A new bill attacking freedom of expression in public education passed in the U.S. House of Representatives with a huge majority, earning votes from both Democrats and Republicans. The bill is called “The Crucial Communism Teaching Act,” and it will provide schools with packages of anti-communist propaganda to include in their curricula. The so-called “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” (VOC) is poised to supply the teaching materials. This bill is not only an attack on freedom of expression in schools, but a continuation of legislation intended to stifle any threat to the ruling class of bankers and billionaires that control the economic and political system.
Congress established the VOC in 1993 to stoke fear in the working class of the alleged “evil” of communism, and to discourage any workers from fighting together for dignity and against the exploitation they experience. The bill blatantly lies about the history of communism. In reality, modern communism started as a workers’ movement against the horrors of capitalist exploitation and oppression. Today, capitalists and the politicians and mass media they own want us to believe that communism is evil. They say we should fear it. In fact, what they fear is working people of all races and other oppressed groups getting together against them. They use anti-worker propaganda and legislation like this against us.
The “Crucial Communism Teaching Act” is part of a recent rise of censorship, but it does not represent a new strategy. Such laws fit right into the U.S.’s history of silencing and attacking workers who fight for change. The rise of workers’ organizations and unions during the 1920s and 30s caused the violent and repressive reaction of the U.S. government, including in the 1940s and 1950s the expulsion of militant workers from labor unions as well as the imprisonment of communist and other militant workers.
The repression of political ideas in schools today is unsurprising given the lengths that the U.S. government and universities have been willing to go recently to silence activism – particularly activism in solidarity with Palestinians, and against the U.S. and Israel’s genocidal war in the Middle East. The repression of this kind of activism has been backed by the Democratic and Republican parties through their support for policing of student activists, Congressional hearings to promote harsh punishments for activism on campuses, and the termination of employees who are vocal in their solidarity with Palestinians. Despite such repercussions, people have shown willingness to sacrifice their careers and interpersonal relationships to speak out against the horrors we are witnessing in Palestine.
On other issues, students, teachers, and families have also resisted the rise of book banning and censorship of public-school curricula. The bans are focused on books and classes that teach the history of racism in the U.S. and teach acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. The drive to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT), which explains racism as a systemic issue, was promoted by a 2020 Trump Executive Order, advancing this surge of repressive legislation. This has been one of the responses of the far right to the Black Lives Matter movement against racism and police brutality.
Legislative attacks on gender-affirming care for trans people have been coupled with the systematic censorship of books and curricula that support LGBTQ+ expression. One such attack makes it illegal for transgender school employees and students to use their preferred pronouns. Bills like this one also affect sex education and force teachers to discuss their students’ gender expression and sexuality with parents, making some students feel unsafe being themselves at school. These “Educational Intimidation” bills and related state-level executive orders have been passed in 19 states.
The latest anti-communist bill is part of these attacks and the long history of assaults on workers and other exploited and oppressed groups in the United States. Anti-communist laws were never meant to protect workers, but to extinguish our efforts to organize ourselves. We know from our experiences that it is capitalist domination that endangers and exploits us, and we cannot allow the politicians to trick us into accepting the suffering they enable. The vilification of communism is a strategy to keep us from realizing our collective power as a class. We need to recognize capitalist lies for what they are, and use that understanding to fight back against the attacks on us.
