When Ignorance Organizes

Monday, May 4, 2026

Minneapolis suffered an actual communist May Day Rally this past Friday.  I wish it were surprising, but it’s not.  What is astonishing; however, is the utter ignorance of  some of the participants.

Consider:

Andy Koch, a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, told Fox News Digital the U.S. is “run by billionaires” and should instead be run by working people. He said support from a wealthy donor would be acceptable if it advanced the cause.

“If one billionaire … wants to donate to progressive pro-worker causes, that’s great,” Koch said.

When asked for examples of successful socialist systems, Koch pointed to China, saying, “China’s doing pretty good right now,” and he praised the former Soviet Union for having “done a lot for its people.

I am not sure how many people have been to and worked in both the Soviet Union and Communist China, but I am among them.  In China is was a short term assignment where I was paid by a western company attempting to break into the market.  I visited the Soviet Union, in its dying days, as part of a technology exchange delegation.  I can say from personal experience neither was or is praiseworthy.

In China an extremely high-ranking official refused to entertain me in his home because, as he stated quite directly, “I have been to America and my humble abode would look impoverished to your American eyes.”  And if the Soviet Union did so much good for its people, why in the world did it die as its population rejected it?  Of course, Andy Koch (whoever that is), is simply and stunningly ignorant.  And judging from the photographs of the event not old enough to know anything about the Soviet Union other than a few paragraphs in a world history book.

That’s not the issue here.  The issue here is that such a level of ignorance managed to organize sufficiently to put on a 1000 person rally.  Not only did the internet allow these very uneducated people to find each other (old news by now), but anymore it would appear that schools protect the ignorant.  We have, it would seem, become so overwhelmed with the desire to make everyone “feel good about themselves” that we can no longer call ignorance what it is.

I have no idea the current state of the psychological studies as they morph faster than flies breeding.  I know in my day it appeared the positive reinforcement worked better than negative, at least with dogs and on an individual basis.  But here we are with the internet supplying constant reinforcement for ignorance and confirmation bias.  Why should you learn when you can find other ignorant people to hang out with?  Why should you study if your school is just going to make sure you still feel good about not knowing things?

No wonder history repeats itself.