Crucial Communist Teaching Act ushers in a new McCarthy era

Congress recently passed a horrific piece of legislation calling for the infusion into the nation’s public school system of a curriculum that teaches middle and high school students about the alleged evils of communism, including the absurd claim that communists have killed 100 million people.

The curriculum is to be provided by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a collection of well-funded extreme right operatives who have never supported the fight for democracy or the rights of workers.

Among the foundation’s more outstanding scandals was the building of a memorial to the “victims” of communism in Canada recently that included the names of more than 300 fascists engraved onto it.

In the Communism Memorial Foundation’s “curriculum” is the absurd claim that the total of people allegedly “murdered” by communists around the world numbers in the many millions. They include in their totals the hordes of fascist and Nazi soldiers who died in Europe during World War II at the hands of the Soviets and countless other freedom fighters, so many of whom were not communists.

It is no accident, of course, that this legislation, like the McCarthyite witch-hunts during the middle of the last century, comes at a time of enhanced struggle for workers’ rights, including the right to unionize and, this time when large numbers of young people are telling pollsters that they either oppose capitalism or support socialism or both.

Virginia Foxx, the Republican congressional rep on the Workforce Committee, renamed by Republicans to take out the word “labor,” says unions themselves are unconstitutional and admits that her support for the bill is motivated by a desire to reverse the “dangerous rise in support of communism and socialism ideas…by so many of our young people.”

Foxx said, “At a time when nearly a third of Gen Z are in favor of communism, it’s clear that we’re falling short when it comes to educating young people about the history and dangers of that ideology.”

The Crucial Communism Teaching Act, she argued, is “an important step in making sure that the future leaders of our great nation have the tools and knowledge to protect capitalism…for the next generation.”

The bill is designed to show Americans that the ideas of communism and socialism are somehow inimical to alleged “American values.” There is absolutely nothing in the constitution of the United States, of course, that prescribes capitalism as an essential element of democracy, and a careful read of that document, if it says or implies anything about one social system or another, would seem almost to prefer socialism as being more democratic than many of the forms of capitalism that abound in today’s world.

Ho Chi Minh, a leading socialist revolutionary of the last century, in fact, took the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, as a declarative document for the socialist liberation movement he led in Vietnam.

Today, exposing the anti-democratic leanings of the U.S. ruling class, we have an unelected billionaire and open opponent of a free press and democracy, Elon Musk, calling the shots. His qualifications for that role are that he had a half-billion dollars to donate to the campaign of Donald Trump. He was never elected by anyone.

Like the anti-communist campaigns of the McCarthy era, this Crucial Communism Teaching Act is at least partially directed at foreign entities whose wealth, natural resources, or strategic location U.S. capitalists would like to control. These include China, Venezuela, and Cuba.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, in declaring his support for the bill, highlighted its foreign policy importance, emphasizing the necessity of preparing Americans to face what he called “growing challenges from adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party.” Maria Salazar, the GOP Florida lawmaker who initiated the bill, says it will help “end the socialist curse in Latin American countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Honduras.”

Salazar said that passage of her bill means countries in Latin America, where so many people allegedly are cursed by socialism, will get the message that “capitalism, free markets, and democracy are the way to go.” It sounds so much like what Sen. Joe McCarty was saying in the 1940s and ’50s.

Salazar’s bill passed 327–62 with many Democrats, including progressives, voting for it, showing that progressives can be frightened into jumping on an anti-communist bandwagon.

We need to engage with those among them who voted with Salazar because, in the end, by siding with her on that bill, they ultimately help lay the groundwork for a domestic and foreign policy that hurts workers here at home and encourages war and militarism overseas. By backing this bill, they are hurting the working-class majorities among their own constituents.

The anti-communist campaigns of the past were the means for launching attacks on unions, workers, teachers, college professors, religious figures, scientists, and anyone else who did not support the powers in place during those years. Among the many victims were Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson, Marilyn Monroe, Angela Davis, Arthur Miller, and many others.

The purpose behind the hysteria and singling out of those people in the red scares was to serve as a warning to others and to keep the U.S. on a capitalist course. It had nothing to do with preserving democracy. The ant-communist ringleaders knew full well that the Communist Party of the United States was a stalwart supporter of democracy, union organizing rights, and economic democracy, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, and academic freedom.

It is no surprise that the time is seen now as ripe by the ruling class for a revival of the McCarthyite anti-communist campaigns. One major reason is that in poll after poll only a fifth of the population says it is satisfied with existing conditions.

A recent Axios poll shows that 48% of people under 35 support socialism over capitalism. Among women in that age group, the figure jumps to 57%.

Another explanation for the revival of the anti-communist campaign becomes clear if we listen to what Trump himself has said about mass deportations at many of his rallies during the campaign just ended.

“I will order my government,” he said “to deny entry to all the communists and Marxists. Those who come here must love this country. We don’t want them if they don’t. We’re going to keep foreign Christian-hating communists and Marxists out of America. At the end of the day, we either destroy them or they destroy us. My question is what we are going to do with all the communists already here, the ones who grew up here? We will have to pass a new law to deal with them.”

As Joe Sims, co-chair of the CPUSA said recently about this, “A cold wind is indeed blowing across our country.” It is the duty of all progressives, of the labor movement and its allies, to make sure this wind does not destroy everything we hold dear—freedom and justice for all.

History proves that anti-communism never resulted in anything good.

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