Teachers in Portland’s public schools are propagandizing children into hating their country while also encouraging them to become “race-conscious revolutionaries” who will grow up to support political ideologies antithetical to the founding principles of constitutional republicanism, investigative journalist Chris Rufo told Fox News Monday night.
In an interview with host Laura Ingraham, Rufo discussed a piece he wrote for City Journal titled “The Child Soldiers of Portland,” in which he described curriculum discovered within Portland and surrounding public schools that essentially trains students in the elementary grades to grow up to be lifelong left-wing radicals.
Rufo, in his piece, notes that while Portland has been nicknamed “the whitest city in America,” its residents and city leaders have, over the past few years, increasingly adopted measures aimed at pushing back against alleged “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” He also noted that the city’s public schools have adopted “a program of political education for their students that borders on propaganda” aimed at transforming them into “child soldiers” who reject America’s founding as inherently racist and who will embrace a Marxist ‘revolutionary’ ideology.
“This is not hyperbole: some of the most active and violent anarchist groups in Portland are run by teenagers, and dozens of minors were arrested during last year’s riots. These groups have taken up the mantle of climate change, anticapitalism, antifascism, and Black Lives Matter—whatever provides a pretext for violent ‘direct action,'” he wrote.
Before bringing in Rufo, Ingraham played a clip of youths in Portland last year chasing down a man and knocking him out cold on the street. One of the youths, whom the host said was 14 years old, kicked the man in the head after he had fallen to the pavement.
Asked to respond, Rufo acknowledged Ingraham’s point that Portland has historically been a very liberal city but noted that the ideology being taught to kids is spreading around the country. He also pointed out that during last year’s numerous Antifa- and Black Lives Matter-related protests, many of the violent rioters who were arrested were students and teachers at the local schools.
“Some of these teachers, despite being arrested for violent riots, are still employed by the district. They’ve doubled and tripled down on revolutionary rhetoric, and that’s exactly what they’re pushing to the youngest people in our society,” Rufo said.
Ingraham went on to mention a Portland public school project called “TechSmart” that is supposedly designed to improve literacy, but which has become just another vehicle to push radical leftist ideals to the youngest students K-5th grade.
She then played a video clip Rufo obtained of a young teacher who appears to be indoctrinating her students, telling them they’ve “trained for this moment” to participate in protests against alleged “injustice.”
“Now is the time to show that you will fight for justice,” the unnamed female teacher says.
A flabbergasted Ingraham went on to ask Rufo what the teacher was saying had to do with “improving literacy.”
The journalist responded by noting that the real objective of the teacher’s lessons is to push Marxism and radicalize her young charges.
“Keep in mind she is speaking to elementary school students, telling them that they need to become justice fighters, telling them that they need to get out into the streets and fight along with the protesters in Portland,” he added.
Rufo went on to note that in the same school, “minority teachers” were permitted “to berate white teachers for 90 seconds in a kind of display of public apology for their whiteness.”
“These are the kinds of things that are happening within the institutions,” he added. “If it’s not in your school district now, they’re pushing to put it everywhere in the coming years.”