Michele Bachmann In 2002: Education Reform Could Lead To Second Holocaust

Michele Bachmann and Michael Chapman of EdWatch, an educational “watchdog group,” put out a film in 2002 highlighting Bachmann’s views on education. Bachmann endorsed Chapman’s abhorrent views.

[Chapman] claimed that state and federal education reforms were leading the United States toward its own Holocaust. Minnesota’s new curriculum standards, Bachmann contended, were going to “undermine our freedom and undermine our national sovereignty” and turn children into “global citizens.” The “brave new world” Chapman warned about, she said, wouldn’t be far behind…

At one point Chapman quoted Hitler: “When an opponent declares I will not come over to your side, I calmly say: ‘Your child belongs to us already.'” And he framed the educational debate as an existential crisis. America, he insisted, had become the most powerful force for good in the history of the world on account of its moral foundation. Now education standards were putting all that at risk.

“Have we evolved beyond the capability of repeating the atrocities of the past? I don’t think so,” Chapman said. “In Nazi Germany the utilitarian worldview led to Auschwitz,” he continued. “And as the victims passed under the shadow of Hitler’s Final Solution, they were tauntingly reminded one last time that they have outlived their usefulness. The iron gates carried the message ‘arbeit macht frei’: Work makes you free.”

At this point in the film, an image of the concentration camp flashed on the screen, the Nazi slogan splashed across it in large red letters. “In America the truth makes us free,” said Chapman, pounding his fist on the lectern. “And it’s time we had the truth from the state about what this freedom is, or we’re gonna lose our freedom in the next generation. Mark my words.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.