1. COLIN WILSON (rs21) REVIEWS ANTI-GENDER POLITICS IN THE POPULIST MOVEMENT<\/h2>\n
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On September 26th<\/sup>\u00a02021, a Swiss referendum produced an overwhelming decision in favour of same-sex marriage, while German voters elected two trans women to the country\u2019s parliament \u2013 the first openly trans people to take their seats there. But there\u2019s a stark difference between these advances for LGBT people and developments in some Eastern European countries. In Poland, local government bodies covering about a third of the country have declared themselves to be \u2018LGBT-free zones\u2019. The hard right Fidesz government in Hungary have abolished legal recognition of trans people, effectively forbidden same-sex couples from adopting children and banned the depiction of homosexual relationships in materials targeted at or accessible to children, conflating homosexuality and paedophilia.\u00a0Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment<\/em>\u00a0helps us understand these developments in the former Warsaw Pact countries, their links with the far-right internationally, and gives an inspiring example of people fighting back.<\/p>\n The grim truth, however, is that millions of people have been mobilised across Europe \u2013 West to East \u2013 by a movement which opposes \u2018gender\u2019, seeks to defend \u2018the family\u2019 and claims that children are in danger and must be protected. Throughout Europe, this movement is part of the populist right \u2013 in France, the 2013 \u2018Manif pour Tous\u2019 brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets against marriage equality and was supported by the French far right, while a 2019 \u2018World Congress of Families\u2019 took place in Verona and featured hard-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini as its star speaker. So, as Graff and Korolczuk make clear, growing homophobia and transphobia in Eastern Europe don\u2019t have their origin in the \u2018backwardness\u2019 of a region supposedly still blighted by decades of \u2018communism\u2019 and so unable to advance into \u2018enlightened modernity\u2019. These ideas originate from, and are promoted by, networks of powerful people in the West. The Catholic church has consistently opposed equality for women and LGBT people, and Pope Francis \u2013 despite his undeserved reputation as a liberal \u2013 continues to do so. In Poland, the \u2018anti-gender\u2019 movement has the additional function for the Catholic church of shifting public discussion away from child sexual abuse by priests, widespread in that country as elsewhere. Homophobic and transphobic claims are supported by the hard right internationally \u2013 as in the cases of Trump and Bolsonaro \u2013 which spreads its ideas through a well-funded and coordinated network of campaign groups and think tanks. These are the people, incidentally, with whom some British so-called leftists and feminists are aligning themselves.<\/p>\n What exactly are those hard right ideas, and why do many people find them credible? As Graff and Korolczuk make clear, a key factor in Eastern Europe is the experience of neoliberalism since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As they put it, \u2018what most Poles and Hungarians hoped for in 1989 was [a] system akin to the Swedish welfare state of the seventies\u2026 What they got, however, was closer to the American model in the eighties\u2019 and the slogan \u2018every man for himself\u2019. Rather than Polish people experiencing the living standards of workers in Hamburg, Paris or London, over 2 million Poles emigrated in search of work. Multinationals set up factories in Poland, staffed by workers who were as educated as Western Europeans but paid less. Accession to the EU was part of this same picture. Countries such as Poland and Hungary were presented with the accumulated body of EU laws and told to enact them in their own states, including laws about LGBT equality. The European Commission didn\u2019t consult with LGBT people in those countries about what they wanted and needed \u2013 these reforms happened over their heads.<\/p>\n It\u2019s in this context, which the populist right describe as a kind of \u2018colonisation\u2019, that hard right ideologues make the claim in Eastern Europe that \u2018gender\u2019 is being promoted by a corrupt international capitalist elite, who impose their ideas on innocent and authentic \u2018ordinary\u2019 people, including the poor and the helpless. There is a remarkable cynicism in the way that such leaders, part of well-funded international networks, can claim to represent the disadvantaged. It\u2019s much easier to understand why Polish or Hungarian workers might find these claims attractive. They have seen communities eroded and everyday lives become more unstable. Social forces they identify with stability \u2013 the nation and the \u2018traditional family\u2019 where parents both control and protect their children \u2013 seem under attack. As Nicolas Bay, an MEP of the far right Front National, has put it, neoliberals \u2018support fragmented individualist \u201cnomadic man\u201d [as] only [an] economic actor who produces and consumes. We support a different vision of a man, not consumer but embedded in family\u2026 It is family that protects the weakest and old people.\u2019<\/p>\n As Graff and Korolczuk explain, \u2018the current attack on \u201cgender\u201d would not be such a success if right-wing populism did not address the real needs and grievances of many families in Europe\u2019. The other striking point here is that this is a populist politics, or claims to be such \u2013 anti-capitalist, for the many and against the few. It\u2019s a right-wing populism \u2013 it favours only those \u2018ordinary people\u2019 who come from \u2018our\u2019 country and live in \u2018traditional\u2019 families. But for those people, it provides a sense of legitimation. What\u2019s more, in Poland the hard-right Law and Justice Party provides families with not just legitimation but hard cash. Since 2015, families are paid 500 z\u0142oty (about \u00a393) each month for each child, government spending on childcare tripled between 2015 and 2018, and public spending on pro-family policies rose as a share of GDP by over two-thirds between 2015 and 2017. In Hungary, every married couple gets an interest-free \u20ac30,000 loan if the woman is aged 18 to 40 and pregnant, as well as subsidised loans to buy or build a house, and grants to buy a bigger family car.<\/p>\n This can seem an alarming prospect. We\u2019re used to right-wingers like the Johnson government, who espouse pro-family and transphobic rhetoric but then attack actual working-class families, for example by removing the \u00a320 Universal Credit uplift. The obvious response from the left is to point out they are hypocrites who don\u2019t deliver \u2013 and that\u2019s a harder case to make if a far-right government gives families monthly cash or an interest-free loan. But Graff and Korolczuk highlight that even in these situations, resistance is possible. In October 2016, for example, in response to a proposed ban on abortion, over 150,000 people took part in protests in 200 cities and towns across Poland. Protesters ostentatiously walked out of church services, challenging not only the government but also the Catholic church \u2013 previously identified with democracy and Polish national identity, but in the eyes of many protesters now with the abuse of women and children. This movement involved many working-class women and other \u2018ordinary\u2019 people who had not been activists before, increasing their confidence to speak and campaign. Such protests mobilised righteous anger against distant political elites \u2013 but this was a genuine, grassroots, left populism as opposed to the fake right-wing variety with its concealed international links and financing.<\/p>\n Protests in defence of abortion rights took place on a similar or even larger scale in the autumn of 2020, after a major attack, so far successful, in the form of a legal ruling that the Polish constitution protected the life of a foetus. As Graff and Korolczuk comment, the 2016 protests formed part of the wave of women\u2019s struggles that inspired the book\u00a0Feminism for the 99 Percent<\/em>\u00a0by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser \u2013 and they exemplify one of its key ideas, that rather than defending the \u2018diversity\u2019 espoused by neoliberal corporations, we need a feminism integrated with struggles for economic justice and against racism, homophobia and transphobia. Likewise, the more campaigners for LGBT freedom in Eastern Europe seek help from their \u2018powerful friend\u2019 in the EU, the more they inadvertently endorse right-wing claims, which a left populist approach could undermine.<\/p>\n Graff and Korolczuk\u2019s book, all in all, is a valuable contribution to helping us understand our enemy as we struggle to build the movement we need. It can be downloaded for free\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n 26th October 2021<\/p>\n This article was first posted at Review | Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment<\/a><\/p>\n also see article Reproductive Racism<\/em> by Sophia Saddiqi in Race & Class<\/em>, October 2021<\/p>\n In the past few months, school boards around the country have been overrun by crowds of right wing parents and community members protesting against trans kids in bathrooms, trans kids on sports teams and against the teaching of \u201ccritical race theory\u201d in school. This is the center of the new Republican strategy for the midterms: focus on schools. This isn\u2019t a concern coming up organically for families. After all, Fox News mentioned \u201ccritical race theory\u201d\u00a01,300 times<\/a>in less than four months. And Glenn Youngkin, the new governor-elect of Virginia, hung his electoral campaign on attacks on trans kids, and critical race theory (CRT).<\/p>\n But this isn\u2019t just a Virginia issue; anti-trans and anti-CRT laws are being passed around the country and the Republicans believe they have found a winning issue. That means the attacks are only going to keep coming.<\/p>\n These are attacks on schools, on students and on teachers. We need a national struggle by teachers\u2019 unions to fight this right wing offensive in schools.<\/p>\n Attacks on trans kids in schools take many forms, from the right to bathrooms to the right to play on sports teams. Eight anti-trans sports bans have passed in the past few months in Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Montana, West Virginia, and Texas. These laws ban trans kids from playing sports on teams that correspond to their gender. Texas\u2019s law\u00a0 was publicly litigated, and trans kids came in to plead their case. 8 year old Sunny Bryant told the Texas State Legislature: \u201cMy first visit to the Capitol should have been on a school field trip, not defending my right to exist, but if I don\u2019t show up, you won\u2019t see the real stories. Kids like me whose futures will be crushed, opportunities taken away even before I\u2019m given a chance to try.\u201d Her powerful testimony didn\u2019t stop the bill\u2014it passed in Texas, and others like it passed in multiple states across the country.<\/p>\n In Tennessee\u2019s anti-LGBTQ education bill, passed earlier this year, school districts are required to notify parents before \u201cproviding a sexual orientation curriculum or gender identity curriculum\u201d in any kind of instruction, including but not limited to education on sexuality. According to the Human Rights Campaign, \u201cA district will be forced to notify parents, provide curriculum materials, and allow parents to opt students out of learning about important modern and historical events, from the A.I.D.S. epidemic to the Stonewall riots to even Supreme Court jurisprudence.\u201d<\/p>\n In Virginia, a sexual assault case became the centerpiece of a transphobic right-wing smear campaign. It was originally spun as the tried-and-true transphobic narrative of a trans person sexually assaulting a helpless girl in a bathroom. In reality, the student who committed the sexual assault does not identify as trans. But this didn\u2019t stop the Right from using this story to whip up fear of trans people and bringing back \u201cbathroom bill\u201d rhetoric which keeps trans people from using the correct bathroom\u2014subjecting them to greater threats of violence. School board meetings have become the center of these battles in Virginia and all over the country. Just a few days ago,\u00a0a California school board meeting<\/a>was bombarded by religious leaders and right-wingers who spoke out against the right of trans kids to use the bathroom.<\/p>\n Clearly, the right wing is up in arms about sexual assault only when they can employ it as a weapon against trans students\u00a0\u2014\u00a0certainly not when Brett Kavanaugh or Donald Trump does it. Glenn Youngkin is only concerned with sexual assault when it can win votes by creating fear around the spectre of trans kids in schools.<\/p>\n In the minds of right-wing bigots, protecting trans kids and the teaching of \u201ccritical race theory\u201d go hand in hand, threatening innocent children all over the country. Small groups of right-wingers have taken school board meetings by storm to shout about this issue\u2014it\u2019s an issue that surfaced in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, as well as in many local school board elections. While right-wingers call it \u201ccritical race theory,\u201d what they are actually protesting is the teaching of basic U.S. history in schools.<\/p>\n Some of the people storming school board meetings aren\u2019t even parents at all. Take Mladen Chargin, who attended a school board meeting in rural Nevada, despite having no children in the school system. Chargin argues that \u201cthe only purpose [of Critical Race Theory] is the division and destruction of the United States. That is the purpose.\u201d In West Bend, Wisconsin, a woman who spoke\u00a0before the school board\u00a0<\/a>called CRT \u201cdivisive, biased, radically left Marxism designed to further alienate our American children from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n Already, schools are banning CRT in states including Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, New Hampshire, Arizona, and South Carolina. In actuality, Critical Race Theory is a\u00a0legal framework\u00a0<\/a>that students have discussed in university classrooms for the last 40 years. But that\u2019s not what these bans are about. These laws bar teaching the ugly truth of American history and the resistance of oppressed people, parts of history that are already woefully absent from school curricula.<\/p>\n As a report by\u00a0America\u2019s Promise Alliance<\/a>\u00a0shows, \u201cWhile police violence, protests, and calls for racial justice have occupied the public discourse in communities across the country, many students continue to lack access to opportunities to discuss race and racism within their classrooms.\u201d Only 56 percent of students said they discussed race and racism \u201csometimes or a great deal.\u201d Only about three in five students reported that their school curriculum represented nonwhite communities \u201csometimes or a great deal.\u201d<\/p>\n And as \u201ccritical race theory\u201d gets banned from schools, discussions of racism will become even more marginalized.<\/p>\n English teacher Mike Stein\u00a0told\u00a0Chalkbeat Tennessee<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that as a result of the new law, \u201chistory teachers can not adequately teach about the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. English teachers will have to avoid teaching almost any text by an African American author because many of them mention racism to various extents.\u201d<\/p>\n Critical race theory took center stage in both the Virginia and the New Jersey gubernatorial races. In Virginia, Youngkin promised to outlaw the teaching of critical race theory,\u00a0saying<\/a>, \u201cThere\u2019s no place for critical race theory in our school system, and why, on day one, I\u2019m going to ban it.\u201d<\/p>\n These right-wing attacks are attacks on teachers\u2014on the ability to teach\u00a0accurate history<\/em>\u00a0in the classroom. They are an attack on oppressed people: on trans students who will be denied basic rights at school, and on students of color who will continue to receive a disgustingly whitewashed version of history.<\/p>\n These laws are having the intended chilling effect: teachers are scared of losing their jobs. The laws against teaching about LGBT issues and critical race theory are written so ambiguously that they can essentially be used for anything. Teachers are already being fired, and many more are scared to lose their jobs. In Tennessee, a high school teacher was\u00a0fired<\/a>\u00a0after teaching Ta-Nehisi Coates\u2019s\u00a0essay<\/a>\u00a0\u201cThe First White President\u201d and showing a video of the spoken-word poem \u201cWhite Privilege<\/a>.\u201d A Black principal in Texas was\u00a0recently suspended without explanation<\/a>\u00a0after a\u00a0former school board candidate complained<\/a>\u00a0that he was promoting Critical Race Theory and held \u201cextreme views on race\u201d and \u201cthe conspiracy theory of systemic racism.\u201d<\/p>\n And these attacks aren\u2019t going anywhere.<\/p>\n Now that Youngkin has won the Virginia gubernatorial race, largely by employing the fear of trans kids and critical race theory, these attacks will only multiply. They are the centerpiece of the Republican electoral strategy going into 2022, and they will be at the center of Donald Trump\u2019s possible presidential campaign. While the Democrats will gladly denounce the Republicans, they haven\u2019t taken any significant action to defend trans rights or the teaching of true history in schools. Instead, the Obama administration had its own version of attacks on the study of history. Under Race to the Top there was a huge expansion of the use of racist standardized tests with a focus on Math and Reading. As a result, history continued to be cut from curricula across the country.<\/p>\n Teachers\u2019 unions must put up this fight, for teachers, for students and for the future of the education system. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association represent millions of teachers. They loudly proclaimed that Black Lives Matter last year during the uprising. But now, they must step up. The AFT and the NEA\u2014both national education unions\u2014must put up a\u00a0national<\/em>\u00a0fight, uniting with LGBTQ+ rights groups and other community organizations that address immigrants\u2019 rights, racism, and Black liberation. These are issues that unite us and it\u2019s time to organize in our workplaces and it\u2019s time to take the streets. The right wingers to attend school board meetings are minuscule compared to the united power of teachers\u2019 unions and community organizations invested in trans rights and the teaching of history in school. It\u2019s time to show it.<\/p>\n Teachers\u2019 unions must fight for teachers\u2019 as well as students\u2019 rights. They should demand that all students have equal rights and protections in schools, including the right to an education that does not brainwash students with pro-American propaganda, but tells the truth about oppression and exploitation.<\/p>\n 3rd November 2021<\/p>\n This article was first posted at Teachers Unions Must Fight the Attacks on Critical Race Theory and on Trans Kids<\/a><\/p>\n also see:-<\/p>\n 1. No more ‘delays’ in trans rights: reform the GRA now! – Leslie Cunningham, rs21<\/a><\/p>\n2. TEACHERS UNIONS MUST FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND TRANS KIDS<\/h2>\n
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\nSchools have become the center of right wing attacks. Attacks on trans kids and the teaching of history are likely to become the center of Republican’s midterm election strategy. Teacher’s unions need to fight back.<\/p>\nThe Attacks on Trans Kids<\/h3>\n
Attacks on Teaching about Racism<\/h3>\n
Teachers Unions Should Fight<\/h3>\n