Fabiola Santiago
MIAMI HERALD
Tue, May 10, 2022,
What do Cuba and Florida have in common?
Book-banning, censorship — and, added into the mix this week, state-mandated school indoctrination for political purposes.
They’re hallmark practices of the Communist Party-led regime in Cuba, tools used for six decades to keep Cubans isolated and in the dark about information that falls outside of what the ruling party’s ideology commands people to believe.
Ironically, after this year’s GOP-dominated legislative session, the same manipulative tactics are now pillars of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ public education system.
Math textbooks and literary books are being banned because some comité a la Cuba — aka “Moms for Liberty,” made up of citizens jazzed and empowered by Republicans into a state of hysteria — deemed them inappropriate and sounded the alarm.
Educators are being censored and handed guidelines, embedded into law, about what they’re allowed to say and not say to students on race or gender identity. Nothing that makes whites uncomfortable. Nothing about being gay or trans in kindergarten to third grade when kids are full of questions about fellow classmates or themselves.
It all reminds me of the atmosphere of repression during my elementary school education in Cuba.
But self-awareness isn’t a Florida Republican attribute.
Mandated communism lesson
And so, DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have mandated, starting with the 2023 school year, that Florida’s middle-school students get an earful about the horrors of communism every Nov. 7, declared “Victims of Communism Day.”
Public school teachers in Florida will be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction that day to Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro. As well as to the “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence and suppression of speech” that people endured under their regimes.
Yet, these same students can’t be taught about the “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence and suppression of speech” to which Blacks have been — and still are — subjected to in this country.
But irony isn’t a concept Florida Republicans understand.
The “horrors of prejudice” lesson would fall under the banned “critical race theory.” A no-no to mothers like the one who got a book banned because it said that the United States has not eradicated poverty or racism.
Incredibly so, Cuba does exactly that, too.
The only allowed point of view is that the Cuban Revolution eradicated racism and that poverty is the fault of the U.S. embargo, not the failed economic system.
READ MORE: DeSantis signs bill mandating communism lessons in class, as GOP leans on education
Cuban Americans and DeSantis
You would think that Cuban Americans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans would run as fast as they could from authoritarian DeSantis and oppose practices that should remind them of the repressive regimes they or their parents fled.
But no, the increasingly conservative Hispanics in the state have their blinders on because the right is their preferred side of the political spectrum. Hence, it’s okay for fascists to ban, censor and indoctrinate.
That these practices conspire against democratic principles is of no importance.
That they’re hypocritical, who cares?
The cancel culture Republicans were so dead-set against during the national reckoning with racial history after George Floyd’s murder has now become their prized turf — with Florida a leading stage for culture wars of the right.
Sadly so, Miami’s first-generation Cuban Americans in state office are the perfect fools in the endeavor to obfuscate.
It should worry Hispanics that DeSantis and the retrograde Republican Legislature are banning books, censoring schools and cracking down on businesses that don’t share their political opinion, plus demonizing only one ideology for crass political purposes.
If it crushing evil was the goal, they would also dedicate lessons to Nazism and the rise of right-wing paramilitary and hate groups in the nation, and specifically, Florida. But that’s too close to the base for comfort, isn’t it?
The right isn’t happy with sending their children to segregated, religious private schools and publicly-funded charters. They want to shape the rainbow of children enrolled in public schools in their 1950s image.
Just like Fidel Castro famously tried to build, from the cradle to the grave and using the education system and his propaganda apparatus, a new generation of suckers.
“El nuevo hombre,” Castro called the generation of Communists being shaped.
What will we in Florida call the generation that DeSantis and his Cuban American Education Commissioner, former Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., are trying to indoctrinate?
Send suggestions, please.
Tue, May 10, 2022,
What do Cuba and Florida have in common?
Book-banning, censorship — and, added into the mix this week, state-mandated school indoctrination for political purposes.
They’re hallmark practices of the Communist Party-led regime in Cuba, tools used for six decades to keep Cubans isolated and in the dark about information that falls outside of what the ruling party’s ideology commands people to believe.
Ironically, after this year’s GOP-dominated legislative session, the same manipulative tactics are now pillars of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ public education system.
Math textbooks and literary books are being banned because some comité a la Cuba — aka “Moms for Liberty,” made up of citizens jazzed and empowered by Republicans into a state of hysteria — deemed them inappropriate and sounded the alarm.
Educators are being censored and handed guidelines, embedded into law, about what they’re allowed to say and not say to students on race or gender identity. Nothing that makes whites uncomfortable. Nothing about being gay or trans in kindergarten to third grade when kids are full of questions about fellow classmates or themselves.
It all reminds me of the atmosphere of repression during my elementary school education in Cuba.
But self-awareness isn’t a Florida Republican attribute.
Mandated communism lesson
And so, DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have mandated, starting with the 2023 school year, that Florida’s middle-school students get an earful about the horrors of communism every Nov. 7, declared “Victims of Communism Day.”
Public school teachers in Florida will be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction that day to Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro. As well as to the “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence and suppression of speech” that people endured under their regimes.
Yet, these same students can’t be taught about the “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence and suppression of speech” to which Blacks have been — and still are — subjected to in this country.
But irony isn’t a concept Florida Republicans understand.
The “horrors of prejudice” lesson would fall under the banned “critical race theory.” A no-no to mothers like the one who got a book banned because it said that the United States has not eradicated poverty or racism.
Incredibly so, Cuba does exactly that, too.
The only allowed point of view is that the Cuban Revolution eradicated racism and that poverty is the fault of the U.S. embargo, not the failed economic system.
READ MORE: DeSantis signs bill mandating communism lessons in class, as GOP leans on education
Cuban Americans and DeSantis
You would think that Cuban Americans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans would run as fast as they could from authoritarian DeSantis and oppose practices that should remind them of the repressive regimes they or their parents fled.
But no, the increasingly conservative Hispanics in the state have their blinders on because the right is their preferred side of the political spectrum. Hence, it’s okay for fascists to ban, censor and indoctrinate.
That these practices conspire against democratic principles is of no importance.
That they’re hypocritical, who cares?
The cancel culture Republicans were so dead-set against during the national reckoning with racial history after George Floyd’s murder has now become their prized turf — with Florida a leading stage for culture wars of the right.
Sadly so, Miami’s first-generation Cuban Americans in state office are the perfect fools in the endeavor to obfuscate.
It should worry Hispanics that DeSantis and the retrograde Republican Legislature are banning books, censoring schools and cracking down on businesses that don’t share their political opinion, plus demonizing only one ideology for crass political purposes.
If it crushing evil was the goal, they would also dedicate lessons to Nazism and the rise of right-wing paramilitary and hate groups in the nation, and specifically, Florida. But that’s too close to the base for comfort, isn’t it?
The right isn’t happy with sending their children to segregated, religious private schools and publicly-funded charters. They want to shape the rainbow of children enrolled in public schools in their 1950s image.
Just like Fidel Castro famously tried to build, from the cradle to the grave and using the education system and his propaganda apparatus, a new generation of suckers.
“El nuevo hombre,” Castro called the generation of Communists being shaped.
What will we in Florida call the generation that DeSantis and his Cuban American Education Commissioner, former Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., are trying to indoctrinate?
Send suggestions, please.
State Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., speaks during the Honoring the Victims of Communism press conference at the Freedom Tower in Miami on Monday, May 9, 2022.
There’s not a thing DeSantis can teach me about communism or any other kind of authoritarianism, including his. I know Cuba’s brand first-hand.
Unlike the ignorant, party-compliant 40-something, Miami-born, Cuban American legislators and lieutenant governor enabling DeSantis, I went to school in Cuba until the sixth grade. That, and 42 years of writing about Cuba and Cuban Americans, is why I easily recognize political chicanery.
My teacher mother refused to indoctrinate children and had to resign. It would be really something if the young teachers in my family had to do the same here because of the repressive atmosphere the GOP has brought to Florida classrooms.
But maybe there’s hope.
One fine day, a smart, fearless kid will raise her hand in the middle of the communism lesson and ask: “Isn’t that what Republicans do in Florida?”
THE WORLD ANTI BOLSHEVIK LEAGUE REBRANDED
DeSantis signs bill mandating communism lessons in class, as GOP leans on education
Bianca Padró Ocasio
DeSantis signs bill mandating communism lessons in class, as GOP leans on education
Bianca Padró Ocasio
MIAMI HERALD
Mon, May 9, 2022
Public school teachers in Florida will soon be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” to teach students about communist leaders around the world and how people suffered under those regimes.
Speaking at Miami’s Freedom Tower before a crowd of local lawmakers and supporters, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 395, which designates Nov. 7 as the state’s official “Victims of Communism Day,” making Florida one of a handful of states to adopt the designation.
It is, however, the first state to mandate school instruction on that day, as Florida Republicans continue to seize on education policy while placing school curriculum at the forefront of their political priorities ahead of the 2022 midterms.
The bill, which DeSantis signed along with two street designations in honor of Cuban exiles, would require the instruction to begin in the 2023-2024 school year. It would require teaching of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under those regimes.
“That body count of Mao is something that everybody needs to understand because it is a direct result of this communist ideology,” DeSantis said, noting that tens of millions of people died in China under his rule. “I know we don’t need legislation here to do this but I think it’s our responsibility to make sure people know about the atrocities committed by people like Fidel Castro and even more recently people like Nicolas Maduro.”
The second bill, Senate Bill 160, designates street names in honor of Arturo Diaz Artiles, Maximino and Coralia Capdevila, and Oswaldo Paya.
Rosa Maria Paya speaks about her father while Governor Ron DeSantis watches during a Honoring the Victims of Communism press conference at the Freedom Tower in Miami on Monday, May 9, 2022. Paya’s late father, Oswaldo, will have a plaza named after him. DeSantis later sign Senate bill 160 to make this designation.
“There are so many people in our community who have suffered and our own family members have suffered and to us it’s so gratifying to honor them,” said Armando Ibarra, president of Miami Young Republicans and founder of the Florida Commission of Victims of Communism.
Ibarra’s group works closely with Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an international organization that commemorates the victims of communism and promotes education on the evils of communist regimes. The organization has developed its own curriculum, one of the materials on which the State Board of Education would model its own lessons, said Miami Sen. Manny Diaz, who was appointed last week as the state’s new Education Commissioner.
“We haven’t reviewed it, but the things set forth in the bill have to be taught,” said Diaz.
Mon, May 9, 2022
Public school teachers in Florida will soon be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” to teach students about communist leaders around the world and how people suffered under those regimes.
Speaking at Miami’s Freedom Tower before a crowd of local lawmakers and supporters, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 395, which designates Nov. 7 as the state’s official “Victims of Communism Day,” making Florida one of a handful of states to adopt the designation.
It is, however, the first state to mandate school instruction on that day, as Florida Republicans continue to seize on education policy while placing school curriculum at the forefront of their political priorities ahead of the 2022 midterms.
The bill, which DeSantis signed along with two street designations in honor of Cuban exiles, would require the instruction to begin in the 2023-2024 school year. It would require teaching of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under those regimes.
“That body count of Mao is something that everybody needs to understand because it is a direct result of this communist ideology,” DeSantis said, noting that tens of millions of people died in China under his rule. “I know we don’t need legislation here to do this but I think it’s our responsibility to make sure people know about the atrocities committed by people like Fidel Castro and even more recently people like Nicolas Maduro.”
The second bill, Senate Bill 160, designates street names in honor of Arturo Diaz Artiles, Maximino and Coralia Capdevila, and Oswaldo Paya.
Rosa Maria Paya speaks about her father while Governor Ron DeSantis watches during a Honoring the Victims of Communism press conference at the Freedom Tower in Miami on Monday, May 9, 2022. Paya’s late father, Oswaldo, will have a plaza named after him. DeSantis later sign Senate bill 160 to make this designation.
“There are so many people in our community who have suffered and our own family members have suffered and to us it’s so gratifying to honor them,” said Armando Ibarra, president of Miami Young Republicans and founder of the Florida Commission of Victims of Communism.
Ibarra’s group works closely with Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an international organization that commemorates the victims of communism and promotes education on the evils of communist regimes. The organization has developed its own curriculum, one of the materials on which the State Board of Education would model its own lessons, said Miami Sen. Manny Diaz, who was appointed last week as the state’s new Education Commissioner.
“We haven’t reviewed it, but the things set forth in the bill have to be taught,” said Diaz.
---
The World Anti-Communist League was founded in 1966. Its chief organizers were the Taiwanese and South Korean governments and an organization called the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. It has since grown to more than 90 chapters on six continents, and includes ex-Nazis, right-wing terrorists, and other unsavory characters.
Author: Scott Anderson, Jon Lee Anderson
Publish Year: 1986
www.amazon.com/Inside-League-Terrorists-Infiltrated-Anti-Communist/dp/0396…
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