Marxism and Critical Race Theory - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Marxism and Critical Race Theory
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“I think the real ominous thing is that critical race theory, which isn’t real, turned the suburbs 15 points to the Trump insurrection-endorsed Republican. What do Democrats do about that?”

So said MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace in bemoaning her Democrats’ drubbing in Virginia. She’s merely one exhibit among many liberals. And what do Democrats do about it?

Some traditional Democrats, like wild man James Carville, acknowledge it and howl from the rooftop at Democrats to stop it. Others, however, cover their eyes and instead blast those concerned about the teaching of CRT to their children. Those of the Wallace school attack the victims. Their assessment of critical race theory in schools usually goes something like this:

Step 1: “No way, CRT isn’t being taught in public schools! Republicans are liars.” Once it is shown that CRT is being taught, they retreat to step 2: “Okay, it is being taught, but that isn’t a bad thing. Republicans are liars. In fact, they’re racists. Their opposition to CRT shows they’re racists.”

When those objections fail, some creative liberals retreat to the Wallace-esque absurdity that CRT itself is a “myth.”

That’s an amusing position to retreat to. As noted by Daniel Greenfield, if CRT isn’t being taught, then where’s the harm in banning it? If it’s a “myth,” what’s the harm in banning something that doesn’t exist? This would be little different than, say, agreeing to a Republican ban on unicorns.

This whole sloppy mess of illogic sometimes sends liberals dashing to a third step: “CRT has nothing to do with Marxism.”

Here, ladies and gentlemen, I step forward to offer my humble services. CRT most definitely has much to do with Marxism. I could offer an exhaustive analysis for you, dear reader. But for now, I thought I’d give an instructive tutorial on what the modern world sees when it searches “critical race theory” on the dreaded Google.

Some 80-90% of the planet’s web searches go through Google. It’s an enormous influence and problem. Google really does rule the world. In fact, who or what truly teaches Americans? Not the public schools. It’s Google — the behemoth of Big Tech.

When typing “critical race theory” into Google, the first thing pops up is the Wikipedia definition. This is where inquirers “learn” about critical race theory. Like many terms, such as “cultural Marxism,” Google and Wikipedia in the past were far more accurate about these terms and their Marxist roots — back before the terms became hyper-politicized and intrepid progressives started redefining them in a way to vilify conservatives and protect their own ideologues. I’ve written here at length about the term “cultural Marxism” (click here and here), including how Big Tech’s sudden redefinition of the term was used against me.

For those of us unfortunates who study this junk for a living, we know better. We watch how ideologues manipulate the meanings. In the past, I’ve printed these web pages and filed them in manila folders; now, I get screenshots. Screenshots are a must, given how quickly leftists remold reality to suit their revolutionary purposes.

Precisely that is going on with the Google-to-Wikipedia search of “critical race theory.” What’s there is barely enough to discern the Marxist roots, albeit only to the discerning few who know the history. Here’s how the definition starts:

Critical race theory (CRT) is a body of legal scholarship and an academic movement of U.S. civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and U.S. law and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.[1][2][3][4] CRT examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the U.S..[5][6] A tenet of CRT is that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals.[7][8]

CRT originated in the mid-1970s in the writings of several American legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, Kimberlé CrenshawRichard DelgadoCheryl Harris, Charles R. Lawrence III, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia J. Williams.[1] It emerged as a movement by the 1980s, reworking theories of critical legal studies (CLS) with more focus on race.[1][9] CRT is grounded in critical theory[10] and draws from thinkers such as Antonio GramsciSojourner TruthFrederick Douglass, and W. E. B. DuBois, as well as the Black PowerChicano, and radical feminist movements from the 1960s and 1970s.[1]

Note that there’s no explicit mention of Marxism, though for those who know, the mention of “grounded in critical theory” and listing of Antonio Gramsci first among its proponents tells you just that. Gramsci, the pioneering Italian Marxist (whose leading American scholar was Pete Buttigieg’s father), was a founder of the application of Marxism to culture — that is, cultural Marxism.

And yet, if you search the words “Marx” or “Marxism” in the text of the Wikipedia entry for critical race theory, they do not appear even once. They’ve been scrubbed. You will find, however, a crucial reference at the very bottom of the page in the box on “Origins.” There, it states succinctly: “Critical Theory: Origins: Frankfurt School, Freudo-Marxism.”

That’s it, precisely. Those are the foundational roots of critical race theory. Critical race theory, as one must cobble together from the Wikipedia page, “is grounded in critical theory,” and critical theory’s origins are the Frankfurt School and its infamous Freudian-Marxism.

Case closed. That’s what you need to know. It should be in the lead paragraph, but the scrubbers scrubbed it, though they evidently missed the box at the end.

Get a screenshot of the box, before some hyperventilating liberal deletes it. As I write, that Wikipedia page was last edited on November 4, 2021 at 13:29 (UTC). The box on origins has not changed since I saved a screenshot last Friday. Expect it to change. Expect there to soon be no mention of Marxism whatsoever anywhere on that page. In fact, my flagging it here may prompt the immediate removal.

Spring into action, comrade!

Truthfully, the Wikipedia page ought to say much more. As I laid out in my review of Mark Levin’s smash bestseller, American Marxism, the Marxist basis of critical race theory is extremely important to understand because of how dehumanizing and destructive it is, particularly to children. Karl Marx saw people not as individuals made in the imago Dei — the Judeo-Christian conception of human beings made in the image of God — but as groups to be shoved into opposing categories pitted against one another as foes. Marx did this according to class and economics, i.e., the Proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie, whereas Marxist critical race theorists do this according to race, i.e., white vs. black or some other ethnic-based construct. One group is the oppressor and the other the oppressed; your category defines you. Rather than aspiring to the color-blind world that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned, where individuals are judged by the content of their character, people are foremost viewed by the color of their skin.

It is a terribly dehumanizing way to view people.

Levin quotes Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, who was very close to the Rev. King: “Today, too many ‘remedies’ — such as Critical Race Theory, the increasingly fashionable post-Marxist/post-modernist approach that analyzes society as institutional group power structures rather than on spiritual or one-to-one human level — are taking us in the wrong direction: separating even school children into explicit racial groups, and emphasizing differences instead of similarities.” Walker stressed: “The roots of CRT are planted in entirely different intellectual soil. It begins with ‘blocs’ (with each person assigned to an identity or economic bloc, as in Marxism).”

The Wikipedia entry for CRT says nothing like this. It makes no mention of Marxism, other than the “Freudo-Marxism” reference thus far surviving in the box at the bottom.

And so, for the typical 21st century Googler landing at Wikipedia to learn of Marxist elements in CRT, they’ll find effectively none. For the left, that’s perfect for demonizing conservatives — and parents — who object to CRT’s Marxist influences. Those people can be derided as followers and fabricators of “myths,” and as “white supremacists.”

This is what we’re up against. Big Tech has become the left’s new Ministry of Truth. As it does, the left controls not only the media narrative but the very meanings of terms.

Paul Kengor
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Paul Kengor is Editor of The American Spectator. Dr. Kengor is also a professor of political science at Grove City College, a senior academic fellow at the Center for Vision & Values, and the author of over a dozen books, including A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism, and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
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