Rachel+C’s+2018+OpEd+Article

Whenever the te rm “communism” is mentioned on campus, literally every Foothill kid ever chants back in unison, “HAHA OMG like Josh Hager!”

(Admit it, when your eyes glimpsed over THAT word, a freckled teenage boy instantly popped into your head.)

Do Foothill kids even know that communism is … real? Do they know that Josh Hager isn’t the last and only communist in the world?

First of all, there’s a country called China. China is communist. (Remember the Cultural Revolution?) And hey, China holds 1.4 BILLION people.

Now that that’s clear, do Foothill kids realize that just because Josh Hager wears celebratory Lenin shirts, dedicates social media to spreading communist memes, or is a walking commie-wikipedia page, it doesn’t mean that ALL communists are like that?

Americans have only three perceptions of communists: they’re either evil, extinct, or batsh*t crazy.

Everytime I return to China, all those “bat sh*t crazy communists” are normal people living normal lives. They go to school, they do homework, they hang out with friends, just like we all do in America. Sure, they have certain beliefs that differ than most of ours, but that doesn’t make them utterly ridiculous.

My grandparents lived during the Cultural Revolution. They’ve told me how they had starved, and they’ve told me how hard they had worked as carpenters. But at the same time, even now, they still hold great respect for Mao Zedong. That’s a common opinion among Chinese people, for Mao Zedong’s portrait is still displayed on almost all Chinese paper currency.

But so is George Washington’s on American dollars. (Washington did direct the killings of the British.) Or what about Jackson’s? (Don’t even get me started on how Jackson treated the Native Americans.) What makes China’s part so much more wrong than America’s?

Several times this year, we’ve discussed historiography and the way we interpret history. But it becomes difficult to interpret history when America’s and China’s history classes teach polar opposites.

In class, it’s easy for us to look at propaganda posters and jeer at how obviously manipulative they are. It’s easy for us to ridicule how large masses of people were “brainwashed” to believe government lies. But it’s not that black and white. George Orwell was greatly lauded for Animal Farm, but I have to criticize at how simple he made it seem like. Propaganda is discrete and can affect even the most intelligent people, not just the brainless sheep. Even modernly, look at how our nation fights over what news is and isn’t real.

I’ve discussed the world history I’ve learned with my cousin, who took the same class but in China. He talked in the same calm manner as I did, yet if anyone were to hear the content of what he was saying, they’d accuse China’s government of brainwashing the youth. They’d disregard the fact that he has outstanding writing skills or can understand quantum physics-- he’d still be one of Orwell’s sheeps.

It dares me to question, what makes America’s teachings so much more “correct” than China’s? If anything, wouldn’t China know more about what happened in its own country? Why does it have to be China’s corrupt communism juxtaposing America’s truth-bearing democracy? As my cousin asked, how do we know that it’s not the other way around?

I’m not saying that I believe that America is telling us lies. The point also isn’t to say that I’m a communist or that I defend Mao. That’s not the case at all.

All I’m saying is that when people laugh at communism or countries that succumbed to propaganda, it’s bigoted. Americans see anything that’s remotely “un-American” as unreal and outrageous. We feel a sense of superiority over any non-European nation -- that’s why Vietnam and Korea happened -- and even after the fact, this superiority never ceases.

The point was never to bash on Josh Hager, and I’m sorry Josh if you ever end up reading this. It is necessary, especially as we have sophomores learning world history and juniors learning American history, to keep an open mind and at least attempt to understand what the “non-Americans” fought for.