Dennis Prager, April 29, 2024The Communist Party of the Soviet Union — like most communist parties — came to power as the great defender of workers.
In reality, the Soviet Communist Party didn't give a hoot about Russian workers. The party was nothing more than a totalitarian organization that used workers to gain power — and then suppressed the proletariat, just as it suppressed every other group. One of the first things the Communist Party did after attaining power was disband independent labor unions and prohibit workers' strikes. Yes, the "workers' party" banned strikes.
The one major exception was the Chinese Communist Party, which came to power as the great defender of peasants. And the CCP slaughtered about 60 million of them.
This has been the modus operandi of every left-wing group everywhere: Claim concern for some group, and use that group to fool people — specifically, naive liberals, who share few values with the Left but have frequently served as useful idiots for the Left. Liberals do so to this day.
Teachers Unions
Teachers unions are nothing more than left-wing groups that use alleged concern for students to attain and retain power. The reality, however, is while they care about teachers, they harm students far more than they help them.
One example is teachers unions' opposition to school choice. Those who actually care about students support the right of parents to choose their children's schools — just as many teachers do when they send their own children to schools of their choice.
A second example is teachers unions' making it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers.
A third example was teachers unions' demands that schools lock down for nearly two years during the COVID-19 era. The unions did so despite there being no scientific evidence in support of school lockdowns and despite ample warnings that many children would suffer intellectually, scholastically, emotionally and psychologically.
Moreover, wrote John H. Cochrane of the Hoover Institution in the Wall Street Journal, "When schools went remote, parents found out what was actually going on inside the classrooms. Teachers were coaching students to hate themselves, their country and their religious traditions and sexualizing young children."
The last point brings us to a fourth example: Teachers rob young students of their sexual innocence with premature talk of, and books that deal with, overt sexual activity, and the infamous use of drag queens to perform in front of children as young as 6 years old.
Just how left-wing teachers organizations are was made clear by the sympathetic left-wing magazine The Nation in January:
"A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop 'sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.' ... But the rank-and-file campaign goes beyond (that). ... Members want the NEA (National Education Association) to revoke its endorsement of Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential race until the president ... stops 'sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.'"
That was only two months after Oct. 7.
Civil Rights Organizations
Most civil rights organizations are also essentially left-wing groups. They use alleged concern for blacks to attain and retain power, but they harm blacks considerably more than they help them.
A glaring example is the near-universal opposition of civil rights groups to school choice despite the fact that black Americans overwhelmingly support it. According to a 2023 RealClear Opinion Research poll, 73% of blacks support school choice — two points more than whites. They do so because large majorities of black students in public schools perform far below grade-level standards.
The reason the largest civil rights organization, the NAACP, opposes school choice has nothing to do with concern for blacks. It is that the left-wing position — again, the NAACP is a left-wing organization — on school choice is dictated by teachers unions.
Other civil rights organizations' positions that harm blacks include labeling as "racist" the most effective solution to racism: widespread colorblindness; supporting separate dorms and graduations for black college students; and support for lowering academic and professional standards to facilitate black advancement.
Feminist Organizations
Feminist organizations are additional examples of essentially left-wing organizations. The group they use to attain and retain power is women. Just as other left-wing interest groups, they harm the group on whose behalf they allegedly fight — in this case, women — far more than they help them.
The most obvious example is the support of major feminist organizations for men who say they are women participating in women's sports.
From the website of the National Women's Law Center:
"The National Women's Law Center (NWLC) unequivocally supports the inclusion of trans women in women's sports. And if you call yourself a feminist, you should too."
From the website of The Women's Sports Foundation (WSF):
The Women's Sports Foundation supports the right of all athletes, including transgender athletes, to participate in athletic competition. ...
In 2022, the WSF wrote a letter to the NCAA protesting any diminution of the right of biological males who say they are females to participate in women's athletics. The letter was cosigned, as expected, by LGBTQIA+ organizations but also by two major feminist organizations in addition to the Women's Sports Federation: the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus.Damaging women has been the primary legacy of organized feminism for the last half-century. That there are more depressed women, especially young women, today than at any other time in modern American history is directly attributable to left-wing influence generally (no religion, no country, no future) and to feminist doctrines specifically: Career is more important than marriage and family, and women can do just fine without a man to love and be loved by.
Dennis Prager is a columnist for WorldTribune.com. He is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His second volume of Bible commentary, "The Rational Bible — Genesis: God, Creation, Destruction," is published by Regnery. He is the founder of PragerUniversity.com and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
