Karol Markowicz is coauthor of “Stolen Youth” and host of “The Karol Markowicz Show.” She is a Jewish immigrant born in the Soviet Union and raised in Brooklyn.
Federal Newswire
What is your book “Stolen Youth” about?
Karol Markowicz
“Stolen Youth” has a chapter on COVID, but it's not specifically about COVID. It kicks off with COVID because we see that as a real starting place for a lot of the issues that we're facing today. The pandemic is over, but a lot of the problems continue.
I hear stories all the time and in just so many different ways. Like, “my child doesn't know how to function, my child is academically several years behind, my child has deep anxiety problems,” all this kind of stuff. You could take it back a little further where I think we were seeing what we describe as the woke mind virus taking effect before the pandemic.
But what happened during the pandemic is that parents got to see up close over their kid's shoulder in the dining room what they were actually learning, and they were shocked by it.
The teachers unions knew what they were doing. They were specifically targeting the poorest children. They knew that rich people wouldn't be able to be controlled the way that the poor would. So they targeted the poorest areas, the poorest schools, kept them out of school the longest, kept them masked the longest…
Where I was living in Park Slope, none of them said one word about opening schools. Instead, they got pods for their families. They moved to their beach house, they signed up to schools there. They got a private tutor. They went to private school because obviously private schools in New York City were open while public schools were closed.
The New York Times likes to talk about this issue, because so many kids are still suffering. But the Republicans largely don't know how to capitalize on it, have the conversation, or how to say to parents, “look, if your kid can't read and they're in fourth grade, trace it back to why they can't read. It's because they were kept out of schools.”
Federal Newswire
You talk about indoctrination in schools–what is your view on this?
Karol Markowicz
"Stolen Youth," it's about how the indoctrination that people assume happens on college campuses…starts way younger than that.
I tell the story of my first grader in Brooklyn. When he was in first grade… his new school was having a climate protest. He marched around outside the school and he had a sign that says, “Earth dies, we die.”
Why was my first grader marching around against climate change? What do you want him to do about it? He has no capacity. I have no capacity to change anything. He certainly has no desire to change it.
I talk about this a lot and people don't like it, but I don't think we should be teaching climate change in elementary school. Why? You could if you're trying to say it should be taught in science, I can assure you they're not taught the science of this.
Federal Newswire
There is a theory that the upheavals we see in this country are planned by the former Soviet Union to destabilize the U.S.--how much do you believe this is true?
Karol Markowicz
It has absolutely occurred. In our book we trace the way Marxist education is pushed at every level of our system. They literally use our system against us. They use our openness and our willingness to listen to people and to be nice against us. That doesn't mean we should change our system, but that does mean we should be a little bit more aware of what's going on around us.
A KGB agent, Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, made a video–and it's been viral–where he says that the stages of destroying a country are, “you infiltrate their institutions and you turn the people against each other.”
I think we have an amazing deep history and we come from a place where we have such a good foundation that we're able to rebut these attacks. But I think people need to understand these attacks are real, these attacks are coming, and they're aimed at your children because the children are the easiest group of the population to measure.
Federal Newswire
Some elected officials don’t believe the U.S. has an obligation to help Ukraine against Russia. What changed?
Karol Markowicz
It's happening on a wide range of other subjects. I think people have been lied to for so long. They just expect that everything is a lie. I think that in the last 15 years we just had so many things disproved and so many previously held beliefs destroyed that I don't know that people can trust anymore.
Going back to COVID, institutions lost a large amount of trust. I think rebuilding that trust is deeply important before you can even have the conversations of, “look, this is a true story, what's happening here is true. This is real, and this is why you should care about this.”
On the issue of Ukraine, that's the conversations that I'm having with conservatives, where they ask, “what's the truth here?” They might think, “yeah, we need to defeat Russia for sure,” but they have reservations about aiding Ukraine.” Because they're not sure what the true story is.
I had family who had to evacuate from Ukraine when the war began. I have cousins still in Russia who just every day are hoping that they don't get drafted to the front. So it's really tough. I would love to see some kind of resolution here. I don't know that we're any closer to it today than we were a year ago.
Federal Newswire
What are your biggest concerns in terms of US policies?
Karol Markowicz
Well since October 7th it's been really hard. We have so many issues in America that are not getting the kind of treatment they should be getting. Although on things like the border for example, we have all the information, we have all the news, we know what is going on.
People are crossing our border brazenly, waving at our agents who are not trying to stop them. There has to be more of a policy change. I don't think that having the border being a bigger news story would really do anything. It's already quite a big news story.
I have family in Israel but it's the reaction around the world [to Oct. 7 that] has been tough for Jews to see. I can't say that I was naive to it. I always pretty much knew that antisemitism had never gone away, but I still have such a healthy belief in the American population.
But what's been going on on college campuses has been startling. It's really scared a lot of people.
The thinking is that we don't want to limit freedom of speech on campuses. Well, yeah, I never wanted to limit freedom of speech on campuses. But if you haven't noticed in the last decade, there hasn't been freedom of speech on campus. Try saying “men can't get pregnant” and see what happens. I'm still going to be kicked out. So the idea that now freedom of speech is to be able to say, “let's kill Jews” is a little too convenient. That's been the main issue for me coming out of 2023.
Federal Newswire
What is your radio program, the “Karol Markowicz Show” about?
Karol Markowicz
[It’s] on iHeart Radio on Mondays and Thursdays, and it's largely nonpolitical. I like to ask people about their marriages, kids, how they got started, and whether they think they made it.
Federal Newswire
Where can people go to follow your work?
Karol Markowicz
I'm on Twitter @karol, Instagram is karolinpublic, and Facebook under Karol Markowicz for my professional page.
