Who is Cleon Skousen and why is he banned in China?
According to his nephew, free-market economist and FreedomFest organizer Mark Skousen, Cleon was an FBI agent and a fierce anti-Communist who wrote several books, including The Naked Communist . Mark and his wife Jo Ann have published a book, There Were Giants in the Land, that digests Cleon’s personal notes and diaries to share “episodes” of Cleon’s life.
The Skousens wanted to publish a low-cost version in China, but their publisher was told by the CCP government that the “sensitive material” could not be published. Mark writes:
I guess they took offense to such as statements as “no patriotic American can be either a communist or a supporter of communism” (p. 155) and “Mao’s ‘butcher’ was believed to have supervised the slaughter of some thirty-five million Chinese” (p. 320).
As with other totalitarian regimes, the Chinese Communists work hard to block anything that might undermine their power and control of information, so it is not surprising they are banning the story of someone who worked against Communism.
Read these books:
There Were Giants in the Land, Jo Ann and Mark Skousen (2023). Skousen Books link.
The Naked Communist, W. Cleon Skousen. AbeBooks link.
