How to identify right-wing children in kindergartens and make them left-wing

Germany's biggest newspaper, Bild, reported that a 60-page guide Ene, Mene, Muh – And You’re Out! has been issued to help kindergarten teachers and parents deal with children who had expressed racist sentiments or appeared to be indoctrinated by neo-Nazi ideology. 

In a story entitled "Row over snooping manual," Bild suggested that it was an attempt to get children to identify “Nazi parents”.

Die Welt in turn criticised Bild for picking up the story from right-wing blogs, which made much of the description of a case where kindergarten teachers had to deal with two children whose parents belonged to a far-right organisation. The guide was quoted as saying:

"The girl wears dresses and braids, she is directed to do housework at home, while the boy faces strong physical challenges and drills." 

Die Welt explained that this passage was taken out of context, referred to specific children and that in general girls in dresses and braids are not suspicious. 

This is how right-wing allegations are always treated - with a sigh and a factual correction that partly or wholly misses the point.


I do not know if the Bild article mentioned that the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which issued the guide, is headed by a self-confessed former Stasi informant, Annette Kahane. For this information I am indebted to Breitbart, a source of which Die Welt would not approve and might consider far right. 

Breitbart, for its part, describes the Foundation as far left. I trust Breitbart's judgement in these matters. It has a good track record for accuracy.

This story is another example of a former nomenklaturist from the Eastern Bloc in a position of power and influence. Another, of course, is Angela Merkel. The European Commission is full of such people. Several ex-Communists sit in the Commission including Romania's Corina Crețu, formerly Ion Iliescu's secretary and Colin Powell's friend. 

To be fair to her, Miss Crețu is not necessarily authoritarian and is reported to strike a blow for freedom by obstinately smoking in her office in Brussels.

Eastern Europeans can be communists but are often (depending on your point of view) refreshingly free from political correctness or racist, sexist and homophobic. They are being shoved swiftly in a socially liberal direction under the European Union's tutelage, or at least the ones under 40 are. On the other hand they see reality better than Westerners. A lot of the leaders of AfD are East Germans.

Schools and universities in the West over recent decades have created social liberals but kindergartens matter enormously. Give me a boy to the age of seven and I shall give you the man, is the old Jesuit maxim. That was before the Jesuits became left-wing.

Bill Ayers, who co-founded the Weathermen, a communist revolutionary group that conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in the USA in the late 1960s, spent the time that his wife Bernardine Dohrn was in prison for the attacks running a kindergarten. He did so to instil his political ideas in the very young about, among other things, 'white skin privilege', a phrase the Weathermen coined, and sexual equality. These ideas are now accepted by everyone 

He became a Distinguished Professor of Education and he won the battle for young minds, which is much more effective than bombing public buildings. 

That was decades ago. Bringing the story up to date, Edina is a smart suburb of Minneapolis whose education authority has mandated that henceforth “all teaching and learning experiences” would be viewed through the “lens of racial equity,” and that only “racially conscious” teachers and administrators should be hired. 

One Nicaraguan American, Orlando Flores, pulled his son out of Edina High School during his senior year to escape the politicised environment. Flores had fled the Marxist regime in Nicaragua as a child. He was reported as saying

“Years ago, we fled Communism to escape indoctrination, absolutist thinking and restrictions on our freedom of speech. If we see these traits in our schools in America, we must speak out and oppose it.”