I think what is missing from your analysis is that all of this is done with the official sanction of the US government through civil rights law. None of this is really possible or would play out this way if it weren't being actively endorsed by our ruling regime, and I believe that is a big reason why you see such a difference between the Black Panthers and the CRT professors of today. The Black Panthers actually were an outsider faction opposed to the government. Today's CRT professors are essentially agents of the government, in practice if not in formal title.
This also explains why the whole thing appears to be focused on pure negation. The "positive vision" of CRT is for people like Joe Biden and Barack Obama to stay in power. That is its purpose. To that end, it focuses on criticism and negation of the elements in society that might threaten the power of people like Hillary Clinton. In this way it is a useful tool to the regime. The people who participate in it either do not understand this or are cynical and do not care, being motivated by blind desires for revenge against an imagined other. Whether that be white people, Christians, transphobes, whoever--they don't care how things turn out, they just want to hurt that target.
Some are cynical, some are deluded to the point of derangement. Presumably, as you suggest, the latter are cadres/useful idiots who can be "directed at" members/institutions of the larger society.
Part of what we are seeing is a version of what is called "auto golpe" (or "auto golpe de estatdo) in Latin America - a "self-coup," which (as you may know, but not everyone does) is when the ruling faction/classes of a regime "swallow up" governance from within. It is reminiscent of the Marxist idea of Fascism as Bourgeois ruling-class dictatorship in immanent fear of Communism (that theory is false - the phenomena is a version of Caesarism. Fascism - as Lenin well-knew, is a version of Marxism).
This is a fascinating take on the takeover by the woke. It totally makes sense. The younger members of the ruling class are stepping up into power, so there is an appearance of dramatic transformation of the culture, but it's all within the family so to speak.
Pretty much - I believe that there is a congruence between neoliberalism and Bourgeois Radicalism. They don't necessarily coincide - they didn't in the 60's. But they do now! And, there is and never has been any inherent conflict between them.
That's part of what's missing. The biggest gap is the spiritual dimension, and if you can't see it (a) none of this will really make sense and (b) you'll have no real weapons to fight with.
"-they don't care how things turn out, they just want to hurt that target"
That should be a clue. Consistent inversion - top to bottom lying regardless of necessity - should be a clue. The suffering and the lies ARE PRIMARY VALUES. This should be a clue. The open permanent sacrifice of children as a central component of their religious belief, and it is absolutely religious, should be a clue. Unless you can grasp this, grasp the implications, and reorient your belief system accordingly, you'll just whine all the way to your death.
Christopher’s work in this area is incredibly valuable and has made him a target. He has studied and synthesized the issues and spearheaded strategies to combat them. I’m so grateful for what he’s done, and every time I read his posts, I come away better informed and more confident in that knowledge.
Any society racist enough to warrant CRT policies is too racist to implement them. And any society woke enough to implement them is not racist enough to warrant them. A society that implements them is systemically woke, not systemically racist, and is deluded.
We were not evolved to be relationship functional - we evolved to survive. And now, for the first time in history we have the opportunity to explore relationship functionality between tribes and we are doing a horrible job.
At 68 I've seen too damn much to change my forecast. Born in the 50s, old enough to remember Kennedy's assassination, the great society, the MLK/RFK shootings. Enlisted during Vietnam, on to law school, built a law practice that spanned five decades. There was plenty of turmoil back then, but it was always accommodated, if not undergirded, by a sense of national purpose, direction, and a common goal of leaving a better place for our children. That's gone.
All of it.
And here we are. I fight the woke, CRT bullshit every day. But I also do the math. I understand scale. Numbers matter. Gen Z is voting. It's not looking good.
"Any society racist enough to warrant CRT policies is too racist to implement them. And any society woke enough to implement them is not racist enough to warrant them. A society that implements them is systemically woke, not systemically racist, and is deluded."
The premises of CRT are racist (race essentialism), as is are its outcomes (legal discrimination - and potentially worse). It is classically reactionary in most simple and regressive way - appropriating an idea and giving it a literally opposite value. This is, literally, childish.
"There was plenty of turmoil back then, but it was always accommodated, if not undergirded, by a sense of national purpose, direction, and a common goal of leaving a better place for our children. That's gone."
WWII seems, in retrospect, to have been the high-point of this patriotism and hope for a better future - not perfect, but improved. My parents were the generation ahead of you, and shared this view. I am of the generation after you, and never witnessed it except in persons older than myself - already it seemed to me a faith whose essence had vaporized. I kept my impression of things to myself for many years, out of respect for citizens - whose spirit and company I have always preferred.
The "Woke" will produce nothing of real or lasting value, and destroy the work of several generations.
Precisely. Marx's mandate to "criticize everything ruthlessly" is a no cost invitation to dismantle, destroy, and disrupt once cohesive institutions. Any fool can do it. A teardown requires no sophisticated skill sets. Like taking a sledgehammer to a Rolex, the precise engineering feats of the producing contingent of the Pareto distribution can be obliterated with one swing of a wrecking ball.
Douglas Murray relates the following in his book War On The West:
"I once read a particular detail of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. A gang of Hutus had been at their work and among the people they macheted that day was a Tutsi doctor. As his brains spilled out onto the roadside, one of his killers mocked the idea that these were meant to be the brains of a doctor. How did his learning look now? All the years of education and learning, all the knowledge and experience in that head was destroyed in a moment by people who had achieved none of those things."
I thank my stars and God Almighty that you, Rufo, an original thinker set this mark on the metastasizing cancer of our Body Politic.
I fear it’s found too late. It’s too advanced for democracy to return. It’s spread too far.
Whatever the result, I have spent a lifetime studying The Western Heritage. The stakes are high. There is no greater heritage. Its Glory is Magnificent. This Revered Heritage is the soul of the American experiment; therefore I will fight beside you ( or under your charge).
As always, thank’s for your intuition and insight to critique these dangers. Only through clarity of Vision can we restore 🗽 liberty to pass forward its Divine promise of the good, the true, the beautiful.
This is an eye-opener. I really did not understand that this movement has neither a plan nor an aim to govern. It would seem that this should be a way to expose their con game. With Hungary, you were able to do so. Now that it is so entrenched here, how best to put American people in the know? Commentators on fox often talk about these sort of encroachment on liberty, but no one ever talks about their lack of vision.
This question should help to guide the way out of the over-intellectualization trap of linking the belief system of Politically Correct Progressives with "Marxism."
CRT is just an operationalization of the PC-Prog belief tenet, "Normal America is virulently racist. And it must be changed (destroyed)." CRT (and all PC-Prog movements) only aims to DESTROY. Annihilation is the only goal. All they want is to wipe out the racist Normals. Nothing to do with Marx or communism. Anti-Normal-America hatred.
It is pure hatred and destruction. There's no link to Marx's extensive socio-economic theories. There's no goal. There's nothing but hatred and destruction.
Mistaking the PC-Prog belief system for Marxism, or Communism, or Socialism leads to complicated and off-the-mark analysis of the opponents of Normals.
Just focusing on the "America is racist." tenet of PC-Progs' belief system misses the totality of their mission to annihilate Normal America. "CRT" is just one facet. It's possible to deal with the PC-Prog attack vectors one-by-one, but crucial to keep in mind that they work hand-in-glove with all the other facets--each of which has its own destructive groups and operations:
PC-Prog is built on hatred, pure hatred. Anything Normals do/say/think/feel/believe is bad and must be changed. Change = eradication. They'll do anything to change Normal America.
They'll loot, rob, murder, destroy, burn, imprison, whatever is necessary to eradicate Normals.
Focusing on Marxism, and it's tactics and strategies is not helpful. In fact, while today's opponents of Normal America were set in motion by a Marxist (Willi Muenzenberg), their beliefs, and their tactics are NOT "Marxist."
We know that the PC-Prog belief system is based on hatred of Normal America. And we know that the belief system was designed by Willi Muenzenberg and inserted in our culture in a covert influence operation, via the three transmission belts of American culture: Hollywood, education/academia, and the media.
His goal was exactly what has happened--to destroy Normal-American culture. His ulterior motive for this destruction was to clear the way for the theorized spread of communism. His only mistake was the timeline. He thought it would take a few years--it actually took 80+ years. And ironically, the communist empire had collapsed by that time. So the PC-Prog beliefs and actions were successful, but there's no replacement for the destroyed culture, just devastation.
To counter-act the PC-Progs, we must understand that they are NOT "Marxists," or "communists," or "snowflakes," or "socialists." They are just hate-filled cultists who gain social credits in their group by hating. That's all. Only with that understanding can we begin to craft responses. Not sure what those responses should be, but analyses of "Marxism" and "wokeness" won't do much.
The cognitive abilities of critical theory activists appear to be less functional than they should be, and their behavior is similar to that of toddlers. Despite the fact that they are highly educated and strong performers in some fields of endeavor, the thinking of CT activists is generally primitive, undeveloped or degraded. They are unable to reason logically from plausible premises to realistic conclusions. Their cognition is rigid and full of errors, and the activists appear to lack curiosity about that. All or nothing thinking is prevalent, concepts are simplified, real people are reduced to undifferentiated categories, and life is navigated via rules for everything one can think, feel, say or do.
This sort of rigid, reductionistic thinking is characteristic of people who are two to three years old, as well as adults who have mental disorders. People who get caught up in totalistic kinds of cults also have been observed to show these kinds of limitations in their ability to process information and to communicate logically and realistically.
Toddlers and immature adults tend to have tantrums during which they break toys and hate authorities. They don't anticipate feeling sad over the losses, they don't want to control their rageful actions, they like to act on them, so they do. They don't worry that they might need or regret smashing whatever they have destroyed.
In the summer of 2020 when young white rioters were destroying the civic center of my city, they had no plan for what would come after the riots other than that they would get their way about something. The nature of that something was never made clear at the time, and my retrospective view is that what they wanted was mostly to act out infantile aggressive behaviors. They were said to be in a justified rage over the killing of George Floyd, but that seemed less likely than that they just wanted to act up and smash things.
It was not clear that the rioters were fully aware that the damage they were doing was irreparable, even when they destroyed irreplaceable art work. The destruction of the property of small business owners was rationalized with dismissive references to "insurance," as if it all could be replaced and the property owners would be made whole. This pattern is also consistent with infantile thinking, in which death is not recognized as permanent, and toys aren't really destroyed by tantrums. Or if they are, replacements soon appear by magic.
The lack of cognitive development in critical theory activists also shows up in DEI trainings. I have not attended one myself, but have been told repeatedly by others who have attended them that they do not include any training in how to solve the problems that are attributed to oppression or privilege. All the instructors do is point out what their ideology regards as the oppressive culture we inhabit, but they never move on to how we are going to solve the problems they identify as important.
I think that critical theory activists may be simply unable to articulate any plan for future governance of our country that would replace what they destroy. Their behavior is so immature that they may not see a need to plan for the future, they just leave it up to Mommy and Daddy. They will always be accepted during and after the tantrum and somebody else will clean up the mess and replace the toys. And if no one does, they aren't concerned about that either.
Excellent analysis of these infantile activists. Too many commentators want to show off their pseudoscience knowledge of Marxian theory and ignore the fact that these activists are not intelligent nor educated but immature & highly impressionable. They remind me of the anti Vietnam war activists spitting on soldiers like me. If these fools had seen what communists were willing to do to others to further the ideology as we vets did...
I too have had questions about the emphasis on Marxism in the Critical Theory cult. James Lindsay and Chris Rufo do present some very convincing arguments for interpreting the CT cult as a kind of Maoism. I see the Marxist influence, but I never hear the leaders talking about Marxist theory in sophisticated ways. During the Sixties the students and civil rights leaders who led the New Left were very well informed about Marx and all of his interpreters, and they argued constantly about differences between Lenin and Trotsky and so on. Other students in my social circle also talked a lot about Herbert Marcuse and Saul Alinsky. (These were kids from relatively wealthy families, however, and I never observed them redistributing their wealth).
Those years were a dark time for our generation. I agree there was something similar about the way the activists behaved towards the men who were serving in the war. I think that even though the current activists are not consciously and effectively Marxists, it is true that they are both the philosophical and the literal descendants of the activists in our generation. The content of their activism is different, but their contempt and hateful behavior towards people with patriotic values and people from blue collar or lower income demographics was the same then as it is now.
I agree with so much of what you say. I disagree, however, that this movement isn’t totally obsessed with power-over structures. Their “de-centralizing” gobbledygook hides it, perhaps, but to me its pretty clear: the pendulum of power has swung in their favor and they know it and they love it. But it is good to understand that this pendulum is attached to a much larger system, and that the kind of power we’re used to seeing people fight over are merely scraps doled out by an upper echelon of elites who are happy to shift and support whoever has the momentum at their backs. It’s time to recognize the mechanism that supports all this futile swinging. Power-over structures are unnatural since they necessarily pit people against each other. We are one human race. No more division and further fragmentation. The woke mob has only perpetuated more of this ultimately weakening fragmentation. Their obsession with identity is bringing us to new levels of hubris. Nature is begging us to reject these old us vs them stories and get into alignment with a much more radical redemption story. I’m speaking, of course, today of all days, of the powerful redemption of the Cross.
"critical race theorists even argue that Abraham Lincoln, the 14th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act, are all merely insidious and increasingly clever schemes to advance racism."
Unwillingness to assimilate the past/complete rejection of the past is a break with Marx, who interpreted past events as partial progress, "imperfect revolution," etc. Hence the cynicism and political "flexibility" of older Marxists. This new attitude is more particularly Jacobin, more "year zero." Put differently, it reveals a more complete and immediate break with reality than existed among orthodox Marxist communists. The disinterest in actual rule of the "Woke" and more immediate descent into Lysenkoism are evidence in this direction (it took the Soviets longer to manifest that). "Critical Consciousness" is an ideological formulation - a substitute reality.
This could suggest a more immediate and violent/absurd conclusion - also less sustainable. Unfortunately, we have another fever to which we might point - the Maoist Cultural Revolution and attendant "Great Leap Forward" were more overtly delusional than the Soviets.
Rufo has written/spoken about the Maoist similarities to Jacobin excess ! He agrees strongly with these parallels but I also agree with his linking these movements as if “ grandfathered in” as Marxist-America.( at least in America, as I see Marxism, it has always been relegated to the subterfuge of finding a willing home only in the intellectual elite, re: University classrooms and its professorial journals ...
Augusto Del Noce writes about the organic connection via the empirical failure of Dialectical Materialism, so that one way to look at Bourgeois Radicalism is as "decomposed Marxism." Of course, there are other ways of looking at it.
It is the irrationalism that worries me the most. "Critical Consciousness" is a derangement - an ideological substitute for reality itself. A proposed discipline of doublethink. No philosopher (including actual atheists) or non-heretical Jew or Christian could say such a thing - only a gnostic falsification of reality can speak in this way. It manifests as an eye-watering combination of certainty and idiocy. It assaults all reason and all sense.
For the irrational, anything is possible. God help us.
Great commentary and insights. Your description of the CRT theorists endgame/desires doesn'et just describe them. It also describes every petty, self-important bureaucrat I've ever had to suffer. I wonder if the neo-Marxism is just the window-dressing for career bureaucrats finally finding words and ways to justify their own self-importance. They may not care about the Marxist ideology, because the ideology is only useful insofar as it makes them feel self-important.
I think the bureaucrat and the self-important cogs in the machine are fundamentally opposed to meritocracy.
While legislative mandates are a strong legal route, a new frame that makes bureaucrats feel self-important without the toxicity of CRT might go further in fixing the CRT aspect of bureaucratic culture.
"Your description of the CRT theorists endgame/desires doesn'et just describe them. It also describes every petty, self-important bureaucrat I've ever had to suffer. I wonder if the neo-Marxism is just the window-dressing for career bureaucrats finally finding words and ways to justify their own self-importance."
This is an outstanding post! The above sentences are spot on and hilarious! You might really be on to something here!
Destruction of all that exists is the main theme of all variants of Marxism. Even scientific research is now being corrupted with woke ideology. I have written "Data Designed to Deceive: The corruption of medical research with ideology" in my latest Substack at https://2026.substack.com/p/data-designed-to-deceive
I wish that Mr. Rufo had said more about how critical race theory complements the revolutionary vision of the American Radical Left, the Marxist-inspired ideological base of today’s Democrat Party. Their revolutionary goal is the total transformation of America—by that, they mean giving a small close-knit socialist elite total control of our political, social, and economic institutions; control of your medical care, your children’s education, local, state, and national welfare programs, all business, manufacturing, distribution of goods – and even your wages and banking and retirement accounts if the Biden administration succeeds in replacing the paper dollar with a Central Bank Digital Currency. The American Radical Left’s ultimate goal is total control of much of the daily lives of nearly every member of American society—in short, the goal is an authoritarian state.
The American Radical Left understands well that free, prosperous, and secure citizens will not give up their freedom and independence willingly. The Radical Left understands, in the words of Saul Alinsky (Alinsky SD. 𝘙𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘙𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘢 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘴. New York: Random House; 1971; pp xix-xx, xxi), “that revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝘀𝗼 𝗳𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱, 𝘀𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱, 𝘀𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁, 𝘀𝗼 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗴𝗼 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲.” [bold type added].
Critical race theory, in my opinion, can be best understood as one element in a comprehensive strategy for causing a broad segment of the American people to feel “𝘴𝘰 𝘧𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘴𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘴𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘴𝘰 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺” will willingly exchange their individual freedoms and independence for the illusory promise of future economic and physical security.
Critical race theory, I believe, can best be understood as is but one element of the Radical Left’s strategy, a strategy that—in the guise of Democrat party policies—has inflicted on America and its people soaring inflation—the worst in four decades; declining purchasing power that is forcing many American families to dig into their savings, fall behind on bills, and sink deeper into debt (the average credit card user was carrying a balance of $5,474 last fall, according to TransUnion, up 13% from last year); increasing racial tension, skyrocketing increases in crime; sky-high gas, oil, and energy prices (for example, the price of fuel oil used in home heating increased 89.3% during 2022); out-of-control rises in the costs for groceries; rising interest rates—the average interest on credit card debt as of April 3, 2023, is 24.20% according to Forbes Advisor’s weekly credit card rates report, up from 14.51% at the end of 2021; and nearly two-thirds of consumers were living paycheck to paycheck as of January 2023.
Bowing to the Radical Left’s woke agenda, the Biden administration has adopted policies that brought America supply chain disruption; proposals to ban everything from internal combustion engines, to natural gas cook stoves and to toilet paper; and more. Pressure from the Radical Left also has brought us a number of controversies and crises on other fronts—voter ID, climate change, the supreme court, fear-mongering related to Medicare and social security, foreign policy failures, abortion rights, 2nd Amendment, police funding, soft-on-crime prosecutors, uncontrolled illegal immigration, a constant drumbeat of race-bating, COVID-19 policies, the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, and the introduction of pornography into the K-12 curricula.
No matter your position on any individual issue or the Biden administration’s responses, the Radical Left has successfully exploited them to cause an increasing percentage of the American people to 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘧𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭, 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. We must stop addressing topics like critical race theory as separate academic issues and begin to recognize and respond to them as complementary components of a coordinated revolutionary strategy with a definable objective that threatens to put an end to the American experiment in representative democracy. If we fail to do so, the Radical Left inevitably will rob us of the peace, prosperity, freedoms, and individual liberties Americans have enjoyed for nearly 250 years.
I think what is missing from your analysis is that all of this is done with the official sanction of the US government through civil rights law. None of this is really possible or would play out this way if it weren't being actively endorsed by our ruling regime, and I believe that is a big reason why you see such a difference between the Black Panthers and the CRT professors of today. The Black Panthers actually were an outsider faction opposed to the government. Today's CRT professors are essentially agents of the government, in practice if not in formal title.
This also explains why the whole thing appears to be focused on pure negation. The "positive vision" of CRT is for people like Joe Biden and Barack Obama to stay in power. That is its purpose. To that end, it focuses on criticism and negation of the elements in society that might threaten the power of people like Hillary Clinton. In this way it is a useful tool to the regime. The people who participate in it either do not understand this or are cynical and do not care, being motivated by blind desires for revenge against an imagined other. Whether that be white people, Christians, transphobes, whoever--they don't care how things turn out, they just want to hurt that target.
Some are cynical, some are deluded to the point of derangement. Presumably, as you suggest, the latter are cadres/useful idiots who can be "directed at" members/institutions of the larger society.
Part of what we are seeing is a version of what is called "auto golpe" (or "auto golpe de estatdo) in Latin America - a "self-coup," which (as you may know, but not everyone does) is when the ruling faction/classes of a regime "swallow up" governance from within. It is reminiscent of the Marxist idea of Fascism as Bourgeois ruling-class dictatorship in immanent fear of Communism (that theory is false - the phenomena is a version of Caesarism. Fascism - as Lenin well-knew, is a version of Marxism).
This is a fascinating take on the takeover by the woke. It totally makes sense. The younger members of the ruling class are stepping up into power, so there is an appearance of dramatic transformation of the culture, but it's all within the family so to speak.
Pretty much - I believe that there is a congruence between neoliberalism and Bourgeois Radicalism. They don't necessarily coincide - they didn't in the 60's. But they do now! And, there is and never has been any inherent conflict between them.
That's part of what's missing. The biggest gap is the spiritual dimension, and if you can't see it (a) none of this will really make sense and (b) you'll have no real weapons to fight with.
"-they don't care how things turn out, they just want to hurt that target"
That should be a clue. Consistent inversion - top to bottom lying regardless of necessity - should be a clue. The suffering and the lies ARE PRIMARY VALUES. This should be a clue. The open permanent sacrifice of children as a central component of their religious belief, and it is absolutely religious, should be a clue. Unless you can grasp this, grasp the implications, and reorient your belief system accordingly, you'll just whine all the way to your death.
Christopher’s work in this area is incredibly valuable and has made him a target. He has studied and synthesized the issues and spearheaded strategies to combat them. I’m so grateful for what he’s done, and every time I read his posts, I come away better informed and more confident in that knowledge.
Absolutely. There's no question. In fact, BLM has even stated "they are trained Marxist." https://twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1274336621702373377?s=12
The BLM CRT paradox:
Any society racist enough to warrant CRT policies is too racist to implement them. And any society woke enough to implement them is not racist enough to warrant them. A society that implements them is systemically woke, not systemically racist, and is deluded.
We were not evolved to be relationship functional - we evolved to survive. And now, for the first time in history we have the opportunity to explore relationship functionality between tribes and we are doing a horrible job.
At 68 I've seen too damn much to change my forecast. Born in the 50s, old enough to remember Kennedy's assassination, the great society, the MLK/RFK shootings. Enlisted during Vietnam, on to law school, built a law practice that spanned five decades. There was plenty of turmoil back then, but it was always accommodated, if not undergirded, by a sense of national purpose, direction, and a common goal of leaving a better place for our children. That's gone.
All of it.
And here we are. I fight the woke, CRT bullshit every day. But I also do the math. I understand scale. Numbers matter. Gen Z is voting. It's not looking good.
"Any society racist enough to warrant CRT policies is too racist to implement them. And any society woke enough to implement them is not racist enough to warrant them. A society that implements them is systemically woke, not systemically racist, and is deluded."
The premises of CRT are racist (race essentialism), as is are its outcomes (legal discrimination - and potentially worse). It is classically reactionary in most simple and regressive way - appropriating an idea and giving it a literally opposite value. This is, literally, childish.
"There was plenty of turmoil back then, but it was always accommodated, if not undergirded, by a sense of national purpose, direction, and a common goal of leaving a better place for our children. That's gone."
WWII seems, in retrospect, to have been the high-point of this patriotism and hope for a better future - not perfect, but improved. My parents were the generation ahead of you, and shared this view. I am of the generation after you, and never witnessed it except in persons older than myself - already it seemed to me a faith whose essence had vaporized. I kept my impression of things to myself for many years, out of respect for citizens - whose spirit and company I have always preferred.
The "Woke" will produce nothing of real or lasting value, and destroy the work of several generations.
Precisely. Marx's mandate to "criticize everything ruthlessly" is a no cost invitation to dismantle, destroy, and disrupt once cohesive institutions. Any fool can do it. A teardown requires no sophisticated skill sets. Like taking a sledgehammer to a Rolex, the precise engineering feats of the producing contingent of the Pareto distribution can be obliterated with one swing of a wrecking ball.
Douglas Murray relates the following in his book War On The West:
"I once read a particular detail of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. A gang of Hutus had been at their work and among the people they macheted that day was a Tutsi doctor. As his brains spilled out onto the roadside, one of his killers mocked the idea that these were meant to be the brains of a doctor. How did his learning look now? All the years of education and learning, all the knowledge and experience in that head was destroyed in a moment by people who had achieved none of those things."
The Rwanda example will stay with me. You will forgive me if I don't thank you .
Regards,
I thank my stars and God Almighty that you, Rufo, an original thinker set this mark on the metastasizing cancer of our Body Politic.
I fear it’s found too late. It’s too advanced for democracy to return. It’s spread too far.
Whatever the result, I have spent a lifetime studying The Western Heritage. The stakes are high. There is no greater heritage. Its Glory is Magnificent. This Revered Heritage is the soul of the American experiment; therefore I will fight beside you ( or under your charge).
As always, thank’s for your intuition and insight to critique these dangers. Only through clarity of Vision can we restore 🗽 liberty to pass forward its Divine promise of the good, the true, the beautiful.
This is an eye-opener. I really did not understand that this movement has neither a plan nor an aim to govern. It would seem that this should be a way to expose their con game. With Hungary, you were able to do so. Now that it is so entrenched here, how best to put American people in the know? Commentators on fox often talk about these sort of encroachment on liberty, but no one ever talks about their lack of vision.
"that critical race theory is an academic discipline that holds that the United States is a fundamentally racist country"
Not just the US but all developed democracies.
And you're right: they're not interested in governing; they're interested in tearing down the developed democracies.
"What do they want?"
This question should help to guide the way out of the over-intellectualization trap of linking the belief system of Politically Correct Progressives with "Marxism."
CRT is just an operationalization of the PC-Prog belief tenet, "Normal America is virulently racist. And it must be changed (destroyed)." CRT (and all PC-Prog movements) only aims to DESTROY. Annihilation is the only goal. All they want is to wipe out the racist Normals. Nothing to do with Marx or communism. Anti-Normal-America hatred.
It is pure hatred and destruction. There's no link to Marx's extensive socio-economic theories. There's no goal. There's nothing but hatred and destruction.
Mistaking the PC-Prog belief system for Marxism, or Communism, or Socialism leads to complicated and off-the-mark analysis of the opponents of Normals.
Just focusing on the "America is racist." tenet of PC-Progs' belief system misses the totality of their mission to annihilate Normal America. "CRT" is just one facet. It's possible to deal with the PC-Prog attack vectors one-by-one, but crucial to keep in mind that they work hand-in-glove with all the other facets--each of which has its own destructive groups and operations:
PC-Progs believe that:
America is a...
racist,
sexist,
homophobic,
xenophobic,
imperialist,
capitalist hellhole.
And it must be changed.
https://kentclizbe.substack.com/p/politically-correct-progressive-belief
But as stated, changed into what? They destroy with no plan to restore or rebuild into something better. Simply destroy.
Yes! That's exactly it: Change = Destroy
PC-Prog is built on hatred, pure hatred. Anything Normals do/say/think/feel/believe is bad and must be changed. Change = eradication. They'll do anything to change Normal America.
They'll loot, rob, murder, destroy, burn, imprison, whatever is necessary to eradicate Normals.
Focusing on Marxism, and it's tactics and strategies is not helpful. In fact, while today's opponents of Normal America were set in motion by a Marxist (Willi Muenzenberg), their beliefs, and their tactics are NOT "Marxist."
We have the opponents' playbook (www.willingaccomplices.com).
We know that the PC-Prog belief system is based on hatred of Normal America. And we know that the belief system was designed by Willi Muenzenberg and inserted in our culture in a covert influence operation, via the three transmission belts of American culture: Hollywood, education/academia, and the media.
His goal was exactly what has happened--to destroy Normal-American culture. His ulterior motive for this destruction was to clear the way for the theorized spread of communism. His only mistake was the timeline. He thought it would take a few years--it actually took 80+ years. And ironically, the communist empire had collapsed by that time. So the PC-Prog beliefs and actions were successful, but there's no replacement for the destroyed culture, just devastation.
To counter-act the PC-Progs, we must understand that they are NOT "Marxists," or "communists," or "snowflakes," or "socialists." They are just hate-filled cultists who gain social credits in their group by hating. That's all. Only with that understanding can we begin to craft responses. Not sure what those responses should be, but analyses of "Marxism" and "wokeness" won't do much.
The cognitive abilities of critical theory activists appear to be less functional than they should be, and their behavior is similar to that of toddlers. Despite the fact that they are highly educated and strong performers in some fields of endeavor, the thinking of CT activists is generally primitive, undeveloped or degraded. They are unable to reason logically from plausible premises to realistic conclusions. Their cognition is rigid and full of errors, and the activists appear to lack curiosity about that. All or nothing thinking is prevalent, concepts are simplified, real people are reduced to undifferentiated categories, and life is navigated via rules for everything one can think, feel, say or do.
This sort of rigid, reductionistic thinking is characteristic of people who are two to three years old, as well as adults who have mental disorders. People who get caught up in totalistic kinds of cults also have been observed to show these kinds of limitations in their ability to process information and to communicate logically and realistically.
Toddlers and immature adults tend to have tantrums during which they break toys and hate authorities. They don't anticipate feeling sad over the losses, they don't want to control their rageful actions, they like to act on them, so they do. They don't worry that they might need or regret smashing whatever they have destroyed.
In the summer of 2020 when young white rioters were destroying the civic center of my city, they had no plan for what would come after the riots other than that they would get their way about something. The nature of that something was never made clear at the time, and my retrospective view is that what they wanted was mostly to act out infantile aggressive behaviors. They were said to be in a justified rage over the killing of George Floyd, but that seemed less likely than that they just wanted to act up and smash things.
It was not clear that the rioters were fully aware that the damage they were doing was irreparable, even when they destroyed irreplaceable art work. The destruction of the property of small business owners was rationalized with dismissive references to "insurance," as if it all could be replaced and the property owners would be made whole. This pattern is also consistent with infantile thinking, in which death is not recognized as permanent, and toys aren't really destroyed by tantrums. Or if they are, replacements soon appear by magic.
The lack of cognitive development in critical theory activists also shows up in DEI trainings. I have not attended one myself, but have been told repeatedly by others who have attended them that they do not include any training in how to solve the problems that are attributed to oppression or privilege. All the instructors do is point out what their ideology regards as the oppressive culture we inhabit, but they never move on to how we are going to solve the problems they identify as important.
I think that critical theory activists may be simply unable to articulate any plan for future governance of our country that would replace what they destroy. Their behavior is so immature that they may not see a need to plan for the future, they just leave it up to Mommy and Daddy. They will always be accepted during and after the tantrum and somebody else will clean up the mess and replace the toys. And if no one does, they aren't concerned about that either.
Excellent analysis of these infantile activists. Too many commentators want to show off their pseudoscience knowledge of Marxian theory and ignore the fact that these activists are not intelligent nor educated but immature & highly impressionable. They remind me of the anti Vietnam war activists spitting on soldiers like me. If these fools had seen what communists were willing to do to others to further the ideology as we vets did...
Thank you!
I too have had questions about the emphasis on Marxism in the Critical Theory cult. James Lindsay and Chris Rufo do present some very convincing arguments for interpreting the CT cult as a kind of Maoism. I see the Marxist influence, but I never hear the leaders talking about Marxist theory in sophisticated ways. During the Sixties the students and civil rights leaders who led the New Left were very well informed about Marx and all of his interpreters, and they argued constantly about differences between Lenin and Trotsky and so on. Other students in my social circle also talked a lot about Herbert Marcuse and Saul Alinsky. (These were kids from relatively wealthy families, however, and I never observed them redistributing their wealth).
Those years were a dark time for our generation. I agree there was something similar about the way the activists behaved towards the men who were serving in the war. I think that even though the current activists are not consciously and effectively Marxists, it is true that they are both the philosophical and the literal descendants of the activists in our generation. The content of their activism is different, but their contempt and hateful behavior towards people with patriotic values and people from blue collar or lower income demographics was the same then as it is now.
I agree with so much of what you say. I disagree, however, that this movement isn’t totally obsessed with power-over structures. Their “de-centralizing” gobbledygook hides it, perhaps, but to me its pretty clear: the pendulum of power has swung in their favor and they know it and they love it. But it is good to understand that this pendulum is attached to a much larger system, and that the kind of power we’re used to seeing people fight over are merely scraps doled out by an upper echelon of elites who are happy to shift and support whoever has the momentum at their backs. It’s time to recognize the mechanism that supports all this futile swinging. Power-over structures are unnatural since they necessarily pit people against each other. We are one human race. No more division and further fragmentation. The woke mob has only perpetuated more of this ultimately weakening fragmentation. Their obsession with identity is bringing us to new levels of hubris. Nature is begging us to reject these old us vs them stories and get into alignment with a much more radical redemption story. I’m speaking, of course, today of all days, of the powerful redemption of the Cross.
"critical race theorists even argue that Abraham Lincoln, the 14th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act, are all merely insidious and increasingly clever schemes to advance racism."
Unwillingness to assimilate the past/complete rejection of the past is a break with Marx, who interpreted past events as partial progress, "imperfect revolution," etc. Hence the cynicism and political "flexibility" of older Marxists. This new attitude is more particularly Jacobin, more "year zero." Put differently, it reveals a more complete and immediate break with reality than existed among orthodox Marxist communists. The disinterest in actual rule of the "Woke" and more immediate descent into Lysenkoism are evidence in this direction (it took the Soviets longer to manifest that). "Critical Consciousness" is an ideological formulation - a substitute reality.
This could suggest a more immediate and violent/absurd conclusion - also less sustainable. Unfortunately, we have another fever to which we might point - the Maoist Cultural Revolution and attendant "Great Leap Forward" were more overtly delusional than the Soviets.
Rufo has written/spoken about the Maoist similarities to Jacobin excess ! He agrees strongly with these parallels but I also agree with his linking these movements as if “ grandfathered in” as Marxist-America.( at least in America, as I see Marxism, it has always been relegated to the subterfuge of finding a willing home only in the intellectual elite, re: University classrooms and its professorial journals ...
Augusto Del Noce writes about the organic connection via the empirical failure of Dialectical Materialism, so that one way to look at Bourgeois Radicalism is as "decomposed Marxism." Of course, there are other ways of looking at it.
It sounds very much like you are saying that Bourgeois Radicalism is a pile of poo.
!!!
Add in the environmental fanaticism to get a Great Leap CRT combo…
It is the irrationalism that worries me the most. "Critical Consciousness" is a derangement - an ideological substitute for reality itself. A proposed discipline of doublethink. No philosopher (including actual atheists) or non-heretical Jew or Christian could say such a thing - only a gnostic falsification of reality can speak in this way. It manifests as an eye-watering combination of certainty and idiocy. It assaults all reason and all sense.
For the irrational, anything is possible. God help us.
Thank you for your very astute insights on this intense topic... Distribute this widely to gain optimum understanding within circles of influence.
Great commentary and insights. Your description of the CRT theorists endgame/desires doesn'et just describe them. It also describes every petty, self-important bureaucrat I've ever had to suffer. I wonder if the neo-Marxism is just the window-dressing for career bureaucrats finally finding words and ways to justify their own self-importance. They may not care about the Marxist ideology, because the ideology is only useful insofar as it makes them feel self-important.
I think the bureaucrat and the self-important cogs in the machine are fundamentally opposed to meritocracy.
While legislative mandates are a strong legal route, a new frame that makes bureaucrats feel self-important without the toxicity of CRT might go further in fixing the CRT aspect of bureaucratic culture.
"Your description of the CRT theorists endgame/desires doesn'et just describe them. It also describes every petty, self-important bureaucrat I've ever had to suffer. I wonder if the neo-Marxism is just the window-dressing for career bureaucrats finally finding words and ways to justify their own self-importance."
This is an outstanding post! The above sentences are spot on and hilarious! You might really be on to something here!
Destruction of all that exists is the main theme of all variants of Marxism. Even scientific research is now being corrupted with woke ideology. I have written "Data Designed to Deceive: The corruption of medical research with ideology" in my latest Substack at https://2026.substack.com/p/data-designed-to-deceive
The wealth is in the middle class so if you make them the enemy you can more easily take it
I wish that Mr. Rufo had said more about how critical race theory complements the revolutionary vision of the American Radical Left, the Marxist-inspired ideological base of today’s Democrat Party. Their revolutionary goal is the total transformation of America—by that, they mean giving a small close-knit socialist elite total control of our political, social, and economic institutions; control of your medical care, your children’s education, local, state, and national welfare programs, all business, manufacturing, distribution of goods – and even your wages and banking and retirement accounts if the Biden administration succeeds in replacing the paper dollar with a Central Bank Digital Currency. The American Radical Left’s ultimate goal is total control of much of the daily lives of nearly every member of American society—in short, the goal is an authoritarian state.
The American Radical Left understands well that free, prosperous, and secure citizens will not give up their freedom and independence willingly. The Radical Left understands, in the words of Saul Alinsky (Alinsky SD. 𝘙𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘙𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘢 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘴. New York: Random House; 1971; pp xix-xx, xxi), “that revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝘀𝗼 𝗳𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱, 𝘀𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱, 𝘀𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁, 𝘀𝗼 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗴𝗼 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲.” [bold type added].
Critical race theory, in my opinion, can be best understood as one element in a comprehensive strategy for causing a broad segment of the American people to feel “𝘴𝘰 𝘧𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘴𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘴𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘴𝘰 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺” will willingly exchange their individual freedoms and independence for the illusory promise of future economic and physical security.
Critical race theory, I believe, can best be understood as is but one element of the Radical Left’s strategy, a strategy that—in the guise of Democrat party policies—has inflicted on America and its people soaring inflation—the worst in four decades; declining purchasing power that is forcing many American families to dig into their savings, fall behind on bills, and sink deeper into debt (the average credit card user was carrying a balance of $5,474 last fall, according to TransUnion, up 13% from last year); increasing racial tension, skyrocketing increases in crime; sky-high gas, oil, and energy prices (for example, the price of fuel oil used in home heating increased 89.3% during 2022); out-of-control rises in the costs for groceries; rising interest rates—the average interest on credit card debt as of April 3, 2023, is 24.20% according to Forbes Advisor’s weekly credit card rates report, up from 14.51% at the end of 2021; and nearly two-thirds of consumers were living paycheck to paycheck as of January 2023.
Bowing to the Radical Left’s woke agenda, the Biden administration has adopted policies that brought America supply chain disruption; proposals to ban everything from internal combustion engines, to natural gas cook stoves and to toilet paper; and more. Pressure from the Radical Left also has brought us a number of controversies and crises on other fronts—voter ID, climate change, the supreme court, fear-mongering related to Medicare and social security, foreign policy failures, abortion rights, 2nd Amendment, police funding, soft-on-crime prosecutors, uncontrolled illegal immigration, a constant drumbeat of race-bating, COVID-19 policies, the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, and the introduction of pornography into the K-12 curricula.
No matter your position on any individual issue or the Biden administration’s responses, the Radical Left has successfully exploited them to cause an increasing percentage of the American people to 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘧𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭, 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. We must stop addressing topics like critical race theory as separate academic issues and begin to recognize and respond to them as complementary components of a coordinated revolutionary strategy with a definable objective that threatens to put an end to the American experiment in representative democracy. If we fail to do so, the Radical Left inevitably will rob us of the peace, prosperity, freedoms, and individual liberties Americans have enjoyed for nearly 250 years.
Much like the Texas two-step, I hate communists.