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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://popularresistance.org/congress-revives-cold-war-tactics-with-new-anti-communism-curriculum/">popularresistance.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Congress Revives Cold War Tactics With New Anti-Communism Curriculum</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Alan MacLeod, MintPress News.</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">December 14, 2024<br></div>
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<p>Above photo: A girl tours an exhibition dedicated to the day of new
regions’ reunification with Russia at the Victory Museum on Poklonnaya
Hill in Moscow, Russia. Kirill Zykov | AP.</p>
<p>Congress has just passed a new bill that will see the U.S. spend huge
sums of money redesigning much of the public school system around the
ideology of anti-communism. The “<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5349" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Crucial Communism Teaching Act</a>”
is now being read in the Senate, where it is all but certain to pass.
The move comes amid growing public anger at the economic system and
increased public support for socialism.</p>
<p>The Crucial Communism Teaching Act, in its own words, is designed to
teach children that “certain political ideologies, including communism
and totalitarianism…conflict with the principles of freedom and
democracy that are essential to the founding of the United States.”</p>
<p>Although sponsored by Republicans, it enjoys widespread support from
Democrats and is focused on China, Venezuela, Cuba and other targets of
U.S. empire. The wording of the bill has many worried that this will be a
centerpiece of a new era of anti-communist hysteria, similar to
previous McCarthyist periods.</p>
<p>The curriculum will be designed by the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2017/11/22/black-book-of-communism-debunked-antisemitic-nazis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">controversial</a>
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and will ensure all American
high school students “understand the dangers of communism and similar
political ideologies” and “learn that communism has led to the deaths of
over 100,000,000 victims worldwide.” It will also develop a series
titled “Portraits in Patriotism,” that will expose students to
individuals who are “victims of the political ideologies” in question.</p>
<h3>A Discredited Book</h3>
<p>The 100 million figure originates with the notorious pseudoscience
text, “The Black Book of Communism.” A collection of political essays,
the book’s central claim is that 100 million people have perished as a
result of the communist ideology. However, even many of its contributors
and co-writers have distanced themselves from it, <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/red-hangover" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claiming</a>
that the lead author was “obsessed” with reaching the 100 million
figure, to the point that he simply conjured millions of deaths from
nowhere.</p>
<p>Its methodology was also universally panned, with many pointing out
that the tens of millions of Soviet and Nazi losses during World War II
were attributed to communist ideology. This means that both Adolf Hitler
himself and many of his victims are counted towards the vastly
overinflated figure. The book was condemned by Holocaust remembrance
groups as whitewashing and even lionizing genocidal fascist groups as
anti-communist heroes.</p>
<p>The principal organization promoting the 100 million figure today is
the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which has shown a similar
level of both anti-communist devotion and methodological rigor. The
group, set up by the U.S. government in 1993, added all worldwide
COVID-19 deaths to the victims of communism list, arguing that the
coronavirus was a communist disease because it originated in China. It
is these people who will be designing the new curriculum that will be
taught in social studies, government, history, and economics classes
across the country.</p>
<h3>China Hawks</h3>
<p>One of the central goals of the bill is also to “ensure that high
school students in the United States understand that 1,500,000,000
people still suffer under communism.” This is a clear reference to
China, a rapidly developing country that, in just two generations, has
gone from one of the poorest on Earth to a global superpower,
challenging and even surpassing the United States on many
quality-of-life indicators.</p>
<p>The bill goes on to detail how the school curriculum will “focus on
ongoing human rights abuses by such regimes, such as the treatment of
Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” by the Chinese
“regime” and its “aggression” towards “pro-democracy protests in Hong
Kong,” and Taiwan, who it labels “a democratic friend of the United
States.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, many of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s “<a href="https://victimsofcommunism.org/programs/witness-project/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Witness Project</a>”
case studies – likely the source for the “Portraits in Patriotism”
series – are from China. This includes Rushan Abbas, the founder and
executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, a pressure group <a href="http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zgyw/202205/t20220507_10683090.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">funded</a> by <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents-reveal-us-ned-spent-22m-promoting-anti-russia-narrative-ukraine/279734/">CIA front organization</a>,
the National Endowment for Democracy. Abbas was also previously
employed as a translator at the notorious Guantánamo Bay torture camp.</p>
<p>The U.S. is currently engaged in a quickly-escalating Cold War
against China that includes channeling money and support to separatist
movements, including those in <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/china-uighur-genocide-behind-us-government-propaganda/276085/">Xinjiang</a>, <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/hong-kong-protest-united-states-destabilize-china/261712/">Hong Kong</a> and <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/think-tanks-taiwan-cash-funding-push-war-china/276799/">Taiwan</a>, as MintPress News has reported. In September, the House of Representatives passed a <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bill</a> that authorized $1.6 billion to be spent on anti-Chinese messaging worldwide.</p>
<h3>Latin America: A Model And A Target</h3>
<p>The other major target of the bill will likely be socialist or
communist-led governments in Latin America. The act’s sponsor is Maria
Elvira Salazar, a Republican Congressperson representing Miami. A part
of Florida’s famously conservative Cuban-American community, in 2023,
she introduced the <a href="https://floridianpress.com/2023/01/florida-republican-lawmaker-reintroduces-the-force-act/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FORCE Act</a>,
which attempted to block any U.S. president from normalizing relations
with Cuba unless its government is overthrown. She has repeatedly <a href="https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/salazar-condemns-biden-administration-allowing-oil-companies-finance-maduro" target="_blank" rel="noopener">condemned</a> President Biden for easing the (illegal) U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. And in July, she <a href="https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairwoman-salazar-denounces-socialist-curse-central-america-and-caribbean" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denounced </a>what
she described as the “socialist curse in Central America and the
Caribbean,” singling out Cuban, Venezuela, Honduras, and Nicaragua as
countries requiring regime change.</p>
<p>She is, however, an avid supporter of the far-right President of
Argentina, Javier Milei, accepting his invitation to attend his
inauguration. Argentina, she <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2023/12/18/javier-mileis-friend-in-washington-00132357" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>,
“is going to set the course and point of reference for the rest of
Latin America as to the way that a country should be governed… Free
market economy, small government, individual liberties, freedom, private
sector, no corruption, that’s what we’re trying to do.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the only foreign country she praises more than Argentina is
Israel, whose actions she has supported at every step, even going so far
as to <a href="https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/salazar-joins-speaker-mike-johnson-republican-leadership-stand-israel-and" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denounce</a> what she called the “one-sided pressure for a ceasefire” in Gaza.</p>
<p>Salazar’s bill passed easily, 327-62, with limited opposition from
Democrats or Republicans, who voted for and against it in roughly equal
measures. Even many members of the Progressive Caucus voted in favor,
proving that anti-communism is as popular on the left as it is on the
right.</p>
<h3>A New McCarthyism?</h3>
<p>The imminent passing of the Crucial Communism Teaching Act harkens
back to earlier anti-communist periods in American history, namely the
Red Scare of the 1910s and the McCarthyist era of the 1940s and 1950s.
During those times, organized labor movements were ruthlessly attacked,
workers from all professions, including professors, government
officials, and teachers, were fired en masse, and some of America’s
brightest minds had their careers derailed due to their political
leanings. This included singer Paul Robeson, actors like Charlie
Chaplain and Marilyn Monroe, playwright Arthur Miller and scientist
Albert Einstein.</p>
<p>The point of these operations was to break any opposition to the
power of the state and big business and ensure the United States
maintained its capitalist course. Today, however, fewer Americans than
ever are happy with the current political and economic system. A recent
Gallup <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1669/general-mood-country.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a>
found that only 22% of the public are satisfied with how things are
going, with a majority responding that they are “very dissatisfied.”
Living standards have been stagnating or dropping for decades, and
alternative economic systems are becoming more desirable. A 2019 <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6145923-Axios-Tabs-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">poll</a> from Axios found that 48% of adults under 35 prefer socialism to capitalism, including 57% of female respondents.</p>
<p>There are some signs that Washington is slowly moving towards a new McCarthyist era. President Trump, for example, has <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/28/lpun-j28.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">promised</a> to carry out mass deportations of leftists once he becomes president, stating:</p>
<blockquote><p>I will order my government to deny entry to all
communists and all Marxists. Those who come to join our country must
love our country. We don’t want them if they want to destroy our
country… So we’re going to be keeping foreign Christian-hating
communists, socialists, and Marxists out of America.”</p></blockquote>
<p>“At the end of the day, either the communists destroy America, or we
destroy the communists,” he explained. But he also stated that American
citizens espousing anti-capitalist views would be purged. “My question
is, what are we going to do with the ones that are already here, that
grew up here? I think we have to pass a new law for them,” he said.</p>
<p>That Trump would actually deport millions of American citizens en
masse appears like too drastic a step right now, but it is clear that
both Democrats and Republicans are serious in their anti-communist
convictions. Therefore, the Crucial Communism Teaching Act will likely
only be the start of this campaign.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alan MacLeod</a></strong> is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting</a> and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Propaganda-in-the-Information-Age-Still-Manufacturing-Consent-1st-Edition/MacLeod/p/book/9781138366404?fbclid=IwAR2xQQWJd98C25wapG4ynmlEnGvL5wxG_mp5RwpBwtwPDxInjNZ1Oo7KD-E" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent</a>, as well as <a href="https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/65/56" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a</a><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396818823639#articleShareContainer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">number</a><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12940" target="_blank" rel="noopener">of</a><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00064/full" target="_blank" rel="noopener">academic</a><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920518820934" target="_blank" rel="noopener">articles</a>. He has also contributed to <a href="https://fair.org/author/alan-macleod/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FAIR.org</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-macleod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Guardian</a>, <a href="https://www.salon.com/writer/alan-macleod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Salon</a>, <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/author/alan-macleod/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Grayzone</a>, <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/author/alan-macleod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jacobin Magazine</a>, and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/author/alan-macleod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Common Dreams</a>.</p>
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