Today I read a rather disturbing (but unsurprising) article about some of the rank propaganda being taught to kindergarteners and first-, second-graders in Portland public schools, by
(below). Keep in mind, the people involved in these efforts DO NOT want parents to know what they’re doing. They want to do their work in secret, away from the public gaze. What else needs to be understood about them to know that they’re unethical and venomous? Even if you agree with their lesson materials… is this appropriate for small children? Can you really complain about the label ‘groomer’ when you’re indoctrinating kindergarteners about Zionism and genocide and hiding it from their parents and the community?
There’s a few reflexive pivots that LIBERALS (not doctrinaire Leftists, but the rather larger group of mostly-well educated, moderate Democrats who promote environmental limits on growth and increased social spending and are concerned about representation of minorities and women, etc.) make.
That (bad thing) is not happening
It may be happening but it’s not widespread
It may be widespread but these (supposed bad things on the Right) are worse
That (bad thing) doesn’t represent MY movement
Sometimes they finally pivot (and I’ve seen this many times) to reasons why the bad thing (which both conversants agreed was bad) is actually good! That is just a lame attempt to thwart cognitive dissonance with a kind of doublethink and you can point the reversal out with some amusement and then let them be. If you get to this stage you’ve probably given them things to think about. The chances that they will ever resist the intense pressures for social and ideological conformity or betray their class interests as wealthy and educated progressives (who collectively suck trillions of dollars of wealth from the economy through grants, federal subsidies to health and education, non-profit funds, agency budgets, etc.) is slight… but every political change is built one individual at a time.
There are now SO MANY instances of flagrant contradiction that the media is frantically trying to plug all the holes in the dam while trying to staunch the bleeding of subscribers and profits caused by the ascent of alternate media and the aging of their market. MSNBC viewers die every day. Who is taking their place on the ramparts? Racial segregation in school activities? Women being raped by violent trans-identified murderers in American prisons and being pressured into silence and continued risk? Criminals who are in the country illegally who shoot at police being released without bail? Explicit drag shows being performed in front of small children? Check, check, check, check.
Are these events common? Not exactly, but that’s the wrong question. The focus should be on the fact that they happen (and are often far from rare) and that media is often invested in hiding or downplaying their occurrences. The questions should be: if they’re happening should the public know? If you hide them won’t you make them more common? And, are these things becoming more or less common? Why are they happening? Which developments or political programs are facilitating or enabling them? This is truly uncomfortable territory for a liberal and so it is rare that the NY Times will venture onto it and when they do it’s often a gesture to reassure their readers: things aren’t that bad. ‘This might be some crazy shit but it’s been exaggerated on FOX News!’, as if that’s relevant to the dynamics of the issues themselves.
The questions become rather more serious when you have institutions or major political figures supporting these things. At that point denial and deflection become much more difficult. That is why the left hates
. He’s tarred as far-Right and a racist (etc., etc.) but he’s really just an effective conservative activist and, more dangerous, he publicizes these events widely. His reach has saturated the center and is beginning to (indirectly) bleed into liberal consciousnesses. This is a crisis for the Left.
If you disagree with these kinds of occurrences you should agree that their existence should be known. Otherwise you don’t really care about racial segregation or rape or violent criminal impunity. You only care about your ideology. As
said, ideologies rarely make evil people good… but they routinely make good people evil. Caring about other people demands that you care about them, not just your political program or your idea of what might benefit the collective political mass of humanity at some point in the future.
It may be said, however, that even if the theoretical book-trained Socialist is not a working man himself, at least he is actuated by a love of the working class. He is endeavouring to shed his bourgeois status and fight on the side of the proletariat — that, obviously, must be his motive.
But is it? Sometimes I look at a Socialist — the intellectual, tract-writing type of Socialist, with his pullover, his fuzzy hair, and his Marxian quotation — and wonder what the devil his motive really is. It is often difficult to believe that it is a love of anybody, especially of the working class, from whom he is of all people the furthest removed.
The local teachers’ union encourages students to resist “Zionist bullies.”
Portland, Oregon, has earned its reputation as America’s most radical city. Its public school system was an early proponent of left-wing racialism and has long pushed students toward political activism. As with the death of George Floyd four years ago, the irruption of Hamas terrorism in Israel has provided Portland’s public school revolutionaries with another cause du jour: now they’ve ditched the raised fist of Black Lives Matter and traded it in for the black-and-white keffiyeh of Palestinian militants.
I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents produced by the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union that encourages its more than 4,500 members to “Teach Palestine!” (The union did not respond to a request for comment.)
The lesson plans are steeped in radicalism, and they begin teaching the principles of “decolonization” to students as young as four and five years old. For prekindergarten kids, the union promotes a workbook from the Palestinian Feminist Collective, which tells the story of a fictional Palestinian boy named Handala. “When I was only ten years old, I had to flee my home in Palestine,” the boy tells readers. “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.” Students are encouraged to come up with a slogan that they can chant at a protest and complete a maze so that Handala can “get back home to Palestine”—represented as a map of Israel.
Other pre-K resources include a video that repeats left-wing mantras, including “I feel safe when there are no police,” and a slideshow that glorifies the Palestinian intifada, or violent resistance against Israel. The recommended resource list also includes a “sensory guide for kids” on attending protests. It teaches children what they might see, hear, taste, touch, and smell at protests, and promotes photographs of slogans such as “Abolish Prisons” and “From the River to the Sea.”
In kindergarten through second grade, the ideologies intensify. The teachers’ union recommends a lesson, “Art and Action for Palestine,” that teaches students that Israel, like America, is an oppressor. The objective is to “connect histories of settler colonialism from Palestine to the United States” and to “celebrate Palestinian culture and resistance throughout history and in the present, with a focus on Palestinian children’s resistance.”
The lesson suggests that teachers should gather the kindergarteners into a circle and teach them a history of Palestine: “75 years ago, a lot of decision makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin,” the lesson reads. “There’s a BIG word for when Indigenous land gets taken away to make a country, that’s called settler colonialism.”
Before snack time, the teacher is encouraged to share “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs” with the children, and have them create their own agitprop material, with slogans such as “FREE PALESTINE, LET GAZA LIVE, [and] PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.” The intention, according to the lesson, is to move students toward “taking collective action in support of Palestinian liberation.”
The recommended curriculum also includes a pamphlet titled “All Out for Palestine.” The pamphlet is explicitly political, with a sub-headline blaring in all capital letters: “STOP THE GENOCIDE! END U.S. AID TO IRSAEL! FREE PALESTINE!” The authors denounce “Zionism’s long genocidal war on Palestinian life” and encourage students to support “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” policies against Israel.
The pamphlet includes chants that teachers can adopt in the classroom. Some imply support for militancy and political violence: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!”; “We salute all our martyrs! mothers, fathers, sons and daughters!”; “Justice is our demand! No peace on stolen land!”
It’s not immediately clear to what extent the “Teach Palestine!” lessons have been adopted in Portland public school classrooms. But the teachers’ union claims that the district has been “actively censoring teachers” for promoting pro-Palestine ideologies; in response, it has assembled a legal guide for how teachers can keep promoting the lessons under the guise of meeting state curriculum standards.
I want to respond to the guy with the megaphone by saying, “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!”