Randi Weingarten’s latest contribution to the ideological echo chamber — her book Why Fascists Fear Teachers — may have been intended as a fiery defense of union power in public education, but what it actually reveals is how untethered from reality the leadership of Big Labor has become.
Let’s be clear: calling anyone who dares to criticize union overreach a “fascist” isn’t bold. It’s lazy. It’s a smear designed to shut down debate, not win one. And yet, Weingarten, who has presided over the American Federation of Teachers since 2008, seems to think this rhetorical Molotov cocktail qualifies as serious commentary.
Weingarten’s book attempts to paint public school teachers’ unions as the last line of defense against authoritarianism, conveniently ignoring the fact that some of the most authoritarian behavior in recent memory has come from the very institutions she defends — locking kids out of classrooms for over a year, pushing divisive ideological curricula, and silencing parents who dare to speak up at school board meetings.
She wants to pretend that her union is standing up to tyranny, but the truth is far more damning: her organization is the tyranny.
Even Frederick Douglass knew it. In his 1874 essay “The Folly, Tyranny, and Wickedness of Labor Unions,” Douglass didn’t pull punches. He described how union bosses used coercion to bully fellow workers and excluded Black Americans from the economic promise of free labor. He called out union racism, mob tactics, and economic gatekeeping — not as a partisan, but as a man who had lived through real oppression and recognized it in a new form.
Fast forward to 2025, and here we are again. A lawsuit from New Jersey’s Attorney General just accused the Ironworkers union of systematically denying job referrals to Black workers. That’s not ancient history. That’s right now.
But don’t expect Randi Weingarten to talk about that.
Instead, she directs her fire at school choice — calling voucher programs and tax-credit scholarships “fascist,” as if empowering low-income parents to choose the best education for their children is somehow a threat to democracy. Someone should remind her: real fascists — like Mussolini and Hitler — didn’t empower parents. They mandated obedience to the state.
Ironically, the very document leftists love to invoke — the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — includes this line:
“Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”
Weingarten doesn’t just ignore that. She tramples it.
She believes government unions — not parents — should shape the worldview of America’s children. That’s not empowerment. That’s control. And it’s exactly why more and more Americans are rejecting the monopoly bargaining laws that have given Weingarten and her allies an outsized — and often destructive — role in public education.
