‘Hive Mentality’ First Step Toward Communism: Oregon Gov. Candidate Kerry McQuisten

Oregon Gov. Candidate Kerry McQuisten in an interview with NTD's Capitol Report on May 11, 2022. (NTD/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Oregon is a state that has been under progressive Democrat control for the last six administrations and its largest city, Portland, has been a hotbed for violence connected to the Marxist revolutionary group Antifa. In response to this, Kerry McQuisten, a native Oregonian and Republican, is running for governor.

She said the current generation of young people have been convinced that they are being marginalized, and this is leading them to accept socialism and eventually communism.

“You know, [Yuri] Bezmenov said that all it took was for them to get [a] hold of one generation of our children, and it would … flip us into communism,” McQuisten told the host of NTD Capitol Report during a recent interview.

She said this effort to achieve the Marxist goals in the United States requires that a generation feel they don’t have individual rights and reacts as a collective. “And that’s the first step toward communism, you know, these folks have to be a generation convinced that they don’t have these individual rights, they may not see themselves as individuals, they have to slide into this hive mentality.

“And that’s absolutely what we’re seeing in our education system here in Oregon. You know, it’s as if we’re the test run here in the United States to see how far they can push this.”

McQuisten said she is pushing back on the current administration’s effort to use the education system to indoctrinate youth to this type of thinking, and if elected would end the teaching of the critical race theory-based curriculum, which seeks to divide groups based on their race.

Other Republican governors have signed bills into law prohibiting the teaching of such ideology in schools, saying it is divisive and goes against America’s founding principles. Elected specifically on an anti-CRT platform, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, after taking office, signed an executive order (pdf) prohibiting the teaching of CRT.

CRT redefines human history as a struggle between “oppressors”—normally considered to be white people—and the “oppressed” individuals from minority identity groups, and has Marxist underpinnings.

In addition, McQuisten said the gender ideology being pushed in schools does not make sense. “Everything in Oregon is upside down at this point, from crime to education and beyond.

“So aside from critical race theory, we’re seeing right now, at the end of the last legislative session, Kate Brown, our outgoing governor, had signed into law The Menstrual Dignity Act.”

This legislation seeks to put tampons in boys’ locker rooms and school bathrooms. An Oregon Department of Education toolkit (pdf) in part states that the goal is to “provide free menstrual products for all menstruating students in public schools in Oregon.” It later continues, “Importantly, this law affirms the right to menstrual dignity for transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and two-spirit students.”

McQuisten said “what I’m looking at across the United States, and especially Oregon right now, and seeing is that assault on our constitutional rights and our assault on our representative constitutional republic.”

If elected, McQuisten would join a number of governors that are pushing back against this type of ideology.

“I think it’s great legislation,” McQuisten said about Florida Gov. Ron DeStantis’s effort to require that the history of communism be taught in schools. “We need to make people aware of this, because I’m completely aware that communism and socialism is how evil manifests itself through our political system.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “The Victims of Communism Day” legislation (pdf), saying Florida will not “whitewash the history of communism” and will stand for liberty.

“Through HB 395 and the funding announced today, we are guaranteeing that the history of those who fled communist regimes and their experiences are preserved and not forgotten by our students.”

Brown also commuted the sentences of close to 1,000 criminals, said McQuisten. “So, the Democrats in our state have actually created this pro-crime agenda.”

Brown said she granted clemency to nearly 1,000 criminals who were “nonviolent adults” that faced a high risk of COVID-19, battled the wildfires in 2020, or are facing “unjustly long sentences they committed as youth,” in an April social media post.

Meanwhile, McQuisten said Oregon is on “the edge of a cliff” and it needs a leader to fight back against these destructive trends.