By Rosemary Dwyer, First Place winner of the 2024 Human Rights Essay Contest – Undergraduate Division
“The future belongs to you young people, just as it once belonged to the generation of those who are now adults, and precisely together with them it has become the present reality.”
-Pope John Paul II, Dilecti Amici
The United States has a great weight of responsibility upon her shoulders regarding relations between different nations and people. She stands as a beacon of morality, influencing the vast majority of global interactions, which include and are not limited to culture, politics, and religion; the list goes on. In this way, it is the United States’ duty to take the utmost care to ensure that the values and foundations on which she was built upon apply to every individual on Earth. After all, she preaches of values such as justice, peace, freedom for all, and happiness. The question is, do these values only apply to America and its own people? When does the United States step in to rally for those not granted privileges such as freedom of speech or religion, especially when they live halfway across the globe?
As the newly appointed Secretary of State, I would like to highlight the undeniable fact that the desire for a Communist society is encroaching upon and seeping into our own culture today. I would specifically like to highlight the fact that America’s own younger generations are those falling for Communist propaganda. Now, some may hear this and brush it off as a mere conspiracy or as a political fear tactic. But this could not be further from the truth. Among Millennials and Gen Z, only one in two still favored capitalism over communism.1 Astonishingly, only 57% of American Gen Z believe China to be an actual Communist country, with the other 43% believing it to be a democratic country. 2 How could almost half of America’s young people believe such a falsity? The answer lies in our own American education, or lack thereof, as well as “historical amnesia”.
Before I lay out the facts and statistics of other recorded studies, I would like to also tell of my own experience. Mr. President, never, not once throughout my own educational journey, whether it be in middle school or highschool, was I taught about The Great Leap Forward and the fatal toll that it took upon China’s own citizens. Never was I taught of the genocide of the Uyghur people that is still raging on today. I had never heard of the “thought camps” that China conducts in order to control populations of those deemed “suspicious” or “dangerous to the state”. This is extremely detrimental to our society because our younger people are those that will be leading our country’s future. We are meant to pave their way and to instruct them on the value of human life, as well as the inherent dignity that each person holds. We are meant to teach them objective truth, and keep them watchful of the ideas that work to destroy a free society and the free man. We may have believed the fight to be over after the Cold War with the USSR, but Mr. President, we are in a bit of a Cold War even now, this time with China being at the forefront.
And by “historical amnesia”, I mean that the younger generations of our country today do not remember the atrocities of Communist regimes because they have not lived through them or are so far removed from them. This kind of safety actually has proven to be a bubble of privilege. Our society is extremely privileged to have lived with the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, even the freedom to vote for whom we want. We have the luxury of deciding where we want to send our children to school, and even how many children we want to have. Citizens in China do not have such a luxury. It cannot be stressed enough how detrimental it is to have a large portion of our citizens believe that Communism is the ideal government that will actually support their own desires and will give each citizen equal freedom.
The Action Institute has outlined the difference between the fight against Communism back then and the fight against it today: “In the Cold War, the struggle against Marxism was geostrategic. Today, it takes place within societies and hearts.”3 Communism is exactly what it has always been depicted as: an extremely dangerous and contagious virus. Once it infects, it is hard to find the antidote.
However, although the youth may be in favor of Communism and may seem to be Communism’s greatest weapon, they also are democracy’s greatest ally. As I mentioned to you before Mr. President, the youth of our country is that which could either allow our country to fall into the hands of such an evil force of ideas, or it could be the savior. If we would only make an effort to teach throughout the schools what the values of our country really means for ourselves and those around the world, we would find the youth to be the antidote against the virus. We must adequately teach our citizens of the horrors of what it is like and has always been like to live under a regime that does not value people for themselves, but rather for itself.
If citizens believe that they would have more equality living in a communist society, then let it be known that a lesson covering the Thought Camps of China would benefit the people of America. They must hear of its unbearable conditions that it puts its citizens through, from those that have experienced it firsthand. Let it be known that Uyghur Muslims are imprisoned in these camps for the sake of being muslim, under the excuse that Uyghurs are more likely to commit crimes because of their “extremist” beliefs, and so the government controls their beliefs and reverses their thoughts in favor of the Communist government. This is so the Uyghurs will not be able to commit a crime before it has occurred or before any Uyghur shows signs of committing any crimes at all.4 Let me especially note that the crime of the Uyghurs is ultimately the fact that they are muslim. Their “extremist ideas” are as simple as fasting during Ramadan.5
If American citizens believe that they would have equal resources and the poor would no longer suffer, then our country would also benefit in a lesson of the Great Leap Forward. According to the Association for Asian Studies, “From 1960–1962, an estimated thirty million people died of starvation in China, more than any other single famine in recorded human history.”6 This event is described as being an effort to produce more resources than Great Britain was at the time of the Industrial Revolution, which ultimately backfired and fatally took the lives of millions. The people were pressured to perform on the agricultural front as well as industrial, but there were not enough resources to provide for such unrealistic goals, and so ultimately much of China starved.
Finally, if the younger generation are opposed to Capitalism because they believe it to be fascist, then I want to further highlight the undeniable fact that in the past hundred years, Communism has claimed four times the lives of those claimed by the Nazis, This means that Communism is responsible for the deaths of 65-100 million people.7
Mr. President, what we do today is what will determine the future of our country, and the world. The young people of our country, the young people of today’s now, are tomorrow’s leaders and foundation layers. To stand idly is to give up our country and our ideals into the hands of a divisive and corrupt future. Let us then educate our young! The power of education and ideas can change generations of ignorance! The power of education is what actively shapes history! So then let us be resolute, lest we forget those who have fallen victim to Communism, with it claiming lives and freedoms. Lest we forget who man is, and the love of God that molds a righteous government. Lest we forget the value of every single man’s life!
1 “Annual Survey Shows Growing Favorability of Communism, Socialism among Millennials”, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
2 Ibid.
3 Johnson, Ben. “Half of Gen Z Supports Marxism/Socialism. Here’s Why.”
4 BBC News. “Inside China’s ‘Thought Transformation’ Camps.”
5 Maizland, Lindsay. “China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.”
6 Brown, Clayton. “China’s Great Leap Forward.”
7 Kosta, Brunilda. “Communism Killed Some 100 Million People”.
Works Cited
“Annual Survey Shows Growing Favorability of Communism, Socialism among Millennials | Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.” 2019. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. October 28, 2019.
https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-survey-shows-growing-favorability-communism-sociali sm-among-millennials/.
Brown, Clayton. 2012. “China’s Great Leap Forward.” Association for Asian Studies. Association for Asian Studies. 2012.
https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/chinas-great-leap-forward/.
BBC News. n.d. “Inside China’s ‘Thought Transformation’ Camps.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-48667221.
Johnson, Ben. “Half of Gen Z Supports Marxism/Socialism. Here’s Why.” Religion & Liberty Online. October 23, 2020.
https://rlo.acton.org/archives/117396-half-of-gen-z-supports-marxism-socialism-heres-why.html.
Kosta, Brunilda. “Communism Killed Some 100 Million People”. Research Gate.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Communism-Killed-Some-100-Million-People_fig1_324755 193.
Maizland, Lindsay. “China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.” Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations. September 22, 2022.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-right.