‘Victims Of Communism Day' Mandate For Schools Heading To Governor's Desk

Florida Phoenix

March 24, 2022

A common criticism of communism in the United States is that the economic system suppresses freedom of speech and discourages political dissent.

To hammer home that point, the Florida Legislature has voted across party lines to require school kids to sit through a lecture each year on what it’s calling “Victims of Communism Day.”

“I think everyone in this room understands that communism is an evil and insidious form of government, akin to fascism, akin to Nazism, and deserves no safe haven in the state of Florida,” Rep. Evan Jenne said during debate on the House floor in late February. He is a Democrat who represents part of Broward County.

HB 395, sponsored by Rep. David Borrero and Rep. Alex Rizo, requires the Florida governor to proclaim Nov. 7 as “Victims of Communism Day.” They are both Republicans who represent areas in South Florida.

Starting with the 2023-24 school year, public high school students taking U.S. government courses would receive at least 45 minutes of instruction on communist figureheads including Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Vladimir Lenin.

The legislation says that the day is supposed to honor the “100 million people who have fallen victim to communist regimes.” Students will learn “how victims suffered under these regimes through poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech.”

When Borrero presented the bill on the House floor, he sited a 2020 poll from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation that noted growing favorability toward socialism and communism among younger voters, such as Millennials and Zoomers.

“That’s why this bill is needed, because it gives honor to over 100 million people who have died from these economic policies, and it also gives hope to this generation and the next generation that America will never be a communist country,” Borrero said at the time.

The Legislature unanimously approved the legislation, which requires Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature to become law, although he has previously supported efforts to teach the “evils” of communism.

Efforts to discredit communist ideas and philosophies is a bipartisan rallying point for the Legislature in Florida, where immigrants who fled the Fidel Castro dictatorship and similar governments in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua form an important political constituency.

During its 2021 session, the Legislature approved new civics education requirements to “help students understand their roles, rights, and responsibilities” by requiring the civic education curriculum to “include a comparative discussion of political ideologies that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy in the nation’s founding principles.”

That legislation explicitly cites communism and totalitarianism as such conflicting principles, and also received unanimous bipartisan support.

That same year, Florida Republicans pushed through legislation that supposedly supports “intellectual freedom” and “diversity of thought” on college campuses by ensuring that students are not “shielded” from opinions they may find “uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.”

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