That wouldn't matter even if it were true, though, because -- Real News -- young people don't generally know who Stalin was. "A poll of 16-24 year-olds found that 28 per cent had never heard of Stalin, almost half had never heard of Lenin and 70% had never heard of Mao Tse Tung ["Zedong," usually, since the PRC prefers the Pinyin system of romanization to the older Wade-Giles. --Grim]."
An allied poll reveals either a complete failure of the educational system, or else a complete success by Communists in corrupting it.
The new data show that 64% of Gen Z and 70% of millennials say they’re likely to vote for a socialist. Meanwhile, 20% of millennials think the Communist Manifesto “better guarantees freedom and equality” than the Declaration of Independence.You kids keep your eyes on Hong Kong.
Bizarrely, 36% view communism favorably, and 15% think the world would be better off if the Soviet Union still existed. And 22% of millennials think “society would be better if all private property was abolished,” while 35% view Marxism favorably.
Since the US media seem very busy ignoring what is going on at Hong Kong Polytechnic (and other locations, I suspect), they will never have the chance.
ReplyDeleteBesides, "we'll get it right this time." And "Lenin/Stalin/Mao/ Pol Pot/ Sendario Luminoso just didn't understand Marx. This time it will be different."
LittleRed1
If all they see of Hong Kong is what MSNBC or Vox shows them, they'll never be troubled.
ReplyDeleteNor will they be troubled by this, even were they to read about it:
ReplyDeleteChinese Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Wu Qian...cited a Nov. 14 speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping in which he said the president gave "the highest direction of the central government" to end violence and restore order in Hong Kong. He called it the army's most pressing task in Hong Kong.
What's a Tiananmen Square?
Eric Hines
I will say I am absolutely flabbergasted by my nephew who will post scathing memes about Hong Kong and Venezuela (i.e. memes that rip the NBA for their kowtowing to the PRC, in favor of pro-democracy protestors, etc), but also highly favorable towards Communism, Marxism and Socialism. It's like, "you KNOW those LEAD to situations like Hong Kong and Venezuela, right?" But I honestly question if they do.
ReplyDeleteThey're told all the promises that "seizing the means of production" would provide and how "property is theft", but they miss the connection between that and the real world results. I don't get it.
In his case, at least he's also pro-2nd Amendment unlike most of his peers. He gets the idea that it's hard to overthrow a system without guns. So he's more logical in that arena than most leftists.
That children do not learn about communism is less about committed communists and socialists in the schools than devotion to the news of NOW as the most important thing. Weaknesses, dimness, and inattention are doing the job of burning the great story of the 20th C just fine without drawing attention to itself with any fanatics.
ReplyDeleteAsk smart young people about the Cold War.
ReplyDelete“Yeah, what happened?”
Not the students fault, nor the schools.
It’s the parents fault.
My Father sent us to school, but he educated his children, not the state.
I'm really glad we've done things like taken the kids to the Reagan Library several times, and this past summer when we took them to Hungary, gave them the chance to see some of the history of both Nazi occupation and Soviet occupation. It helps to be able to connect history to experiences and places. Clearly though, we've got a long way to go till the hammer and sickle are seen with the same proper disgust as the swastika.
ReplyDeleteWhat's a Tiananmen Square?
ReplyDeleteThat was one of the Gang of 9 (that rules the Communist party), which was the internal security force. The external army, is most likely somebody else's faction.
Twitch viewers may be as much as 50% in favor of Flat Earth theory. Let that sink in a bit, given how much the old school media tries to fight FE theorists and how the CIA keeps outputting stuff about conspiracy theories being kooks.
ReplyDeleteThe agency most likely responsible for half of America's disastrous foreign policies due to conspiracies, wants to tell Americans not to believe in in konspiracy kooks... haha. Just ask the lawyers why they can't stop the conspiracy charges.
bdoran: Agreed. It's a non-delegable duty.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't get a lot of propaganda in our rudimentary history training in grammar school, so I don't remember those issues coming up at home much, in the sense of criticizing the school's approach. I did come home with some fallacious notions about nuclear physics. I was charmed once by a science fiction story about miniature worlds at the atomic stage, as if the nucleus were the sun and the electrons were planets, with even tinier inhabitants. My father pointed out mildly that the "solar system" model of the atom, though appealing, hadn't really been valid for quite some time even then, regardless of what I might be hearing in my 1970s chemistry class. I brought it up in class, and my teacher readily agreed that, although it was in the curriculum, it wasn't really right, though it was far beyond the scope of her class to go into why. I was lucky to have parents and some teachers who were interested in teaching me how to learn rather than in instilling dogma of any kind.
We didn't get into the Holocaust to any major degree that I can recall. I do remember, though, that we were given "The Bridge at Andau" to read, and that we all took it for granted that there was something wrong with a socio-political system that kept its citizens prisoners. At the same time, we all wondered whether any socio-political goal was worth the impact of global nuclear war. That's about as far as we got, so it was up to us to keep reading about it for the rest of our lives, trying to work out what to do.
You'd have to be crazy to think your kids are going to get everything they need from any school, let alone a public grammar school.
Texan, they are gonna start saying the same thing about the theory of gravity, that it was never quite right, soon enough. If I have anything to say about it, and I do.
ReplyDeleteMost theories aren't quite right. I'm always happy to jettison them as soon as someone comes up with experimental data that don't fit, and a new theory that better accounts for all the data we have. Until then, we bumble along with the old theory, which gives us the most reliable predictions we know how to come up with.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't care for is evidence-free theories, even evidence-immune theories. Theories that just HAVE to be right, or everyone will get upset and start trying to muzzle people. "The time for debate is over" theories. The theory that Marxism is going to start working really great, any year now, because the idea of sharing makes me feel all warm inside.
It doesn't really matter whether we're clinging to an old theory in the face of new, contradictory evidence, or making up a new theory before we have a shred of evidence to support it. It's all just ways to bully people into believing things when you can't make a persuasive case about them to free minds.