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Over the weekend, The New York Times published a detailed breakdown of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to indoctrinate Russian schoolchildren with pro-government propaganda.
The Times described the Kremlin's maniacal obsession with making sure young Russians remain slavishly loyal and uncritical of Putin’s government as it wages war on Ukraine and seeks to expand its power across the globe.
I recommend you read it, so you can draw parallels between what the Kremlin is doing and Republican efforts in American schools.
Take this excerpt, for example:
Starting in first grade, students across Russia will soon sit through weekly classes featuring war movies and virtual tours through Crimea. They will be given a steady dose of lectures on topics like “the geopolitical situation” and “traditional values.” In addition to a regular flag-raising ceremony, they will be introduced to lessons celebrating Russia’s “rebirth” under President Vladimir V. Putin.
The Times quoted a senior Russian official who spoke at a teachers workshop: “Patriotism should be the dominant value of our people.”
That’s identical to the stated purpose of then-President Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission,” which produced the widely rebuked “1776 Report.” Remember, he commissioned that report in response to the Times’ “1619 Project,” which examined slavery’s ties to America’s past and present. The Trump administration’s commission was ostensibly created to promote “patriotic education.”
In his 2020 announcement of the project, Trump said: “We will state the truth in full, without apology: We declare that the United States of America is the most just and exceptional Nation ever to exist on Earth.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., made a similar remark in the 11-point GOP “plan” for America he released earlier this year.
“We will inspire patriotism and stop teaching the revisionist history of the radical left; our kids will learn about the wisdom of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding fathers,” he said in the roundly mocked plan.
The Kremlin comparisons don’t end there.
The Times also reported on Russian educators receiving orders to teach lessons that place Russia’s war on Ukraine in a positive light. That should sound familiar to Americans. In the United States, we’ve seen several examples of conservative officials pushing for schools to teach lessons that offer positive takes on atrocities committed in the United States.
In June, for example, a group of educators urged the Texas State Board of Education to whitewash slavery in lessons by referring to it as “involuntary relocation.” Last year, a Republican lawmaker in Louisiana advocated for a bill banning so-called divisive concepts, which he said would force schools to teach the “good” of slavery. Members of a Wisconsin school board committee recently blocked a book about concentration camps the U.S. government created for Japanese Americans during World War II because it didn’t have an opposing, “American” (her words) view. And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a new “virtuous citizens” curriculum for schools that reportedly downplays the founders’ role in slavery and their belief in the separation of church and state.
The GOP’s love for revisionist history stretches far and wide, and it’s a love shared with the Kremlin.
It’s important to make these comparisons out in the open, because so many Americans sincerely believe our country could never descend into the fascist society we are trained to see in Russia.
But now is the time for introspection. The descent has already happened.