The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 59
The movement taking on Critical Race Theory is now in full swing across the Western world, and not a moment too soon. Over the course of the last year and a half, people have learned enough about this Neo-Communist menace to be ready, willing, and able to stand up and fight it in schools, institutions, companies, and communities all across our societies. What’s necessary now is a simplification. Critical Race Theory flourishes in part by making people believe it is complicated and sophisticated when, in fact, it is neither. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay boils down Critical Race Theory to five simple points that are easily understood and easily communicated. Join him to arm yourself to show up to the fight and to equip officials to take up the fight beside you.
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6 comments
What are the five simple points? If you want to win a war, you need to fight it effectively! Five simple bullet points, please.
47m52s transcript
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1) CRT is Marxism that uses race instead of a class so its role in schools is the same as what Mao Zedong did in China to create his Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
2) CRT teaches that racism, that benefits white people whether they like it or not, also whether they recognize it or not, is the fundamental organizing principle of society and is therefore relevant to all differences and inequalities and inequity.
3) CRT exists specifically to make more critical race theorists at the expense of everything else.
4) CRT believes the explanation for all inequalities of outcome relevant to race, is or overwhelmingly includes racism as the cause.
5) CRT bends all curriculum to teaching critical race theory. Through aspects of that subject matter, even mathematics.
So those are some big hot button points that people who are looking at CRT in the schools need to understand.
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You may appreciate this video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HUWPua648Jk&list=LL&index=24&t=1694s
Also keep in mind Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” on how successful totalitarianism depends on three sociological types that often overlap: “men of words”, “fanatics”, and “men of action”.
Sorry, that should read ‘racial disparities’ not ‘racist outcomes’.
A few thoughts:
James is right to highlight the obscurantism of CRT with its ‘private language’ of technical terms. Many of these terms employ sophism by being parasitic on everyday or commonsense meanings, hence the mottes are so easy to build.
For example, many would charitably agree that ‘systemic racism’ exists. One reason is that the terms ‘systemic’ and ‘institutional’ racism are often misunderstood by the public and even academics. The latter has a kind of semi-legal definition and can be empirical verified. The former therefore exploits the legitimacy of the latter in its claim to exist. ‘System’ and ‘institution’ are somewhat cognates of each other after all. I noted that writing in the Guardian, Gary Younge (a Professor of Sociology) bemoaned this confusion in one of the ‘long read’ articles. Despite this complaint, he made no effort to define these terms himself before listing a litany of complaints about systemic and institutional racism!
Institutional racism as defined in the Macpherson report was not understood in a nebulous and ‘totalising’ sense (like systemic racism) but as concrete policies and practices that one could put one’s hand on. It was a form of racism that could be resolved by piecemeal improvements to institutions, not by their abolition because they were ‘racist by design’.
Another reason for ‘systemic racism’ offering prima facie plausibility is that following from structuralism, and even Parsons (not all conceptualisations of social systems need focus on radical change), nothing seems obviously wrong with conceiving of the entire social world as a ‘system’. It’s just a short step, therefore, to denounce that ‘system’ as racist if it produces racist outcomes. it’s almost a tautology in fact. However, it’s utterly useless as a traditional theory since it offers no predictive power. It’s a bit like theorising that one’s body has a ‘system problem’ if one has a stomach ache. There’s absolutely nothing (instrumental) you can do with such knowledge.
On a tangent, and given James’ thesis that CRT is Marxism in new clothes, if traditional Marxism was defeated (to some degree) as a force of praxis in the 19th and 20th centuries by reforms to Capitalism that improved conditions for the working classes, how now to take the wind out of the sails of CRT/Identity Marxism. It’s surely not enough to double down on reactionary tendencies that would prohibit any complaints about equality and/or access.
Thank you James for validating what I saw this as from the start. Critical Race Theory is just plain old Marxism that has replaced class with race, and is a rapidly metastasizing cultural cancer spreading as fast as it can. We have to wipe it out as fast as possible, confront it for what it is and get it out of our schools and culture at large. The end goal of it has always been that of the Frankfurt School, the members of which endlessly belabored the question, “How can we bring down Western Civilization?”