Do americans learn about this stuff in school?

Sounds like he was a pretty great guy.

This.

Honestly, when it came to talking about socialist history in school, the discussion was INCREDIBLY limited. There was talk of Marx (including reading the Manifesto, but no other prominent figures of the time), then nothing more on the topic until touching briefly on the Russian Revolution (a heavily sanitized version that cast the Whites as being "not that bad" or declaring how only the Provisional Government was legitimate), then more nothing until the Cold War (where it was a weird mix of criticizing McCarthyism while simultaneously espousing the righteousness of efforts to root out the "tyranny of global communist subversion").

Burger education is suffering.

Burger here, we didn't even learn that tbh. He wasn't even mentioned.

I'm not American but I learned about him after listening to Chris Hedges. Also the rural USA had a communist culture in the 1800s but the effects civil war put an end to that.

I'm clinically retarded, apologies.

I hate when people criticize crtindividuals because they know they're supposed to dislike them, but legitimize everything they said or did.

I actually went through a similar thing in school, but with the Fascists. My teacher always rationalized what they thought and what got them into power (crisis, fear of international communism, etc), but everytime we discussed Communists it was about how they were these quasi-religious utopians trying to create paradise on Earth.

You would be surprised how many celebrities back then supported communists.
Since they were quite popular, the state made sure to whitewash this aspect of them.

fam most americans think that communist is an evil ethnic group from the cold war

you know nothing about just how fucked the US is if you think we would be taught about Debs in public schools

100 years of brainwashing had quite an effect

This is Burgerstan history class in a nutshell tbh. Besides college, your entire education on the 20th Century is being taught to sympathize with Fascists and see them as rational actors while being taught at the same time that Commies were all frothing at the mouths zealots who would kill twice as many millions of people if they had the chance because of how crazy they were.

This. I know multiple people who literally only know what Communism is because they're the villains in most of our action movies from the 80's. I also know a couple of people who literally don't know what the Cold War even was. I knew someone, an adult mind you, who thought the Civil War happened in the 1930's. And out of all the idpol liberals I went to college with, most of them, Obama voters who dick rode Hilary mind you, all thought the Vietnam War was justified, as well as most shady Cold War shit, like funding Contras and Mujahideen. I literally cannot stress the degree to which the general U.S. is an uneducated mass of retards. And it's no coincidence, this is how porky prefers us.

kek

This one surprises me.

I never learned about Debs in a public school. They briefly mentioned Upton Sinclair and the labor movement and basically tried to tell us that all labor problems were solved forever and that unions were only necessary for that small window of time.

us education is much worse than however you imagine it being

each class is basically just learning how to answer about 100 multiple choice questions at the end of the year from powerpoint presentations

Are you a Burger? Because Liberals are a lot less Left-leaning here then the media or reactionaries depict them.

I only learned about Paul Robeson last year. One of the biggest singers in the world, a film actor, and a star athlete. One of the most interesting Americans ever, but has been almost completely erased from American popular culture because he was a communist.

I honestly didn't even know education could be better then this till I was much older.

This is the exact same experience I have

also theres the unique horror that now the liberals are sneaky patriots cause theyll talk shit on america and then clarify we need a democrat in charge

There are no more Hawks and Doves in the U.S. Just Hawks and Chickenhawks.

Even college educated people think that communism=Everyone one getting the same thing no matter their needs (For example, a skinny person and a fat person both get medium sized shirts because it's "equal") I cannot stress enough how massively fucked this country is. The US is the reason why I think leftcoms are dead wrong when it comes to waiting for a revolution. If material conditions worsen, a fascist revolution is much more likely than a socialist one here due to years of brainwashing. I just found out about Eugene V Debs a few months ago when I became a leftist. I was taught nothing of the strong socialist tradition that exists here (And I live only a few minutes away from the Haymarket Massacre site for fucks sake!)

I can do you two better than that famalam I know seniors in highschool who think hitler led the soviet union, And i know teachers who think that fascism is just a less extreme version of communism. I tried to explain the exact differences between fascism and communism and how they are nothing alike, but my teacher just said "hmmm this doesn't sound accurate I will fact check you later"

No I'm not, which might be why I'm surprised. Every exposition to the Vietnam War I've had was accompanied by talks of how unpopular it was and how there were huge protests against it, etc. I assume even conservatives were often against it.

W E W

Conservatives have big, veiny erections for the Vietnam War.

Never, Communism is not talked about in Americna shcools.

Right wingers just make that shit up about Marxism being tought in American schools.

Most Americans don't even know who Marx is.

Holy shit you're right. we hardly ever heard of marx compared to stalin.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

At the time, yes, but remember, that's the same generation that went on to vote in Reagan, and the same Baby Boomers who are making up a lot of Trump's base. I'd say today far more people see the Vietnam War as justified then they see it as a war crime. Also, I'm just going to be honest with you fam, most Americans don't even know what Vietnam was, positive or negative. "Communists", "Nazis", "Muslims", to most Americans these things are all interchangeable, because they see history as static, and they basically just view these things as hostile NPCs who attack us just because we're the Protagonist in some story about how cool we are. It's depressing to admit, but this is honestly how the majority of Americans think.

Kek, that's fucking awesome. This reminds me of a time someone refused to believe me about the Soviet Union being one of the Allies during WWII. They just would not believe me, or that the Nazis invaded Russia, their logic being "they both hated America, so why would they fight eachother". This is the level of thought we're dealing with here.

Only from Bernie

The Bourgeoisie hide America's socialist traditions creating the myth that Socialism is a European thing. It's sad that it's worked so well.

Hillary Clinton is considered "far-left" HILLARY "Wall Street speeches 4 cash" CLINTON!

We only talked about Stalin becasue of WW2.

I don't even think we talked about Mao or Vietnam.

Schools are shit in here.

tell me cumrade is there any hope left for socialism.

Read Labour's Untold Story, it chronicles the history of the labour movement from the Civil War to the 1950s. America has one of the strongest traditions of socialism leading up to WW2 and the 3rd Red Scare. There were several periods including the Gilded Age and Depression where American porkies legitimately feared a socialist revolution.

By who? I think even the most dogmatic democrats agreed she was center at best

Someday all these people will be dead.

Is that hopeful?

Socialism? Yes. The United States? Probably not, and that has nothing to do with Socialism, but once climate change worsens, and once NeoLibs and NeoCons slowly slide us into neo-feudal social relations Civil War and succession are immanent. If peaceful exchange of power from one flavor of Capitalist to another is enough to get Americans ready for Civil War imagine what it's going to look like once everythings privatized, the police become a paramilitary organization that can drone strike citizens, and climate change has created a resource and refugee crisis like the world has never known. I actually unironically think that Communism being inevitable is true, but a century of classcucking ourselves has made it so that the U.S. is going to cuck itself a lot more before we realize that Capitalism is thoroughly unequipped to handle the ecological and geopolitical realities of this era.

Yeah, but none of that is gonna happen. We gotta work in reality as opposed to waiting for that moment where everything has spiraled into utter shit that would make Russia 1917 look like Disneyland

So once everything is absolutely fucked beyond repair americans will finally realize. that is depressing.
I honestly think civil war and secession are always imminent. not only did california try to secede but when you look at the individual state economies, if the usa lost california new york, and or texas, the union would be fucked and some states like georgia have actually passed laws saying that if the government puts any more restrictions on guns or religion they will secede, remember when obama one for a second time and a bunch of southern states voted to secede. When the usa collapses it will be out of the most relatively mild reasons imaginable.

Debs and the Pullman Strike got a couple paragraphs in my high school textbook but my teacher then went on and told us how all that justified the Red Scare and the Palmer raids. My teacher was a union member too…

...

Idk fam, I was mostly memeing, but it does feel like that sometimes. I think we should do everything in our power to organize and agitate, but when only 16% of workers are Unionized and most of the country has to argue about whether or not healthcare or a job are a right, it seems like a real uphill struggle. I don't advocate nihilism or defeatism, but when the Left is as fringe and obscure as it is in the U.S. I think we should at least prepare ourselves for the possibility that we're fucked. Or at least that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

In certain curriculums you still learn about him, but not all. Heavily dependent upon what school you're at because although curriculum standards are set by the federal and state governments, what facts are taught vary by textbook and administrator.

However, pretty much everywhere you're going to get a negative view on socialism and communism without actually learning what they are.

Its illegal to be a communist in the U.S, there is no way that curriculum standards are going to allow teaching the other side.

Are you fucking kidding me? Do teachers in the US not have to have some sort of bar exam or certificate? What I've heard from my American friends is that most "professors" In US collages are actually just doctors, sometimes not even that. In Europe when you are called a professor, you are actually a professor, who habilitated and administers a chairs.

Conservatives. I have family members who to this day that still think Obama and Hillary are communists.

Nope. We were never taught about Debs, not even in high school. We were, however, taught that the Soviets intentionally starved people, because their ideology was based on misanthropy, and thus the natural conclusion was to mass murder people. Or something.

If you're to the left of Hillary Clinton you're not given any mainstream platform to explain your views or allowed any significant role in government. Because of this the right controls the narrative and their view is that fascism and communism are twin totalitarian ideologies. It's not always the teachers fault.

One time like 3 people agreed that the cold war was a conventional war that happened entirely in the 1960s and was caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Normies are retarded.

I learned a lot about the labor movement in high school despite growing up in a rural area. Teacher told us that socialism isn't a bad thing and talked about how the government targeted communists and anarchists during the red scare.

In my highschool economics class (taught by the same woman who did my history classes) it would be laughable. when we were learning about different economies we were taught two main economies here is the short version of how they were taught
A girl who lived in the impoverished part of town asked "why would anyone want communism it sounds awful" my teacher shrugs and replies "some people just prefer it I guess" this was completely unexaggerated and I died a little on the inside when it happened.

youtube.com/watch?v=BzBEHYsWKwI
I was shown this video in my AP Microeconomics class (itself the height of classcuckery) when I was already a leftist. My blood was boiling the entire time.

AP US Politics and Government was even worse because it was a semester of being talked at by one of those smug neoliberal "centrists" who think they know everything but are actually pathetically ignorant, the kind who clutch their pearls at Trump's election and care about whether Congress is made up of old white men or black transgender lesbians.

At least I won't have to take those classes in college.

I'm the user above you we had to watch this
youtu.be/S6HEH23W_bM

They're actually allowed to show PragerU in classrooms? Wow. I get it that the government has a vested interest in promoting boot-licking of the bourgeoisie, but even that seems too far.

Ain't that funny?
If the US government and the porkies left them alone, they would've degraded into socdems.
But they wouldn't and they couldn't and now the US is fucked up beyond repair.

That was the least propaganda I had seen in a social studies course. in middle school I went to a private school where we watched "make mine freedom" youtu.be/mVh75ylAUXY
We also had textbooks that literally claimed that secularism environmentalism and women's rights are of the devil.

Both of my granddads hunted communists during the 50ies for the bureau.
If they are to be believed, Marilyn Monroe and Buddy Holly were both commies.

one of them fed marilyn the suicide pills and the other fucked up buddy holly's plane

This may actually be the case.
I'm afraid to ask, tbh. That's why I am hiding my powerlevel.

Makes my dick hard every time when I hear him sing it. No other singer does it right.

Oh don't worry at least that's coming back

Does the average person know about much of anything which happened before WW2?

How extreme!

It's pretty weak but if anyone had said these things in the 90s they would be thought of as a brainwashed wonk

Reminder that Bookchin as a burger.

Average American understanding of their own history:

>George Washington, greatest military leader of all time my dad got very mad at me when i contested that particular one, overthrows the British Empire and then Jefferson communes with God to wrote the Holy Constitution

Whoa, how could anyone unironically believe Washington, who's only military achievement was to lead a provincial revolt against the British, is a better military leader than say, Napoleon, who conquered all of Europe?

And even then he had to have the french help.

Because Americans are arrogant and absolute fucking idiots. Jfc I hate living around these people.

Wouldn't have happened to be in Lowell, would it? Those mills are cool.

No mention of Debs in school. The only mention of socialism really was in middle school, fucking teacher had some shitty analogy about how capitalism is great because you get all the choices of ice cream possible, whereas communism means you get only 1 choice of ice cream. In retrospect it was some of the most retarded shit I've ever heard.

I'm willing to bet though this is by design. They don't teach about communism because they want us to be ignorant. Even slander isn't good because it informs the person it exists. Better to leave them completely in the dark.

I grew up in Milwaukee so we learned a bit about the sewer socialists when they taught us local history in elementary school, and I think because of the sewer socialist background here we learned a little bit about the Russian Revolution at face value without any elaboration on communism in grade school. Then when you get to WWII you learn about how Stalin is literally the same as Hitler, but even then it was more about Stalin himself and not so much about the "inherent evils of communism". And in high school's coverage of WWII they actually gave a little bit more truth about how active the Soviets were for the Allies, but nothing major. But I'm aware this is very much the exception and not the rule.

Wow, I'm an American and I have never heard the name Debs ever talked about.

Is it really?

No, but you're liable to get put on a watchlist, and you can't run for government office iirc

Honestly, as an American my first exposure to the word "Marxism" was on this board

It's fucking shameful.

No, we never learned about Debs when I was in school. No mention of him in middle school of high school.

Marxism isn't really discussed much either. Teachers mainly went on about "Gommunism bad", "US won Cold War". So really, if you wanted to learn about Communism & Socialism in general, you'd have to look it up yourself.

technically, you cannot legally become an american if you're a member of "the communist party" or promote the idea of "worldwide communism". in fact if you apply for citizenship there's a section specifically asking you if you're a commie.

Lucky enough to be in a district where the high school was surrounded by a bunch of rich fucks in nice suburbs (idk how it works for non-burgers but in ameriga schools get or used to get their funding from property taxes, which means that even if it's not the case anymore public schools with lots of departments and nice buildings will almost always be in rich areas). That means we had a really nice building, a good teachers union which my mom is treasurer of, and a social studies department staffed with lots of big degrees including one doctorate.

In my required freshman US history class we spent a week on the Haymarket massacre and Sacco and Venzetti trial. In addition we had an entire UNIT literally called "US Imperialism", plus another unit about Vietnam that absolutely did not cast it in a good light. It doesn't satisfy all of my commie masturbatiom fantasies but I definitely lucked out.

The worst was an AP world history class where the teacher thought working class=lower class so he claimed that Marx was wrong because he couldn't know about the "emerging middle class", which means his dislectictics were wrong because there were 3 things instead of 2. Idk man.