Woke Patrols Eye Transformers, Clifford the Red Dog and Holocaust History
Republican legislators around the country are gearing up for the 2024 election as they push on with their unholy crusade to control instruction in schools on subjects from the Holocaust to slavery while dragging down such beloved TV characters as the Transformers and Clifford the Red Dog into their fight against wokeness.
Most recently, the South Carolina State Senate picked a curious day to pass a new law that prevents teachers from discussing white privilege and implicit bias. The law was approved on May 10, exactly 283 years after the same state passed its notorious “Negro Act of 1740,” which codified white supremacy and made it illegal for enslaved Africans to learn to read, move freely, assemble in groups, earn money, and grow their own food.
The new Republican bill would allow parents to “challenge any educational materials they say violate banned teachings around white privilege and implicit bias.” The bill prevents teachers from instructing that someone “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past” and that an individual “is inherently privileged or should receive ‘adverse or favorable treatment’ due to their race.”
Shane Massey, the South Carolina Senate Majority Leader, said the bill “keeps the subjective opinion of those who want to rewrite American History from creeping into South Carolina’s schools.”
It is unclear if that fear of “subjective opinion” would get in the way of teaching the ugly facts around the Negro Act of 1740. In addition to the restrictions on movement, reading and earning money, the law authorized white enslavers to whip and kill enslaved Africans for being “rebellious.”
In order to prevent organized rebellions, the law also mandated a ratio of one white person for every 10 enslaved people on a plantation.
The law was passed after the unsuccessful Stono Rebellion in 1739, in which around 50 enslaved Black people waged an uprising that killed between 20 and 25 white people.
Other states soon followed South Carolina’s efforts. Georgia authorized slavery within its borders in 1750 and enacted its own slave code five years later. The 13th Amendment legally abolished slavery in 1865, except for punishment for crimes. But “Black Codes” and “Jim Crow” laws were enacted throughout the south and remained in force for more than 200 years to oppress formerly enslaved people and to continue the legacy of the Negro Act of 1740.
At the time, the Stono Rebellion was the largest enslaved rebellion in the southern colonies. The uprising was led by native Africans who were apparently from the Central African Kingdom of Kongo. The leader of the rebellion was an enslaved man named Jemmy. The group hoped to escape to Spanish Florida and promises of freedom for fugitive slaves from British North America. Most of the captured Africans were executed; the surviving few were sold to markets in the West Indies.
Following the unsuccessful rebellion and similar uprisings in Georgia and South Carolina, plantation owners decided to develop an enslaved population who were native-born, believing the workers were more content if they grew up enslaved.
Holocaust education, meanwhile, came under the continuing wokeness hatchet in Florida where Republic Gov. Ron DeSantis’s state education department rejected two new Holocaust-focused textbooks for high school classroom use, and forced another textbook to change a passage about the Old Testament.
The banned Holocaust materials included the book, “Modern Genocides,” and an online learning course titled “History of the Holocaust.”
A review of “Modern Genocides,” says the book is “an eye-opening look at 10 genocides,” that explores the causes and consequences “of a topic humanity cannot afford to ignore.”
The 10 genocides include:
The Herero Genocide which occurred between 1904 and 1908 and involved a campaign of ethnic extermination waged in German South West Africa, now Namibia, by the German empire. The targets were the Herero and Nama tribes in the first genocide of the 20th century.
The Armenian Genocide from 1915 to 1923 was waged by the Ottoman Empire during World War II and resulted in the mass murder of around one million Armenians.
The Holocaust was genocide against the Jews by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945, resulting in the extermination of 6 million Jews.
The Cambodian Genocide from 1975 to 1979 was the systematic persecution and killing of 1.5 million to 2 million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Communist Party of Kampuchea General Secretary Pol Pot.
The East Timor genocide lasted from 1975 to 1999 and included state terrorism waged by the Indonesian New Order government during the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor.
The Guatemalan genocide was the massacre of Maya civilians during the Guatemalan Civil War from 1960 to 1996 by the U.S.-backed Guatemalan military government. Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilian collaborators were widespread.
The Kurdish genocide, or Anfal campaign, was carried out by Ba’athist Iraq from February to September 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The plan was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate. Human Rights Watch estimated between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths.
The Bosnian genocide refers to either the Srebrenica massacre or the wider crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing campaign throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska or Bosnia-Serb Army during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. The Srebrenica massacre in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000 to 30,000 Bosniak civilians.
The Rwandan genocide occurred between April 7 to July 15, 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Armed Hutu militias killed 500,000 to 662,000 members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group.
The Darfur genocide, ongoing since 2003, is the systematic killing of ethnic Darfuri people during the conflict in Western Sudan. It has become known as the first genocide of the 21st century and more than one million children have been “killed, raped, wounded, displaced, traumatized, or endured the loss of parents and families.”
“Modern Genocides” was rejected because it discusses “special topics” prohibited by the state, such as “social justice” and “critical race theory.” The Florida Department of Education did not clarify which prohibited “special topics” the book included.
“History of the Holocaust” also was rejected because it received low scores from the state’s educational review committee. The publisher, eDynamic Learning, is appealing the rejection.
Another social studies textbook for children in grades 6–8 was required to change a reference to the Old Testament in order to meet state standards. The book’s original version included a question for students reading, “What social justice issues are included in the Hebrew Bible?” The publisher was ordered to replace the phrase “social justice issues” with the phrase “key principles.” The state determined that the original phrasing used “Politically charged language when referencing the Hebrew Bible.”
On another front in the Republican woke battle, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said the Pentagon is ruining the military by forcing troops to read liberal books, including books to help provide abortion services. As a result, Tuberville said, the military is coercing resignations of “white extremists, white nationalists,” who the lawmaker referred to as “Americans.”
In interviews last week, Tuberville responded to reporters who said that white supremacists support some Nazi views.
“You think a white nationalist is a Nazi? I don’t look at it like that,” Tuberville said. “I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican.”
Military leaders are concerned with the number of extremists in the ranks. A study by the Center for Strategic International Studies found that 6.4 percent of all domestic terror incidents in 2020 involved active-duty or reserve personnel, more than quadrupling the tally from the previous year. Many military veterans also participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by trump supporters.
And then there are those nasty, woke Transformers characters, according to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who warned that the kids show on Paramount Plus features characters who do not conform to traditional gender identities.
Ingraham said kids want a loving family, a roof over their heads, “a life grounded in faith and freedom.”
“But you probably never thought what they really really need is a non-binary robot. But that’s exactly what Paramount thinks they need because in Transformers: Earth Spark , that’s what they’re giving them,” Ingram said.
The series is for kids 7 and older and now includes a character named “Nightshade.” Ingram aired a clip from the show where one character says that “Nightshade’s pronouns are they/them.”
“‘He’ or ‘she’ just doesn’t fit who I am,” says Nightshade in an English accent. A third character apologizes, presumably for having misgendered the robot.
“[T]he show is shoving these inane pronouns down the throats of seven-year-olds,” Ingraham said. “I mean, we’re lucky to get them to spell the regular pronouns and get those straight.”
And that brings us to Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt who said that “Clifford the Red Dog,” “Work It Out Wombats!” and other PBS shows “sexualize Our kids.” Stitt offered his appraisals as to why he vetoed a bill to continue funding the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA), a state network of PBS member television stations.
Stitt was apparently trying to one-up Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is in the midst of a woke battle with the beloved world of Walt Disney’s Disneyland, based in Orlando.
“I don’t think Oklahomans want to use their tax dollars to indoctrinate kids,” Stitt said. “Some of the stuff that they’re showing just overly sexualizes our kids.”
In particular, the governor was incensed when the OETA promoted LGBTQ-focused Pride Month programming in recent years. To pour salt on the governor’s faux wound, he said that two PBS kids shows, “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Work it out Wombats!” have episodes including lesbian characters.
An override of Stett’s veto is expected. If not, OETA would have to shut down.
As part of his struggle to purify Oklahoma, in November, Stitt issued an executive order that prohibited transgender individuals from changing the gender on their birth certificates. In 2022, Stitt signed a bill into law that prohibited nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates.
“People are created by God to be male or female. There is no such thing as nonbinary sex,” said the governor.
Stitt signed another bill on May 25, 2022, that requires students at public charter schools and public schools to use locker rooms and bathrooms that match the sex listed on their birth certificate.
Concerns about the safety of young people may not have been foremost on the governor’s mind when he signed a bill allowing anyone 21 or older, or 18 if a member or veteran of the armed forces, to carry a firearm without obtaining a permit or completing training. Stitt signed a related bill that expands the places a firearm may be carried to include municipal zoos and parks, regardless of size, as long as it is concealed.
He opposes Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma, which has resulted in a loss of health care for many Oklahomans, including those young people he is trying to hard to protect. On a related note, in April 2020, Stitt ordered a massive purchase of hydroxychloroquine, a drug of unproven efficacy as a treatment against COVID-19 that had been heavily promoted by trump and his allies. By January 2021, Oklahoma had a $2 million stockpile of hydroxychloroquine which it sought to sell.
Stitt is not just protecting young people but also unborn people. In April 2022, he signed a law which makes performing an abortion, even for rape or incest, a crime punishable by 10 years in prison or a $100,000 fine.
Stitt and his wife, Sarah Hazen, have six children. The Stitts are active with the Woodlake Church, an Assemblies of God USA church in Tulsa. Stitt’s then-20 year old son was arrested on Oct. 31, 2022 after he was found drunk in a parking lot in Guthrie, Okla., in possession of firearms, including a gun belonging to his father. No charges were filed, though the Logan County Sheriff’s Office recommended filing charges.