Coming to a Bookstore Near You: 'Communism for Kids' CNSNews.com The death toll from communist regimes in the 20th century is well-documented. One study found that more people were killed under communism than homicide and genocide combined, and only 9 million more people were killed in World War I and World War ... |
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Coming to a Bookstore Near You: 'Communism for Kids' - CNSNews.com
A Berlin-based author and MIT have published a kid's book making the case for Communism using fairy talesminus all the mass murder, of course.
Of his Hitler Youth pledged to him and him alone, Adolf Hitler once said, When an opponent declares, I will not come over to your side, I calmly say, Your child belongs to us already.'
And this was cemented not just in community hikes, and pep talks from their Youth leaders, but in schoolbooks with easy to read lessons about 'Blood and Volk, and the glories of Nazism as a political system.
There wasand in the case of North Korea and Cuba still isa Communist variant of this. In the Soviet Union, school children were given parables emphasizing the infallibility of Communism, and the heroism of Uncle Joe and his heroic proletariat saving and defending the motherland from fat, greedy, war-loving capitalists.
Today, a Berlin-based (who else?) author, is carrying on this tradition with a book making the case for Communism via fairy tales. Bini Adamczak, a political and queer theorist, has penned the book, Communism for Kids, just published by MIT Press.
The press kit accompanying the book describes the set-up: Once upon a time, people yearned to be free of the misery of capitalism/ How could their dreams come true?
Adamczaks book, of course, provides the answer; such dreams will come true if the masses will only follow his more purist version of Communism: This little book proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism.
The press release reveals the book uses the trappings of fairy tales, composed of jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers-not to mention a Ouija board, a talking chair, and a big pot called, the state.
With lovable little revolutionaries as their guide readers will be given a primer in the historic stages leading inexorably to Communism: Before they know it, readers are learning about the economic history of feudalism, class struggles in capitalism, different ideas of communism, and more.
To the credit of the author, he does note that past attempts at communismfailed. But the dream is still alive as the author ends the book with the assertion that Communismcan still create a better world.
To illustrate these points, Adamczak offers a multiple choice game in which a capitalism in crisis scenario (occurring because of competition between two factories) allows workers six ways to introduce Communism. Although each attempt fails, and true communism is not so easy after all, the author assures readers its also not that hard.
The press statement admits that the book is geared to have a wider scope than just the kindergarten set: With an epilogue that goes deeper into the theoretical issues behind the story, this book is perfect forall ages and all who desire a better world.
However much MIT and the author wish to assure readers that Adamczpak has learned the lesson of how not to implement Communism, nothing has changed. The bloody history of the Left in the 20th century, in which no matter how inexorably repressive each new attempt at Communism becomes, has been the dream must continue, no matter how many millions have to pay for such stubbornness until the Communists get it right.
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Seventy-one years ago, George Orwell pennedAnimal Farm, designed to be easily understandable to all ages about the evils of Communism.He was delighted when parents told him the children felt the injustice of the Stalin pig exploiting the other animals. Today, it is the virtues of Communism being communicated to children via easily understandable fairy tales.
So one is compelled to ask, where is the Orwell today, who will provide a counter-fairy tale to this clear attempt to indoctrinate children well before the process occurs in left-wing academia?
Something needs to happen; otherwise parents may discover that ideologues of the Adamczpak sort, might, like Hitler, already have the children.
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Hey Kids, How Cool Is Communism? - The Daily Beast - Daily Beast
April 24, 2017, Cliff Kincaid, Leave a comment
Photo by mattbuck4950
Since MSNBCs Rachel Maddow is still preoccupied with the supposed influence of Russia on President Donald Trump and the American political process, we suggest that the publication of a new book called Communism for Kids by MIT Press is worthy of her attention. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian revolution, this book offers a glimpse into an uprising that was global in scope and which has not only destroyed the moral fiber of Russia, but has also done enormous damage to America.
The author of Communism for Kids, Bini Adamczak, writes that the Russian revolution instilled new hope, particularly in women and people who did not identify themselves within the hetero-normative paradigm. The destruction of the family, she writes, was the goal. With the revolution, the right to legal abortion, both sexes right to divorce, the decriminalization of adultery, and the annulment of the sodomy law (which had previously prohibited homosexuality) were implemented and enforced, she explains.
In Moscow, one could find international communes led by gay communists, she says. Drag kings could become legitimate members of the Red Army. Participants of the revolutionary debates decided upon the destruction of the family, demanded the legalization of incest, and advertised the practice [of] polygamy.
Queer communism is the battle cry of these modern Marxists, who label themselves Queer communists and identify with the origins of the Russian revolution.
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. This blog is excerpted from a column he recently wrote for Accuracy in Media.
Posted in Guest Articles. Tagged as Accuracy in Academia, Accuracy in Media, AIA, AIM, children's book, Cliff Kincaid, communism, communists, Marxism, Marxists, queer, queer communists
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Queer Communism For Kids - Accuracy in Academia
As a (relatively) new American, I was intrigued by Leo Fagans viewpoint on America and Americanism (One way ticket out, April 16). He seems to believe that America is the greatest country in the world (a view shared by Russians, Koreans, Japanese, French and many other countries), and I am not going to argue with his belief.
But if so, why is the infant mortality rate here that of a Third World country? American life expectancy is going down (again, check statistics). We in Europe who had close contact with American troops found that so many of them had an arrogance that was rudeness itself, insofar as they were expected to be ambassadors or guests in their host country.
Mr. Fagan also seems to equate socialism with Communism. There is quite a difference. Socialist countries in Europe in the main do very well for their citizens, with low infant mortality rates, good health care for all and reasonable retirement (I admit not always good), but accountability to their electorate.
In contrast, Communist countries are basically dictatorships, with no accountability to the voters, something I see beginning to happen to this good country.
Valerie Derks
Deer Park
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Communism isn't socialism - The Spokesman-Review
One hundred years ago this month, Lenin detrained at Finland Station. Now, young people think George Bush killed more people than Stalin. We need some history lessons, pronto.
One hundred years ago this month, a train pulled by locomotive No. 293 arrived at the Finland Station in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). Though it was late at night, a large crowd waited waving red flags and flowers. Within a sealed railcar was a passenger who would soon become dictator of the worlds first Marxist state: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin.
Returning from a decade in exile, he was jubilantly greeted by socialist comrades, old and new, who a month earlier had deposed Nicholas II. The Russian Revolution achieved by you, Lenin declared at the station, has opened a new epoch. A new epoch, to be sure, but certainly not a better one for the more than 100 million people who, over the course of the next century, would be tortured, persecuted, and murdered in the name of communism.
Tragically, these facts are controversial to someand even unknown by manyin 2017. In particular, a large swath of the millennial generation is unaware of and indifferent to the horrors and deceits of communism as well as those of its fellow-traveling collectivist ideology, socialism.
A recent study conducted by YouGov found only 33 percent of millennials are familiar with Lenin. Of those who are familiar, 25 percent view him favorably. The study also revealed, among other disturbing insights, that 32 percent of millennials believe more people were killed by the administration of George W. Bush than the regime of Joseph Stalin, which was responsible for no fewer than 15 million deaths.
Influenced by educational and cultural systems hostile to free-market economics and willing to whitewash the human toll of Marxism, young Americans are increasingly turning to socialism and other forms of extremist ideology. In a 2016 poll by Harvard University, 33 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 said they supported socialism while 51 percent said they opposed capitalism. Alarming also are the findings that only 25 percent of millennials now believe that living in a democracy is essential, down from 75 percent for their grandparents generation.
At the same time, polls suggest that young people value equality more than democracy. From these data we can infer that many millennials care deeply about the state taking care of them, even if it undermines democratic processes. In a word, collectivism.
In fact, our foundation has tracked the growth of dozens of neo-Marxist organizations active on college campuses and in urban protest movements. Their membership is growing and may now be as high as several hundred thousand. Not surprisingly, these groups are revisionist on U.S. history and spread 21st-century propaganda on American social mediamessages crafted or borrowed from those transmitted in Havana, Beijing, and even Pyongyang.
Senator Bernie Sanders and other leaders of a newly emergent left deploy the phrase democratic socialism as their new ideal. Yet one word, a mere rhetorical modifier connoting noble intent and good governance, should not suffice when it remains unclear how their vision differs from the bloody and economically disastrous socialism experienced by nearly 40 nations in the last hundred years.
But the problem of historical distortion and misperception runs deeper. Last month, the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked the seventh-best university in the country by U.S. News & World Report released Communism for Kids. By Bini Adamczak, a Berlin-based social theorist and artist, the book presents political theory in the simple terms of a childrens story, accompanied by illustrations of lovable little revolutionaries experiencing their political awakening. The lovable little revolutionaries, beginning with Lenin, continuing through Che Guevara and Mao Zedong, and remaining with us today from Pyongyang to Caracas, have inflicted misery on the lives of hundreds of millions.
The soil of ignorance and envy bears not fruit but thorns.
Today, hammer and sickle flags once again flutter above the Crimean Peninsula. In socialist Venezuela, workers are now forcibly relocated to collective farms in coercive efforts to remedy the man-made famine now emaciating the once-prosperous country. In Hong Kong, for the first time in history, Mao is portrayed in textbooks as a socialist heronot a mass murderer. It was this Beijing-mandated revised history curriculum that sparked the 2014 student protests known as the Umbrella Movement.
In 1919, two years after Lenins return to Russia, Lincoln Steffens, eminent muckraker and co-founder of The American Magazine, spent three weeks touring the then newly-established Soviet Union. Enthralled by what he had witnessed, he boasted back home, I have seen the future, and it works. The it, of course, was communism.
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Before long, the Russian experiment devolved into tyranny of unprecedented scale marked by famines, forced labor, show trials, and the brutal repression of opposition. Although Steffens himself jettisoned communism by the early 1930s, he would forever serve as a punching bag for his botched prophecy.
Yet he wasnt entirely wrong. While communism clearly failed to bring utopia, Steffens had in fact, tragically, previewed the future. The Soviet Union lasted another seven decades and today, one-fifth of the worlds population still lives under single-party communist regimes in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. The century of Communism began 100 years ago. The ideology responsible for more deaths than any ideology or religion in human history continues to exact a tragic human toll.
In perverted distortion of Lincolns aspiration for America, these regimes work every day to ensure that governments of the party, by the party, for the party shall not perish from the earth.
More Americans must stand up to defend the truth about what has happened and what is happening when it comes to the failed ideas of collectivism, both socialism and communism. We must fight for justice where feasible, for those who were killed for ideological reasons and their families who continue to suffer. And we must fight to cultivate accurate memory about this difficult history, without which neither truth nor justice is possible. Nor, it would seem, is American democracy.
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100 Years of Communism's Bloody Legacy - Daily Beast