Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is making the media rounds again over his new graphic novel in which he publicly throws his white adoptive parents under the bus for their supposed racism.
His comments in a recent TV interview seem to encourage more sons and daughters to do the same in order to change the culture. It is a tactic right out of any Communist playbook — and alarmingly a growing trend in American discourse.
According to Kaepernick, who is black, his parents would make “problematic” comments from time to time. On one occasion, he wanted to wear cornrows as a teenager like his idol — NBA superstar Allen Iverson. His mother objected, stating that they made him look like “a little thug,” he claimed.
“I know my parents love me, but there were still very problematic things that I went through,” he said during a recent interview. “It was important to show that, no this can happen in your own home and how we move forward collectively while addressing the racism that is being perpetuated.”
Critics were appalled by his disparaging comments toward those who adopted him. As an adult, Kaepernick now seems to be following different role models — that of communists who have often urged children to turn on their parents for their political views.
The two most infamous examples of that tactic can be found in Mao Zedong’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China, children were indoctrinated to report their mothers and fathers to the Chinese Communist Party if they opposed Mao’s edicts.
“Those with ‘bad parents’ suffered a lot and they resented their parents instead of resenting the system which brainwashed them daily,” Michel Bonnin of Tsinghua University, told The Guardian in 2013.
Accused individuals were forced to endure public humiliation in “struggle sessions” until they renounced their conservative views and joined the cause.
One child during that time, Zhang Hongbing, came to regret his actions and how he was conditioned to detest his mother because she was not sufficiently devoted to the communist leader.
“I warned her: ‘If you go against our dear Chairman Mao I will smash your dog head,'” Zhang told the British paper in 2013. “I felt this wasn’t my mother. This wasn’t a person. She suddenly became a monster … She had become a class enemy and opened her bloody mouth.”
His mother was eventually executed for going against Mao.
Yet as Zhang explained, “For a child to criticize their parents wasn’t just our household. The whole country was doing it.”
Mao understood that if the family unit could be broken, and children displayed more allegiance to the state, then he could amass authority.
In Cambodia, the Marxist dictator Pol Pot used a similar strategy.
“During the Pol Pot regime, the ultimate act of loyalty was for a child to spy on and turn in a mother or father who did not wholeheartedly embrace the Khmer Rouge brand of Communism,” The New York Times Magazine succinctly summarized in 1984. “Though they did not fully understand the consequences of their acts, such children, in effect, signed their own parents’ death warrants.”
Both Communist regimes killed millions of their own citizens.
This is not to say that Kaepernick wants to conduct mass murder nor that he poses a similar threat as Pol Pot or Mao. It is, however, to warn that Communist regimes start by disrupting the family unit.
Keep in mind that Black Lives Matter, co-founded by open Marxist Patrisse Cullors, used to point-blank admit that their goal was to dismantle the nuclear family. Cullors has praised Kaepernick for “playing such a powerful role” in the movement. In 2020, he teamed up with black radical and former United States Communist Party member Angela Davis for a project titled “Abolition for the People” which featured essays seemingly inspired by Critical Race Theory ideals and promoted a “global liberation from systemic oppression.”
CRT, of course, has been described as race-based Marxism.
Kaepernick isn’t alone in using his parents’ political differences, real or imagined, to push his ideology.
Readers will remember the daughter on TikTok who trashed her dead father at his own funeral for allegedly being a “racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, Trump-loving, cis, straight white man.” She received dozens, if not hundreds, of comments in support.
Across America, we see attacks on parental rights and the idea that public school teachers should have the final say on education. Young students, in effect, are being taught to distrust their parents as well.
It is important to stop that movement from gaining any more steam and that we remember the lessons of the past — or it could turn into something far worse.
As Zhang said of China’s Cultural Revolution that put younger generations against their elders, “We must remember this painful historical lesson and never let it happen again.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.