UPDATED! Collectivism 134, Part 1: Empirical Errors and Philosemitic Racism
Written 1981, Revised 2020
Hello there, and welcome back to Awful Christian Education
Today we’re beginning our review of Collectivism 134, the second PACE in Accelerated Christian Education’s 12th grade Basic Government course. Each of the PACEs in this course were single-handedly written in 1981 by ACE’s founder, Donald Howard, and while the editors may have revised some grammatical errors since then, these PACEs haven’t received any substantive changes to this day.
If you need more context for what PACEs are, you can check out Part 1 of Collectivism 133, where I give a more general overview of an Accelerated Christian Education Learning Center, and explain how PACEs work:
Donald Howard wrote this PACE like it was a filler episode. There are many PACEs like it throughout the curriculum, and fortunately for us, there is quite a bit we can learn about the quality of the curriculum from this PACE. I’m going to split this guy into two parts to keep ‘em quick n’ clean. In this post, I’m going to touch on their “antisemitic Jew” rhetoric and document the factual errors I found in Collectivism 134.
Before we begin, it’s vital we recognize that all of the following errors have either eluded ACE’s editors for 44 years, or they were added in during the editing process. Either way, this absolutely disqualifies their curriculum as divinely inspired education. Check em out:
Exhibit 126
In
18181817, Comte met Saint-Simon and soon became the latter’s secretary and disciple. [Page 2]A string of illicit affairs culminated in his marriage to Caroline
MarsinMassin— an illegitimate Parisian woman of ill repute. [Page 3]Georges Sorel (
18461847-1922), was born in Cherbourg, France… [Page 15]In
AugustApril, 1649, approximately twenty poor men… [Page 22]On January 4,
18441884, a small group of young men, socialists who had rejected Marxian communism, met and founded the British Fabian Society. [Page 32]Edward R. Pease, who was the first secretary of the Fabian Society (
1884-1912)(1890-1913) and wrote History of the Fabian Society(1915)(1916)… [Page 32]In 1920, however, while still in prison, Debs polled over
90,000915,000 votes. [Page 38]Morris
HillquirtHillquit (18701869-1933) was born in Russia… [they misspell his name every single time]In
18881886, he joined the Socialist Party of America.. [Page 38][Page 36, 38]
In
19121917, the I.W.W. reached its peak strength with a membership of nearly100,000150,000 persons. [Page 40]In 1875, farmers from the Middle West and South formed the
Greenback PartyGreenback-Labour Party…The
Greenback PartyGreenback-Labour Party survived onlytwofive years… [Page 42]In
18911892, member’s of the National Grange met.. and formed the People’s Party. [Page 42]Collectivism 134, pages 40, 42
That’s sixteen factual errors in less than 25 pages of text (as more than half of these PACEs are taken up by the Q&A sections). “Superior Christian educatgion” indeed:
Exhibit
Teen Turmoil, page 173
You have other errors in the form of egregious editorializing, or the omissions of huge historical figures on the basis of them being, say, a woman. It’s important to note that I spent less than a weekend combing over this PACE and looking up a lot of very basic facts. If Accelerated Christian Education gave a damn about education, they could very easily correct these issues. Further, if this PACE were reviewed by someone who had more specialized knowledge of this history, I can’t imagine the number of errors they’d find.
For example, errors like this next one are harder to catch when you’re not familiar with the topic at hand:
Exhibit
Early in 1827… Comte vainly tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge… Caroline Comte eventually left her husband, and he never saw her again. In 1829, the lonely Comte began anew his series of lectures on “positive philosophy.”
Collectivism, 134 Page 3
The two separated in 1842, but the PACE makes it sound like they split between 1827 and 1829. This is either very poor wording or false, and both mislead the student. That’s now 17 errors.
Switching Gears
Donald Howard was a philosemite who believed that ‘true’ Jews are indeed superior to everyone else, and the ACE curriculum reflects that. These people hold that ‘true’ Jews are Aryan capitalists, or at a minimum, White presenting Arab capitalists. The basis of this attitude is racism, and detrimental to Jews because, like antisemitism, it separates them from the rest of humanity as this distinct ‘other’ race. By doing so, philosemites enflame antisemitic behaviors and give fuel to the narrative that Jews are taking over the world.
To Christian Fundamentalists, Jews play two self-serving roles. They’re either cannon-fodder employed to fulfill Biblical prophecy and herald the second coming of Christ (see: the genocidal IDF), or they’re scapegoats used to blame Jews for their own persecution. The latter is why Christian Nationalists are obsessed with claiming that Hitler was a Jew, a fascist lie and John Birch Society conspiracy which has been debunked time and again.
This is ACE’s official stance, which becomes more blatant later in this course, particularly in Collectivism 138. In that PACE, they gate keep what it means to be a Jew by quoting Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover, former director of the FBI, saying that:
Exhibit
The [Jewish] people who gave the world the concept of our monotheistic God and the Ten Commandments cannot remain Jews and follow… the deceit of the Communist movement.
Collectivism 138, page 61
In that same PACE, they rank human races as such:
Exhibit
Collectivism 138, page 22
Out of context, that list doesn’t make any sense because ethnic Jews are (most often) Arabs (both are Semitic), and “Gentile” isn’t a race. In context, the student reads this list as “Whites/Aryans > (light-skinned) Brown Folks > every other skin color.”
This curriculum used to include the JBS related None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen, where they change “International Jew” (from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) to the Southern Strategy’s “international Communist” or “international Banker”:
Exhibit
Sunday Telegraph Jul 16, 1995 Page 32
Getting back to the PACE review at hand, in Collectivism 134 they make the case that Ferdinand Lassalle (an ethnic Jew) laid the ground work for the Nazi party. While there may be some truth to there being overlap between the Nazi party platform and Lassalle’s work, this is all in service of victim-blaming, and gatekeeping what it means to be part of God’s ‘chosen elect.’ Of note, Lassalle died in 1864, so he wasn’t directly involved with the Nazis in any capacity, like the PACE is making it sound:
Exhibit
[T]he movement he spawned established the philosophical basis for the German National Socialism of Hitler’s Third Reich. The fact that Lassalle was a Jew was studiously ignored by the Nazis.
Collectivism 134, pages 7, 8
I think it’s important to point out that Socialism, as a progress focused movement, naturally evolves over time. Pretending the above exhibit is explicitly true, calling Socialism historically anti-semitic discounts the fact that we as leftists can examine our past leaders in a critical light and reject the bigotries they held. It’s not inaccurate to say that Marx was a racist, but to pretend that makes every socialist a racist would be almost hysterical if this disinformation wasn’t being injected straight into the brains of children.
On the flip side, the religious right wants to take us back in time to eras of unabashed racial and gender hierarchies (culturally/legally speaking). The accusations against socialism in this blurb on Lassalle are simply confessions of Donald Howard’s heart. White people gatekeeping what it means to be a Jew is a venture that has gone south for Jews and anyone associated with them, every single time.
That’s all I have for today.
Thank you for your interest in this Awful Christian Education!
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6