Commentary

As a school board member in the Ramona Unified School District in San Diego County, when I read the Santa Ana Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum for the first time, it brought back childhood memories from growing up in the Soviet Union.

The communist vocabulary that I remember from my time in the USSR included liberation, oppression, oppressor, and oppressed, class struggle, solidarity, hegemony, Zionist, imperialism, colonialism, and collective, as well as phrases vilifying capitalism and Zionism (a movement for the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish ethnoreligious state), painting capitalists as oppressors and the working class as oppressed, and presenting capitalists, Israel, and the West as enemies.

These words were an integral part of Soviet communist propaganda. These words are also an integral part of the Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum—I recognized them right away. They were so familiar and so omnipresent throughout the course, to an extent that I have never encountered since living in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. Native-born Americans grossly underestimate the gravity of communism and Marxism. However, its parallels with Liberated Ethnic Studies are astounding and personally alarming.

Ethnic Studies was originally designed as another vessel, along with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and CRT (critical race theory), to deliver Marxism to schools and incorporate communist ideology in education. And while DEI and CRT are not required in schools, the Ethnic Studies course is mandated by the state of California.

Ethnic Studies can be a Trojan horse for communism if we don’t pay attention, and we have to be very vigilant in order to weed out the harmful elements. We are not teaching in a vacuum. Kids will eventually spread these concepts throughout California and the United States.

There are countless examples of “Liberated,” politicized curriculum throughout California alone. Liberated curriculum continues to pigeonhole students into oppressor and victim roles, which is typical for Marxism. In Alameda County, Santa Clara County, and San Mateo County, students learn that their own physical and intrinsic characteristics, such as skin color, gender, mental health, sexuality, and body size, make them oppressors or victims, good or bad students.

They are taught that neither actions nor words change this determination and that there is no opportunity to move between categories, removing all personal agency from students. Students also are taught that capitalism causes racism and upholds white supremacy.

The Santa Ana Unified School District has been sued by the Anti-Defamation League, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights, and the American Jewish Committee, for its allegedly anti-Semitic Ethnic Studies courses, which are based on the “Liberated” curriculum.

I remember the dehumanized Soviet system. I remember cruelty, intimidation, disregard for human life, disdain for dignity, and normalized contempt and disrespect. People lived in constant fear of the state. Schools taught kids that there is no God, that God doesn’t exist. Nothing was sacred. Morals and values were relative. Since there was no God, there were no morals in the society, and no compassion. Government policies were covertly anti-Semitic, and this affected my Jewish family, too.

The average Soviet person was vindictive, manipulative, unforgiving, ruthless, and immoral. There were no marriage vows—just two signatures on a government marriage form. What would be the point? Promises didn’t mean anything anyway. Citizens and the government deceived each other at every turn. Lying, cheating, and stealing were considered smart moves in order to get ahead. Honest people, people of integrity, were considered idiots and losers. Nobody believed or trusted one another. And people thought this was normal because nobody knew any different. The USSR was an evil empire best known for its economic incompetence, atheism, and drabness.

And all of this could be brought to you courtesy of Ethnic Studies if we are not careful. Liberated Ethnic Studies is a front for Marxist or communist ideologies. It uses the same concepts, vocabulary, and philosophy.

Teaching Marxism in schools is prohibited by the Ed Code, and the lawyers who vetted this kind of curriculum for the school districts either agree with Marxism or are not familiar with Marxist concepts. I doubt that they read the Communist Manifesto or grew up in a communist country. I have done both.

I have seen firsthand what communism does to people. I have seen how it corrupts human souls. I have lived it. Never again. And never again is now.

“Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty” is inscribed at the entrance to the National Archives.