Marxism is a “virus” that has evolved and infiltrated the United States in the form of critical race theory (CRT), according to James Lindsay, bestselling author and founder of New Discourses.
The presence of CRT in K–12 education has become a topic of debate, particularly in some of the nation’s recent high-profile elections. A number of GOP-led states have barred schools from using curricula based on critical race theory or The New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which critics have denounced as ahistorical and inaccurate.
An outgrowth of Marxism, CRT interprets society through a Marxist dichotomy between “oppressor” and “oppressed,” but replaces the class categories with racial groups. Proponents of CRT see deeply embedded racism in all aspects of U.S. society, including in neutral systems such as constitutional law and standardized tests, and deem it to be the root cause of “racial inequity,” or different outcomes for different races.
Lindsay argues that CRT and Marxism share the same key missions.
“One is to awaken this consciousness in as many people as possible, so that they can become the collective of racially social man, and to put themselves in positions of power so that they can dictate how things are supposed to go, so that we can have an equitable situation, for now, which is an enforced racial economy,” the author explained.
“So cultural and social economy, and, or maybe even material economy. And then later, we‘ll get somehow at the end of the rainbow, we’ll get to justice, which they always talk about, we‘ll get to social justice, we’ll get to racial justice, we'll get justice for trans people. When does that happen? Well, apparently a long time from now.
“And how do we get there by enforcing equity long enough and … this is exactly the same socialism to communism model that Marx proposed, and that Lenin said, the only true reason for socialism is to get the communism etc. It’s just the same thing; once you just read some of it, it starts to come out very clearly.”
CRT denounces U.S. and Western culture as a form of oppression. Critics have said its proponents apply the Marxist tactic of “class struggle” to divide people along lines of race, gender, and ethnicity to label them “oppressors” and the “oppressed.”
Lindsay explained that CRT, like Marxism, works by undermining an existing culture, creating a break from the existing culture and ultimately demonizing that culture in order to pave the way for a new “program.”
“Then you can especially get the younger generations to want to pick up with a whole new program. And that’s the way that you can effect what they call a cultural revolution,” he said.
“You have to break people from liking that thing … from trusting that thing. So you have to poison the institutions, you have to make people think, all the founding of America was rooted in racism … you have to make them hate the existing culture.”
“If you break off from the old culture … you can go into a whole new culture with a whole new model,” he continued. “What you have to do is foment hatred against the existing culture, or at least make people feel like it’s toxic, which is one of their favorite words.”
Lindsay added: “And that’s when you actually can get people to say: ‘You know what, no, everything we have is terrible. So the answers can’t lie there. We need new answers.’ And then you have these people saying: ‘Well, these are the new answers. Why? Because we’re anti-racist. We’re anti-fascist, we’re anti-whatever bad thing or anti-capitalist which is where all the problems came from.’”
A handful of states have successfully enacted laws to combat CRT, including Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and South Carolina. Most of these anti-CRT laws do not explicitly mention the words “critical race theory,” but instead target specific concepts and beliefs that are derived from the ideology.
