules. The 0:07:29.850 --> 0:07:32.490 rules might be there's no collection of money around it. 0:07:32.490 --> 0:07:35.010 You're not allowed to enrich yourself from it. There's actually 0:07:35.010 --> 0:07:39.530 no hierarchy in it. There's no there's a the Li Hongzhi, 0:07:39.570 --> 0:07:41.570 the man who wrote the teachings, right? Like you could 0:07:41.570 --> 0:07:44.010 call him the founder or the teacher, but there's no 0:07:44.050 --> 0:07:47.179 worship or something like that. And also, there's not even 0:07:47.180 --> 0:07:49.180 a roster. You don't join a group. You're kind of 0:07:49.220 --> 0:07:51.940 living the teachings is what makes you a practitioner. People 0:07:51.940 --> 0:07:53.700 shared it by word of mouth, and by the end 0:07:53.700 --> 0:07:56.340 of the 90s, it was 100 million people were doing it, 0:07:56.340 --> 0:07:59.620 70 to 100 million by government estimate. And so this 0:07:59.620 --> 0:08:03.980 was bigger than the Communist Party. And communist parties don't 0:08:03.980 --> 0:08:07.060 like something that's bigger than them in society that they 0:08:07.060 --> 0:08:10.580 don't have explicit control over. Right. And with Falun Gong, 0:08:10.620 --> 0:08:13.780 there really is no way to control a whole fleet 0:08:13.780 --> 0:08:18.300 of individual practitioners. And what they discovered that. So Jiang Zemin, 0:08:18.300 --> 0:08:20.660 the dictator at the time, basically blocked, classed them, pushed 0:08:20.660 --> 0:08:24.460 this mass dehumanizing propaganda through the system. But the Falun 0:08:24.460 --> 0:08:27.100 Gong kind of as the first black class that did 0:08:27.100 --> 0:08:30.980 this really at some significant scale. They refused to do 0:08:30.980 --> 0:08:34.420 the contrite thing. They refused to be re-educated or, you know, 0:08:34.860 --> 0:08:37.100 you know, really he used the term eradicated. But that 0:08:37.100 --> 0:08:39.940 didn't mean kill everybody. It meant break them, get rid 0:08:39.980 --> 0:08:43.020 of this whole thing. Right. But people wouldn't do it. 0:08:43.020 --> 0:08:47.790 They wouldn't. And sometimes you'll even see in capitals around 0:08:47.790 --> 0:08:49.790 the world, in DC and other places, you'll see people 0:08:49.790 --> 0:08:52.590 with yellow shirts that says Falun Dafa is good. It's 0:08:52.590 --> 0:08:55.150 another name for Falun Gong. Those. That was kind of 0:08:55.190 --> 0:08:57.949 the slogan that the film Gong practitioners created, really in 0:08:57.950 --> 0:09:01.670 juxtaposition to this dehumanizing propaganda that they were facing. They 0:09:01.670 --> 0:09:03.990 were like, no, Falun Dafa is good, Falun Gong is good. 0:09:04.030 --> 0:09:06.470 It's not all the things that you're saying it is. Right. 0:09:06.710 --> 0:09:09.910 So what? Why is this important? Okay, because this is 0:09:09.950 --> 0:09:14.390 what this unique situation in Chinese history sets up the 0:09:14.390 --> 0:09:17.709 killed to order forced organ harvesting industry. Because you have 0:09:17.710 --> 0:09:21.270 this mass group of people, 7000 million, they're dehumanized in 0:09:21.270 --> 0:09:23.310 the eyes of their peers. So people are being conditioned 0:09:23.309 --> 0:09:26.790 against them. And now the regime not knowing what to do, 0:09:26.830 --> 0:09:29.910 these people are not going easily. It incarcerates a million 0:09:29.910 --> 0:09:33.110 of them. We don't know how many actually, but hundreds 0:09:33.110 --> 0:09:36.270 of thousands. The State Department in 2005 said half of 0:09:36.270 --> 0:09:38.630 the people in the re-education through labor camp system in 0:09:38.630 --> 0:09:41.670 China were Falun Gong practitioners. So just like it's like 0:09:41.770 --> 0:09:45.610 massive amounts of gong practitioners in the system. And this 0:09:45.610 --> 0:09:48.050 is where some very evil person and I kind of 0:09:48.090 --> 0:09:50.570 hypothesize about who this is in the book and how 0:09:50.570 --> 0:09:54.250 this developed. Exactly. We don't know for sure. But he 0:09:54.290 --> 0:09:58.690 they started blood typing. Tissue typing and organ scanning. These 0:09:58.690 --> 0:10:04.450 people on mass incarcerated in the system and creating a database. Right. 0:10:04.809 --> 0:10:08.410 So now let's say I'm a wealthy transplant tourist. And 0:10:08.410 --> 0:10:11.490 unfortunately people have done this in some scale. I need 0:10:11.490 --> 0:10:14.060 my new heart. I'm desperate. I pay my 100 or 0:10:14.059 --> 0:10:17.850 200 grand, which is the going rate. And now there's 0:10:17.890 --> 0:10:20.530 a database, right? And because there's so many people in 0:10:20.530 --> 0:10:24.250 the database, that perfect match for me already exists. And 0:10:24.250 --> 0:10:26.730 that person can be shipped and killed to order so 0:10:26.730 --> 0:10:31.050 that I can live. So in this situation, there's one recipient. 0:10:31.210 --> 0:10:33.970 This is how it's the exact reverse of an ethical system. 0:10:33.970 --> 0:10:37.610 But there's this whole field of so-called donors, actually innocent 0:10:37.610 --> 0:10:41.380 prisoners of conscience to be used for as this unwilling 0:10:41.380 --> 0:10:45.100 organ bank for for for profit and frankly, for the 0:10:45.140 --> 0:10:47.220 longevity of the super elites in China. 0:10:47.540 --> 0:10:53.340 Yeah. How widespread is this in China? How many transplants 0:10:53.380 --> 0:10:55.420 are we talking over the course of a year? How 0:10:55.420 --> 0:10:58.820 many people are killed over the course of a year 0:10:58.820 --> 0:10:59.380 in China? 0:10:59.660 --> 0:11:03.780 So the rough estimate and this is very rough because 0:11:03.780 --> 0:11:06.939 remember this is all a state secret, right? Right. But 0:11:06.940 --> 0:11:10.220 there was this massive growth of hospitals, right. The Falun 0:11:10.220 --> 0:11:15.059 Gong persecution begins. They incarcerate massive amounts of people. And 0:11:15.059 --> 0:11:19.340 suddenly the organ industry just just starts to skyrocket. They're 0:11:19.340 --> 0:11:23.459 building hundreds of hospitals. Okay, hundreds. And so in each 0:11:23.460 --> 0:11:27.060 of those hospitals is going to be doing some basic, 0:11:27.580 --> 0:11:29.380 at least a little amount of work because it's a 0:11:29.380 --> 0:11:31.060 lot of it's a lot of work to set up 0:11:31.059 --> 0:11:34.300 a transplant team. So if you assume the most sort 0:11:34.300 --> 0:11:38.100 of cautious estimates and you just say this giant transplant 0:11:38.150 --> 0:11:40.990 team is just doing one transplant today. Reality is they'll 0:11:40.990 --> 0:11:43.589 be doing more. But let's say you were just so 0:11:43.590 --> 0:11:47.230 that would you would get about 60,000 transplants per year. 0:11:47.510 --> 0:11:52.429 More realistic would be 90,000 100,000, something like that. Ethan 0:11:52.429 --> 0:11:55.589 Gutmann testified about this in Congress, I think in 2016 0:11:55.630 --> 0:11:59.430 about that, that estimate. So it's a very large number 0:11:59.429 --> 0:12:03.309 of transplants. That's not people. That's transplants. Right. So with 0:12:03.309 --> 0:12:07.870 the advent of technologies like ECMO, which is a machine 0:12:07.870 --> 0:12:12.110 that replaces heart and lungs and allows circulation, they one 0:12:12.110 --> 0:12:14.950 of the pieces of evidence we collected was that when 0:12:14.950 --> 0:12:19.590 those portable ECMO machines came online, what happened was that 0:12:19.790 --> 0:12:24.790 these transplant hospitals started buying them like hotcakes because, you know, in, 0:12:24.790 --> 0:12:28.230 in a it's a life saving device here in America, right? 0:12:28.270 --> 0:12:32.110 It allows you to, to fix heart and lungs situations, 0:12:32.150 --> 0:12:34.830 kind of bypassing them in a case of severe trauma 0:12:35.150 --> 0:12:37.970 in China. They use them as a as a profusion 0:12:37.970 --> 0:12:41.250 device to keep the body healthy so more organs can 0:12:41.250 --> 0:12:44.450 be transplanted out of a body. This is this is 0:12:44.450 --> 0:12:46.010 the scale we're talking about. 0:12:46.050 --> 0:12:48.250 John is with us here on the program. His book 0:12:48.250 --> 0:12:51.729 is called To Order. We'll continue with him in a moment. First, 0:12:51.770 --> 0:12:54.930 I want to remind you about the new Hillsdale College 0:12:54.970 --> 0:12:59.929 online course, The Odyssey. You might have heard Doctor Ben Whalen, 0:12:59.929 --> 0:13:02.809 your teacher for this course, on an earlier episode, and 0:13:02.809 --> 0:13:05.970 maybe since then have seen the new film. Well, now 0:13:05.970 --> 0:13:16.330 it's time to take the online course. hillsdale.edu/course, hillsdale.edu/course. The 0:13:16.330 --> 0:13:20.450 Odyssey contains themes about love and marriage and fatherhood and 0:13:20.450 --> 0:13:25.290 kingship and duty. Homer touches on the full experience of 0:13:25.290 --> 0:13:28.770 humanity in this great epic poem you can learn and 0:13:28.770 --> 0:13:33.329 appreciate so much more with Hillsdale new online course The Odyssey. 0:13:33.370 --> 0:13:44.020 Find it at hillsdale.edu/new course, NEWCOURSE. hillsdale.edu slash. New course 0:13:44.059 --> 0:13:48.740 for the Odyssey, we continue with Jan Jekielek. He's the 0:13:48.740 --> 0:13:52.860 author of Killed to Order China's Organ Harvesting Industry and 0:13:52.860 --> 0:13:57.620 the True Nature of America's Biggest Adversary. A somewhat uncomfortable 0:13:57.620 --> 0:14:03.380 conversation about forced organ harvesting under the Chinese regime. Jan, 0:14:03.660 --> 0:14:06.980 something I noticed when reading Jan is that we hear 0:14:06.980 --> 0:14:11.540 stories occasionally people going to foreign countries for surgeries, and 0:14:11.540 --> 0:14:14.140 sometimes the results aren't great doesn't work out well. There 0:14:14.179 --> 0:14:17.740 are infections, right? You get a chop job. That doesn't 0:14:17.740 --> 0:14:20.060 seem to be the case here at all in China, 0:14:20.060 --> 0:14:24.700 meaning this is a very efficient and very successful process 0:14:24.700 --> 0:14:28.020 that they've put together in this organ transplant, this forced 0:14:28.020 --> 0:14:29.980 organ transplant system. 0:14:30.020 --> 0:14:33.590 Well, the set of C, the set of incentives is different, right? 0:14:33.630 --> 0:14:36.150 So I've actually been just learning more about this. And 0:14:36.150 --> 0:14:39.710 you're sort of run of the mill, pretty horrible cartel 0:14:39.750 --> 0:14:43.950 transplant deal. Right. Which of course those exist as well. 0:14:44.030 --> 0:14:47.110 It's kind of like any organ into any body because, 0:14:47.150 --> 0:14:49.990 you know, you make the deal, you're desperate. Someone says 0:14:50.030 --> 0:14:52.830 a cartel can broker it. You're, you know, you obviously 0:14:52.830 --> 0:14:57.150 know that this organ is coming from illicit sources. And then, 0:14:57.190 --> 0:15:00.070 you know, if it fails, which it often does, what's 0:15:00.070 --> 0:15:02.350 your recourse? You're going to complain to the cartel that 0:15:02.350 --> 0:15:06.470 it didn't work out, right? Right. That doesn't even make sense. Right. 0:15:06.590 --> 0:15:09.910 So that's kind of how it works there. But here 0:15:09.910 --> 0:15:13.030 we have something where the Chinese do you remember there 0:15:13.030 --> 0:15:17.310 was this hot mic moment back in September of last year? Yes. 0:15:17.510 --> 0:15:20.950 XI Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong un, they're watching the 0:15:21.150 --> 0:15:25.030 parade in Tiananmen Square. And so this I'll just paraphrase 0:15:25.030 --> 0:15:27.870 what they said, right? Because it reveals, you know, why 0:15:27.910 --> 0:15:33.080 this system works so well, so to speak. So she 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.680 says to Putin, hey, when we're 70, we're just babies. 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:40.400 I'm paraphrasing here, okay? And Putin responds, you know, with 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:45.000 continual organ transplantation, perhaps we can achieve immortality with continual 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:50.160 organ transplantation. Perhaps we can achieve immortality, continual organ transplantation. Right. 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:53.960 And then she responds, our targets 150 years, we hope 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.680 we can reach 150 years. And that's actually 150 years 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.960 is the target of their elite longevity project. It's called 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:04.400 project 981, they claim. And you always have to take 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.120 every Chinese statistic with a massive grain of salt that 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:11.160 has a political valence. First, the reality valence is not 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:15.400 even second. Right. But but I think directionally I'm I'm 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:18.960 sure it is correct. They say 16 years more life 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:22.000 for people that are part of the Elite longevity project. 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:25.960 And yeah, so if you're a Chinese super elite, you 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:31.220 have unlimited on demand organs available to you in perpetuity, right? 0:16:31.260 --> 0:16:34.300 Basically forever. And that's, you know, people ask me, how 0:16:34.300 --> 0:16:37.580 much money do we estimate? It's about a $9 billion 0:16:37.580 --> 0:16:41.820 annual industry right across these hospitals in China. But this 0:16:41.820 --> 0:16:44.820 this is like a whole different level of value, right? 0:16:44.860 --> 0:16:48.580 If you have no moral boundary and you're ready to 0:16:48.620 --> 0:16:52.060 have people killed for organs, um, of course, you also 0:16:52.100 --> 0:16:54.740 want it to work very well. And then, you know, 0:16:54.780 --> 0:16:56.780 you're going to get in bed with other people who 0:16:56.780 --> 0:17:01.220 share your lack of morals. Um, because they want that 0:17:01.220 --> 0:17:04.540 longevity too. There was even this, um, there's an obituary 0:17:04.540 --> 0:17:06.820 that was sent to me a few years ago. It 0:17:06.820 --> 0:17:10.020 was kind of creepy and weird, but basically in the obituary, 0:17:10.220 --> 0:17:13.340 the author writes about the person that passed who was a, 0:17:13.700 --> 0:17:15.660 I think it was a vice minister, a very high 0:17:15.660 --> 0:17:18.420 level official in the Chinese Communist Party. And he had 0:17:18.460 --> 0:17:21.420 been he was known to talk about how many organs 0:17:21.420 --> 0:17:24.379 he had had transplanted. And this actually made it into 0:17:24.380 --> 0:17:27.189 the obituary unbelievably right. Like, I just didn't even know 0:17:27.190 --> 0:17:28.629 what to make of it then, now I do. 0:17:29.590 --> 0:17:33.590 John, when we look at, uh, at this system, something 0:17:33.590 --> 0:17:38.230 you point out throughout the book is, uh, it's very secretive. Uh, 0:17:38.230 --> 0:17:40.670 and it's hard to know a lot about it because 0:17:40.710 --> 0:17:44.270 the victims here of the systemic forced organ harvesting, they 0:17:44.270 --> 0:17:47.830 don't survive. There is a whistleblower in the book. And 0:17:47.830 --> 0:17:52.310 there's also one person who did survive, and there's some, 0:17:52.310 --> 0:17:55.830 some stories from from him. How do we know what 0:17:55.830 --> 0:17:58.230 we know? Or at least how do we know what 0:17:58.230 --> 0:18:01.150 we think we know about this Chinese system? 0:18:01.310 --> 0:18:05.230 So there's, you know, as David Matas, who's I think, 0:18:05.230 --> 0:18:09.190 one of the heroes of the research of this whole thing, 0:18:09.510 --> 0:18:11.990 he just says, you know, our problem is not too 0:18:12.030 --> 0:18:14.470 little evidence, but too much evidence. He likes to say 0:18:14.470 --> 0:18:17.909 that it's true. We have really a great amount of 0:18:17.910 --> 0:18:20.230 evidence of a variety of sorts. I mean, in the 0:18:20.230 --> 0:18:23.590 early years, one of the problems is that the moment 0:18:23.590 --> 0:18:26.800 that you reveal some of the evidence, you reveal how 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.160 you collected it, and then they would close that way 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:32.600 of gathering the evidence, if you will. Right. So in 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:37.440 the early years, there were hospitals that advertised online that said, 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.080 here's the price list and you can get it in 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.520 two weeks. If you can imagine that we actually we 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:44.600 archived some of these, thank goodness, because as soon as 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:50.000 we started reporting on this, they those ads disappeared. Okay. 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.720 People called hospitals and said, hey, I'm looking for organs. 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.439 Can I get them in two weeks? Absolutely. Can I 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.440 get Falun Gong organs? Absolutely. Those those are the ones 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:01.920 we have. Those are the best. It was Falun Gong 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.920 were known to be unusually healthy, by the way. That's 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:09.119 part of the sort of weird allure or whatever. Right. 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:10.800 And by the way, I just there's something else I 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.040 want to mention. Right. No one really did anything about 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.600 this for 15 or 16 years. Right? This is in 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:20.920 the we believe it started around 2000. The Falun Gong 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:24.179 are persecuted in 99. It's starting. It's really grows like 0:19:24.380 --> 0:19:28.580 super quick. Up until 2005 2006. And then it plateaus 0:19:28.580 --> 0:19:31.459 for a bit and keeps growing. Okay. But in 2015 0:19:31.500 --> 0:19:36.300 and 2016, the Chinese Communist Party picks another group, adds 0:19:36.300 --> 0:19:38.940 another group. In the northwest of China, there's a group 0:19:38.940 --> 0:19:42.859 called the Uyghur Muslims. It's an ethnic minority in China. 0:19:43.020 --> 0:19:48.180 It's a strategically important area. The US official position on 0:19:48.180 --> 0:19:51.060 what the CCP is doing up there is genocide, that 0:19:51.060 --> 0:19:55.780 they're eradicating this entire group of people. And so what 0:19:55.780 --> 0:20:00.899 they did up there is they dehumanized them with similar rhetoric, again, 0:20:00.900 --> 0:20:04.740 as they always do, incarcerated a million plus. But then 0:20:04.740 --> 0:20:07.460 they went further because the whole area is run like 0:20:07.500 --> 0:20:11.060 a police state. Basically, they started blood typing and tissue 0:20:11.100 --> 0:20:14.820 typing people in their homes. Right? Basically, blood and DNA 0:20:14.859 --> 0:20:16.980 is enough to do the matching. And that's what they've 0:20:16.980 --> 0:20:19.580 done through almost the whole population up there, from what 0:20:19.580 --> 0:20:22.510 I'm told. So it's a very dark thing and it's 0:20:22.510 --> 0:20:27.390 also geographically isolated. So it's easier for that deniability aspect, right? 0:20:27.430 --> 0:20:31.550 Because again, no one wants to advertise that, that they 0:20:31.550 --> 0:20:34.149 want to advertise that you can get organs quickly to 0:20:34.190 --> 0:20:37.149 the right people. They don't want to advertise how those 0:20:37.150 --> 0:20:38.430 organs are procured. 0:20:38.750 --> 0:20:41.350 John is with us killed to order is his book 0:20:41.350 --> 0:20:44.670 China's Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America's 0:20:44.670 --> 0:20:50.109 Biggest Adversary. You point out that the system makes everyone 0:20:50.109 --> 0:20:54.390 complicit in these crimes. That includes people inside China, but 0:20:54.390 --> 0:20:58.869 also outside of China. And and in some ways, the 0:20:58.869 --> 0:21:04.389 United States being complicit. Why hasn't why haven't we done 0:21:04.390 --> 0:21:06.670 more about this? Why hasn't the rest of the world 0:21:06.670 --> 0:21:08.830 done more about this? And I was trying to sort 0:21:08.830 --> 0:21:12.990 of manipulated us, perhaps to make us complicit in their activities. 0:21:13.869 --> 0:21:16.430 So it's it's very interesting. Like, I'll share a little 0:21:16.470 --> 0:21:19.879 bit about how this complicity works, right? But let's just 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:24.800 super briefly internally, right as an example, right. You get 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:28.639 called in to buy one of the, you know, MSS 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:33.760 Ministry of State security people and you're told, okay, well, comrade, 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.640 I'd like to know what your wife did last night. 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:40.280 She didn't come home on time. I was like, oh, 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:42.760 you're creeped out. They're watching you. You kind of know 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:44.840 they're watching you. It's kind of how the system works. 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:46.720 But you're like, you know, you can't really say no 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:48.800 to those people. Actually, my mother faced this sort of 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:53.040 thing in Poland. And see, what she said was, I'm 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:55.440 not really made out to, to say any. I'm not 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:57.280 really made out to do this kind of thing. That's, 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:01.320 that's you could say that because it's like directly going 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:03.600 against these guys wasn't a good idea. This is what 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:06.800 I've been told. Right. So anyway, so they, they, they 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.240 let her go. But she lost her travel rights. She 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:13.000 just she was revealed she wasn't like this big activist, 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.240 but she was revealed as someone that was not on 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.770 the regime's side. Right. But what they could do in 0:22:17.810 --> 0:22:20.130 that situation. Very often do that. If my mother had 0:22:20.170 --> 0:22:22.970 had a kid, she if she was, you know, if 0:22:22.970 --> 0:22:26.369 she was married and if we had this situation that 0:22:26.369 --> 0:22:29.810 I described, the next thing the guy would say is like, well, actually, 0:22:29.810 --> 0:22:33.370 my compatriot is over there with your daughter at her school, 0:22:33.369 --> 0:22:35.890 just making sure that she's safe. Are you sure you 0:22:35.890 --> 0:22:38.250 don't want to tell us what your wife was up 0:22:38.250 --> 0:22:41.610 to last night? Right? And at that moment, you have 0:22:41.609 --> 0:22:44.970 to make the decision. What do I do? Right. And 0:22:44.970 --> 0:22:48.850 so you probably say where your wife was because you think, well, 0:22:48.890 --> 0:22:50.570 I got to protect my daughter. They're going to do 0:22:50.570 --> 0:22:53.250 something to my daughter, right? And now first, you know, 0:22:53.290 --> 0:22:55.770 you were forced into this. You didn't ever want it 0:22:55.770 --> 0:22:58.410 to make this decision, but you are now morally compromised 0:22:58.410 --> 0:23:01.970 because you had to do something immoral. And they work 0:23:01.970 --> 0:23:04.090 at you this way in small ways to make these. 0:23:04.130 --> 0:23:08.690 And this is, you know, um, one word of truth 0:23:08.690 --> 0:23:11.170 is worth more than the world. I'm kind of butchering 0:23:11.210 --> 0:23:13.969 a soldier line here a little bit, but this is 0:23:13.970 --> 0:23:16.990 the reason because it just becomes, you know, just you're, 0:23:16.990 --> 0:23:20.350 you're constantly having to lie to survive. You lie more, 0:23:20.910 --> 0:23:23.870 but kind of breaking out of that is very powerful 0:23:23.910 --> 0:23:26.990 and very empowering. Right? In the system. So that's one 0:23:26.990 --> 0:23:31.389 way that people get complicit. And if you're an American 0:23:31.390 --> 0:23:33.830 working in China, you have to kind of participate that 0:23:33.830 --> 0:23:36.750 in inadvertently, you have to participate kind of in the lie, 0:23:36.790 --> 0:23:40.669 if you will, you're forced to bribe people and so forth. 0:23:40.710 --> 0:23:42.950 John, that's a great explanation about how some of the 0:23:42.950 --> 0:23:48.470 internal complicity occurs. What about the the external complicity? How 0:23:48.470 --> 0:23:54.190 does China force coerce those outside the country to acquiesce 0:23:54.190 --> 0:23:55.190 to what they're doing? 0:23:55.310 --> 0:23:57.590 It's just simply the moment that you start having a 0:23:57.590 --> 0:24:02.710 financial relationship, right? A regular financial relationship with someone on 0:24:02.710 --> 0:24:04.990 the other side. This is the I had a whole 0:24:05.030 --> 0:24:08.150 kind of class of people that were. You could think 0:24:08.150 --> 0:24:10.710 of it as the wooers of the barbarians. They viewed, 0:24:10.750 --> 0:24:14.560 you know, the name for the for the Westerners and 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:17.720 and actually Jiang Zemin, who started the Falun Gong persecution 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:19.679 that he that was his job. He was an expert 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:22.639 at this. This as on his rise to the top 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:25.160 of the Chinese Communist Party, he actually had that deep 0:24:25.160 --> 0:24:29.200 relationship with Senator Dianne Feinstein long before he wrote all 0:24:29.200 --> 0:24:33.119 the way to the top. And, um, yeah, so, so 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:37.359 you this financial relationship is built and what what you say, 0:24:37.359 --> 0:24:39.360 if you're one of these wooers, so to speak, is 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:44.520 you're like, well, look at this great relationship that we've created, right? We're, 0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:48.120 we're changing China. You and I are making, you know, 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:51.840 big change in China. We're of course, doing very well 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:55.840 financially alongside that. But then there's those hardliners, those bad 0:24:55.840 --> 0:24:58.760 guys that want things to do it the old way. Right? 0:24:58.800 --> 0:25:01.520 And so now, okay, so let me tell you, since 0:25:01.520 --> 0:25:04.199 we're friends, here's what you shouldn't do. Don't say anything 0:25:04.200 --> 0:25:07.479 bad about it. Don't talk about human rights. Um, you know, 0:25:07.520 --> 0:25:10.560 we'll have to we'll have to transfer some technology here 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:13.770 to placate them. But we're making a difference. We're working 0:25:13.810 --> 0:25:16.530 together to change China. This is this was like the 0:25:16.530 --> 0:25:19.250 standard line. So many people, a lot of and frankly, 0:25:19.250 --> 0:25:23.690 a lot of people believed it even. Right. Because well, 0:25:23.850 --> 0:25:25.890 first of all, it's, you know, there's this famous Upton 0:25:25.890 --> 0:25:30.169 Sinclair quote where he says, you know, it's, uh, it's 0:25:30.170 --> 0:25:33.929 hard for someone to notice something if they're financially incentivized 0:25:33.930 --> 0:25:35.130 to not notice it. 0:25:35.170 --> 0:25:39.570 Jan, how far does the complicity go? How deep are 0:25:39.570 --> 0:25:42.129 we involved in this morass, so to speak? 0:25:42.170 --> 0:25:45.609 Like we've trained some of those surgeons in China, those 0:25:45.609 --> 0:25:47.770 those Chinese surgeons come to America and get trained and 0:25:47.770 --> 0:25:50.649 then go do kill to order forced organ harvesting, which is, 0:25:50.970 --> 0:25:53.770 you know, as far as we know, that by vast, vast, 0:25:53.770 --> 0:25:56.650 a vast amount, the major way it's done over there, 0:25:56.690 --> 0:26:00.570 there may be some legitimate transplantation, but it's sort of 0:26:00.609 --> 0:26:03.490 hidden amidst this system. Remember, the incentive structures are really 0:26:04.010 --> 0:26:08.889 terrible against creating a, an ethical system like I described earlier, 0:26:08.890 --> 0:26:12.100 because it's complicated, right? It's incredibly complicated to have a 0:26:12.100 --> 0:26:13.900 system like that. And you have to find the right 0:26:13.900 --> 0:26:16.700 people and match them here. You've got the matches, you've 0:26:16.700 --> 0:26:18.780 just got them incarcerated, and you don't even think of 0:26:18.780 --> 0:26:22.020 them as being particularly useful human beings at all. So 0:26:22.060 --> 0:26:24.859 it's like a bank. Organ bank, right? It's really messy. 0:26:24.900 --> 0:26:29.060 We we have partnerships with universities. We have partnerships with hospitals. 0:26:29.060 --> 0:26:32.500 We have NIH funding for some of these institutions. We 0:26:32.500 --> 0:26:35.460 provide some of the technologies, like I mentioned, ECMO and 0:26:35.460 --> 0:26:38.500 other things that actually, you know, there's a company that 0:26:38.500 --> 0:26:42.699 provided the technology to do that DNA matching up in Xinjiang. 0:26:42.780 --> 0:26:44.180 I mean, it just sort of goes on and on 0:26:44.180 --> 0:26:47.180 and on. And so let's say you're one of these 0:26:47.180 --> 0:26:51.260 people that really doesn't believe that America should be worried 0:26:51.260 --> 0:26:54.899 about anything outside of America. We have enough problems here, sir. 0:26:54.940 --> 0:26:58.820 You know, like, like, I'm, I, I personally believe that 0:26:58.820 --> 0:27:01.060 when it comes to these kinds of atrocities, you know, 0:27:01.060 --> 0:27:03.300 that you saw how it spread from the Falun Gong 0:27:03.340 --> 0:27:08.320 to the Uyghurs. I'm even seeing this really significant uptick 0:27:08.320 --> 0:27:12.080 in dehumanizing rhetoric against Christians right now in China. And, 0:27:12.359 --> 0:27:14.920 you know, my friend Bob Fu, who runs China Aid, 0:27:15.160 --> 0:27:19.320 agrees with me. That's that's a non-profit ministry that basically 0:27:19.320 --> 0:27:24.040 supports persecuted Chinese Christians. And so what does that mean? 0:27:24.040 --> 0:27:25.880 I don't know for sure, but I do know that 0:27:25.880 --> 0:27:30.120 this dehumanizing rhetoric precedes, you know, being added to the 0:27:30.160 --> 0:27:31.680 to the databases. Right? 0:27:31.720 --> 0:27:32.280 Right. 0:27:32.760 --> 0:27:35.880 So that concerns me quite a bit. And, and it's 0:27:35.880 --> 0:27:38.479 just this is with these atrocities, they always hurt. But 0:27:38.480 --> 0:27:39.959 let's say you're one of these people that says, you 0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:43.400 know what? Let's focus on America. At the very least, 0:27:43.400 --> 0:27:46.560 we shouldn't be complicit in this. You know, we can 0:27:46.560 --> 0:27:49.560 stop those all those channels by which we're kind of 0:27:49.600 --> 0:27:52.560 helping it all function and work like that. There is, 0:27:52.800 --> 0:27:56.159 you know, the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation. 0:27:56.160 --> 0:27:58.919 They've cut off the Chinese, Chinese Communist Party and all 0:27:58.920 --> 0:28:01.800 of their any basically institution in China. They will not 0:28:01.800 --> 0:28:04.880 accept any papers related to transplantation because they see this 0:28:04.880 --> 0:28:07.449 as real. So some people are starting to take a 0:28:07.450 --> 0:28:10.489 position here. There's legislation in the Senate right now that 0:28:10.490 --> 0:28:12.850 has just come out of committee. Hopefully will be voted 0:28:12.850 --> 0:28:15.810 on soon. The Falun Gong and victims of Forced Organ 0:28:15.810 --> 0:28:19.370 Harvesting Protection Act. Maybe we'll see some traction there. And 0:28:19.369 --> 0:28:22.210 that's something also that will sanction some of these people, 0:28:22.210 --> 0:28:26.209 establish in law that this is real. Get reporting on it. 0:28:26.410 --> 0:28:29.129 There's another piece of legislation in the House as well, 0:28:29.170 --> 0:28:31.930 a stop forced organ Harvesting act. That's it's a very 0:28:31.930 --> 0:28:36.810 powerful piece of legislation. So there's there is movement on this. Okay. 0:28:37.130 --> 0:28:40.730 But we still there's wild amounts of things we should do, 0:28:40.770 --> 0:28:41.330 I think. 0:28:41.610 --> 0:28:44.810 Yeah. John is with us. His book is called To Order. 0:28:44.810 --> 0:28:49.170 Throughout the book, there are reminders about the brutal nature 0:28:49.170 --> 0:28:52.370 of China and the communist regime. You say that there's 0:28:52.370 --> 0:28:55.410 no such thing as a civil society under totalitarianism. We 0:28:55.410 --> 0:28:58.729 have to remember that this forced organ harvesting is a 0:28:58.730 --> 0:29:01.930 logical outcome of a system that sustains itself through any 0:29:01.930 --> 0:29:06.780 means to serve the party's ends. Do we have a 0:29:07.100 --> 0:29:12.500 fundamental misunderstanding about the threat posed by China? 0:29:12.860 --> 0:29:15.020 So let me touch on this. I'm so glad that 0:29:15.020 --> 0:29:17.740 you picked up this piece about how they destroy all 0:29:17.740 --> 0:29:21.220 civil society. This is like a really something we really 0:29:21.220 --> 0:29:25.580 fundamentally misunderstood. So, you know, the thing that de Tocqueville 0:29:25.580 --> 0:29:29.020 noted as he was watching this emergent America and writing 0:29:29.020 --> 0:29:32.140 about it, right? The thing that captured his imagination and 0:29:32.140 --> 0:29:36.340 he was incredibly passionate about it was that Americans would 0:29:36.620 --> 0:29:42.940 see an issue and get together spontaneously to fix that thing, 0:29:42.940 --> 0:29:45.940 or work on it or build it and create institutions 0:29:45.940 --> 0:29:48.100 around that. And he thought that this is amazing, that 0:29:48.100 --> 0:29:50.020 they do this in a way that no one else does. 0:29:50.060 --> 0:29:52.540 And this is going to make them very successful. Okay. 0:29:52.580 --> 0:29:59.020 That's civil society, right? In communist and communist regimes, they have, 0:29:59.060 --> 0:30:02.840 or in Communist China, they have a department. You know, 0:30:02.880 --> 0:30:05.080 if it was in the UK, it would be a ministry, right? 0:30:05.120 --> 0:30:08.480 But a department called the United Front Work Department, whose 0:30:08.480 --> 0:30:12.160 express purpose. Right. It exists. It's one of the top 0:30:12.200 --> 0:30:15.040 most funded by the way of these of the departments 0:30:15.480 --> 0:30:19.440 to destroy or subvert civil society so they can either 0:30:19.480 --> 0:30:22.720 put the Chinese Communist Party figurehead into it and run it, 0:30:22.720 --> 0:30:26.000 in effect that way, destroying it. Right. It stops being 0:30:26.000 --> 0:30:29.240 civil society, obviously, if it's controlled by the regime, right. 0:30:29.760 --> 0:30:32.800 Or if they if it won't, then they destroy it. 0:30:32.800 --> 0:30:34.760 That's what that does. And that and this is they 0:30:34.760 --> 0:30:38.480 do that both inside China and outside these Chinese police stations. 0:30:38.480 --> 0:30:42.120 You hear about. Right? In America, that's the united front work. 0:30:42.120 --> 0:30:45.840 That's basically the way that the Chinese Communist Party does 0:30:45.840 --> 0:30:50.800 that with similar institutions in America. Right, which are ostensibly 0:30:50.800 --> 0:30:54.400 in that way controls the voice of the Chinese people. So, 0:30:54.440 --> 0:30:57.480 you know, you're thinking you're dealing with civil society organizations 0:30:57.480 --> 0:31:00.770 in Chinatown, you're actually dealing with the regime. right? So 0:31:01.330 --> 0:31:03.890 of course, not all of them have been subverted overseas. 0:31:03.890 --> 0:31:06.010 They don't have that kind of power to do that. 0:31:06.410 --> 0:31:09.650 But internally they have. So externally it's just a lot 0:31:09.650 --> 0:31:10.050 of them. 0:31:10.490 --> 0:31:10.970 Yeah. 0:31:11.090 --> 0:31:13.690 And I just I think we this is just one 0:31:13.690 --> 0:31:16.690 example of something we don't understand. Like we've only really 0:31:16.690 --> 0:31:18.730 been starting to grasp that recently. 0:31:18.770 --> 0:31:21.810 Jan Yelich is the author of Kill to Order China's 0:31:21.850 --> 0:31:26.090 Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America's Biggest Adversary. 0:31:26.250 --> 0:31:28.729 Also senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of 0:31:28.730 --> 0:31:31.650 American Thought Leaders. I enjoy when the author does some 0:31:31.650 --> 0:31:33.410 of my work for me, because in the back of 0:31:33.410 --> 0:31:36.890 Kill to Order, there's an appendix with questions and answers 0:31:36.890 --> 0:31:39.570 to those who still might be somewhat skeptical or have 0:31:39.570 --> 0:31:42.450 additional queries about what's been laid out in the book. 0:31:42.450 --> 0:31:44.850 It is hard to believe it's so extreme. It's hard 0:31:44.850 --> 0:31:46.969 to believe, as you put in the book, but the 0:31:46.970 --> 0:31:49.450 evidence is is out there. Jan, thanks so much for 0:31:49.450 --> 0:31:52.530 joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. 0:31:52.810 --> 0:31:56.010 Scott, thank you so much. And kill to order.com. If 0:31:56.010 --> 0:31:58.700 you're interested in the book, that's the Amazon short link 0:31:58.740 --> 0:32:02.460 to the Amazon link to order.com. And at the end, 0:32:02.500 --> 0:32:04.380 there's actually an email. I don't know if you may 0:32:04.380 --> 0:32:07.100 have noticed that as well, but it's an email that 0:32:07.100 --> 0:32:09.020 it's only for people who have read the book. It's 0:32:09.020 --> 0:32:12.820 a very special one. I get really amazing letters from 0:32:12.820 --> 0:32:14.780 people and I try to respond to all of them. 0:32:14.780 --> 0:32:16.580 So I would encourage you, if you do read the 0:32:16.580 --> 0:32:18.140 book to to use that email. 0:32:18.500 --> 0:32:21.580 Wonderful. Kill to order.com for the direct link there. John, 0:32:21.580 --> 0:32:22.340 thanks so much. 0:32:22.500 --> 0:32:23.060 Thank you. 0:32:23.100 --> 0:32:27.100 Up next, Doctor Kelly Scott Franklin from Hillsdale's English Department 0:32:27.100 --> 0:32:31.100 joins us. We'll go inside another poem from Emily Dickinson. 0:32:31.100 --> 0:32:35.380 I'm Scott Bertram, this is the radio free Hillsdale Hour. 0:32:50.460 --> 0:32:54.700 We're back on the radio free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. 0:32:54.820 --> 0:32:57.950 Be sure to check out more audio from Hillsdale College 0:32:58.110 --> 0:33:04.310 on Hillsdale College Podcast Network, podcast.hillsdale.edu, or wherever you get 0:33:04.310 --> 0:33:08.150 your audio. We're joined by Doctor Kelly Scott Franklin, associate 0:33:08.150 --> 0:33:11.390 professor of English at Hillsdale College. Doctor Franklin, thanks for 0:33:11.390 --> 0:33:11.910 joining us. 0:33:11.910 --> 0:33:12.830 Thank you for having me. 0:33:12.870 --> 0:33:17.590 Continuing our brief walk through a few of Emily Dickinson's poems. 0:33:17.950 --> 0:33:20.989 And this time we will talk about Tell All the 0:33:20.990 --> 0:33:24.550 Truth but tell it slant. And we begin with a 0:33:24.550 --> 0:33:26.110 reading Doctor Franklin. 0:33:26.670 --> 0:33:29.070 All right. Tell all the truth, but tell it. Slant 0:33:29.110 --> 0:33:33.670 by Emily Dickinson. Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. 0:33:33.670 --> 0:33:38.830 Success in circuit lies too bright for our infirm delight. 0:33:38.830 --> 0:33:43.990 The truth. Superb surprise. As lightning to the children eased 0:33:43.990 --> 0:33:49.870 with explanation. Kind. The truth must dazzle gradually. Or every 0:33:49.870 --> 0:33:51.190 man be blind. 0:33:51.950 --> 0:33:54.450 Tell the truth, but tell it slant. If someone hears 0:33:54.450 --> 0:33:58.010 this for the first time, what's her central piece of advice? 0:33:58.010 --> 0:34:00.290 What does it mean to tell the truth but tell 0:34:00.290 --> 0:34:01.130 it slant? 0:34:01.450 --> 0:34:04.969 Yes, that people have. We've puzzled over this one for 0:34:04.970 --> 0:34:08.890 for many years. It's it's a clear command. It's a 0:34:08.890 --> 0:34:13.810 very assertive opening line. We are, to tell all the truth, 0:34:13.810 --> 0:34:18.850 leaving nothing out. But she wants it told slant wise. 0:34:18.850 --> 0:34:20.770 She wants it told. And as you see in the 0:34:20.770 --> 0:34:25.049 second line, right. Success in circuit lies. And I think 0:34:25.050 --> 0:34:29.530 for starters, I like to contrast like telling something directly 0:34:29.530 --> 0:34:32.609 or telling something straight with telling it in circuit that 0:34:32.610 --> 0:34:36.489 is going around the thing almost like a roundabout, right? 0:34:36.489 --> 0:34:37.890 You're going across, you're going to go straight or you're 0:34:37.890 --> 0:34:40.689 going to go through the roundabout. I, I can never 0:34:40.690 --> 0:34:41.690 figure out roundabouts. 0:34:41.969 --> 0:34:42.569 Roundabouts. 0:34:43.090 --> 0:34:47.450 But if you go around an object, you see more 0:34:47.450 --> 0:34:49.489 of it than if you face it head on. And 0:34:49.489 --> 0:34:52.290 so on the one hand, it could sound like she's saying, well, 0:34:52.940 --> 0:34:56.700 soften the truth or, um, and I do think there's 0:34:56.700 --> 0:34:58.819 something about, you know, having to deliver the truth in 0:34:58.820 --> 0:35:02.140 a way that's received. Right. But I like to think 0:35:02.140 --> 0:35:07.340 that she's imagining the telling of it slant as actually 0:35:07.340 --> 0:35:10.660 a way to, number one, to actually bridge the gap 0:35:10.660 --> 0:35:13.259 between the truth and us, but then perhaps even to 0:35:13.300 --> 0:35:17.100 show something more about the thing to, to reveal more 0:35:17.100 --> 0:35:21.340 about it. Too bright for our infirm delight. The truth. 0:35:21.340 --> 0:35:25.299 Superb surprise. We we're we're going to be kind of 0:35:25.300 --> 0:35:28.340 shocked or startled by the truth. And so you need that, 0:35:28.660 --> 0:35:30.419 you know, and in the discipline of rhetoric, they think 0:35:30.420 --> 0:35:32.819 about this, right? How do we communicate the truth? Or 0:35:32.820 --> 0:35:36.339 how do we persuade. But it has to be adapted 0:35:36.340 --> 0:35:38.340 to your audience, right? It has to be suited to 0:35:38.380 --> 0:35:40.380 who you're speaking to. So I think that's kind of 0:35:40.420 --> 0:35:42.459 the starting point for for Dickinson. 0:35:43.020 --> 0:35:45.180 It's a short poem. Um, I want to focus on 0:35:45.180 --> 0:35:51.550 this comparison to lightning that she talks about lightning, Something powerful, 0:35:51.950 --> 0:35:57.750 potentially dangerous, unpredictable. Also temporary, though lightning is gone in 0:35:57.750 --> 0:36:01.030 a flash, quite literally. So what is that image? Why 0:36:01.030 --> 0:36:03.509 that image? What do you think she's suggesting about how 0:36:03.510 --> 0:36:05.989 humans can experience truth? 0:36:06.270 --> 0:36:09.750 Yeah, I, so I think she the word for me, 0:36:09.750 --> 0:36:11.669 one of the key words there in that third line is, 0:36:11.710 --> 0:36:16.990 is infirm. The truth is too bright for our infirm delight. 0:36:16.989 --> 0:36:20.790 That is, our capacity to receive truth is limited. Mhm. 0:36:20.830 --> 0:36:24.589 Dante talks about this in Purgatorio. The pilgrim is he 0:36:24.630 --> 0:36:28.029 sees an angel, an unfallen angel for the first time, 0:36:28.030 --> 0:36:31.790 and he's completely blinded by it. So that kind of, uh, 0:36:31.790 --> 0:36:36.109 the poet's job, it seems, or the teacher's job or 0:36:36.110 --> 0:36:39.150 whoever it is that's going to take these words, it 0:36:39.150 --> 0:36:42.190 has to adapt the truth because there's something something wrong 0:36:42.190 --> 0:36:46.630 with us, right? My eyesight isn't great yet. And so 0:36:47.110 --> 0:36:50.810 truth has to. It will will blind me, as she 0:36:50.810 --> 0:36:53.770 says at the very end. And lightning is interesting because 0:36:54.489 --> 0:36:57.410 she actually uses a simile in that second stanza. And 0:36:57.410 --> 0:37:01.010 I like to think I like to think that for. 0:37:01.010 --> 0:37:04.290 For Dickinson, telling the truth slant is using metaphor that 0:37:04.290 --> 0:37:07.049 I think that's what she's getting at is. And in 0:37:07.050 --> 0:37:10.330 the second stanza, we get a metaphor as lightning. She's 0:37:10.330 --> 0:37:12.770 going to give us a simile. Uh, I know this 0:37:12.770 --> 0:37:15.089 is a hot take for all you English teachers out 0:37:15.090 --> 0:37:18.490 there and grammarians, but I, I think similarly and metaphor 0:37:18.530 --> 0:37:20.089 are the same thing. I'm just going to I'm going 0:37:20.130 --> 0:37:21.969 to take a stand right now. They're not different. You 0:37:21.969 --> 0:37:24.210 use like or as for simile, but it's the same thing. 0:37:24.210 --> 0:37:27.129 So she says she's using a metaphor as lightning to 0:37:27.170 --> 0:37:30.129 the children eased with explanation, kind. So she says, this 0:37:30.130 --> 0:37:32.130 is how. An example of how you might do it 0:37:32.130 --> 0:37:36.370 or understand it this way. And children are scared of lightning. 0:37:36.810 --> 0:37:39.730 They're terrified by it. They might not understand it, but 0:37:39.730 --> 0:37:42.250 you might give them an explanation kind. And one of 0:37:42.250 --> 0:37:45.290 my students who wrote her thesis on Emily Dickinson, she proposed, 0:37:45.290 --> 0:37:48.180 maybe this is like you tell them a story or 0:37:48.219 --> 0:37:50.820 a myth or, or you say like, oh, they're having 0:37:50.820 --> 0:37:53.980 an argument. The thunderclouds are knocking into each other, or 0:37:53.980 --> 0:37:56.620 it's God bowling or something. Like whatever your kind of 0:37:56.660 --> 0:37:59.700 analogy or metaphor is to help them understand it. And 0:37:59.700 --> 0:38:03.980 there's a kindness there. And, and metaphor, if it's going 0:38:04.020 --> 0:38:08.340 to give us success, it needs to, to, to really 0:38:08.340 --> 0:38:11.219 reveal and not obscure. It's going to, it's going to 0:38:11.260 --> 0:38:14.580 ease the truth to us because of our infirmity, because 0:38:14.580 --> 0:38:17.860 of our weakness. But it is going to deliver something 0:38:17.900 --> 0:38:19.939 of the truth. So there's, there's a statement there about 0:38:19.940 --> 0:38:22.580 what metaphor does. And poetry, which is full of metaphor, 0:38:22.620 --> 0:38:25.779 is still, I think, ridiculously going to tell us the truth. 0:38:25.820 --> 0:38:29.300 Mhm. And she says the truth must dazzle gradually, which 0:38:29.300 --> 0:38:32.700 is similar to what you're talking about here. Yeah, maybe 0:38:32.700 --> 0:38:35.500 little portions as opposed to everything at once. 0:38:35.540 --> 0:38:39.219 Absolutely. And we I mean, we've experienced this ourselves in education. 0:38:39.219 --> 0:38:41.899 You gradually learn more and more about the world. You 0:38:41.900 --> 0:38:44.700 might learn more and more about history. I think God 0:38:44.790 --> 0:38:48.989 reveals to us slowly ourselves so it doesn't shock us 0:38:48.989 --> 0:38:51.230 with our. He doesn't shock us all at once with our. 0:38:51.270 --> 0:38:53.270 All of our failures. You sort of like reveal. Okay, 0:38:53.310 --> 0:38:56.590 here's some weaknesses you have, right? There's this revelation of 0:38:56.590 --> 0:39:00.310 truth because we're weak and we need to receive it. Uh, 0:39:00.310 --> 0:39:03.990 we need to receive it gradually. And there's a marvelous, uh, 0:39:04.390 --> 0:39:09.390 just the sounds there of that poem dazzle gradually. And 0:39:09.390 --> 0:39:14.029 it's because otherwise we'll be will be blind. And on 0:39:14.030 --> 0:39:15.589 the one hand, you can say, well, that means that 0:39:15.590 --> 0:39:17.870 the truth is going to be too shocking, but it 0:39:17.870 --> 0:39:20.710 could also just mean I won't see the truth unless 0:39:20.710 --> 0:39:23.670 someone bridges that gap. I won't even be able to 0:39:23.670 --> 0:39:26.750 see it unless you can help me to see it. 0:39:26.790 --> 0:39:30.110 Talking with Doctor Kelly, Scott Franklin, associate professor of English 0:39:30.110 --> 0:39:33.950 at Hillsdale College, about Emily Dickinson's poem Tell All the Truth, 0:39:33.950 --> 0:39:36.870 but tell it slant. This is a very short, tightly 0:39:36.870 --> 0:39:41.069 structured poem. How does that economy of language perhaps reinforce 0:39:41.070 --> 0:39:43.120 her argument about the truth. 0:39:43.160 --> 0:39:46.200 That's a good question. And Dickinson, some of her poems 0:39:46.200 --> 0:39:49.359 are really tight, really. And she would even write like 0:39:49.400 --> 0:39:51.399 on scraps of paper sometimes. So we'll have like the 0:39:51.400 --> 0:39:54.280 corner of an envelope flap. And so it fits into 0:39:54.280 --> 0:39:57.919 the angle. Or you were a doodler. Yeah. She would 0:39:57.920 --> 0:40:00.480 use any scrap of paper she had sometimes. So she. 0:40:00.520 --> 0:40:03.479 I read a John Adams the same, the same thing. 0:40:03.520 --> 0:40:07.200 Paper was so expensive in Adams time that when they 0:40:07.200 --> 0:40:10.520 went through all his artifacts, they found scraps and corners, 0:40:10.520 --> 0:40:13.719 and he'd write the tiniest print to fit what he 0:40:13.719 --> 0:40:16.080 was trying to say in that little piece of paper. 0:40:16.120 --> 0:40:20.440 Amazing. Much to the chagrin of of historians and biographers. Right? Yeah. 0:40:20.600 --> 0:40:24.799 So Dickinson's used to working, you know, in those even 0:40:24.800 --> 0:40:27.719 physically cramped spaces of a little corner of an envelope. 0:40:27.719 --> 0:40:32.480 But I think maybe saying too much about it would 0:40:32.520 --> 0:40:35.080 kind of blunt the vision of the poem we have. 0:40:35.600 --> 0:40:40.000 We have this opening statement that she unpacks for us. 0:40:40.000 --> 0:40:43.980 And then the second stanza begins with a metaphor, really 0:40:43.980 --> 0:40:48.219 the one metaphor of the poem. And. And then she 0:40:48.219 --> 0:40:51.900 leaves it to us. But yeah, it she doesn't spend. She's, 0:40:52.180 --> 0:40:54.620 she's so concise. She doesn't spend a lot of time 0:40:54.620 --> 0:40:57.900 unpacking that. The truth. She leaves it. Maybe there's something 0:40:57.900 --> 0:41:00.820 mysterious still left over in the poem. 0:41:00.860 --> 0:41:03.620 It sounds the poem sounds almost like a proverb or 0:41:03.739 --> 0:41:07.020 a set of instructions. Is that typical for for Dickinson's work? 0:41:07.140 --> 0:41:09.140 It's one of her modes. Yeah. She doesn't. It's not 0:41:09.140 --> 0:41:13.460 every poem, but I. I really have noticed that she'll begin. 0:41:13.500 --> 0:41:16.180 She has, you know, a poem that she'll have a 0:41:16.180 --> 0:41:19.060 poem that just begins with that aphorism or that kind 0:41:19.060 --> 0:41:22.500 of received wisdom. And sometimes the poem unpacks it and 0:41:22.500 --> 0:41:24.460 says like, okay, here's what this means, or here's how 0:41:24.460 --> 0:41:27.500 this would work out in a life. Other times, she 0:41:27.540 --> 0:41:32.060 obliterates it. One of my favorite poems is, um, she. 0:41:32.300 --> 0:41:36.340 The opening line is they say that time assuages, you know, 0:41:36.380 --> 0:41:39.430 it's like everybody says, well, you know, time heals all ills, right? 0:41:39.469 --> 0:41:43.669 They say that time Assuages time never did assuage like 0:41:43.710 --> 0:41:47.310 she just immediately contradicts it. So Dickinson will take those 0:41:47.310 --> 0:41:50.630 received wisdoms, sometimes explode them, sometimes unpack them. This is 0:41:50.630 --> 0:41:53.350 one of the unpacking ones. She she wants to give 0:41:53.350 --> 0:41:56.950 us a kind of injunction for how to speak, write, teach, 0:41:57.310 --> 0:42:01.750 and then gives us an example. Uh, in in what follows. 0:42:02.350 --> 0:42:06.230 This poem can feel especially relevant today. There's a lot 0:42:06.230 --> 0:42:10.629 of talk about honesty and truth, bluntness, and there's that 0:42:10.630 --> 0:42:15.110 phrase that seeps into place. Oh, it's my truth. How 0:42:15.150 --> 0:42:18.509 might Dickinson speak to some of these modern debates? 0:42:19.350 --> 0:42:25.270 Yeah, the opening line tell all the truth. I think 0:42:25.310 --> 0:42:30.110 Dickinson is well aware of of the subjective experience of reality. 0:42:30.110 --> 0:42:34.310 And she validates that like when we experience reality, it's 0:42:34.350 --> 0:42:37.560 in some ways it's a is a truly unique experience, 0:42:38.200 --> 0:42:41.799 but I think there's no doubt in Dickinsons mind that 0:42:41.800 --> 0:42:46.560 there is the truth. And she just. And she, along 0:42:46.560 --> 0:42:50.560 with Emerson and some of these other 19th century writers, Melville. 0:42:51.080 --> 0:42:56.120 They're aware that the truth might be cosmic. It might 0:42:56.120 --> 0:43:00.360 be God. And so what I like to think about 0:43:00.360 --> 0:43:03.080 is I like to think about that moment in Exodus 0:43:03.080 --> 0:43:05.960 chapter 33 when God says to Moses, I'm going to 0:43:06.120 --> 0:43:08.920 Moses says, show me your glory. And God says, well, 0:43:08.960 --> 0:43:11.800 I'm going to go hide in behind this rock, and 0:43:11.800 --> 0:43:13.719 then I'm going to pass by. And when I've passed by, 0:43:13.719 --> 0:43:16.160 then you can look at my back and whatever that means, 0:43:16.160 --> 0:43:18.879 looking at the back of God. Well, when Moses has 0:43:18.880 --> 0:43:21.000 these encounters with God, he comes down. He comes out 0:43:21.040 --> 0:43:25.200 like glowing, right? So, you know, it's like in Indiana 0:43:25.200 --> 0:43:27.200 Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, you're going 0:43:27.200 --> 0:43:28.759 to open up the ark and then your face is 0:43:28.760 --> 0:43:32.440 going to get melted off you. I think Dickinson's aware, 0:43:32.480 --> 0:43:38.130 like Emerson, like Melville, that the truth capital T is real, 0:43:38.130 --> 0:43:40.770 but it's like the Old Testament writers, you know, thinking 0:43:40.770 --> 0:43:43.649 about the tabernacle and the Holy of Holies. God and 0:43:43.650 --> 0:43:47.930 the truth are overwhelming. Yeah. Eternal cosmic. And so I 0:43:47.930 --> 0:43:51.450 think she's thinking about that. But then knowing that even 0:43:51.450 --> 0:43:54.090 as weak and frail human beings, we're still called to 0:43:54.130 --> 0:43:56.410 have some kind of access to that. But it needs 0:43:56.410 --> 0:44:00.930 to be mediated. It needs to be kind of bridged. 0:44:01.290 --> 0:44:04.930 I like to think about the myth of Zeus and Semele. 0:44:05.010 --> 0:44:08.489 Zeus took a mortal woman as his lover, and then 0:44:08.810 --> 0:44:10.690 someone who was jealous said, well, you should ask him 0:44:10.690 --> 0:44:13.609 to reveal himself in all his glory. And then, of course, 0:44:13.610 --> 0:44:17.209 she's incinerated. Right. And that that model, I think, is, 0:44:17.250 --> 0:44:20.050 is the kind of a way to understand what Dickinson's 0:44:20.050 --> 0:44:25.169 thinking about the truth, capital t God, the nature of 0:44:25.170 --> 0:44:28.290 things might be too much for us. Has to be 0:44:28.330 --> 0:44:32.170 has to be bridged to us, has to be mediated 0:44:32.170 --> 0:44:35.189 in some way or will be overwhelmed by it will 0:44:35.190 --> 0:44:35.750 be blind. 0:44:36.150 --> 0:44:40.630 Doctor Kelly Scott Franklin, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College. 0:44:40.630 --> 0:44:43.390 As we talk about the Emily Dickinson poem, Tell all 0:44:43.390 --> 0:44:46.430 the truth but tell it slant. Doctor Franklin, thanks for 0:44:46.430 --> 0:44:49.270 joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. 0:44:49.310 --> 0:44:50.109 Thanks for having me. 0:44:50.230 --> 0:44:53.310 That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free 0:44:53.350 --> 0:44:56.870 Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Janice. His book is called 0:44:56.910 --> 0:45:02.230 to order and Kelly Scott Franklin from Hillsdale English Department. Remember, 0:45:02.230 --> 0:45:05.110 you can hear new episodes every week on this station. 0:45:05.230 --> 0:45:08.469 You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews, 0:45:08.469 --> 0:45:14.669 or listen any time to the podcast. Find it@podcasts.hillsdale.edu or 0:45:14.670 --> 0:45:19.710 wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, 0:45:19.710 --> 0:45:23.510 and this has been the radio free Hillsdale Hour.