Resisting Critical Race Theory Workshop, Session 5 of 5
What is Critical Race Theory? What does it believe? Where does it come from? How does it work? And what can we do about it? These are core questions to understanding our times. In this series of lectures, originally delivered in Tampa, Florida, in July of 2021, James Lindsay, the founder of New Discourses, gives thorough, deep answers to these questions.
In this fifth and final lecture in the series, Lindsay offers a stirring alternative to Critical Race Theory. The approach he advocates has two prongs, one practical and the other cultural. Practically, Critical Race Theory must be fought. Being Race Marxists, Critical Race Theorists will not stop on their own, even if we ask very nicely (or firmly). Their better nature cannot be appealed to because their entire program insists that Critical Race Theory is humanity’s better nature (in fact, the only way it can avoid being racist). Thus, practical solutions that challenge and limit Critical Race Theory’s implementation are needed with the overarching goal of removing the influence of Critical Race Theorists from power they only ever abuse. Secondly, Lindsay dives into the need for a cultural renewal in the classically liberal principles that founded nations like the United States. He makes calls for decentralization of power and, even more importantly, a new Common Sensibility to replace the fractured intersectional sensibility imposed upon us by Critical Race Theory. Join him in this and the other lectures in the series to understand Critical Race Theory like you never have before and, in this lecture, to gain some clear ideas on how to take action to defeat its pernicious influence in our societies!
For those interested in learning even more, Lindsay’s newest book, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis, was developed out of the notes for this series of lectures. His notes for this lecture served as the basis for the very detailed third chapter of the book. Get the book and follow along with the lectures!
Session 1: What is Critical Race Theory?
Session 2: The Proximate Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
Session 3: The Deep Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
Session 4: How Critical Race Theory Operates
The audio version of this presentation is available on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or by RSS.
10 comments
Diamond clarity, reflection, incisiveness. Why don’t you give the devil Marcuse and the doctrine of false consciousness their due? Is the idea not presaged by religions (maya, slavery to sin, etc) and validated by psychology all over the place? Surely it is a key factor and not the root of woke error.
They won’t stop until they are stopped. Methods abound. After the first one, the rest are free.
You may appreciate this.
https://edwest.substack.com/p/a-long-line-of-useful-idiots?s=r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqgFMhlYSnA
Truth is stranger than fiction.
James , thanks for this series . People disagreeing on here need to offer up solutions not just being critical.
There is no one answer , except one thing is clear , far left ideologies and violence were used as a political football , along with race identity and actualy pulling back athorities to protect citizens from attacks and burning of business and property .
The most dirty things against police , society and the country , were screamed with rage and false narratives were pushed as truth by mainstream media.
To beat this , the responce has to be as big , or it will fail.
It has to be met with anger , scorn , the ideology hss to be mocked , scrutinised , derided and flushed down the toilet. Yes , James , you are right , make it cringeworthy.
And know these people are now supported by big tech , mainstream medis ,corporate leval , its parasiticly in the military , congress hollywood , its everywhere and most people have no idea how evil this is , and are sleep walking as they vote people in office who profess this crap . Too many people were already brainwashed in the academies , or , love the sound of victom hood .
Hell yes , resist …and realize , the people who really beleive in this have risen above race , gender , ethnic or religion , and have become ass holes and there is no debate with ass holes .
Neil Oliver: “American writer Alana Newhouse, raged against the machine made by and of technocrats, ideologues and vast, faceless corporations. She said we should dedicate ourselves to breaking free of the machinery that lulls us into a false sense of community made of illusory thousands of friends online and the instant gratification of stuff ordered up from far away with clicks of buttons – in favour of generating, ‘… love and attention from three people you actually know instead of hundreds you don’t.'”
Just turn it all off! Throw out the i-phones. Stop the social media. Never use Amazon. Interact only with real people. Read paper books. Refuse anything virtual. Reality is the starting point for Resistance.
“…[I]in every civilization, however generally prosaic, however addicted to the short-time point of view on human affairs, there are always certain alien spirits who, while outwardly conforming to the requirements of the civilization around them, still keep a disinterested regard for the plain intelligible law of things, irrespective of any practical end. They have an intellectual curiosity, sometimes touched with emotion, concerning the august order of nature; they are impressed by the contemplation of it, and like to know as much about it as they can, even in circumstances where its operation is ever so manifestly unfavourable to their best hopes and wishes. For these, a work like this [‘Our Enemy, The State’], however in the current sense impractical, is not quite useless; and those of them it reaches will be aware that for such as themselves, and such only, it was written.”
AJ Nock ‘Our Enemy, The State’ 1935
Erasmus in ‘Praise of Folly’ (1509) said that human fools are happy sheep and their folly is the wool they pull over their own eyes to survive; their fool’s errand in life is to fit into the flock and be happy in their captivity, conformity and contradictions no matter what the cost. This is human nature for 90% of people.
The rest of the 10% are the non-fool ragbag of disparate anomalous cats-in-a-sack misfits doomed to be Cassandras, seeing the ugly world as it really is but knowing that no one wants to hear this truth, indeed most want to destroy the messenger whose warnings disrupt their fool’s chosen oblivion. Sheeple bite when their self-delusions are threatened.
Despite this reality (or because of it) non-fool misfits must continue to document the truth of our historical moment, both for ourselves (and our own sanity) but also for future misfits (Nock’s metaphoric ‘alien spirits’) who can take comfort knowing they are not alone on this planet of brutish willing fools.
Resist? The problem is that you give life to the things you resist,
Tell the truth.
Learn how to do it better. This is possible, you know. On Earth right now it is possible.
I think a lot of people feel paralyzed simply because they don’t know how to do it better.
This sounds good, but is ultimately superficial. When you tell the truth in the face of an ideology that adamantly rejects the entire notion of objective truth, you’re losing. But take solace in the fact that you were telling the truth as the boot crushes your face.
The people who are pushing this ideology control education. And they’re using that to subvert the entire concept truth and empiricism by appealing to the baser forms of human psychology that Western Society has spent millennia trying to overcome. Truth is your story. Truth is what you feel. Your feelings are infallible. These are the foundations of the malignant narcissist. Those feelings must conform to radical progressivism, however, or they are not genuine (this is how they avoid the empathy trap they like to lay at the feet of dissidents).
I have seen plenty of people “do [truth] better” and not make a ripple against this rising tide. No, “do it better” is not the answer. It is too simplistic and it misses the target, because they have short circuited the chief mechanism you wish to employ. This is by design.
Here’s an article that may interest you.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/qa-terence-renaud-new-left/