A Florida law requiring public schools to teach the “evils of communism” is stirring debate. Critics say it could fuel a backlash against immigrants from communist nations.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed H.B. 395, which will require public high schools to offer at least 45 minutes of instruction about communist atrocities for the newly designated “Victims of Communism Day” every Nov. 7 starting in 2023.
Florida joins Alabama, Utah and Virginia in observing the memorial that former President Donald Trump declared annually from 2017 to 2020. Legislation to adopt it is pending in seven other states.
Florida’s new law also requires that Victims of Communism Day “be suitably observed by public exercise in the State Capitol and elsewhere as the governor may designate.”
Mr. DeSantis signed the law at the Freedom Tower in Miami, where he said hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees were processed between 1959 and 1974.
China’s Mao Zedong, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Soviet Russia’s Josef Stalin were among the communist leaders he identified as having murdered their people. He also criticized socialist leader Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela and the socialist government of Nicaragua.
“These Marxist ideas are not dead. They are in many places right now, oppressing people such as in communist China,” Mr. DeSantis said at the signing.
“And so when we are speaking the truth, it’s not just for history, it’s for what we’re doing in the here and now,” he added.
Economist Weifeng Zhong, who emigrated from communist China, expressed concern on Tuesday that the law could hurt Americans who have fled communist nations.
“Immigrants and refugees from China, Cuba, North Korea, and more understand the authoritarian regimes they were once in,” Mr. Zhong said in an email. “They didn’t learn that from mandatory courses in schools.”
Mr. Zhong, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s free-market Mercatus Center, said the discussions could also divide families with relatives still living in communist countries.
“While it’s important for students to learn about the history of such regimes in classrooms, policymakers must be cautious not to accidentally pit next-generation Americans against each other,” the economist said.
Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Mr. DeSantis, denied that the law does this.
“The governor’s comments and the legislation itself is clear that it concerns the atrocities committed by communist and socialist regimes, not ordinary Cubans or Chinese citizens, or others who were innocent victims of this catastrophically destructive form of government,” Ms. Pushaw told The Washington Times in an email.
The Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America did not respond to a request for comment.
Kylie Cheung, staff writer at the feminist website Jezebel, slammed the law in a column on Tuesday.
“For any impressionable Florida kids that may be reading this, please note that there have never been any ‘true’ communist countries, owing largely to violent intervention from the US and other western superpowers,” Ms. Cheung wrote. “But that hasn’t stopped American propagandist and revisionist histories from slapping the label on really any country the US doesn’t like.”
Meanwhile, some authorities on communism praised the new law.
“Commemorating this day not only honors those who have suffered, but it also helps educate American youth to have an understanding of communism and an appreciation for democracy,” said Andrew Bremberg, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. Bremberg serves as president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit that plans to open a Victims of Communism Museum in the nation’s capital next month.
“I applaud Gov. DeSantis and Florida lawmakers for making this important designation,” Mr. Bremberg added in an email to The Times.
Activist Rosa Maria Payá, founder of the advocacy group Cuba Decide which fights for free elections in the island nation, also praised Florida’s new law.
“Just as the crimes of Nazism are known and repudiated, young people need to know the atrocities of communism that have caused more than 100 million victims,” Ms. Payá said, in a statement emailed to The Times.
“My father, Oswaldo Payá, Cuban civic leader, is one of those victims, assassinated by the Cuban communist regime 10 years ago,” she added. “The same regime that has over a thousand political prisoners in jail as we speak.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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