December 6, 2024
Last December, Congressman Huffman voted for this schlock, “Crucial Communist Teaching Act” H.R.5349.
We want to know why.
From the official summary of the legislation:
This bill directs the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to develop a civic education curriculum and oral history resources for high school students to promote understanding of certain political ideologies (e.g., communism and totalitarianism) that conflict with principles of U.S. democracy.
It is not likely that the “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” in its curriculum will address the dangers of any rightwing authoritarian government- such as Pinochet’s Chile, apartheid South Africa, or the current regimes in Orban’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia. Or the danger posed by increasing rightwing authoritarianism in Trump/Musk United States. Or Netanyahu’s Israel. Nope. Only “communist” regimes. Like the John Birch Society, it will likely do what it can to promote the idea that even modest programs like expanding Medicare will lead inevitably to gulags for dissenters.
Certainly, students should learn about the dangers and the tragedies of past authoritarian regimes of any political ideology. But I think this program promoted by this organization is just endorsing a rightwing revisionist history that will be used to excuse the repression we see increasingly in the United States, all in the name of “fighting communism”.
What was Jared Huffman thinking? Why didn’t Huffman join the progressives in the House voting against this? Huffman yaps at Trump, but with votes like this, I wonder if at heart he’s just another maga-poodle waiting for his next biscuit.
Maga-poodle noun
A politician who may often yap at Donald Trump and his followers, but then by their actions embody MAGA values of rightwing extremism- e.g. “Congressman Jones criticized Trump before casting his vote to increase military aid to Israel.”
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