Kerby Anderson

Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill that designates November 7 as “Victims of Communism Day.” But there is much more to the legislation than the establishment press has reported. In fact, you might suspect there is more to the bill given the amount of controversy it has generated.

Of course, just about anything he has said or done has been controversial to liberal politicians and the press. In April, he signed a bill attempting to prevent students from feeling responsible “for historical wrongs because of their race, color, sex, or national origin.” That was an attempt to address the covert teaching of critical race theory. He also signed the “Parental Rights in Education Act” to prevent classroom discussions about sex and sexual issues with very young children.

This bill on communism does designate a day but it also mandates that schoolchildren in Florida be taught about communism for at least 45 minutes a year. This is apparently necessary because little, if anything, is being taught about the evils of communism. Ask a student about Hitler and the Nazis. They know the evil perpetrated by the Third Reich. Ask them about Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong, and you might just get a blank stare. They may not know anything about the Gulag or Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

Students aren’t the only ones ignorant of the history of communism. A YouGov poll found that two-thirds (64%) of Americans did not know that Communist China killed more people than Nazi Germany. This fact is readily available on Wikipedia. It refers to the Washington Post article “Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world.”

Warning students about the dangers of communism shouldn’t be controversial, especially since a significant number of students are inclined to believe socialism and communism are preferable to capitalism.