Red Scare Redux 2017: From Right-Wing Radio to Brooklyn
Thursday, July 20, 2017
By Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout | Report
(Image: Lauren Walker / Truthout)
Donald Trump's campaign and presidency have ushered in a tide of blatantly
racist, classist, sexist and politically repressive nostalgia, encapsulated
by his ominous slogan, "Make America Great Again." As Trump and his
Republican allies work to dismantle civil, voting, reproductive and
immigration rights, another vestige of the past -- anti-communism -- has
begun to reappear.
Fox News is but one purveyor of this ideology. As commentator after
commentator sees it, communism stifles the spark that promotes competition
and human advancement. In fact, any positive mention of communism is quickly
and repeatedly condemned. For example, when MIT Press published a book
called Communism for Kids, in April, newscasters immediately made it
headline news, denouncing the text as "propaganda and revisionist theory"
and lampooned the idea that capitalism causes misery among a swath of the
population.
The network, of course, is far from alone.
Michael Savage's "The Savage Nation" on talkstreamlive.org routinely
lambastes CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, calling them "mouthpieces of
the far left, part [and] parcel of Pravda or Izvestia." Similarly, Glenn
Beck's Mercury Radio Arts has aired a four-part series called "The Truth
About Communism." "The difference between Communism and the Hitler faith was
very slight," Beck rails. "The Communists of the Reichstag voted almost
uniformly with the Nazis; they voted in lock step. The slogan for the
Communists and the Reichstag, first brown, then red."
The communism Beck conjures is rife with deprivation, want and well-worn
stereotypes and is likely motivated by the millions who voted for socialist
Bernie Sanders -- no communist he, but that does not seem to matter. The
series began in March and gave Beck a platform to warn that "communism" may
be making a comeback. To support this thesis, he apparently dusted off a
1950s playbook full of warnings. "You can't own land or make money from
owning land," he says of communism. "No matter how hard you worked to
acquire your property or how many generations have owned it, your land is no
longer yours."
He has also pontificated that communism zaps human motivation, since
"everything belongs to the collective." In Beck-world, money is the sole
motivator of creativity and innovation (a conclusion that is certainly worth
debating) and since communism threatens money as we know it, he argues that
it poses an enormous danger to everything red-blooded Americans should hold
dear.
Then there's Breitbart News, where anti-Castro commentary is a regular
feature. Trump, himself, has both feet firmly planted on this bandwagon,
recently telling fans in Miami's little Havana that "we will not be silenced
in the face of Communist oppression any longer." Indeed, he fulfilled a
campaign promise by directing the Treasury Department to end the US-Cuba
people-to-people tourism program. Under the administration's new rules, the
only people who will be allowed to visit Cuba are those traveling with
pre-approved sponsoring groups. What's more, Trump has repeatedly labeled
Cuba a security threat to the US, charging that the tiny island has shipped
weapons to North Korea. He has also criticized the country for granting
asylum to Assata Shakur, who he calls a "cop killer." His call for Shakur's
extradition has gotten significant play on right-wing radio and in
conservative print publications and blogs.
And let's not forget May Day. Ilya Somin is a professor of law at George
Mason University, home of the Koch-funded Mercatus Center. Mercatus exists
to "bridge the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems," and not
only promotes capitalism as the best possible economic system, but trains
scholars to value rivalry in business and oppose all manner of regulations
-- including licensure of businesses. Somin is a close ally of the Mercatus
faculty and has the Center's support for his campaign to turn May Day into
"International Victims of Communism Day." "We appropriately have a Holocaust
Memorial Day," he wrote in a Washington Post editorial. "It is equally
appropriate to commemorate the victims of the 20th century's other great
totalitarian tyranny."
California Legislators Declare "Communism Has No Place in California
Anti-communist grumblings have also grown sharper in state legislatures.
Several months ago, Rob Bonta, a Democratic California Assembly member,
introduced AB22, a bill to remove a nearly 70-year-old statute that makes it
illegal for members of the Communist Party (CP) to work in that state's
government. He called the law a violation of the First Amendment right to
free speech and association, and pointed out that a 1960 Supreme Court
decision made employment bans based on CP membership -- or membership in
other organizations that advocate revolutionary change -- unconstitutional.
Despite this, conservatives quickly mobilized to oppose the bill. Led by
Republican Janet Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American state senator in the
country, opponents declared that "communism has no place in California."
They further dubbed the bill "an outrageous piece of legislation which
inadvertently hurt the Vietnamese-American community and countless veterans
who have fought to defeat communism."
Others, including Southern California Assembly member Randy Voepel, chimed
in to declare communists in North Korea and China an ongoing threat to US
safety.
Bonta eventually withdrew the bill, and apologized for his lack of
sensitivity. He did not respond to Truthout's request for an interview.
Anti-Communism Rises in Brooklyn
Brooklyn's tony Park Slope neighborhood is the site of a different kind of
Red Scare. It's where Jill Bloomberg, the principal of Park Slope Collegiate
(PSC), along with her assistant principal, a paraprofessional and two
teachers, are being investigated by the New York City Department of
Education for allegedly belonging to a communist organization.
Park Slope Collegiate is a sixth-to-twelfth grade public school, one of four
programs co-located in what was once the massive John Jay High School.
Bloomberg became PSC's principal in 2004 and has tried to promote the
school's mission as a "truly integrated school -- racially, ethnically,
economically, and academically."
Throughout her tenure, Bloomberg has been an outspoken advocate for racial
justice. She has denounced the use of metal detectors and called out
inequities in resource allocations and funding. For example, one of the
schools in the John Jay building, Millennium High, is largely white,
mirroring the upscale neighborhood in which it is located. (In contrast, PSC
is 79 percent African American and Latinx.) When Millennium was given
$115,255 for coaches and sports teams during the 2014-15 academic year,
Bloomberg took notice -- first asking Millennium to allow students from the
other schools in the building to join its teams; when the request was
rebuffed, she demanded parity for all John Jay programs. As she pointed out,
the inequity was blatant: the three other programs combined received just
$41,045 for athletics.
The situation got even worse the following year, 2016, when Millennium
received funds for 17 teams, including fencing, baseball, basketball and
table tennis. Meanwhile, only four teams existed at the three other schools;
after Bloomberg and others protested this imbalance, five track teams were
added, but the total still paled in comparison to Millennium.
"Jill is all about the students," Patrick Lloyd, the parent of a PSC
student, told Truthout. "She is very professional. In fact, she does all the
things people in academic circles talk about as being important. If students
are fighting, she promotes conversations to resolve the issue. She knows
every kid by name and knows where he or she is supposed to be at all times.
She also does something a lot of other people don't do. She fights back
[against injustice] and encourages the students to fight back."
No one knows for sure what put Bloomberg and PSC on the radar of the school
district's Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation (OSI).
Michael Aciman, deputy press secretary for New York City's Department of
Education (DOE), told me by email that, "Ms. Bloomberg has been a strong
advocate for her school community, and the recent concerns she's raised
regarding the John Jay campus have nothing to do with the current
investigation. OSI has an obligation to review and investigate all reports
of misconduct that it receives, and the complaint against Ms. Bloomberg
contains allegations that, if true, would be a violation of several
Chancellor's regulations."
What are the allegations? I ask. What regulations has Bloomberg been accused
of violating? Who made the complaints? "Due to the ongoing investigation, we
cannot confirm additional details," Aciman wrote.
Furthermore, no one seems to know how long an investigation can take or
whether the five-month-long brouhaha is near completion. "OSI sent someone
to the school building on March 2," Bloomberg explained. "He said I was the
subject of an OSI investigation, but that was all he'd tell me. The
investigator then asked to speak to the assistant principal and in speaking
to her, indicated that they were investigating whether two teachers and I
are members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and are recruiting students
to attend meetings and events."
Bloomberg emphasizes that she is not in the PLP, but also makes clear that
membership in such an organization would not be incompatible with teaching.
She acknowledges that she has been vocal in protesting racism and
encouraging the students to speak out against discrimination. For example,
when PSC's girls' volleyball team was mistreated by security guards at
another school, the team -- backed by Bloomberg -- held public protests.
This resulted in both media coverage and a public apology from the offending
security personnel.
This was not Bloomberg's first brush with DOE authority. After Eric Garner's
2014 murder by police, PSC staff organized an assembly to discuss what had
happened. "The superintendent told me that I needed to take a position of
neutrality on this, but we can't be neutral when it comes to racism. The DOE
itself should not be neutral about racism," Bloomberg said.
Patrick Lloyd agrees, which is why he wanted his daughter to attend PSC in
the first place. He's still glad she's enrolled there. At the same time, he
is appalled that students were pulled out of class and questioned throughout
the spring semester -- without parental permission -- about whether they've
been encouraged to attend protests, meetings or study groups. "My daughter
was absent the day the investigators came to talk to her. When I heard about
this, I wrote [the Department of Education] a cease-and-desist letter
stating that they cannot speak to my child without my permission," Lloyd
said. A number of parents have since drafted similar missives.
Student Amanda Lee, a rising senior and captain of the girls' volleyball
team, calls the investigation ridiculous. "The only time I ever heard the
word communism in school was in 10th grade global studies," she told
Truthout, shaking her head in disbelief. "The teacher was talking about
capitalism and communism and was very pro-capitalist. He said communism was
bad and told us that if we had a pair of sneakers, we'd have to share them
with our friends. That was it. If I didn't research communism on my own, I
wouldn't know anything else about it."
Indeed, the situation playing out in Park Slope represents a type of Red
Scare that goes far beyond the verbal prattle of far-right talk shows. It
also reminds us that we can't expect the Democratic Party to protect us from
this type of ideological posturing. "In a Democratic city, with a Democratic
mayor and a Democratic Department of Education head, this situation reeks of
McCarthyism," Patrick Lloyd concludes. "It's a good lesson, reminding us
that even when we elect Democratic officials to a run a city, there can
still be witch hunts."
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Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Eleanor J. Bader
Eleanor J. Bader teaches English at Kingsborough Community College in
Brooklyn, New York. She is a 2015 winner of a Project Censored award for
"outstanding investigative journalism" and a 2006 Independent Press
Association award. The coauthor of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion
Terrorism, she presently contributes to Lilith, Rewire, Theasy.com and other
progressive feminist blogs and print publications.
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