Critical Race Theory
Across the country, grass roots resistance to “critical race theory” is growing, and that is a good thing. But what is critical race theory and where did it come from?
At its core, critical race theory is the argument that all white people have an unjustified negative attitude towards blacks and some (not all) other races, which leads whites to treat blacks et. al. unfairly. No white is exempt from this bias, and if they are to avoid being “racists”, they must be psychologically conditioned to mouth a set of lies about what evil people they are, grovel in the dirt before blacks, pay “reparations”, etc. For blacks, it’s a racket, what Tom Wolfe called “mau-mauing the flack catchers.” For black “leaders”, it’s a highly remunerative shakedown: pay me off or I’ll call you a racist. It should be ridden out of every town and campus in America on a rail, wearing tar and feathers.
The question of where critical race theory came from points to a larger threat. In a column in the June 3 Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger wrote,
Critical race theory refers to an idea that emerged some 40 years ago in academia. The idea’s originators, most famously the late Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell, argues that “race” infuses virtually every aspect of American social reality.
Henninger is not wrong, but this history is incomplete. Critical Race theory is a subset of Critical Theory, which was invented in the 1930s and ‘40s by the Frankfurt School, the group of Marxist intellectuals who created cultural Marxism, now most commonly known as “wokeness”. Critical Theory quickly became one of the most important tools in their quest to destroy traditional society, Western culture, and the Christian religion. The term “Critical Theory” is something of a play on words: the theory is to criticize, to damage and eventually destroy all traditional institutions by unremitting criticism.
Critical race theory has already destroyed the generally functional relationships whites and blacks had developed in most of America, starting after the Civil War, and replaced them with a witches’ brew of black racial anger and growing white resentment that constitutes a dire threat to blacks, who are only a small minority (about 13%) of America’s population. When a small minority of any country’s population becomes a threat to the majority, the minority’s future is uncertain.
To understand critical race theory within the context where it originated, the Frankfurt School’s translation of Marxism from economic into cultural terms, people need to learn more about Critical Theory and cultural Marxism generally. A good place to start is a short video documentary history of the Frankfurt School, “The History of Political Correctness,” available on Youtube. Another good introduction is a recent book I co-edited, Political Correctness: A Deceptive and Dangerous Worldview, published by the Nehemiah Institute and available on Amazon. For those seeking in-depth knowledge of cultural Marxism, the definitive work is Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School.
I must note that the Left has taken to labelling my work on the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxism an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theory”. They have called it that in a number of places, including in my biography on Wikipedia. This is a lie. First of all, it is not a theory, it is history, the history of the Frankfurt School, which is well-documented in an extensive academic literature. Second, they call it “anti-Semitic” because I point out that the reason the Frankfurt School left Germany in 1933 and moved to New York was that all its members during its German phase were Jews, as Wiggershaus states. Do you think Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 might have led Jews to leave Germany? The move was of great significance for this country because had the Institute not moved to the U.S., its influence here today would probably be much smaller. Third, the Frankfurt School had aspects of a conspiracy from the outset, often concealing its real objective and its Marxism; this was especially true during its New York phase. Indeed, the Institution was originally to be named the Institution for Marxism, but instead chose the neutral-sounding name Institution for Social Research, again with the purpose of concealing its real nature. If there is conspiracy here, it is theirs, not mine. My pointing out that the Left is telling a lie about my work will not stop them, since everything they say is a lie, but it at least corrects the record (and might shame Wikipedia into not publishing the lie?).
Note: My columns on Traditional Right will be on hiatus for a few weeks as we upgrade our steam plant. We are installing a new, triple-expansion engine, putting in four high-pressure boilers and, to do our bit for the planet, converting from solar heating to coal. The work should take about a month.