In a normal world, this wouldn’t be major news but academia isn’t a normal world.

The College Fix reports.

Student denounces communism after years of singing its praises

‘As a former Maoist, I see what the left is doing. They are attempting to start another Cultural Revolution’

Twenty-year-old Cal State Los Angeles student Mark Kahanding spends his days taking business classes and his free time working to tout free market, Constitutional and conservative principles on campus.

It’s hard to believe just a few years ago in high school he often recited and praised the teachings of Mao Zedong, the Chinese dictator and mass murderer whose executions, imprisonments, forced famines and labor camps are credited with killing an estimated 65 million Chinese.

Many romanticize Mao’s legacy, and Kahanding said as an impressionable teen who faced severe bullying for many years he had been drawn to Mao’s rhetoric of equality for the common man.

Kahanding — whose ethnic heritage includes Chinese ancestry — said he was seduced by the notion of equality as he searched for purpose and acceptance.

“I fell in love with this ideology because prior to high school I was bullied for nine years,” Kahanding said in an interview with The College Fix. “Having been treated like dirt, I thought that if I became a communist and helped advance the cause, then no one else would have to go through that.”

“It started off with music from the Cultural Revolution,” he said. “The song, ‘Socialism is Good,’ was catchy and stuck in my head. It forced me to research more and I fell in love with the ideology.”

Despite his parents beings conservative, Kahanding said he became obsessed with advancing a world where no one felt harassed. He began to dedicate his time to studying the teachings of Mao – even learning Chinese so he could recite Chinese revolutionary songs from the 1960s.

“I would dream for the day that I could tear down the oppressive system so that all men and women would be equals,” Kahanding said. “I would even graffiti the hammer and sickle on sidewalks.”

The symbol represents empowerment of the working class, but to Kahanding, it represented a rebellion against everyone who constantly put him down.