American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten just released a book titled Why Fascists Fear Teachers. It’s all about how American conservatives are actually fascists who are working to “undermine democracy, opportunity, and public education as we know it.” She’s either ignorant or lying about what fascism means. Clearly, she needs to read my recent article, “What Is a Fascist?”
In my first sentence, I blamed our rotten and all-too-often nefarious public education system for the fact that so many Americans have no clue that actual fascists have always been far-left ideologues who are very close to socialists. Weingarten is a key part of the problem, not these fictitious right-wing fascists she sees sullying school board meetings.
According to the book’s preview, “Attacks on schools and teachers have long been a hallmark of fascist regimes: Throughout history, as many dictators rose to power they began banning books and controlling curriculum.” Why does she think this happens? “Fascists fear teachers because teachers foster an educated and empowered population that can see past propaganda and scare tactics. Fascists fear teachers because they teach young people how to think for themselves.”
She expands on this in the book itself. “Those hell-bent on unraveling democracy, pluralism, and opportunity have always attacked teachers and education,” Weingarten writes. “It’s a very old playbook. In the 1930s, Hitler and Mussolini persecuted teachers and tried to control the curriculum. Iran’s Cultural Revolution closed universities and restricted academic freedom. From Russia to Indonesia to Hungary to Chile, fascist and authoritarian governments have sought to attack teachers and control not only what students learn but what they think.”
There are many good teachers in our public schools (my wife used to be one), but a bunch of fascist teachers just got fired for celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Like all actual fascists, these teachers are radical leftists.
Moreover, the public school system as a whole does not produce people who think for themselves. The far-left teachers unions do exactly what Weingarten decries — banning books and controlling curriculum, while pushing propaganda and scare tactics. The Left is famous for its gaslighting, but Weingarten’s book takes it to the next level.
To be fair to Weingarten, she did post decent thoughts on X after a fascist murdered Kirk: “There is no excuse for political violence against anyone for their beliefs. We must condemn it unequivocally. And I hope this tragedy sparks a serious conversation about the role social media plays in spreading fear, hate & disinformation.”
There is indeed some hate on both sides, but this isn’t really a “both sides” problem. The sheer contempt many left-wingers have for their fellow Americans — grieving human beings like Erika Kirk and her two young children — is appalling. Democrats are the party of fear, hate, and disinformation, and it is unsurprisingly fomenting political violence.
Naturally, Weingarten tries to blame the Right for this. “I think there’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of anxiety,” she told NPR. “I think social media has been a pretty prime reason. I think that the politics have gotten corrosive. And when you have this kind of fear and anxiety in a country, it creates distrust.”
What creates distrust is people like Weingarten and her union colluding with the CDC to keep schools closed and now lying about it: “Beginning in April 2020, I tried to get schools to reopen safely…”
What creates distrust is indoctrinating kids with radical ideas like “transgenderism” that pull children down a rabbit hole and alienate them from their families.
Weingarten mentions this, of course, but from the other side of the Left’s distorted prism. She “wanted to address sexuality since the fear-mongering by the Right has been extreme, with [President Donald] Trump and others making false claims about schools turning daughters into sons and vice versa.”
Those aren’t false claims, but the sex cult must be defended at all costs.
She lies about book bans for this reason. Right after complaining that Oklahoma wants to teach the Bible in schools (horror!), she laments that the ACLU says “more than 3,000 books have been banned” and that most of them “feature stories about LGBTQ+ communities, people of color, and others who have been marginalized.”
These books aren’t removed from school libraries because opponents hate minorities but because these books are indoctrination on behalf of left-wing ideology. The books aren’t even actually banned — Weingarten brags about the millions of copies of these supposedly banned books that the union gives out for free.
Teaching kids that Dad can become Mom is insidious. Using stories to tell kids about the supposed systemic oppression of blacks is meant to perpetuate grievances, not educate.
Indeed, Weingarten prolongs the lie that has been central to the Left’s falsely recasting of fascism as a right-wing ideology, saying, “I made race a central focus of the book.” She draws a straight line from the opponents of school integration after Brown v. Board of Education to “today’s so-called school choice movement.”
Uh, the opponents of Brown were largely Democrats. They are still obsessed with counting by race, which is precisely why they oppose school choice.
“The book emphasizes that promoting … falsehoods is fascist behavior,” Weingarten asserts.
She’s right about that; she’s just gaslighting about who the fascists are.
In fact, given the excerpt of her book available at Rolling Stone, which repeatedly turns truth on its head, her title should have been Fascist Gaslighting for Dummies.
