The Blog

2020-

2020-12-15 a
AMERICAN COUNTERS CRITICAL RACE THEORY
"The present social-justice movement has Marxist roots:"

A Critical Analysis of Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory and ”wokeness” mean demanding social justice for some identity groups, while attacking others, in the name of fairness.

As you read and watch the news, do you feel like you’ve been transported to a different world? A world in which right is called wrong, good is called evil, rioters and vandals are called protesters and demonstrators, and criminality is called “social justice”? A world in which faceless masked people scream slogans that seemingly make no sense? A world in which racial neutrality is denounced as racism, while overt racism — provided it is for the right race and against the wrong race — is politically correct?

Then welcome to the “woke” ideology of 2020 and its “social justice”!

Welcome to a world that uses terminology that ordinary Americans weren’t brought up with and don’t understand, and often gives language the opposite meaning from common understanding.

Welcome to a world that proclaims tolerance and respect for all religions, except Christianity.

It’s been coming for awhile. But when the COVID-19 crisis hit, social-justice warriors saw their opportunity. The media and the Left (am I being redundant?) used the fear of dying, and the lockdowns resulting from that fear, to drive popular public opinion to demand federal aid. The administration pushed for stimulus packages, but the new funds for COVID spending were created out of thin air — and didn’t come as a result of taxing real wealth — meaning that there are now more U.S. dollars in the economic chasing the same amount of goods. This drove up the price of goods (inflation) and thereby caused great hardship, especially to low-income people.

The Left went a few steps (miles) further, following Rahm Emanuel’s mantra, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The radical Left actually resisted and delayed the stimulus agreed to by Republicans unless the bill included key elements of the Left’s agenda: making corporations reveal pay statistics by race and race statistics for corporate boards, bailing out Post Office debt, requiring early voting, requiring same-day voter registration, bailing out student loans, requiring that one-third of board members of companies seeking assistance must be chosen by the workers, provisions on official time for union collective bargaining, fully offsetting airline emissions, releasing greenhouse gas statistics for individual flights, providing for retirement plans for community newspaper employees, and instituting a $15 minimum wage and permanent paid leave at companies seeking assistance. Most of these conditions were utterly unrelated to the pandemic or to economic recovery, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Left were willing to hold the country hostage unless their radical wish list was granted. Fortunately, saner minds prevailed and the Left was forced to back down — this time.

And so, the country hunkered down and hoped for recovery. But retaining the status quo was not an option for the Left: just putting people in masks and making them stay home wasn’t enough. The movement needed a “trigger” to start the agitation for radical change.

... The present social-justice movement has Marxist roots: Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors openly proclaimed that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists.” Marxism teaches that the central fact of history and human existence is one of economic class struggle, with oppressed classes working for the violent overthrow of their so-called oppressors. And despite Marxist promises of equality and a classless society in a workers’ paradise via revolution and strict socialism, Marxism has universally led to totalitarian thought control, starvation, and mass extermination of those whom the Communist Party regards as suspect.

In the early 1900s, an offshoot of Marxism, often called Cultural Marxism, stressed that the class struggle is not just economic warfare between the poor and the rich. Rather, it is a much broader struggle between races, sexes, cultures, ideologies, and all types of identity groups, and it must be spread not just by overt Marxist indoctrination but by influencing culture, media, entertainment, music, literature, schools, labor unions, and even churches. At first centered in the Frankfurt School in Germany, Cultural Marxism spread to Geneva and other parts of Europe, and to American universities. The movement’s students became the New Left radicals of the 1960s, led by the Students for a Democratic Society, the Weather Underground, the Youth International Party (Yippies), and other groups. The streets and campuses erupted into demonstrations and, sometimes, violence. The Vietnam War was the central catalyst that ignited the movement, but ending the war was only one of their goals. Racism, police brutality, economic injustice, and “authority” in general were targets, and America was portrayed as an oppressive country that exploited other nations and its own oppressed classes. Professors urged students to question and challenge authority (unless a student challenged the professor’s authority; then they went ballistic!).

The ’60s faded into the ’70s, and then came the Reagan era of the ’80s. Many of the hippies and yippies became yuppies, their radicalism faded, and they decided that working and earning a living wasn’t so bad after all. But many became teachers, professors, and school administrators; others went to work for foundations. And they spent the next several decades training a new generation of radicals. We’ve seen the fruit of their labor on the streets and campuses this past summer. The year 2020 has been replay of the 1960s, with an important difference: In the 1960s, local government officials and law enforcement stood against the radicals, but in 2020, local officials (often themselves products of 1960s radicalism) have often supported the radicals and have ordered law enforcement to stand down.

To understand the mind-set of the Cultural Marxism of the 2020s, we need to clarify several key concepts:

... Countering Woke Thinking

Countering woke thinking is difficult. First, it is hard to reason with people for whom truth is subjective and logic is a “construct” of the oppresser. And it is impossible to awaken someone who is only pretending to be asleep. Pointing out that proportionately more blacks than whites are killed by police officers because blacks (especially young black males), proportionately, commit more violent crimes than whites, and that in 2015, 89 percent of black murder victims were killed by other blacks will probably not persuade a person who has concluded, based on feelings, that “the police victimize black people.”

But you might help a person understand that he doesn’t run his life by feeling. He (we hope) doesn’t buy a car, plan a diet, or obtain healthcare based on what “feels right.” So why build a worldview on that kind of thinking?

And if truth is subjective and there are no absolutes, then why is the oppression that the Cultural Marxists always harp against always absolutely wrong?

Second, if a woke person believes oppression is always wrong because it violates the fundamental principle of equality, you might then ask, “Why do you believe in equality, especially considering people have varying levels of abilities, physical attributes, effort, and more? Why do Americans in general believe all people are equal, and why is this principle so fundamental? As he fumbles for an answer, point out to him that equality is a uniquely Judeo-Christian concept, and that as Joshua Berman of Bar-Ilan University observes in his book, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke With Ancient Political Thought,

If there was one truth the ancients held to be self-evident it was that all men were not created equal. If we maintain today, that in fact, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, then it is because we have inherited as part of our cultural heritage notions of equality that were deeply entrenched in the ancient passages of the Pentateuch. (read more)

2020
http://www.usaapay.com/ar15/2020/12/14j.html
______________________

Permission is hereby granted to any and all to copy and paste any entry on this page and convey it electronically along with its URL,
______________________